by Annie Jocoby
I suddenly felt shy. “You mean, you want to move in with me?”
When I asked that, he seemed to back away. “No. I mean, I want to stay with you as much as possible.”
That confused me just a bit. Slade was always, in my view, trying to put just a little bit of distance between him and me. It was just a feeling that I got, that made me uncomfortable, but I felt unbalanced by him. “I’d like for you to stay with me as much as possible,” I said. I wanted to go further and ask him why he didn’t want to move in, but I stopped short. I didn’t want to lay that on him when he was grieving for his mother.
“Well, let’s go. I hope you don’t mind driving. I don’t feel up to driving just yet. I hope that you understand.”
“Of course. You’ve been through some serious trauma. I wouldn’t think to ask you to drive right now.”
We stood up, and I took his hand. He gripped it tightly, and we made our way out to his car.
Then we took off. I didn’t know what was going to happen in our near future, so I knew that we had to take everything one step at a time.
And the first step was going to be with Slade to do the last thing that I knew that he wanted to do - sign the autopsy authorization.
Chapter 20
We went to the hospital and Slade did what he needed to do. He signed the autopsy authorization and then we went back to my home. It was late by this time – the clock read just after midnight.
I felt awful for Slade. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the depth of his emotions. I could feel the grief, the sadness, and the rage, emanating from every one of his pores. I could feel his despair in my bones.
It was so sad. We had one of the greatest weekends of our lives, when we went to New York to see my brother get married. We went from something so pure, so filled with love, to dealing with the death of Slade’s beloved mother, all in the span of a few days. What was ironic was that I was mending fences with my family, right when Slade was losing his.
As we drove to my home and the reality of what we had to face, Slade was silent. In his silence, I was able to feel his emotions even stronger. I didn’t have his voice to distract me. I was starting to feel what he was feeling, without even trying to tune into it. His grief was that powerful.
“What’s on your mind?” I finally asked him. I knew the answer to that question, but I wanted to get him talking if he wanted to.
He shook his head. “She was my only family.” He paused for a few seconds. “That’s not fair. Scott was a good adoptive father. But she was my only real family. She had such a hard time in life, and it just seems so unfair. That’s all.”
“I know how you feel,” I said. “When my mother was killed, it was like a part of me was violently ripped out. I felt this hole right in the center of my soul.” I put my hand on his. “Sudden deaths are the worst, because it’s such a shock. Such a huge, huge shock. And when a young person gets cut down, it makes it that much worse. My mother, and yours, should have lived to be old and grey. But they didn’t. They didn’t, and it doesn’t seem fair or right.”
Slade just stared out the window and didn’t say anything. I felt uncomfortable, wanting to fill the silence, but knowing that filling the silence wasn’t what was called for here. I had to follow Slade’s cues, and, thus far, the only cue he was giving me was that he wasn’t in the mood to talk.
I took a deep breath, and talked quietly to myself. “Don’t push, don’t push, don’t push,” I said to myself. I looked over at Slade, who hadn’t moved since he got into the car. However, his facial expression was different. He no longer looked blank, but looked pissed. Then he looked blank again. I knew what was going on – he was trying not to think, but, every so once in awhile, he would think about Charlotte and would get angry. I couldn’t read his mind, but I knew him, and I knew that this was what was going on. I didn’t know what to say to him, but I knew what was on his mind.
He surprised me, though, when about a half hour after we got on the road, he addressed my earlier comment about my mother. “I know you can relate, Serena. I can’t even imagine how much pain you felt when your mother was taken from you like that.” And that was all he said. After he said that, he looked out the window again.
We drove along like that until we got to my home. We ended up at my house around three in the morning and I headed straight into my bedroom and lay down. Slade was soon lying beside me, and he just wrapped his body around me. He held me tight, so tight that I felt that I couldn’t breathe. Yet, I lay perfectly still and let him hold me like that. He was asking for comfort without actually asking for it, and that was what I was going to give him.
For the rest of the night, he held me like he was using me as a lifeline.
I had never felt closer to him.
Chapter 21
I had to go to work the next day. Actually, it wasn’t the next day so much as it was later on in the morning. We had gotten in at around 3, and I woke up again around 7, with the intention of getting into the office by 8. I didn’t really want to leave Slade, of course, but he assured me that he was okay. “Go into work,” he said. “I think that I need to be alone anyhow.”
“If you’re sure…”
“Of course. Listen, I know that you have cases piled up, and I would imagine that your firm will give you even more to do, now that you don’t have my mom’s case anymore. I’m fine, and I’ll see you this evening when you get off.”
“What are you going to do today?”
“I think that I'll go ahead and schedule a Skype meeting. I need to start making plans to get back into it full-time, now that I don’t have a reason to stay away.”
I bit my lip when he said that. He still hadn’t addressed with me what he wanted me to do once he returned to his firm in LA. Now he was saying that he didn’t have a reason to stay away. I wanted to scream “what about me? Aren’t I a good enough reason to stay away?” But I didn’t. He was dealing with overwhelming grief, and I didn’t want to add to that.
