by Callie Hart
“I didn’t accuse you of anything, Sasha. I’m simply trying to record the facts. It’s my job to assess your mental state.”
“I thought it was the doctors’ jobs to assess my mental state,” I reply. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were a trained psychologist.”
He huffs. “Why don’t we start from the beginning? You tell me everything that happened from the moment you arrived at the museum, and I’ll try not to say anything that might upset you. Deal?”
Right now I’m wondering where my sympathetic female police officer is. I’m wondering where my trauma therapist is. I’m wondering a lot of things. I’ve invested a lot of time in the CSI TV franchise; I’d never have thought this is how a situation like this would play out. Here I am though, being stared down by the most terse, unfriendly detective in New York.
I do what he wants. I tell him absolutely everything, from walking through the front door, to seeing the bastard in the ski mask for the first time, to smashing the hook into the side of his head and running for my life. I don’t leave anything out. I go into explicit detail. I try not to cry when he asks me if I was assaulted sexually. I tell him I don’t know, that I was unconscious for a length of time, and I have no idea what happened to me while I was out cold, and I feel an icy wash of terror settle deep inside me.
He asks more questions: my stockings were ripped in the feet, but were they ripped in between my legs? I tell him, no, I don’t think so. He asks if I’m sore anywhere other than my ribs and my leg. I say yes, I’m sore everywhere, because I am. My whole body is ringing like a struck bell. Even breathing hurts at this point. Down to my toes, I feel tender and compromised, entirely unlike myself. Shifting in my bed is a monstrous task that seems incomprehensible right now.
An hour passes, and every minute detail goes down into Jacobi’s notebook. He grunts every now and then, but he doesn’t make any other comment until we’re done. That’s when he looks up at me, locking me to the spot with dark, invasive eyes and he tells me something that makes panic rise around my throat like a clenched fist.
“Is there any chance you didn’t hit this guy as hard as you think you did?”
I stare at him dumbly, trying to process the question. “Yes. I hit him really hard. I mean, I…I saw the blood. There was blood everywhere. And the hook...”
“You saw the hook actually strike him?” He sounds unsure.
“It didn’t just strike him, Detective. It sank into his skull.”
He grimaces, making a swift note of this. “Okay. It seems we’re on the hunt for a tall, psychotic redheaded guy with a hole in the side of his head, then. He must have gotten up and run off because we couldn’t locate him, Sasha. There was no body to be found.”
He leaves, and I sit and stew on this information. Seriously? How can they not have found his body? He was dead when I left him. There was blood everywhere…
The nurse comes back an hour later to let me know that the doctor wants to keep me here for a couple of days for observation, and that my friend Allison is waiting for me, anxious to see if I’m all right. Another police officer comes by to tell me that detectives will be by again tomorrow to talk to me, to see if I’ve remembered anything else about the “incident” as they’re calling it. The young kid with the bad acne scars then warns me not to talk to the press, just in case I say something that compromises their investigation. The door opens again, and I’m about to tell the person standing in the doorway to politely fuck off and leave me alone, when I see who it is and my words die on my lips.
He came.
“How did you get in here?” I whisper.
Rooke just stands there, staring at me. His jaw is clenched tight, eyes filled with a frightening calm that belies the turmoil he’s clearly neck-deep in. “How bad is it?” he asks quietly.
“Nowhere near as bad as it looks.”
“It looks pretty fucking bad,” he growls.
“Gee. Thanks.”
Rooke doesn’t respond to my attempt at humor. “Who did it?” he demands.
“I don’t know. Some redheaded guy. I think he was drunk or high. He didn’t tell me his name.”
“Describe him to me.”
“Rooke, I’ve been through all of this with the cops. They’re handling it.”
“They’re not going to handle it. They’re going to fuck it up. I won’t fuck it up, though.”
