Justin’s manicured eyebrows lifted. “What?”
“I don’t do that stuff anymore. I have a job.”
“A what?”
“A job.”
He looked around at the bike shop, trying to figure out how I fit. “Here?”
“Er, no.” I let my answer hang in the air for a few minutes while Justin tried to process everything. “At a restaurant called Bianca.”
“Oh.” Justin squinted at me and dropped his voice. “Wait a job? Are you like… poor now or something?”
I rolled my eyes. Some of the crippling fear receded in light of this guy’s lunacy. “No, dummy, I’m not poor. I just… I needed purpose. I didn’t want to waste my entire life at Leyla’s lodge. I went back to school and got my culinary arts degree. I just took over as the executive chef.”
He ran a hand through his floppy dishwater blonde hair. “That’s cool.” The interest in catching up with me had already diminished. I was a different girl than the one he knew six years ago. “Oh. Sweet.”
Said in the flattest voice ever.
“I want to go.” I heard the words as they left my mouth, but even I was surprised I’d said them.
Justin looked at me funny. “What?”
I realized he thought I meant to Leyla’s. Turning to Vann so there was no confusion this time, I held back tears and whispered. “I want to go home.”
Vann took a step closer to me and grabbed my biceps with supportive hands. “Are you okay?”
I ripped my body away from his touch, not able to disconnect his comfort with my unwanted past. Wrapping my arms tighter around my waist, I shook my head and hiccupped a choked sob. “No. I need to go.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Justin asked Vann.
Tears blurred my vision so I couldn’t read the look Vann gave Justin. “How about you back off and let me take care of her?”
“Dude, something’s got her fucked up.”
“Yeah, dude,” Vann snarled. “I’m starting to think that fucked up something is you. So back up.”
Justin finally stepped out of the way, arms raised in surrender. “It’s not me. I haven’t even seen her in forever.”
A guttural cry escaped the prison of my chest and I nearly collapsed right there in front of Vann’s shop and the crowd of cyclists gathering near the curb. Vann reached for me out of instinct, but drew his hand up short when he saw me flinch again.
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself. “Let me… put this inside. Do you want to walk with me?” He grabbed the pretty blue bicycle that he’d surprised me with by the handlebars. I cried harder, realizing I had just totally screwed up our night.
Maybe our entire relationship.
Justin’s face was all over my mind now and with it, memory after bad memory of all the terrible mistakes I’d made. But most prominently the horrific mistake that wasn’t mine to claim, but mine to bear. Forever and ever.
Vann managed to get the bike inside his shop and lock the door while I huddled near him without touching him. He kept shooting furtive glances my way. Every single time those stormy gray eyes filled with concern it made me cry harder.
Hadn’t I been praising my breakthrough with this man not minutes ago? And now I was trapped in my nightmare, a mental loop of the events of that night spinning around in my head without stopping.
Somehow, I ended up in Vann’s Jeep. And somehow he drove me home while I curled into the fetal position in his passenger seat.
He kept saying, “It’s going to be okay, Dillon. I’ve got you.” Over and over those words were like a blanket on my ice-cold skin.
I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.
He parked at my apartment building in a visitor’s spot and turned off the car. I had expected him to drop me off at the front and drive off into the sunset, anxious to get away from the psycho in the middle of a nervous breakdown.
“I’m going to walk you upstairs,” he told me firmly. “I don’t think you can do it on your own.”
I nodded numbly, not knowing what else to do. I was afraid he was right. I was also afraid of what my doorman, Teddy, would say if I stumbled through the front door looking like this.
There was a huge chance Vann was right too—I couldn’t make it upstairs on my own.
“Just… please, don’t touch me.” My voice was ragged and small, barely audible.
His voice broke too. “Dillon, you’re killing me.”
Fresh tears poured out of my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. Please don’t apologize.”
