"Who was it?" he asked, and I'd known he would.
I closed my eyes. I didn't want to tell him. He was too far to losing it, and if he had a clue just how much the police did not give a damn about finding the guy, he would to do it himself, I knew it. "Don't," I said quietly. "The police will handle it." I didn't believe it myself, but that wasn't the point. "I'm just a little bruised and pissed off, okay? Let's not make this a big thing."
One of his warm hands had moved up to cup my cheek. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked. "I don't know what to do. I feel so helpless."
I did not want to talk about it. It felt like I'd talked about it too much, but I figured it would be better to let him know what had really happened than to let him speculate and think the worst.
He gripped my hand a little too painfully amid the retelling, but stayed very quiet and still, and I knew without having to ask that he was going through his own personal hell.
Gram came in soon after. Between the two of them, they made a big enough fuss over me that I felt truly cared for, and, though I was embarrassed by it, I was comforted.
Dante stayed the night with me in the hospital room, even after an initial standoff with my nurse. I think she decided it just wasn't worth the trouble.
I was discharged the next day, and things were almost starting to feel normal again, or at least like normal was on its way.
We were talking as though nothing had happened, joking, teasing each other as I prepared to leave for home.
As Dante was helping me to dress, we had another bad moment when he saw my bruised torso.
I glanced down at my breasts. They were black and blue. No wonder they hurt so damn much.
Dante had been holding my bra but it dropped out of his hands, his breath gone ragged. "Jesus. Look what he did to you. I'll fucking kill him."
The nurse walked in as he said that, and she sent him a startled look.
"I can't wear a bra right now," I said practically. "Just grab me a shirt."
"I'll do that," the nurse told Dante, her tone sharp, as he renewed his efforts to dress me.
He was gently sliding my arms into an oversized T-shirt as he tersely replied, "I've got her." The two didn't get along. It'd been awkward since their standoff about him staying the night before.
But the nurse only cared to a point. She clearly decided that we weren't worth the hassle and left us to it with one last glare.
We didn't even discuss it but he took me straight to Gram's house instead of mine, and she was waiting for us, a large corner suite upstairs prepared for me. I pulled Dante into bed with me and went instantly back to sleep.
"I fucking hate that guy, the male detective," Dante said abruptly at dinner.
I was surprised. "He's the only one that seems like he's trying to help me."
"I don't like him. I don't trust him. There's something wrong with him."
I was so used to him being jealous that that was the first conclusion my mind jumped to. Detective Harris was a very good-looking man, even distracted and shaken I had noticed, and then he'd had the nerve to keep Dante from me for hours after the attack. Of course Dante didn't like him. I didn't much like him either.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."
~Charles Bukowski
The worst thing about the attack was how it made me question everything around me. Made me see it all differently. The forest surrounding our houses had been the home to many of the good memories in my life, a source of nothing so much as joy and enchantment, but all of a sudden, it was the opposite.
It was a dark, mysterious place now, the shadows more oppressive and menacing.
Within a few days, I was still more shaken than I'd admit to anyone, but more or less back into my daily routine, and I thought I was happy to put it all behind me. The police would do their job, and I would go on with my life just as before.
Well, not quite. I didn't leave Gram's, and we didn't walk to or from school anymore. Dante started driving us, and I was more than fine with it.
I knew I'd be in trouble as a few days passed, and I still didn't leave Gram's house.
It just felt so good to stay in a place where I was wanted, so I put off going back home.
Finally, I made Dante take me back to the trailer after school. If he'd had his way, we'd have just avoided the place, entirely and forever.
"Go back to practice," I told him. "You can come get me when you're done."
He wasn't pleased about that. "Fuck practice. I'm not leaving you."
He was immovable on the subject, and I was secretly relieved.
"Oh look who decided to come home after three fucking days," was my greeting from Glenda as I walked into the trailer for the first time since the attack. "No word from you, not even a phone call, and you come waltzing in like you still live here."
"Didn't Gram tell yo—?"