It’s weird. Relief washes over me, so intense and powerful that I feel every single rigid muscle in my body finally relax. The look on his face says it all. Rooke’s going to go out there, and he’s going to find this guy. He’s going to make him pay for what he’s done. I feel safe all of a sudden. Then, reality starts to kick in. He can’t go after this guy. He can’t. He’s angry right now, so angry I can see every single one of the veins in his arms bulging from where he’s clenching his hands so damn tight, but he’s going to kill this guy if he finds him. He’s going to murder him, and then what?
“Rooke. Please.”
“Tell me everything,” he grinds out. “Now, Sasha.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“He was ginger. Did he have any birthmarks? Scars? Tattoos?”
And there it is. Tattoos. Rooke must see my expression change, because he takes one small step into the room. The tension pouring off him is like heat from a fire. It fills the small space, sucking all the air out of the room. “Tell me,” he says quietly.
“I don’t know what it was. Something small on the back of his hand. It looked like a black smudge. It was faded and blurry, like he’d had it for a long time.”
Rooke nods slowly. “Anything else? What was he wearing?”
“All black. Black jacket, black pants. His shoes…wait, his shoelaces were different colors. One was red, one was black.”
Again, Rooke nods. “Okay. How tall was he?”
“About six foot, I guess.”
“Did he have an accent?”
“No. He just sounded slow. Like he was really out of it. That’s all.”
Rooke inhales deeply. His eyes travel across my body, surveying the damage, and I suddenly feel very vulnerable. I can’t decipher the look on his face. “Are you mad at me?” I whisper.
Something breaks in him. He glances away, like he can’t possibly bear to look at me anymore. “Why the fuck would you think that?” he says.
“Because…you’re looking at me like I’m broken. You’re looking at me like you’re disgusted.”
“I am disgusted.”
My heart plummets in my chest, my lungs aching painfully.
“I’m disgusted with myself. That I didn’t get to you in time. I should have stopped this.”
“How were you supposed to know?” He’s crazy if he thinks for a second that he’s responsible for any of this. Last night was the first real time I allowed him in, to connect with me. Does he think he should be following me around, protecting me from unknown assailants twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? That’s just ridiculous.
He grinds his teeth together, pressing his lips into an unhappy, angry line. He still won’t look at me. “No one should have dared fucking touch you, Sasha. No one should have been allowed to fuck with you. There are consequences to an act like this. Dire, awful consequences. I’m going to make sure this guy pays for what he’s done to you. I can’t leave him fucking breathing. I won’t.”
“Rooke, please—” I try to sit up, to reach out to him, to stop him from leaving, but it’s too late. A wall of pain comes crashing down on me and I sink back into the bed, gasping at the shock of it. Rooke hovers in the doorway, his head hanging low.
“Rest, Sasha. I’ll be back for you. You don’t need to worry about that.”
TWENTY-ONE
ASSHOLE, BUT NOT A CUNT
SASHA
“I’m never leaving you alone again. Never. Not tonight. Not this week. You’re stuck with me, sunshine.” Ali takes my keys out of my hand (newly equipped with a fresh can of pepper spray) and opens the front do
or to my house, taking my coat and the overnight bag she brought to the hospital for me, then ushering me inside. I follow her, mute, because I don’t have anything to say. She’s been rambling ever since we left the hospital, and I don’t have the energy to engage.
I get it. She feels bad. She shouldn’t, though. When I dialed her back at the museum, the call did connect. She did pick up, and she did hear what was going on. She called the cops, and alerted them to the fact that I was being assaulted, but somehow she seems to think that she didn’t do enough. It was ten forty when the EMTs drove me across the city to the hospital. It’s not as if the police were the ones who saved me, but who’s to say that guy in the ski mask wouldn’t have chased after me and recaptured if me if the cops weren’t thick on the street? Who’s to say he wouldn’t have killed me dead for hitting him in the head with that dull metal hook?
I can’t believe he’s not dead. I just can’t process the information. I can’t believe any of it really. It’s been three days since it all happened, and I can’t wrap my head around any of it at all. I haven’t seen or heard anything from Rooke. Luckily, I haven’t seen or heard anything on the news about Rooke either. I’m taking that as a win.
