“Tell me.” It was an order. It was law.
Again, I concentrated on the fire. Pretended the details were about someone else. “He, um, forced me on my stomach. He cut the curtain cords with the scissors and used them to tie my hands and feet to the bedframe. Then he put his fingers in me. Uh, like, all his fingers at once. It wasn’t gentle. Then he put his cock inside and put the scissors at my throat and told me if I made a sound that he’d…”
I covered my eyes with my hand. No matter how much Reeve pressed, I couldn’t say the things that Bridge had threatened to do to me. They ended in death and that was the best part of it.
“So I was quiet,” I said finally, summarizing. “And I was really good at obeying.” Once again, my sick perverted proclivities failed to protect me. I obeyed my rapist. I hadn’t struggled. Maybe deep inside I really had wanted it.
I lifted my eyes to Reeve who was now pacing in front of the fire. He was probably already thinking it. I might as well say it for him. “I should have fought more.”
He stopped abruptly and spun toward me. “Do not do that, Emily. Do not blame yourself.”
“Yeah, right.” Just because he said it in that forceful way of his didn’t mean I could do it.
Maybe I wasn’t as good at obeying as I thought I was.
“I mean it, Emily.”
I glared at him.
But I wasn’t in the mood to argue about it so I continued instead. “He got bored with that after a while and he moved to…” I had to stop to take a breath and it shuddered on the intake. “To my ass.” In my head, I was still in cold, clinical mode, but my words were shaky, full of lumps and cracks that hadn’t been there before. “He didn’t use lube and I couldn’t help it, I screamed. He said for that, I needed to be punished. He used the scissors. In me.”
“In your ass?” His tone said he knew the answer already.
I shook my head no.
Reeve let out a string of obscenities that ended in his foot meeting one of the empty beer bottles and sending it flying.
The reaction was foreign to me. It hadn’t been one that I’d experienced after Bridge hurt me. I’d been angry, but never full of rage. And honestly, the only person I’d been angry with was myself.
Watching Reeve’s outburst, seeing him feel the fury that had eluded me, was fascinating. It seemed so freeing to have an emotion that could be so easily concentrated into outward action. My pain had always turned inward. My anger only destroyed me.
Reeve, though, he had the power to hurt others. I’d known that. In this moment, I saw it.
In some twisted, fucked-up way, it was inspiring.
He began pacing again. He gestured with his hand for me to keep going as he said, “What next? Tell me what happened next.”
I pinched at the bridge of my nose. It should have been downhill from here, but the worst parts were yet to come. Hoping they’d hurt less, I hurried through them, letting each syllable tumble out nearly on top of each other. “When he was done, I was bleeding. Bruised. Every time I moved, my uterus spasmed with intense cramps. Bridge was passed out, and I knew I needed to get to a doctor, but I was still tied up. That’s when she walked in.”
God. The look on her face. It had mirrored Reeve’s in many ways, but it wasn’t Bridge she’d been angry with.
“You fucking bitch,” she said. “You knew I loved him, you fucking bitch.”
It should have felt like a betrayal, because she’d automatically assumed the worst of me and the best of him, but the real bitch of it was I got her point. I got her point and I could even stand up for it if need be.
“She blamed me,” I told Reeve now.
Once again he halted his movement. “She blamed you? How the fuck could she – could anyone – have blamed you for that?”
“She thought I’d wanted it, but” – I put a hand up to silence whatever it was he was about to say – “before you get mad at her, remember she’d seen me put myself in those kinds of situations on more than one occasion. She’d never pointed a finger before. And she’d always helped me out of them. Then this was how I’d paid her back? In her eyes, I’d stolen her man when she’d been nothing but compassionate to me.”
Reeve shook his head incredulously, scoffing to himself.
I continued to defend her. “She got me to the hospital. Even when she thought I’d asked for it, she still helped me.”
“She’s a goddamn saint,” he said, drenched in sarcasm.
“Well, not a saint. But she cared about me. Despite everything.” I glanced at Reeve. He looked appalled but he stayed tight-lipped, his hands working at his sides, fists clenching and unclenching.
Whatever. I knew what I knew about Amber. He couldn’t change my mind.
“That’s pretty much the whole story,” I said. “I miscarried by the end of the next day. I pressed charges, but Bridge didn’t even get arrested. I had too much history or he had too much money. I don’t know. When I was released from the hospital, I tried again to explain to Amber, but Bridge had a story that she thought was equally believable.”
She didn’t realize that the ten grand that Bridge had allowed her to give me had been retribution instead of charity. I didn’t blame her for taking his side. And she said she didn’t blame me either, but that maybe it was time for us to rethink our situation. I agreed. I wanted out, wanted to live a life where I depended on myself and my own money. A life where I felt safe, for once.
I’d begged her to come with me. I’d begged her to leave Bridge and start again, without drugs, without abuse. “We always said we’d find our own life someday,” I’d reminded her.