Sorry for the wait, but school started up again and it's been... hell. Anyways, thank you for the votes and the reads and the comments. I really do appreciate it.
TRIGGER WARNING: SEXUAL ASSAULT, VIOLENCE
Please take care of yourself and don't read anything that may trigger or upset you.
-Clee
Chapter 12
By 2am, I was feeling completely fine again, and completely embarrassed. I tried to shuffle away from Caleb in the booth, just to put some space between us, but he stretched his arm back over my shoulders and pulled me into him again. I pushed against him, to indicate that I didn't want to be touched, but he wasn't getting the message.
"Caleb," I whined.
"Hush." He responded.
"I want to go home." I whispered.
"In a bit." He snapped, and then returned to his conversation.
"I'm going, but you should stay here and have fun." I tried to reason with him. He huffed out in annoyance and turned all his attention to me.
"Sit and be quiet."
"You're being a jerk." I said with a wavering voice. I was terrified of standing up to him, but I made a promise to myself to be more assertive. Plus, I felt a little safer with a lot of people around. I also made a point of making eye contact with him, to show I was serious. But as soon as his eyes met mine, I chickened out and looked away.
"What?"
"Nothing." I put in quickly, instantly going back on my decision.
"No please tell me, why am I being a jerk?"
"I'm so tired, please can I just go?" I asked softly.
"Why can't you wait?"
"Ok I'm sorry." I looked away. The familiar burning in my eyes returned. I was really tired, and the night had kind of been a whirlwind, so I wasn't surprised that I was feeling sensitive and emotional. But I was afraid how much it would hurt if I cried, so I quickly patted away the water building up in my eyes, so they wouldn't have a chance to turn into tears.
I hated being there.
I needed to go.
But I didn't want to make him mad or anything, because things had been good between me and Caleb lately. And in case we run into each other more, I didn't want to ruin that.
"Hey I have to use the bathroom." I whispered to him. He ignored me, I knew that he had heard me, but he was in the middle of a conversation so he ignored me. I waited until there was a pause, and then I repeated myself.
He looked down slowly.
"Alright." He didn't seem pleased, but he released me from under his muscular arm.
I scrambled out of there as fast as I could.
I didn't have time to make sure I had all my stuff with me, I just booked it out of that bar and into the cold London air.
How should I get back?
Taxi?
Yeah, I guess that was my only way home. I walked down the block a little, to the corner so I could hit two streets at once, in case a cab drove by. I stood there and waited, and I waited. But no cab came by.
So I walked down the next block and decided to give that corner a try. I spent five minutes there too, and no luck.
It was freezing and I hadn't brought a jacket. I had thought it would be too much of a burden to remember at a party, but I was regretting that decision.
And so I kept walking.
Three blocks later, a car pulled up next to me.
But it wasn't a cab.
"Hey sweetheart," a man leaned out and looked me over. "I'll give you a grand for the night."
I looked at him for a moment, what in god's name was he-
Oh.
He thought I was a prostitute.
My cheeks flushed red and I immediately looked away. How could he think that? I looked down at my dress that was too tight and too short, and then at my legs, that were too fat to be on display like that. I did look like a hooker, I couldn't even blame him.
The familiar stinging in my eyes returned.
"Alright, you drive a hard bargain, love. I'll go up to twelve hundred, but you gotta do some extra stuff."
I opened my mouth to respond. But I couldn't. How do you respond to that? So I politely said no thank you and kept walking. But the car kept pace with me. He didn't say anything to me as I kept walking, he just followed me. And when I turned away from the main street, he turned, too.
"C'mon baby, I offered you a lot." He said harshly, his tone changing.
"I'm not... I don't do that."
"Oh, well then, why don't we hook up for free?" He suggested. I fished my phone out of my little bag and quickly texted the first person I could think of.
The car pulled over.
"Why not, babe?" He opened the car door.
"I just want to go home." I answered.
"You know, you're kind of pissing me off now." The guy approached me. He was in his early forties, wearing a cap, and otherwise a nondescript white male. "I give you a really nice proposition, and I'm frankly offended at how rude you've been to me." He snapped.
"I'm sorry." I said as I kept walking.
"Get back here." His hands were on me, stopping me, grabbing me, shaking me. I tried to scream out but my voice was completely lost in my chest. "Let's go." I fought back, but to no avail, and was dragged towards his car. I dropped to my knees on the sidewalk, hoping that it would make it harder for him to drag me.
It did, but it also made it more painful to me as my tights were ripped and my bare legs were scraped along the rough cement. I pushed and kicked to get away from him, but all it got me was bloody legs.