Ali tosses my keys into the dish on the stand in the hall and ushers me into the kitchen. I sit down heavily at the counter, watching her as she hurries around the room in a flurry of activity. “What do you want, coffee or tea? I can make us some lunch, too. Oh, wait.” She peers into the fridge, frowning. “Maybe not. I can call for something though. Some Thai food? Or maybe a pizza?” She’d normally give me shit for not having any food in the fridge but I guess she’s giving me a hall pass in light of recent events.
“I’m not hungry, Ali. Honestly, I just want to take a nap. I feel…” I grasp for a word, any word, that could possibly describe what I’m feeling right now. It’s like I’m snatching at thin air.
“I know. You must be exhausted by this whole thing.” Ali smiles sympathetically, and I want to scream at her to get out. She won’t, though. It won’t matter how many times I tell her I need some time to myself, that I’m sick of being fussed over, poked and prodded and asked if I’m all right. She will ignore these comments and refuse to leave, no matter what, so there’s really no point in saying them. I grind my teeth together, breathing slowly down my nose.
“I’m going to go lie down for a while. Maybe I could eat something later on.”
Ali nods. She turns and starts rifling in the cupboard under the sink. “No problem, babe. I’ll just do some cleaning or something. Do you have any laundry that needs folding?”
I may not keep much in the way of perishable goods in my refrigerator, but my place is always clean and neat as a pin. And I hardly have a pile of crumpled laundry that needs taking care of, either. If it makes her happy to run a duster over my shelves, though, I’m okay with it. Anything for a moment to sit alone in my room by myself so I can gather my thoughts. My injured knee spasms as I slowly climb the stairs. My ribs sing with pain every time I take a breath.
My physical hurts all seem to melt away the moment I close my bedroom door behind me. This is the first time I have been alone since I managed to run around the side of the museum. Nurses, doctors, friends—I’ve been surrounded by people twenty-four seven since Tuesday, and now that I’m shut inside a room on my own I feel like I can finally let go.
I climb into bed, planning on crying myself to sleep, but the moment I release my desperate hold on my emotions, allowing everything to wash over me, I’m numb. There are no tears. There’s no fear or worry. There is only a cold, heavy sensation pressing down on me, weighting me to the bed.
I pass out.
I wake up a long time later, sweating, panicked and afraid. My attacker from the museum plagues my dreams every time I sleep. He holds his hands around my throat; he uses his fists to hurt me; he throws me down stairwells, and he smashes my head against marble floors. It takes a while to calm my frantic heartbeat. I’m safe now. He’s gone, and I’m safe. I tell myself this over and over, and eventually I manage to catch my breath.
A large chunk of time has passed. It was morning when we got home and when I look out of the window now I can see that the light is fading in the sky, already dusk. Downstairs, I can hear talking, muffled and unintelligible. The television? Maybe the radio? As I listen, I can make out the steady rise and fall of Ali’s voice, though, along with the odd word here and there, and I know that she has to be talking to someone.
“I’m sorry. She’s just not...maybe in a couple of days…No, she hasn’t said…”
The other voice is harder to make out. Deeper, less inflection. Definitely male. I get up and creep to the door, and then I crack it open and tiptoe out into the hallway. It’s dark, apart from a misshapen chink of light from downstairs, cast upward onto the ceiling.
“Can you just tell her I’m here?”
“Next week, Rooke. She’s completely…well, she’s fucked. Of course she’s fucked. She’s been through some crazy shit, and now she just needs some time to decompress, okay?”
There’s a long pause. The silence is filled with the beating of my heart and the nervous push and pull of my breath.
“No. Actually it’s not okay. I’m seeing her. I will pick you up and physically move you if you don’t get out of the way, Ali.”
“That’s pretty rude!”
“What about me makes you think I’m a polite guy?”
