Or was it worse?
“Anyway, it was some new guy at the gym. Tall, built, hot. This is in no way your fault. I just, I thought he was safe. He seemed nice. Said he knew you and all. That he used to work out at the gym.”
I remember Sofie saying damn near the same thing and my shoulders hunch like I’m preparing for a blow.
“He caught me off guard today as I was leaving the gym, must have hit me over the head with something because the next thing I remember is waking up bent over in his truck.” She pauses, scoffing. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
“Take your time. I can bring in a counselor if you’d be more comfortable. I can call your mom or your sister.”
“Trust me, the last thing I want to be doing is admitting to you I was raped and beaten by someone.”
If it weren’t for her hold on my hand, I would have shot across the room to put as much space between the two of us as possible. From what I already know she’s going to say.
“He said to tell you this was a w-warning.” Tears stream down her cheeks now, and she pulls her uninjured hand away to wipe them away, sniffling. “He said you’d know what it meant.”
I bring her hand to my lips. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
“Do you know what he was talking about?”
“Yes, he hurt someone else I care about a long time ago. Kept hurting her.” I look into her eyes. “I want you to know I’m here for you. For whatever you need. If you want to press charges—” she shakes her head furiously.
“No, no I can’t. God, what would they think? They know me around here. I’m not exactly a prude, Jack. You know that.”
“That doesn’t mean shit and you know it.”
“I flirted with him before it happened. I was into it when I met him. He seemed nice at first,” she says again.
“Did you tell him no? Did you want to have sex with him?”
She hiccups through a sob. Her no is barely audible.
“Then you didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t ask for this. This fucker deserves to be in jail for a long time to pay for what he did to you. I’ll stay with you, if they let me. To do a report. I can be here as long as you need.”
Her vision grows clouded with sleep and the medication pumping through her I.V. “I dunno, Jack. Just hurts. Want my Mom.”
“I’ll call your mom, honey, and we can talk about this some more later. You just get some rest.”
She curls back into a ball on the bed and I leave the room wondering if her dreams will be plagued with nightmares and wondering if there’s anything I can do to help.
I think about Damian’s smug face and wish I’d known.
I could have saved her from this horror.
Then again, I hadn’t been there to save Sofie either.
Present
MY LITTLE CAR shakes beneath me as I max out the speed on the highway to get to the hospital. When I get there the E.R. is packed, so I stop a passing nurse. “The girl who was attacked? Was there a man with her?”
“I’m sorry, miss, but I really can’t say.”
I growl and turn in a circle. Spotting a familiar dark head through the double doors, I barrel past a nurse and bang on the pane of glass. “Jack!” I say.
His head shoots up, and the first thing I notice is he looks like complete crap.
There’s blood on his shirt.
I have to grip the handle to the locked door to keep from going down on the white linoleum. His eyes widen in alarm and he lunges for the door, grabbing ahold of my shoulders. “Sofie, what the hell?”
“You’re bleeding?” I say dumbly, fingering the stains on his shirt and noting his unsteady hands. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I—” his voice breaks and he swallows. “It’s not mine,” he says.
“When you called me my first thought …I thought it was Damian. It’s stupid, I know, but—”
“It’s not stupid. He did…hurt someone.”
My heart sinks like a stone to the bottom of my stomach. “Oh, God.”
“She was, she is,” he corrects, “a friend. We dated for a while last year.”
I close my eyes. “This is my fault. I could have done something to stop him from being released from jail. I should have hacked his files, fucked with his probationary hearings. I almost did it, but then I thought, wouldn’t that make me as bad as him? Is there a line of good versus bad you just shouldn’t cross? Does one misstep make you a horrible human being? I guess the fact that I could have stopped him from hurting another person is proof enough.”
“This isn’t your fault,” he says. “This was for me.”
I frown. “For you?”
“She said it was a message meant for me.” His eyes dart around the waiting room like an animal searching for an escape. “Can we get out of here? I don’t want to be here right now.”