I didn't even feel the bitterness of the winter cold. I could only feel pain.
"Shut up, bitch." He grabbed a chunk of my hair and lifted me off the ground
I wanted to scream out, but honestly, in situations like that have taught me that screaming only makes it worse. Much worse.
I was smashed against the metal frame of the car and held there with his left arm as he opened the back door. He yanked me away and shoved me into the back seat, face first and on my stomach. My dress was hiked up to my waist, but before he could touch my underwear, I sent a kick to his gut and crawled into the car further, away from him. I tried the other door, but it was locked.
My ankle was grabbed and I was dragged back to him.
He looked furious.
"I'm going to make this hurt." He snarled. His large hands grabbed the collar of my dress and ripped it right down the middle. I tried to kick him again, but he blocked me and instead punched me right in the face.
I recovered from the pain faster than he expected, probably due to experience, and kicked him right in the gut. It stunned him, but didn't leave the impact that I thought it would. He punched me in the face again, this time in the nose and I heard something crack, and then warm liquid dripped down my lips.
His hand reached out and grabbed my neck, and when I looked back up at him, I saw my father standing there. It was my father holding my throat, blocking my breath.
I blinked away the images with burning and painful tears.
My father was gone.
The other man was back.
"Please." I whimpered. "Please."
"How do you want me?" He smirked at me.
This wasn't happening. My first time wasn't going to be like this.
The man leaned over me and pressed himself against me. I felt him against my inner thigh. I heard him unzip his jeans.
I shut my eyes. I went to my happy place, I went back to baking with Irene. I went back to being with her, in her home. It was what I did in tough times in high school. If this was going to be my first time, I wanted to make a point of not remembering it.
And then suddenly, the man was off of me. I left my eyes shut, because I knew he would be coming back.
But then I heard shouting coming from outside the vehicle. I opened my eyes. There was no one in front of me. I quickly grabbed my torn dress and held it to my chest. I pulled myself from the car and looked to see Caleb there, with the man on the ground, next to where my blood was drying.
Caleb was shouting angrily, and kicking him. Over and over.
"Stop." My hoarse voice called out. "Please." Caleb looked over at me, he looked me up and down, looked at my almost naked form.
I must've disgusted him.
"Here, take my coat." He slipped off his jacket and handed it to me. I accepted it gratefully and wrapped it around myself tightly. "Go wait around the corner." He ordered. I started to walk away, to follow his directions, but then I stopped.
"Please just leave him. Come with me." I begged. If I left him alone with that man, he would kill him.
"No, I'll be a minute."
"No, please. Caleb, I need you." I whispered hoarsely. I took shaky steps toward him and reached out a shaky hand. He landed another sharp kick to the bloodied man on the ground, who let out a sharp groan. "Please, Caleb. I can't- don't make me see this." I begged him again. Caleb was starting to morph into my father too.
"Fine." He leaned down and said something to the man, before grabbing his hair and smacking his head against the pavement, rendering the man unconscious. He reached out to me, but I stepped away. I couldn't let him touch me. Not after that display of violence.
"Take me home." I asked softly.
"Yeah," he sighed, "We're going to the hospital first."
"No, just take me home. Please. Please."
"No, your legs are bleeding, your nose is bleeding, your face is bruised up. You need to be fixed up." He insisted.
"No, I know how to do that myself. Please, I just really need to be home."
"Red-"
"Please Caleb. You can stay with me if you want, but please just take me home." I whispered. We got to his car, and he tried to carefully help me into it, but I avoided his touch.
"Fine." We drove in complete silence. He seemed furious. I almost believed that he'd take the rest of it out on me when we got back to my apartment, but that wasn't really Caleb's style. But thinking it over, Caleb didn't really have a style. I couldn't predict at all what he would do. He was spontaneous.
Volatile.
When we pulled up to my apartment, I just handed him my bag. He fished through it until he found my keys. He didn't hand back my purse.
He walked me upstairs and to my apartment.
"I'm coming in." He told me. I consented without a fight, I didn't feel like getting into it with him. He opened the door and held it for me, so I could stumble inside. I heard him lock the door behind us, but I didn't look back and directly went to the bathroom.
I locked the bathroom door too, just in case.
I carefully hung up Caleb's coat on the towel rack, so that it wouldn't wrinkle or get dirty. I stripped out of the little clothing I was left in and stepped into a steaming hot shower. The water hurt my face and my legs, but I needed it. I turned it hotter. It burned, but in a good way. It burned all of it away. All of his touches were getting burned off my body, and with the water down the drain, they were gone.
