Billion Dollar Vengeance

Chapter 13: Last Time

I hold Jenna's hand in the hospital as she tells her story to the detective, as she gets a physical exam, an x-ray, and a pelvic exam. She hardly looks me in the eye, even as she squeezes my hand back. Even as I repeat to her over and over again that she is no way at fault for anything that happened, and she did everything she could. She was trying to protect her friend, and refused to leave her alone when her friend insisted on getting into trouble. Jenna was brave.

Carly and Stella work without me for a week and a half. I know the hospital and ambulance bill will be nauseating, but I can't leave Jenna just to go to work. The only time I do leave her side is to go to the grocery store. Once. I have absolutely no room in my thoughts for my two faced ex-lover.

I stay by her side during the day, and hold her against me at night. I sit on the sofa next to her at her first session of therapy. Even when I go back to work, it's Jenna that I think of now as I scrub, dust, and vacuum. This city will devour anyone if given the chance, and Jenna was toying with it, dancing on the edge.

She speaks very little, and I don't know what the right thing to say is, so we spend a lot of time in silence. Trying to distract her, I attempt to straighten her curly hair, ask her to bake cupcakes with me, watch her favorite movies. One afternoon when it wasn't raining, she asked to go outside. We sat on the back porch and I spent two hours pointing out all the different species of birds.

It churns my stomach to watch Jenna face what happened to her. To talk about it and start her healing process. She's incredibly strong and brave. And I can't even talk to a guy I was fucking. I know I must face him. I can't move on until I know why. But it's the why that I'm so afraid to know. It's the fear that I'm worse off than I thought. That I'm more just a little kinky- that I'm deranged. That I was encouraging a man with serious issues, and that I need professional help. It all but confirms my fears to lay in bed at night and wish I was in his new sports car, or in the park under the cover of darkness.

If he had told me who he was, I don't know for certain that I would still want both experiences. Part of the fun, the game, the wrongness, the dirtiness, was that I didn't know who he was. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a driving force in those all consuming orgasms. It would have just felt like roleplay to know that it's Bruce under the mask. It wouldn't have felt dangerous. And the danger was what I was seeking most.

It has been a month since that night at the top of that abandoned building. With nerves through the roof, I pick up my phone and call. It rings. And goes to voicemail. No problem, he's a busy man. I leave a polite voicemail, and wait.

Three days later, I leave another voicemail.

No response.

I try not to let it infuriate me as I glare at every surface in his house. I don't even bother approaching his bedroom. I don't even know if he's home. He could be traveling. But then two weeks go by, and I start to get pissed off. He got himself in this mess, the least he can do is explain to me why. I contemplate asking Mr. Alfred to make me an appointment with the distinguished Mr. Wayne, but that feels cheap and manipulative.

If Bruce refuses to talk to me, I have to find myself a masked vigilante. I wonder if putting myself in danger would lure him in, but that's more risk than I'm willing to take. What if he doesn't save me and I get into real trouble?

Feeling like an insane stalker, like Bruce, I go buy a fucking police scanner. My only available vehicle is my cleaning van, so every night after Jenna goes to sleep, I slip out of the house and walk to the garage. For hours and hours, I listen to police chatter while I sit in the van, feeling like an idiot. Unfortunately, no better ideas come to me.