I went over to kiss him goodbye, and we embraced before I left.
When I got into work, I immediately went to my office and shut the door. I had no desire to make conversation with anyone there, and I really just wanted to hunker down and shut out the rest of the world. I especially didn’t want to see Derek.
Unfortunately, Derek wanted to see me.
He came into my office about a half hour after I went in there with the door locked. I had no idea how he managed to unlock the door. “Serena, where have you been?” he asked me. “I know that your boyfriend owns this firm, but that doesn’t mean that you can just make your own hours.”
I took a deep breath. Derek had been laying low for several weeks, and now, here he was, trying to intimidate me once again. “None of your fucking business,” I said. “I have a lot of work to do, since I’ve been gone for so long, so if you’ll excuse me.” I started to write down notes about a case and picked up the phone to call my assistant, Anita. I needed to get some discovery requests out the door, along with some interviews set up with some key figures in an embezzling case that had landed on my desk while I was gone.
Derek got closer to me, and I tried to calm my racing heart. “The door’s locked,” he said, coming around behind me.
Alarm bells were going off inside my head when he walked behind me. I had no idea what he was going to do.
To my horror, he put a ball gag around my head, like Slade would do to me when we were playing. I couldn’t make a sound. “You like this, don’t you, Serena?” he whispered to me. “I know you do. You get off on this kind of thing. Being controlled, being helpless. I know it. I knew it then. I gave you just what you wanted that night, and, ever since then, I’ve been thinking about the moment when I would give it to you again.”
I had no idea what to do. I stood up abruptly, and prepared to run screaming from the room, but the second I stood up, he pushed me back down. “Where are you going?” he asked me.
Then he spun me around, and I was face
to face with his cruel expression. Gone was any hint of civility on his face. What I was looking at was a pair of dead blue eyes. His mouth was contorted, as if he were in pain. “Nobody will hear you scream, Serena. I guess because you cannot scream.” He brought out a knife, and he put it to my throat. “Charlotte has asked me to do this, but, I have to say, I was quite happy when she told me what I was supposed to do. I remember your tight pussy. It was tight that night because I was your first. I doubt it’s still that tight, but no matter. I’m quite sure that it still feels nice.”
He was leaning down, both his hands on the sides of my chair. I was looking up, facing him with the ball gag in my mouth.
“Why did Charlotte want me to do this?” he asked me. “I know that’s what you’re thinking right now. I’ll tell you why. She wants you to be traumatized. So traumatized that you push Slade away. That’s why. She also just wants you to suffer. She’s kind of a bitch, that one, but she pays me very well.” He got closer to me, his lips just centimeters from mine. “She pays me well, but I really should be paying her. It would be worth it to me, because getting in your pussy again has been something that I’ve been thinking about for many years.”
He spread my legs, and I started to panic. My first inclination would be to punch him again, but the last thing that I wanted to do was to land a punch that would only serve to piss him off. The punch at the restaurant was effective, because I was around a lot of people, and Derek wouldn’t have done anything. But here…we were alone, the door was locked, and I couldn’t speak or scream.
When he unzipped his pants and exposed himself and then yanked down my panties while he hiked up my skirt, the panic that began when he gagged me came to a crescendo. He was going to do this to me again, and I was determined not to let him. I wanted to kick him right in the nuts, which were exposed, so I knew that I would drop him to his knees. But I couldn’t. He had both of my ankles held firmly in his hands, and, when I tried to move them, I couldn’t. He was way too strong.
I was going to have to use my fists again. He had both of my ankles held, which meant that he wasn’t going to be able to fend off my fists. He leaned down, his hard cock reaching my opening. His face was within centimeters of mine again, and I poked him, hard, in his right eye.
That seemed to do the trick. He reflexively lowered his head and, just as reflexively, both of his hands went to his injured eye. That meant that my legs were free, so I kicked him, hard, right in his exposed nuts. He crumpled to the ground, and I hurriedly got up from my chair, and ran out the door. He was on his feet and chasing me, but I managed to get out the door before he was able to slam it.
My heart pounding, I ran to the front door of the office suite, after hastily taking off the ball gag. “I’m leaving for the day,” I told the receptionist. “Hold all my calls.”
“Will do,” she said. “When will you be back?”
Never. “I don’t know right now. I just know that I have to leave. I’m not feeling well.”
She looked skeptical. “Okay. But, listen, I know that it’s not my business, but everyone’s been noticing how much time you’ve been away. We all know that your boyfriend owns this firm. I don’t want you to get into trouble, but everyone is starting to talk.” She nodded her head knowingly. “I only wanted to tell you that, because I’ve been where you are, and it’s not fun.”
“Good,” I said. “All the more reason for me to leave this place.” When I said those words, I realized that I wouldn’t be back. Ever. I also realized that I was going to have to move out of my house. There was no way that I was going to live next to that man. I somehow thought that he wasn’t going to try something, but, now that I knew what his intentions were, there wasn’t any way that I could ever be around him.
Fuck Charlotte. I knew that getting away from Derek was going to set her off, but I didn’t care. I would sooner die than be raped again.