"Are you alright?" Caleb called from outside the door. "You've been in there for a long time!" He sounded worried.
I didn't respond.
He began to pound on the door, at first slowly, and then frantically.
"I'm fine." I called out. I wanted to tell him to just leave me alone, but I didn't.
I left the shower when my fingers pruned and my skin was practically raw. I took my time drying off and wringing out my hair and just taking in the steam in the bathroom. I could feel it opening up my pores and cleansing me of the disgusting feelings I had. I felt like myself again. I wrapped a large bathrobe tightly around my body- to hide everything- and let my wet hair down to air-dry.
I grabbed Caleb's coat on my way out.
He was waiting for me, and jumped up when I emerged.
"Umm, here's your jacket. Thank you for letting me... you know, use it." I muttered awkwardly. He took it from me and stared at me carefully. I turned and went to change in my bedroom but I knew those intense green eyes followed me.
"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked me when I came back out with a first aid kit. I sat down on my couch, on the opposite side of the room from him. I tucked my legs up to my chest and rested my chin on the soft fabric of the sweatpants over my knee.
"Talk about what?" I wrapped my arms around my legs and held my body in a ball as tightly as possible. He looked over me and my body very slowly, with his brows furrowed. He looked frustrated or concerned, I couldn't tell.
"Your eye and nose are swelling," he commented. I didn't look in the mirror for a reason- I didn't want to know how bad I looked. "And you know what I want to talk about."
"Don't you want to sleep at all? It's after four in the morning." I offered. I didn't want to talk about what had happened that evening, because honestly it was nothing. If I hadn't talked about what had happened my whole life, then I definitely wasn't going to open up to Caleb Scott over something as trivial as an attempted rape.
Ok, that sounded bad.
But considering I was just bruised up, and not in the hospital, I didn't consider it a huge deal.
I began to wipe at my knees with antiseptic and then put a large bandage on over them.
"Do you want to go to bed?" He responded. I shrugged my shoulders, I didn't want to sleep. I didn't think it'd do much good to try anyways- I'd probably have nightmares of my dad since I imagined him today.
"No." I responded truthfully.
"Ok, then I won't. C'mon, let's talk." He got up from the chair he was in by the bathroom and sat next to me on the couch. I shuffled towards the edge, putting some space between us. He didn't seem to notice.
"I'd rather not."
"Ok," he put his hands up in surrender, "let's watch a movie or something, then. Or talk about something else." He suggested.
"You like cream cheese frosting." I said, without thinking. I wasn't sure why I said that, it was the first thing that came to my mind. He narrowed his eyes for a second, it seemed he was confused. I was about to apologize for being so weird, but then he smiled. It was a beautiful smile, with dimples and white teeth. It was genuine.
"I do, it's my favorite." He responded. "You do too."
"Yeah, sorry. I don't know what to talk about." I tried to laugh to make it less awkward, but it only made it worse. His smile broadened. I shuffled around in my seat to try to distract the conversation from my dumb outburst, but I could feel his intense green eyes on me.
"Oh you know what," I wondered aloud. He looked at me curiously. "I think I have..." I trailed off in my sentence as I hopped off the couch and wandered into the kitchen. I heard his heavy footsteps behind me.
"What do you have?" He asked. I started pulling out all of the necessary ingredients.
"I'm going to make cupcakes with cream cheese frosting." I responded. I raided through the cabinets, "except I don't have red food coloring or vinegar, so I can't make red velvet, we'll have to settle for chocolate." I was really talking to myself.
"Red," his large hand reached out and grabbed my wrist, I flinched at the contact and immediately recoiled from his touch. He looked at me sadly.
"Here, measure out a cup of flour." I handed him my sack of flour and a measuring cup. He did so and handed it back to me. I was measuring out the other dry ingredients, like the salt, coco powder and baking soda. I gave him another job while I sifted everything.
He was good at following directions, which surprised me. But I did have to show him how to crack an egg.
"You don't need a recipe or anything?" He asked me as I popped the first batch in the oven. I saw him dip a finger in the batter.
"Nope." I tapped on my temple, "it's all up here." He smiled at me. I started digging through my refrigerator and pulled out some butter and cream cheese. I handed them to him.
"What should I do?" He asked me, balancing all of the ingredients in his abnormally large hands.
"Put all of the cream cheese in there," I pointed to a mixing bowl, "and take the butter out of the wrappers, put them in a soup bowl, and stick them in the microwave for twelve seconds." I instructed him.
