“Anyway, I was on my way to the car, about halfway between the lot and the hospital, when something hit me from behind.”
As I retold the story of my rape, my breath hitched and tears pooled in my eyes. But I didn’t stop. Not until every single detail was out in the open between us.
“He told me that it was because of something one of my friends had done.” I rasped. “But really it was one of my mother and father’s men ‘teaching me a lesson.’”
He growled.
My parents were bad people. I hadn’t had any idea how bad until my brother, who I had thought was dead, came back into my life hell bent on vengeance.
Tobias had been sent to pick me up because my parents were blackmailing me to get me to work for them.
To save me, Ghost – who was actually my brother, Tunnel—had sent Tobias to bring me to him, and in the process, had thwarted my parents’ plans for me to give them and others in their employ medical attention if the need ever arose.
Now my father, as well as my rapist, were in jail.
They were doing life sentences.
Josh, my attacker and rapist, was serving time for embezzlement and the murder of two of his wives. The rest? My rape? Everyone thought it’d be best that we not put me into the position that I’d have to testify and relive the event.
I’d agreed that it was for the best.
Josh would already be serving two life sentences. If there wasn’t a reason for me to subject myself to that, I knew that I shouldn’t.
Honestly, it burned that he wasn’t serving time for everything he’d done, but he would be in jail for a very long time and would be almost ninety-three when he got out—if he lived that long.
Though my brother had wanted to kill him, I’d made him promise that he wouldn’t.
Josh deserved every single minute of that time he had to serve and then some.
I took pride in the fact that I played an integral part in the prosecution’s case against him. It was immensely satisfying that my testimony was one of the reasons he would be serving nearly the rest of his life in prison, even if it was just telling the judge and jury what I’d heard when I’d been his captive.
Josh had helped my mother and father kidnap not just me, but Tunnel and Mina as well.
If it wasn’t for the quick thinking of my brother, then they might very well have had Tunnel’s daughter and Tobias, as well.
“I want to walk into that prison and rip his arms off his body and beat him to death with them.”
Tobias’ quiet, angry words were enough for me to breathe a sigh of relief.
“So yes, you’re fucked up. But I’m just as fucked up, Tobias,” I told him. “It’s taken me a very long time to get to where I’m at right now, and it’s not looking like I’ll be fixed anytime soon, if ever.” I hesitated to say the next part. “If you stay with me, there’s bound to come a time when I will completely lose it, and you can’t hold it against me, okay?”
That’s when his arms wrapped securely around my shoulders, and my head pillowed on his defined chest.
“I replay shit in my head,” he muttered.
I wondered where he was going with this.
“I see my sister get raped by my best friend over and over in my nightmares.”
I moaned.
“God, Tobias,” I breathed. “You shouldn’t feel guilty for that.”
He laughed humorlessly.
“I shouldn’t?” He questioned. “I invited him over to our house constantly. It was my fault that he was even there in the first place. I felt bad for Jay the first time I met him.”
“Why?”
“Because Jay was sitting by himself at lunch.”
“Okay…”
“And everyone kept throwing fucking food at him when he wasn’t looking…and even when he was.” He paused. “I felt sorry for him, and I invited him over to my house to play some soccer and watch a movie the next weekend.”
I smoothed my hand over his chest.
“Inviting a loner to your house doesn’t make you a bad person, Tobias. It makes you compassionate. It’s not like he had ‘I’m a rapist’ tattooed on his forehead to warn you of the kind of person that he was.”
He grunted something I couldn’t hear, but replied with, “Just because that’s true, doesn’t make my heart hurt any less.”
“He took advantage of your kindness,” I told him bluntly. “If he were still alive, I’d kill him myself for making you hurt.”
He started to chuckle.
“As much as it makes me happy that you’re willing to do that for me, Jay is long dead, and even his parents don’t bother me all that much anymore.”
“What?”
The fury lacing my tone was barely contained, but I didn’t think that Tobias realized the danger as he began to speak.
“Jay’s parents still hate me, to this day, for killing their son.”
“Do they know what their son did?” I asked carefully.
“Yes,” he answered. “When it all went down, they learned the whole truth of what he was doing. Even after they found out all that he did, they still tried to take me to court and sue me for emotional damage or some shit.”
I was utterly aghast that someone would even think that that was okay to do.
“They got the part where you walked in on their son raping your little sister…right?”
He nodded.
“It gets better. After that night, the police thoroughly investigated him to corroborate my allegations.” He dropped his chin on top of my head. “Jay was seventeen. Not old enough to buy a shotgun, let alone own a shotgun. When they went to his house, they found over a half dozen guns, a shit load of ammo, and stuff on his computer about school shootings.”
I closed my eyes as horror washed over me. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I don’t really want to go watch that movie anymore.”
I didn’t really feel like it either.
“How about sitting our asses right here and ordering room service?” I replied hopefully.
He hummed. “I saw chocolate cake on the menu.”
I smiled and then pulled away from him. “Chocolate cake it is…do you want milk?”
“Am I a man?”
I rolled my eyes at his non-answer, then went to the cabin’s phone and placed an order for two slices of chocolate cake, two glasses of milk, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Other than the grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich, everything came out perfectly, and we spent the next few hours in each other’s arms.
It was blissfully perfect.
***
Three hours later, though, we found ourselves bored, with nothing to do and time on our hands.
“You want to walk around the boat?” he asked hopefully.
I could clearly see his desire to walk around and explore, so I gave him what he wanted without too much of a fight.
“I heard from the lady in the cabin next to ours that level six is the one you’d want use if you’re looking to walk all the way around the ship without hitting a dead end,” I supplied helpfully.
So off we went on our little adventure, heading down the long hallway away from our room toward the elevator.
“This is where you went this morning when you got lost?” he teased.
I glared at him.