I almost laugh out loud. I thought the same thing about him when we had sex. There’s a thick silence, and I can imagine the look on Ali’s face. She’s not used to anyone standing up to her like this, let alone a guy. She seems to have the ability to strike the fear of god into men, no matter who the hell they are. Rooke Blackheath isn’t a man, though. He’s some sort of myth that no one really believes in until they lay eyes on him for themselves.
I quickly jog down the stairs, ignoring the twinge in my knee every time I hop down a step. Ali looks like she’s just been caught red-handed stealing something. And Rooke…
He’s standing in the doorway. A dusting of snow rests on the shoulders of his worn black leather jacket. He’s so damn tall. I don’t think I’ve ever really appreciated how tall he is until now, with his head nearly scraping the top of the doorjamb. There’s a stack of books pinned against his body under his left arm, and there’s a tray containing takeaway coffee cups in his other hand. How very…normal. Steam rises from the cups, clouding in the entranceway. I look down at his shoes and notice that the deep reddish brown leather is darker at the toes, wet where he’s been walking through the rain and the snow. I can smell him from where I stand on the third step of the stairs—notes of wood and smoke, but fresh. Cold, masculine smells that seem incredibly out of place inside my home.
I notice all of this. I take it all in, scanning the way he’s holding his body weight on his right-hand side, and the creases in his t-shirt, and the way his hat is tilted at an odd angle on his head. I document it all with a fierce intensity, paying attention to every small detail, because I don’t want to look at his face. I don’t want to look him in the eye. I’m terrified. If I do look at him, I don’t know what I’ll do anymore. I don’t know myself well enough anymore to trust my own reactions. This man is going to break me. I’ve been worried sick over him. Worried that he was going to do something stupid and get himself hurt. Now he shows up here, unscathed, looking utterly normal, and I want to throw myself at him.
“Sasha?” Ali says my name disapprovingly. I already know she’s about to urge me back upstairs, away from this situation and any confrontation it might bring. I have no problem looking her in the eye, so I do that, swallowing hard.
“It’s okay, Ali. You can let him in.”
I’m surprised by how firm I sound. I speak in a tone that brooks no argument. Ali must be able to hear this; she holds up her hands, stepping back out of the way. Instead of talking to me, she faces Rooke. “If you upset her, I swear to god and all things holy…”
“
Don’t worry. I didn’t come here to cause friction.” He holds out the tray of coffees to Ali. “Yours is the one on the left.”
She gives him a weird, curious look but reaches out and takes the coffee all the same. “I’m not gonna ask how you even knew I was going to be here, let alone how I like my coffee.”
Rooke shrugs, taking a determined, bold step inside the house. “You’re a good friend. That’s how I knew you’d be here. Or rather I knew someone would be here. I honestly have no idea how you take your coffee. It’s just black, no sugar.”
“And the other two?”
“Have a fuckload of whiskey in them.”
“Jesus Christ, she can’t have whiskey. She’s medicated up to her eyeballs.”
I step forward, intervening before Ali can shove him back out the door again. “All right, all right. I won’t drink the coffee. No harm, no foul. Rooke, come with me. Ali, I won’t be long, I promise.” I set off in the direction of the dining room, hurrying through the kitchen, not looking behind me to see if Rooke is even following me. I hold the dining room door open and he sweeps in quickly after me. I close the door, planting my back against it, palms pressed flat against the wood. Rooke stands beside the dining table where we hold book club each week, where he sat and consumed nearly a full cheese board all by himself, and I have no choice now. I have to look at him. I have to see the intention in his eyes.
My heart feels unnaturally swollen inside my chest as our eyes meet. Rooke places the books and the coffees down on the table and then stares at me, unblinking, the fingertips of his left hand braced against the surface of the table. His face is a confusion of emotions. His stubble is almost a full-blown beard right now, and there are shadows under those light brown eyes of his. His mouth is twisted into a half smile, but it’s kind of angry.