“What’s wrong, Callie? Is it Gentry? Is he somehow forcing you to ignore me?”
I cringe but the knife’s already sliced deep. That name. Oh God, even hearing the monster’s name… One, two, three— Gentry’s face flashes. That sadistic grin. Four, five, six, seven—
Fuck, it’s not working! My hand goes to my forehead. I’ve been blocking it out so well. I’ve been surviving goddammit, and now here Jackson is, showing up where he is not wanted, spouting all kinds of shit.
“Look, I just don’t want to see you right now. It’s not a discussion.” I go again to close the door.
“The hell it’s not,” Jackson says, and this time he not only keeps me from closing the door, but moves like he’s going to shove his way past me into the apartment.
“Don’t you dare!” I shout. I don’t know if it’s my words or the shrillness of my voice that stopped him, but he freezes. I don’t fucking care. The fact that he was even about to—the fucking gall of this guy— Of all of them.
He’s a foot taller than me and I should be intimidated, but I’m not. I get right up in his face. “You think you have the right to just come into my apartment when I told you no? You think you can just do that because you’re a man and stronger than me? That you have the right to do any fucking thing you want? I told you no!”
His face blanches and he takes a backward step so that he’s clearly on the opposite side of the threshold, outside the door. Too fucking late.
“No,” he holds up his hands, “no, Calliope, I would never think that. God, no. I just thought this conversation should be had in private—but of course I would never—if you’re uncomfortable—” he stops talking, as if finally realizing he’s just digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself.
“Fuck.” He drags a hand through his hair, looking furious at himself. He looks back up at me and his eyes are tired and haunted.
“Forgive me, Calliope. Even though, fuck, it’s unforgiveable. No is always no, no matter what, no matter where or when.” More than haunted, he looks anguished as he says it. “I’ve just been so worried. You were going to hand in your resignation at Gentry Tech on Monday, but then I never hear from you again. I’ve been going crazy all week. Please, I just need to know that you’re okay.”
“I’m fine—”
He’s shaking his head already. “Stop bullshitting me! I can tell you’re not okay.”
I grab onto the door handle so hard I think it might shatter. There’s too much shit going through my head at the moment. Why is Jackson doing this to me? I feel the scratching of my throat and I hate it. Hate it. What, I’m going to cry now? Fucking now? After everything else, this is gonna be the thing that breaks me—stupid fucking Jackson Vale and his compassion for me.
Because I can fucking feel it. Cracks in the dam I spent the past week fortifying with every ounce of my strength, sinking and sealing each emotion until my soul is a calm, placid lake on a windless morning. There is no more storm or tempest and the things that lay buried in the cold, lightless depths of that lagoon need to remain undisturbed forever. That can only happen if I remain in control.
Absolute control.
So I do the only thing I can do. I lash out. “God, what makes you think you’re such an expert on my life? You can tell I’m not okay? Because you have known me, what, all of a month? There’s this magical thing called listening to the words that come out of someone’s mouth. I’m fine. And even if I wasn’t,” I enunciate each word pointedly and manage to look Jackson in the eyes, forcing a glare. “What in the hell makes you think I would confide in you? Again, our whole four weeks of barely knowing each other?”
I can tell from the stubborn set of his jaw that he’s still ready to argue with me about some kind of connection with me so I push even harder. “Or is it just that I let you put your cock in me?” I arch my eyebrow and let the sarcasm drip.
“Fun fact, that doesn’t mean that you know me or that you suddenly get any say in my life at all. You don’t get to barge into my apartment. You don’t get to demand that I tell you things. You don’t get to stalk me, come to my house, and ask me why I’m not returning your calls. None of this,” I wave my hand between him and me over the threshold of my doorway, “is appropriate behavior.”