"Why twelve seconds, love?" He asked me as he did what I asked. I fished around in my cabinets for confectioner's sugar.
"It gets it to exactly room temperature, so it's easier to mix." I explained. "I don't have the right sugar, so we'll have to make do." I said more to myself, but for his benefit as well, as I pulled out superfine sugar instead of the powdery one I needed.
"It's still sugar. Does it make a difference?" He asked as he pulled the butter out of the microwave.
"Are you pushing my buttons or do you actually not know the difference between superfine and powder sugar?" I shook my head, which made me a little dizzy. He looked at me innocently, which answered my question.
"Ok," I sighed, "confectioners' sugar is like a powder. And superfine sugar is like granulated sugar but with smaller grains." I explained as I mixed all the ingredients together.
"Ok, what's granulated sugar?" He asked me, leaning against my cabinets.
"Are you kidding? It's just regular sugar!" I gasped. How could someone live so much of their life and NOT know that? It was preposterous.
"I don't bake often," he shrugged, "or cook for that matter."
I started to do the dishes while the first batch baked. I pulled them out and set them aside to cool, and then put the second batch in. Caleb stood in my kitchen watching me closely the whole time. He would occasionally lick his lips as if he were about to say something, but he seemed to decide against it and stay silent.
Thank God.
"When can I have one?" He asked me as I pulled the second batch out.
"When they cool enough to put frosting on."
"Why do we have to wait?"
"Because or else the frosting will melt." I explained.
"I don't mind melt-y frosting." He informed me. I told him that was too bad because it was worth waiting for.
"Twenty minutes." I said. He pouted at me but didn't protest. I finished cleaning up while we waited for the cupcakes to cool, and he didn't offer me any help. But to be fair, based on his baking knowledge, I wasn't sure I would have wanted his cleaning help if he had offered it. He didn't seem to know much about anything domestic.
"Hey so, I know that I cut in before that scumbag took it too far tonight, but you were still sexually assaulted and you had a very traumatic experience." He started talking to me as I frosted the cupcakes. I glanced up at him to find the intense green eyes focused on me. I quickly looked back down at the cupcake in my hand.
"Nothing happened." I said quietly.
"Yes, something did happen. And at the station, we have resources available for people who survive things like you have. It might help to talk to someone- or at least know what resources are available to you." He told me carefully.
"Ok, I'll think about it," I lied. I handed him one of the cupcakes and hoped that it would distract him from this line of thought.
"Don't lie to me, Red." He said slowly. He took a big bite of the cupcake and moaned out in delight. I was pleased that he liked it, but nervous that he'd make me talk about what had happened.
"Look, Caleb. I really appreciate everything you've done for me. I appreciate that you saved me, and I appreciate that you stayed with me tonight, but I'm ok. Really, I am." I assured him. He looked at me skeptically. He put the cupcake on the counter.
"How could you possibly be alright? I think the only reason I'm not freaking out is because of the training I've had for my job. Red, it's ok not to be ok." He stepped towards me and tried to rub my arm, but I jumped away from him.
"I'm fine. I promise." I said again.
"Red, you're not fine."
"Everything that happened tonight was my fault- I dressed like a slut, I drank too much, I walked around alone at night. I understand why it happened." I told him.
"Hey, stop that. Do not blame yourself, Red. Nothing that you did caused what happened. That... scum... it's all his fault. Seriously, Red, you can't honestly believe that-"
"I've survived a lot worse than that, so really I am fine." I said quickly, interrupting him without thinking. I was just trying to get him to not touch me. He froze. Uh oh. Why did I have to say that? I saw his brow furrow over his eyes and his mouth mash into a hard line.
"What are you talking about?" He asked me quietly.
"Nothing," I waved it off, "I'm just being dramatic." I went back to frosting the cooled down cupcakes. A large hand crept into my line of sight and grabbed my wrist. He made me slowly put down the cupcake.
"Red, talk to me." He cooed in his deep voice.
"I don't want to." I responded. I glanced up at him and let out a defeated sigh. "Ok listen, I'm not ready to talk yet. But the second I feel comfortable, I will come to you immediately." I lied to him. He stared me down for a moment.
"You promise?" He raised his eyebrows at me.
"I promise." I lied again. He stuck his long pinky finger up in front of me. I looked at him in confusion. A pinky swear? Was he kidding?
"C'mon." He pushed his pinky a little more towards me. I sighed and held up my pinky that looked microscopic in comparison. He wrapped his large one around mine and squeezed it gently and then he released me.