He shoved his door open and hurried around the front of his Jeep to open my door. I wished I was strong enough to ask him to carry me upstairs. I wished I could find the courage to touch him. To remember that he wasn’t the one that had hurt me.
But my body had locked down. When confronted with fight or flight, I’d chosen to freeze. My teeth chattered as my body surged with adrenaline and those groping, clawing, intrusive hands.
He ripped my dress off and tore my underwear away from me. He shoved my legs open and thrust inside me. Then he held my arms down as I weakly tried to fight back.
I gasped for breath and tried to sink to my knees. Vann scooped me up even while I cried out.
Minutes past as I fought for clarity, as I beat the demons back and tried to reemerge in the present.
When Vann was finally able to take my keys from me and open my apartment door, he deposited me on my sofa and hurried to the kitchen. I heard water running as I pulled my knees to my chest and rocked myself back and forth.
“Should I call someone?” he asked, hovering over me with a glass of water in one hand and a throw blanket in the other. “Ezra? Your mom? Vera?”
I shook my head. This was bad enough. I didn’t want to introduce anyone else to my secret shame.
“No,” I sniffled between sobs. “I’m fine.”
He was silent for a minute before saying. “No, you’re not, Dillon. You’re not fine. Something is seriously wrong.”
I cried harder. His words had hit with such precision, it was like they’d punctured my heart and ripped it open.
Tipping over on the couch, I stayed there sobbing, with my knees pulled up to my chest for a long time. Vann covered me with a blanket and took a seat at the other end of the couch.
“I’m here for you, Dillon. I’ll be right here. If you need anything let me know.”
I couldn’t find the words to thank him, but his presence was enough. It was soothing to know he wasn’t going to leave.
His presence was like a guard against the evil thoughts and memories from six years ago. He sat still and silent at the end of the couch, respecting my wish for him not to touch me, and slowly the broken pieces of my soul started to piece themselves back together again. My sobs became silent as the tears continued to fall, but my body shook and trembled less, and my heartbeat began to steady.
I hadn’t had a crying jag like that in a couple years. Not since my senior year of school.
My therapist would call this a relapse. And that was exactly what it felt like. All the careful work I’d trudged through to make the small steps toward healing undone and erased.
Two small steps forward, six hundred steps back. Right to that memory of that bedroom. Right to that drug-blurred night.
Eventually there were no tears left to cry. My eyes dried and my soul shriveled. I sat up and I turned toward Vann, tucking myself into the farthest corner of the couch.
He looked at me, eyes red and strained. There was despair there, fear I had never seen except when looking in the mirror.
“I was raped.” The words fell out of my mouth as an apology and an explanation. “Drugged. And then raped.”
Twenty-Two
Vann didn’t even flinch. I realized my reaction to Justin told more than my words ever could have. “Was it by that fucking asshole? I will go back and kill him if he touched you, Dillon. Say the fucking word.”
He was serious. The truth of his threat
rang through the room. Another piece of my soul clicked back into place. I didn’t condone murder by any means, but Vann’s willingness to go that far for me helped restore some of my faith in humanity in a messed up kind of way.
“It wasn’t Justin,” I told him, fighting through the sick feeling curdling in my stomach. “It happened at his party though.”
“You’re sure?” Vann asked. “Because that smug motherfucker rubbed me the wrong way.”
My lips twitched at his zeal. It had been six years after all. Six. I had survived the aftermath for six whole years. I wasn’t a victim anymore. I was a survivor. Even if the pain of what happened still threatened to suck out my soul and shatter it into a million unfixable pieces.
“It was a guy I didn’t know. I don’t even remember his name. I’m not sure I ever knew it to begin with.”
“What did you tell the cops then?”
I pressed my lips together, ashamed to admit the truth. And maybe this was what killed me the most—that at the end of the day I was a coward. I was a fucking coward that hadn’t even been able to stand up for myself.
