AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Or I was sure that was what it seemed.
Yes, I was attacked in my own home. Groped. Assaulted. My privacy and safety was ripped apart by a single man.
But I wasn’t raped.
So I must’ve been able to recover easier.
I was sure it would’ve been harder, infinitely so if he’d defiled me in that way, but I still felt defiled, dirty, broken.
Still couldn’t shower in unfamiliar places and it took me two years to stop having only baths.
“I saw a therapist for years after it happened, first because Mom insisted I do so, she’d been insisting for a long while before that, but now she had a more tangible, inescapable reason.”
I hadn’t been living in Castle Springs at the time, hadn’t called my family when I was first beaten, because I didn’t want them to worry, because I was ashamed and I didn’t want my father or brother to go to prison for killing Marcus, which was exactly what they would’ve done if they’d seen my face.
But sitting on my bed, with soaking wet hair, mismatched clothes and strangers in uniforms trampling through my personal space, I called my mother. And for the first and last time since losing Liam, I’d broken down. I could barely speak through my tears. But I didn’t need to, my mother didn’t need to know the specifics, she only heard my tears and she informed me she’d be there “quicker than a bull could shit.”
It was the first time I’d heard my mother curse.
The second was when she arrived at my house three hours later, with my father in tow.
She hadn’t left for two months.
“And as much as I hate to say my mother was right, she was,” I continued, it was the only way she’d leave. “It helped. Not a lot. Barely a little bit. But any kind of help after something like that is welcome.” I shrugged. “I survived, which is more than I could’ve said if my neighbor hadn’t heard the crash, if the police hadn’t responded immediately.”
I had tortured myself with the what ifs, for a long time. Until I had to stop. What ifs would chip away at a soul, whittle it down to nothing. Mine was a fractured shard as it was.
“I don’t have scars or hangups about sex,” I continued, though it had taken me another three years to have sex again, and since then it had been casual. “But I do have a thing about showers. It’s my mind telling me that horrible thing happened in the shower once so the only time something truly horrible can happen to me is when I’m in strange showers.” I paused, looking around the room that had been my prison, my sanctuary and something in between. “Which is stupid, because truly horrible things happen everywhere.” I ended on a whisper, my words emptying out like I’d used up my quota for the day within a handful of minutes of waking up.
Silence blanketed over us, I expected words, curses, death threats from Liam, that was the man I’d come to know, at least. A man that used violence as action, as a response.
But there was no violence to be wreaked upon Marcus. He’d been found to have outstanding warrants out of state for aggravated rape, stalking, and domestic violence.
He’d been sentenced to twenty-five years.
I testified.
As did three more of his victims.
We kept in touch, horror keeping us together when it had ripped pieces of ourselves apart.
Marcus was killed in prison two months into his sentence. It made me angry that he only served two months for what he did. The other women decided that he was serving a lifetime in hell, because that helped them. Just like the idea of heaven helped those who wanted to think of loved ones in a better place, hell helped victims banish monsters to a worse one.
I didn’t believe in Hell. I didn’t lend myself false comforts.
Just like I didn’t believe in Heaven.
For whatever reason, I didn’t want to believe Liam had been in a better place. Mainly because I didn’t want him in a better place. I didn’t want him watching over me, I wanted him beside me. So it helped me thinking he was absolutely nowhere than anywhere else.
Which was funny now, because he hadn’t been nowhere. He hadn’t been in heaven or hell, he’d been in a biker compound in New Mexico.
So I waited for the man, the biker to respond to what I told him. I already knew it bothered him. Even before, Liam had been protective. Not aggressively so, but enough to make it known that anyone who did anything to me would face him. He wasn’t exactly intimidating back then, he wasn’t one to get into fights, but he would for me.
Now, it was a different story. Everything about him was intimidating. Violent. The entire persona he’d created was meant to promote violence.
