The One That Got Away ✔

Chapter Nineteen

The doctor from Moscow gave me valium for the plane ride back. I sat between Jane and Bella, too afraid to so much as blink. Most of the flight was silent, the girls only spoke to me to ask if I needed anything. By the time we landed, I hadn't eaten for more than twenty-four hours. My cheeks were stained with my salty tears and my eyes were red and dark.

Doug and I shared a cab to my home from the airport. He had called my mum from Moscow, explaining to her what had happened. She spoke to the kids and explained that something happened while we were in Russia and that they should be on their best behaviour. She then pulled Freddy aside and explained properly what had happened to me.

What is the protocol for when someone is raped? The morning-after pill. Doctors take a DNA sample. They clean out the perpetrator's semen. You file a report with the police and get profusely questioned like you're the one who did something wrong. But what are you supposed to do with yourself after the event is over? Are you supposed to go back to your normal life? Go back to your family and your job? Yes. That's what I was told to do.

However, I had to relearn everything that was once natural for me. I had to relearn how to react to men. How to react to anyone speaking a foreign language, anyone with their face covered, anyone with a similar smell to the men that hurt me. I flinched whenever someone, anyone, came anywhere near me. I would scream whenever I saw men in security uniforms. See, you can relearn how to act like a normal human in society - that's the easy part. The hard part is living with yourself after the fact.

I remember telling myself that things could be worse. I could be dead like the desk clerk. Sometimes, I wish that the men had killed me, that way I wouldn't be feeling the way I did. I felt violated and ashamed. The only thing that got me through was painting. Controlling the brush strokes and the colours that I used. Creating then recreating then remastering all the graphic images that those men left me with. I painted the desk clerk, with a red backsplash - just like the hotel walls had after they killed him.

Jane started therapy. Something that she was ashamed to tell me at first. All she saw was the desk clerks dead body and me on the ground. She knew that if she had stayed at the hotel that night, she would have seen a lot more. She would have experienced a lot more.

I, on the other hand, watched the desk clerks brains splatter on the walls. I watched and felt two of the men rip my robe open and touch me. They took something from me that night that no amount of therapy could fix. I didn't sleep for weeks after. Whenever I tried, I was awoken by the horrific images in my head.

"How are you feeling?" My father asked me a week after the assault.

"I'm okay," I told him, my phone pressed against my ear.

The truth was, I could still feel their hands on me. The feeling of my robe being pulled open and their hands on my breasts. Their weight is still crushing me. His hands forcing my legs open and me kicking hysterically.

Mum and Tom were helping with the kids while I self-loathed in my room. I was too afraid to sleep by myself. Mum and the kids were the only people alive that I would let touch me afterwards. I would cry into my mother's chest every night and she just laid there and held me.

I was too afraid to leave the house. Too afraid to be on a plane or sleep in a hotel room. I couldn't even look at the dress that I wore that night. Eventually, I did go back to therapy where I was taught to be human again, to live again. The anxiety and fear that I was living with from being traumatized by a violent crime, left me feeling as though I had lost my mind.

Therapy fixed me. My therapist took the knotted up twine and unravelled it, pulling each piece into the right direction until my mind was working properly again. Until the pictures in my head weren't so scary to me anymore.

"I miss planes" I admit.

Freddy looks over to me from the drivers seat, the sun shining behind the trees in front of us.

"What?"

"I miss planes and hotels and travelling for work" I explain, "I've missed out on so much because of what happened in Moscow"

"What are you saying?" He asks me.

"I think I'm ready to do it all again" I shrug, "I can't do long road trips every time I need to leave the country"

Freddy takes my hand, his left hand still on the steering wheel.

"Have I ever told you how proud I am of you?" Freddy says. "You took this thing that happened to you and didn't let it destroy your life...Instead, you made something beautiful out of it"

I smile. "I love you"

The trauma that I faced in Moscow last year inspired more paintings then I can count. Maybe those paintings will help other people find relief from their trauma and have hope for their future.

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A/N

Hi all,

This book is nearly over!! I'm writing so many books right now and since we're so close to the end, this book has now become my number 1 priority.

Also, you guys will see present day Kyle in the next chapter and onwards!! Get hyped!!

Please VOTE and let me know your thoughts!!

- Rose xx