These words had never left my mouth before. Not all of them. My therapist had heard broken, battered bits of the story, but never all at once. She had been the only person I’d been able to tell. And only because it had felt like life or death, only because the secret couldn’t stay trapped inside only me. I needed someone else to share the burden, to understand the depth of my pain.
“I didn’t,” I whispered, feeling like I would choke on the truth.
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t tell the cops.”
His lips pressed into a straight line, his eyes filling with sorrow, frustration, and anger. So much anger.
The words came in a rush. Confessing my personal sin opened the floodgate and my secrets spilled from my soul. “I was drugged. I remember taking a cocktail from someone at Justin’s, but I don’t remember who. Someone had been passing them around. Mine was drugged. Or maybe they were all drugged. I’m not sure…” I turned my head, staring out the window at the city. I couldn’t look at Vann. I couldn’t bear his judgment. “I have memories of what happened, but they’re blurry. Foggy. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve made them up completely.” I took a steadying breath and let the words settle in the air. The truth, in all its messed-up-ness was like getting thrown off a bridge. The falling sensation rocked through me like a cannon.
“I can’t remember what he looked like,” I whispered. “I don’t have a name. Or a description. Or even clarity of what exactly happened that night.”
Vann ground his teeth together. I could feel his anger, his outrage. I felt sick, too afraid to ask if it was directed at me.
And then, as if I needed to prove myself to this man that had trusted me until now, the events of the night came tumbling out of me. “I used to be wild,” I told him. “A total mess. My dad was sick and then dying and then dead… It started in high school though. We were rich assholes with too much money and not enough parental supervision. I was at a party every weekend and nothing was off limits. Alcohol, sex, drugs… When my dad died, I just… I just lost the ability to care about consequences. He’d been absent my entire life. Even when I lived at his house, he wasn’t there. Even when he spent time with me, he was never there. Never truly present. I grew up being the thing he used to manipulate my mom. Or the party trick he would prance around social clubs with. I wasn’t his daughter. I was his weapon. By the time I got to high school and he could no longer use me anymore, I didn’t even know what my purpose was anymore. I mean, how fucked up is that? That’s when the drinking started. And then the drugs. And I was out of control. When he died… I don’t know, something snapped inside me. By the time I showed up to Justin’s party, I thought I didn’t care about anything. I thought nothing could make me feel again. Nothing could make me care. And then I accepted a drink I shouldn’t have. The memories are blurry at best. I woke up to hands all over me. They were rough… painful. I remember trying to swat them away, but I was so damn weak.” Tears leaked from my eyes again and I was surprised there was any moisture left in my body. My chest shuddered as I tried to breathe through the lancing pain across my rib cage. “He pulled off my clothes and I could not stop him. I was in and out of it, waking up in the worst of the pain. He would shove my face with his hand, shutting me up when I tried to make a protest. He smelled like too strong cologne and cheap beer.” I glanced at Vann, my voice breaking when I saw tears reflected in his eyes. “I woke up naked and sore and sick the next morning. Justin’s place was mostly empty. But I didn’t stick around to see if anyone was there or had seen anything. I fled. I ran away. And I never went back.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
I shook my head, loose strands of hair getting caught on my wet cheeks. “I didn’t know what to say. I was too ashamed to tell Ezra. I should have gone to the police, I realize that now. But I was twenty-one and terrified. I had no hard evidence. I had no memory of what the guy looked like. I had nothing. Plus, at the time, I was afraid that if they called in character witnesses, they would find out that drugs were… I wasn’t like this upstanding citizen, okay? And the thought of them using a rape kit on me…” I hiccupped through another sob, wishing I could shrug off the shame that had followed me since that day. “I would do things over if I could. I would do anything to go back to that morning after and make different decisions.”
“Dillon…”
“I did finally get tested for disease and pregnancy though. About a month later. I couldn’t stomach the idea of having to live with something venereal forever. And I was worried about a baby.”