“Okay,” she said. “But don’t ever say that I didn’t warn you.”
“I consider myself warned.”
At that, I left.
I left, and there wasn’t any way that I would be coming back.
Leaving might cost me my life, but so be it. I couldn’t live like this.
Chapter 22
The first thing that I did when I left the office was go to the beach. I needed to feel calm, and the water always did that for me. When I got there, it was noon, and the beach was crowded but not as crowded as it was during the summertime. There were people everywhere, even in the water, and I shivered just a little. It was October and Indian Summer had evidently passed, because there was just the slightest chill in the air. Not that it was cool, because it wasn’t by any means.
I took off my shoes and stood in the water, which lapped at my calves and knees. Every once in awhile, a big wave would come in, but I didn’t care. I was stilled dressed in my business suit, and I was getting soaked, but I let the waves come in and envelope me.
A few minutes later, I was coming down just a little bit from the fear and helplessness I had felt in that office and the tears started to come. They mingled with the water on my face, and I sat down in the sand. Again, I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that I was ruining my nice clothes. All I could think of was how good it felt for the water to spray on my face and surround me.
I became aware that there was a small child who was watching me with wonder. She was about two years old with blonde curly hair. She had a shovel in one of her hands and her other hand was in her mouth and she just stared at me. Then she sat down too and dropped the shovel and put that chubby little hand on my arm. For some reason, that kind gesture from the tiny child just made me cry even more. I brought my knees up and I put my head down and just bawled. The child was sitting next to me for several minutes, her little hand petting my arm and shoulder.
The child’s mother finally noticed what was happening and she came up and snatched her arm. The little girl protested and continued to try to hold onto me while she started crying as well. “You have to come with me, Miranda,” the mother said. “That water will come and sweep you away.”
“No,” she said defiantly.
The mother seemed exasperated by the tone of her voice. Then, she too, put her arm around me. “Miss, are you okay?” Her voice was now gentle and soothing.
I seemed to snap back into reality with the mother’s voice, and I finally realized how I probably looked. I just nodded my head, but she didn’t seem convinced. “Miss, please stand up. I don’t want to call the lifeguard.”
I reluctantly got to my feet and looked at the slight woman. She was dressed in a tankini that showed off her buff arms and abs. With her blonde hair and deep tan, she looked like a typical Southern California beach girl. “Thanks,” I said.
“Not a problem,” she said, putting her arm around me. “Come with me,” she said, pointing to the rows of homes that faced the beach. “I live right over here.”
I felt like a zombie as she led me to her home. It was a three-story place that had high ceilings and an open floor plan. She sat me down on her couch after putting down a towel. “Is there anybody you would like for me to call?”
I shook my head.
“My name is Rebekah by the way.”
“Serena.”
I soon had a cup of tea in front of me and a blanket over my shoulder. “Serena, I’d like to look at your phone.” She gestured to my small bag which was what I had carried with me on my person when I was in the water. “Is it in there?”
I had no idea why she wanted my phone, but I nodded my head.
She took it out of the bag. “Do you mind if I look through your missed calls?”
My mind was fuzzy and again, I had no clue on why she was asking these questions. I simply couldn’t process it. I just nodded my head again, and she looked through the calls.
“Slade,” she said. “Is that your husband?”
I shook my head.
“Boyfriend?”
I nodded my head.
&
nbsp; “Do you mind if I call him?”
I shook my head.
At that, she got on the phone. “Hello, my name is Rebekah. May I please speak with Slade?”
After a brief pause, she said, “Serena is here with me. I hate to bother you, but could you please come to my house at your earliest convenience? I live on Mission Beach.” She paused again. “It’s the first house you get to after you pass by the bars and other businesses.” She nodded her head. “I’ll see you in a few. Thank you.”
“Your boyfriend will be here in a few minutes. He sounds like a great guy – he didn’t ask any questions, he just said that he would be here and he was leaving his house right now.
“He lives in Del Mar,” I said weakly. “So it’ll be awhile.”
I sipped my tea and Rebekah took a seat in a big chair next to the couch I was sitting on. She obviously had no idea what to say to me, because she sat there silently. The little girl, whose name was apparently Miranda, came up to me again and she, too, watched me silently.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Rebekah asked me.
I had to make my mind a blank, because if I didn’t, I felt that I would lose it. What happened to me in that office was bringing back the horrible memories of what had happened to me back in the woods all those years ago. I didn’t want to examine what was roiling underneath my psyche. There was the possibility that I would have a mental breakdown from all the stress, combined with the terror that almost befell me with Derek.
“No,” I said, suddenly feeling that I couldn’t wait to see Slade. “But thank you. Thank you for your kindness.”
“There’s no need to thank me.” She smiled. “It’s my daughter who found you and paid attention to what was happening. Children can be so perceptive sometimes. You know?”
I managed a weak smile. “I’ll be okay. I just had something happen to me and it’s bringing up stuff that I hadn’t really wanted to face for a long time.” Rebekah was a perfect stranger, yet I found myself wanting to tell her everything. She just had that kind of face and demeanor. “But I’ll get through this.”