Jackson’s frame seems to fold in on itself. The posture looks all wrong on him. He’s a confident man, so assured in everything he does. But my words have made him second guess everything. It punches me in the chest, seeing him like this, but I immediately numb myself to it. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. He’ll get over it. My points are valid anyway. To any outside observer, his behavior could be interpreted as problematic. Or at least it would have been if it was any other man than Jackson.
Because Jackson cares for me. My throat constricts. He was worried. He knew I was walking into Gentry’s den. And he was right to be worried, wasn’t he?
Hands. Hands on my body. Everywhere. Sweat. More hands. I’m choking, oh God, I can’t breathe—
NO. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, one, two, three, four—
“Callie? Calliope? Callie, are you all right?” I come back to myself just to see him reaching out to me. He stops himself even as I cringe and pull back. It doesn’t go unnoticed.
I watch as his jaw goes taut. He takes two steps back from me and puts his hands out, like someone might do when they’re trying to soothe a spooked animal.
Shit, is that how he sees me? Is that what I am?
He looks like he’s about to say something, but I know I don’t want to hear it. I can’t handle any of the questions or observations or anything else from him.
My own voice has no inflection at all when I ask, “Do I still have a position at your company? If I do, where and when should I report?”
“Callie, please talk to me. If it’s something Gentry’s doing, if he’s blackmailing you or hurting you in any way, I swear I’ll—”
Well, that’s that. I live in Silicon Valley, and I have at least one contact. I just need to track down a number for Mr. Henderson, the guy from Lockheed I met at the charity. This is what new Callie does. She sees a problem and attacks it. No room for sentimentality.
Jackson doesn’t physically halt me from closing the door this time. It’s just his voice.
“Stop! Dammit, Calliope. Of course you have a job at CubeThink. I told you that you always would, regardless of whether or not you ever see me socially again.” His voice is firm but no less intimate as he takes a step closer, though he still doesn’t cross the doorway. “I always keep my promises. The law firm will also continue handling your custody case pro bono. I don’t have to be part of it at all if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.” I swallow, my eyes on the floor. “Also, if I could get the information for the lawyer so I can contact him directly going forward.”
He nods and doesn’t try to disguise how bothered all of this is making him. “I’ll email you the lawyer’s information.”
For a second I think that’s it. That he’s going to leave it there, but of course, being Jackson, he doesn’t.
He maneuvers his face to try to catch my eyes, but I keep my gaze firmly averted. “You never have to worry about any of it falling through—the job or the lawyers. But I do hope that eventually you’ll feel like you can open up to me, Callie. Even if it’s only ever as a friend. You’re an amazing woman and I’m privileged to know you.”
Damn him. Damn him to hell. My whole chest feels warm and hurts at the same time. I’m hollow inside, but with every word he speaks, it’s like I can feel the ache of the emptiness, the contour of all that’s missing.
I stiffen my back and swallow hard. I am in control. I am fucking in control. I will count to ten until I’ve made it to a billion a million times over before I fucking crack, I swear to God.
Jackson’s voice is soft as he continues, “You start next Monday. Go to the seventeenth floo
r and ask for Marissa in HR. She’ll get you your security badge and then introduce you to your team. I was going to do that but,” he hesitates, “I imagine you would prefer her.”
It sounds like one last lifeline he’s holding out to me, but I do what I have to. I quash it. My eyes are still on my shoes as I answer. “Yes, I think that would be best.”
Even from the corner of my eye, I can see the pained expression that crosses his face. I force myself to ignore it.
“Goodbye, Jackson.”
“Goodbye.”
I feel his lingering stare but I don’t look up again. Moments later the charged air feels empty and I know that he is gone.
EPILOGUE
One Month Later
My self-defense instructor is a bad ass. When she talks, people pay attention.
“Watch closely,” Lydia’s voice sings out. “Reach behind you, grab the attacker’s shoulder— though in real life you can grab anything you can get your hands on, even an ear—then use your hip as a fulcrum to flip them over.”