My heart hammered at those awful memories. The thing about being violated was that it didn’t end after the act was over. The actual act, the actual rape, had been the quickest part. It was the rest that would follow me around for my entire life. It was the pain and sorrow, the grief, the shame and embarrassment, the stupid guilt that shouldn’t even be mine. It was the tests that happened later. The continued exposure as I tried to make sure my body had survived in ways my soul hadn’t. And for those women that were brave enough to tell law enforcement… they had more tests and testimony, they had court cases and lawyers and opportunity after opportunity to relive their horror. The rapist walked away free as a fucking bird, while we had to suffer it over and over and over.
“I’m clean,” I quickly added. “And there was no pregnancy caused by it.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth, but I still managed to spit them out. “In those ways, I got lucky, I guess.”
Vann moved so quickly I barely caught my breath before he was kneeling in front of me, his hands tentatively on my knees, his eyes dark and intense. “Not lucky. Nothing about that is lucky.” His fingertips dug into my knees and I found that I didn’t want to push him away now that the story was out in the open, no longer hiding inside only me. “Dillon, I am sorry that happened to you. It’s not okay. Nothing about it is okay. I am wrecked that you had to survive that violence.”
I shook my head, tears falling freely. “I feel like a coward for never telling anyone. He could still be out there. He could still be doing that to other women.”
He lunged forward, wrapping me up in his arms, cradling me against him. “You’re not a coward,” he whispered against my temple. “You’re the bravest woman I have ever known.”
“Vann…”
“Stop,” he ordered, his gravelly voice sounding as though it had been dragged over hot coals. “I refuse to let you blame yourself for any part of that night. That should never have happened to you. You should never have been put in a position where you would have to question your decisions every damn day. That fucking asshole should never have touched you. That’s what should have happened. He’s the goddamn coward. Not you.” He pulled back, cradling my face as gently as humanly possible with both hands. “I have never met anyone more beautiful than you, Dillon Baptiste. I have never met anyone as kind or as giving or as funny. You are everyt
hing that is beautiful and lovely. Everything that is sweet. You are the opposite of all that happened. And if I ever find out who it was, I promise, we will make him pay. I promise, he will suffer like you have. He fucking dared to hurt something I love so much, I would be happy to put him away forever.”
My wounded heart tripped over his words, finding more pieces of itself at the same time it grew in my dormant chest. “Love?”
He seemed to realize what he’d said and that it had been the first time that word had been whispered between us. It only took him a moment to nod with conviction. “Yes, love. I love you, Dillon. I’ve been falling slowly for you since you walked into the Bianca kitchen when you wanted to turn down the job. I had never seen anyone as beautiful and confused and frustrated as you. I nearly dropped the stack of plates I was holding that night. Since then it’s been a downward spiral into wholeness. I love you. I want to keep loving you.”
I threw my arms around his neck and pressed my heart against his chest, needing the comfort of his solid body. “I love you too,” I cried, fresh tears wetting my lashes. “I didn’t know I’d be able to feel this way. Not after what had happened. And not after confessing it. I didn’t even know if I was… loveable. Or if I had the ability to love back. I thought I would be empty forever. Forever broken. And yet you’ve made me feel like a can be whole again. Complete. Anything but empty. I love you, Vann Delane. I hope I always do.”
He held me like that for a long time. Our hearts beating against each other, our arms wrapped securely around one another.
He held me until I stopped crying. He held me until I could smile again. He held me until I was brave enough to face the world again.
* * *
I stepped out of the shower the next morning and wrapped myself up in a towel. Blinking at my reflection in the steamed-up mirror, I reached out and wiped my hand over the cool glass, making a window for my face.
My eyes were still puffy from yesterday’s crying and my fresh face had seen better days. My long, wet hair dripped at my shoulders, water droplets rolling into the gray towel I’d secured tightly. But there was a light inside me that hadn’t been there in a long time—maybe ever. I looked stronger today. I looked resilient. I looked… confident.
The Something about Her: Opposites Attract book four Page 28