She repeats the move at the front of the class. I watch in awe as she flips a man in full padding almost twice her size with apparent ease flat onto his back to the mat at her feet. The man lets out a small oof of surprise, but he’s smiling the next moment as Lydia holds a hand down to help him back to his feet.
I watch Lydia’s body as she moves. Her small frame is strong and graceful and packed full of muscle. She’s everything I aspire to be.
When I was searching for self-defense classes a few weeks ago, I just wanted one that was taught by a woman. I had no idea I’d find a friend in Lydia.
After my second class which meets at a local gym, I stayed after. I saw a punching bag, started hitting it and then couldn’t stop. I just wailed on the damn thing.
I had no idea what the fuck I was doing, of course. It just felt so good to finally hit something. I’d done what I promised myself I would—I kept my shit under control. I didn’t break, even when that horrible afternoon replayed on fucking repeat in twisted nightmares over and over and over.
The nightmares didn’t vary much. Always those sweaty fucking hands holding me down on that goddamned table. The stink of men and sweat and sex. Except in the nightmares the afternoons never end. I’m kept there for eternity, chained like a dog as their slave—
So yeah, I was there smacking the hell out of the standing bag that was almost as big as I was until a soft voice stopped me.
“Hey, aren’t you in my six-thirty class?”
“What?” I was in such a haze, releasing my fury on the bag it took me a second to register the petite woman with mocha-colored skin and intelligent hazel eyes.
“You know,” she said conversationally, “there’s a reason that you’re supposed to wrap your knuckles up before you start slamming the bag like that.”
She nodded in the direction of my hands. I followed her gaze, only then realizing my knuckles were bloody.
Holy shit. How long and hard had I been going at it?
“I… um...” I dropped my hands, only barely fighting the impulse to put them behind my back in a pathetic attempt to hide them.
“Come with me,” Lydia said decisively. “I’ve got a first-aid kit in my locker.”
I followed along after her. I was embarrassed, but she seemed assured about what to do and even a quick glance at the mess I’d made of my knuckles told me they’d be hard to patch up on my own.
Shannon was home after the visit to our parents, but we weren’t on the best of terms right now. She stayed in the apartment only because it would look better to the courts, she believed, if Charlie had two stable adults to come back to if and when the custody grant was repealed. But Shannon barely spoke to me. No matter how much I swore the drug test was a false positive, she was convinced I was lying and it was my fault Charlie’d been taken. Just the thought of my sister made me want to head back out to the heavy bag, bloody knuckles or not.
“You live around here?” Lydia asked and I was glad for the distraction.
“Campbell.” Everyone around here was familiar with the neighborhood just south of San Jose.
She nodded, confirming my thought. “You?” I asked.
“Just moved into Cambrian Park.”
“Nice,” I smiled. It was the neighborhood just south of Campbell, but much nicer. “I feel like that’s where everyone in Campbell wishes they lived. Sometimes half a mile makes all the difference in the Bay Area.”
She nods and laughs. “Don’t I know it. Me and my roommate just moved from a total shithole in Oakland.”
We walked into the locker room. “Head to the sink. I’ll grab my bag and be there in a sec.”
I did and she was back beside me in a couple minutes.
I put my hands underneath the tap and Lydia helped me washed the blood off. I grimaced when I saw the damage underneath.
“Well that’s pretty,” Lydia acknowledged.
“Yeah, I’m a real work of art.”
Lydia looked at me compassionately but she didn’t hold back from liberally pouring the peroxide on both hands. I held my own even though it stung like a bitch.
Lydia made a noise of approval. “Ooo, I do love the strong, silent types,” she said with a flirty tilt to her head.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly flustered. I hadn’t realized she was looking at me that way. “Look, I’m into guys. Or well,” I look at the floor, “I was. I mean, at the moment I’m not actually into anyone or anything.” I shuddered. “None of it. At all.” Right, so that came out way too vehemently. Um, and all that shit before it was major foot-in-mouth syndrome too because she probably wasn’t coming on to me at all, and even if she was, I just made it all super-fucking awkward.
I looked back up at her. At the beginning of my word vomit her eyes were sparkling, but her mouth had become a flat, unamused line.
Fucking hell. The first time someone was nice to me in forever and I went super-freak on them within ten minutes of them talking to me one-on-one. Fuck. I was about to grab a paper towel to dry my hands and rush out of there when her voice stopped me.
“Women come to self-defense classes for all kinds of reasons.” Her voice was quiet in the busy locker room. Women bustled all around us, but at our little corner sink, she spoke loud enough so only I could hear. “Maybe they’ve just moved to the city and want to learn how to protect themselves. Or their friends are doing it so they sign up too. Maybe they see some movie or read a book that scares them or inspires them about women empowering themselves this way. But then there’s another category of people.”
She paused, her eyes briefly meeting mine in the mirror before she squeezed antibiotic cream onto several large Band-Aids, which she then applied carefully to my knuckles.
“Do you want to know about this last category?”
I didn’t say anything, barely even dared to breathe.
“It’s mostly women,” she went on calmly, her eyes on the task of bandaging up my hands, “but not always. This group comes to the class because they’re scared. Or angry. They are in pain for sure. They’ve been hurt in the past. They’ve been abused, sometimes in the worst ways possible.”
My stomach sank and I felt sweat on the back of my neck that had nothing to do with the forty-five-minute session at the bag. God, how did she know? Was what they did written all over my face? Would every stranger know my worst secrets within three minutes of meeting me, without me ever saying a word?
That I’m defiled. Wrong. Filth. Disgusting. I looked beyond Lydia to the shower stalls that line the walls. If she wasn’t holding my hands to bandage them, I’d be scratching at my skin. It’s there again, that sense of dirt that goes down to my bones.
She finishes applying the last Band-Aid.
“But you want to know something else about these people?”
I didn’t nod or shake my head. I didn’t meet her eyes in the mirror anymore either.
She grasped my uninjured fingers in her hands and squeezed. “These are the st
rongest, most resilient and amazing people I’ve ever met.” Her voice was still a whisper, but the strength in it felt like that of a preacher giving a sermon.
“The fact that you are coming to my class, making a stand against your abuser and saying no!” She shouted the last word like she taught us to do in class on the first day—no matter that we were in a locker room with other strangers milling around. She shouted it so loud it echoed off the concrete walls.
For good measure, she shouted again, “No! We say no! To ever being abused again,” her voice then went back to a whisper.
“Amen!” called out several women, including an aging elderly woman with sagging breasts, walking around with a towel wrapped only around her waist who raised her fist in solidarity. Okay, that was an image I didn’t necessarily need, but yay sisterhood and all that.
My attention re-directed to Lydia when she continued, “That would be difficult enough for normal people. But for people like us?”
That was when I saw it. She didn’t look at me and automatically know what I’d been through because it was somehow rubber-stamped on my forehead. No, she saw it because like recognizes like. She’d known abuse firsthand. She’d known powerlessness while animals stole control of her body. I couldn’t even blink, couldn’t process what it meant to meet someone like her. To be able to talk to someone else who understood. Not just that, but to meet someone who had obviously survived and was managing it a hell of a lot better than me.
“For people like us, taking a stand like this is like conquering Everest. No,” she shook her head. “It’s more than that. Climbing a mountain is something that normal people set out to do. That’s a goal they set their minds and discipline their bodies for.
“But us?” Her brows scrunched together in pain. “We don’t get a choice. Whether we want to or not, we’re dragged back to hell on a regular basis, forced to face our demons.” She tilted her head down, eyes direct. “Only way out is to jump into the hottest pot of brimstone and burn those fuckers alive, no matter that it burns us up right along with ‘em. That’s the trick—if you can be reborn stronger through the process. Some make it. Some don’t.
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