Falling Down

CHAPTER EIGHT

She wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, and her eyes sought Zach’s after every question. Yet she still found the words sticking in her throat as the officer scribbled on her pad, trying to look unbiased and nonjudgmental. Lindsey didn’t think she was doing a very good job, and she thought sending a woman was just cheap-as if she would feel more comfortable with a female? Not likely.

“So did you know any of your assailants?”

Lindsey cleared her throat. “I… no.” It was the first time she’d lied, and the first time she didn’t lift her eyes to Zach’s.

“And you obviously resisted, fought back, told them no?”

“Yes.” She traced the top edge of the thin hospital sheet covering the hospital gown the nurse insisted she wear. Her voice was almost inaudible, but she couldn’t seem to make it any stronger. “But I always tell them no.”

“What?” The detective leaned in, tucking a stray blonde hair from her ponytail behind her ear. “What was that?”

“I always say no.” Lindsey still didn’t look up, feeling something burning in her throat, but she went on. “It’s a game. It’s a thing. I just…I like to say no, and have them, you know, do it anyway.”

She felt their eyes on her and didn’t want to look up and see their faces- especially Zach. She half-expected him to get up and go, right then. The silence seemed to stretch forever, and then, finally, the detective spoke again.

“How are they supposed to know the difference?”

“I don’t know.” Lindsey shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Did you have an agreement with these men? Did they know that your ‘no’ meant yes?”

Lindsey thought of Brian-of all of them, he was the only one who really knew the game. Had he told the new ones, the others? She didn’t know, but figured he must have. His continuous apology, both verbal and non, told her that much. They knew the game, but when her “no” had turned insistent, when even Brian knew she didn’t want to play the game anymore, the others had gone on.

She remembered Smooth, the look in his eyes. He didn’t care about the game-

he didn’t want her to like it, and most especially, he didn’t want her to be in control.

Everything he did made it clear she was helpless, powerless before him. He’d known she didn’t want what they were dishing out, that her “no” had really meant “no.” But there was no way to tell the detective that. How could she possibly defend herself? And if she told this woman there was some sort of agreement, she would have to admit knowing Brian, tell them about her encounters with him before, even though the rest of them had been strangers to her. She remembered the tears in Brian’s eyes, the apology there, and knew she couldn’t.

“No…” Lindsey sighed. “It was just a game I played in my head.” The detective, who had kept her distance the whole time, business-like, writing in her little note pad, took a step toward the bed. Lindsey flinched, only able to bring her eyes up to the level of the woman’s badge.

“That’s a dangerous game, Lindsey.”

She snorted, finally looking at the woman’s face through half-closed eyes-she couldn’t open them any further, and they were still crusted with blood. “Obviously.”

“We’ll have a sketch artist contact you and I want you to look through our mugshots.” The blonde—her name, officer Deborah Bills, was embroidered on her uniform pocket, and Lindsey wondered for a moment if the woman had done it herself—closed her notebook and tucked it away into that pocket for safekeeping. “If you can identify the suspects and there is enough evidence to charge them, you’ll be asked to testify.”

The thought made Lindsey’s stomach drop, but she just nodded. “Can I go home now?”

“You’ll have to talk to the doctor about that.” The officer took a card from a holder and put it on the adjustable hospital bedside table. “This has my number on it. If you’ve forgotten anything, or there’s something new you have to say, give me a call.” The doctor insisted she stay, but Lindsey signed herself out AMA. “I’m eighteen, I can do that, right?”

The doc was a short, Asian woman with a cruel mouth that twisted when she was mad-like now-but kind eyes, and she looked like she wanted to say, “No,” but she didn’t. “Technically, yes.”

Zach spoke up then for the first time in what felt like hours. “I can take care of her, if she wants to go.”

The Asian doc looked him up and down for a moment, and finally even her mouth softened with a resigned sigh. “She’s had a good deal of head trauma. Check her often during the night, look at her pupils…”

Lindsey ignored the rest, hopping off the bed like a five-year-old who just got her own way and, after checking one last time with the doc, went to take a shower. It was more painful that she would have believed, in more ways than one. The hot water over her lacerated back and legs hit her like sharp needles, and anywhere she touched herself with the soap felt bruised and broken. She didn’t even attempt to wash the purple and, in some places, near-black nubs of her breasts, just let the suds from her shampoo drip down her body-and that burned, too, in the little cuts and nicks along her abdomen and the front of her thighs.

She stood there a long time in the heat letting the water massage her front, washing away the dried residue of their cum. Her memory was too clear and bright, even if it only came in flashes, like someone taking photos at night. She saw herself, still, outside of herself, hanging suspended, beaten, aching, bleeding. Flash. A slim girl spread flat in the pine needles and dirt, three men kneeling over her, working their way into her, on her, in one way or another. Flash. Brian’s face an apology, his trembling hands gripping her hips. Flash. Running, desperate, the birch trees like negatives in the growing darkness. Flash. Her stepfather, looming. Flash. A blood stained mattress, the darkness spread like a question mark, or a crescent moon. Flash. Zach’s stunned face, the twist from disbelief to anger, his hands gentle, his words soft.

She cried then, turning the water salt, shoving a washcloth into her mouth to muffle her sobs. Zach was right outside the door, and listening, she was sure of it.

There was only so much pain one man could stand, she reasoned, as she bent over double, retching, nothing in her stomach, but vomiting anyway, as if she could rid herself of every memory but the last.

Finally, she stood, paying special attention to the area between her legs then, using one of the harsh, bleached hospital washcloths laved with soap to scrub herself clean. Her whole body felt raw as she used the rough, stingy towels to dry off and realized she didn’t have any clothes to put on, the hospital gown just a blood-stained ball on the floor.

“Zach?” Poking her head out the door, she spoke in a stage whisper, looking around for the doc, but she was gone. “I don’t have anything to wear.” He looked up from where he was sitting, head in hands, in the chair next to the bed. “She left you something. I guess they… they keep stuff on hand for when…” He let his words trail off, but the sentence finished itself in her head, anyway. “For when women get raped.” Lindsey held out her hand and he put a bag into it, thinking about the sentence he hadn’t wanted to finish.

Raped. And so, she had been. Wouldn’t be the first time, she mused, digging through the bag. Sweatpants, bright pink, size large—she was going to swim in them—and a t-shirt with a logo she recognized from another business-sized card sitting on the table out there in her hospital room. Turning Point. It was the place that other woman was from, the one who said she was a social worker, an advocate. Lindsey had dispatched her pretty quickly, she remembered, pulling the clothes on, tying a knot in the sweats on the side so they would stay up.

“Get out,” Lindsey had insisted, pointing the way toward the door, in case the young social worker had missed the way. “I don’t want to talk to you.” The dark-haired woman had persisted for a few minutes, trying to explain her role. “I’m just here as a friend, really,” she explained. “Someone you can talk to.”

“What part of ‘I don’t want to talk to you’ didn’t you understand, lady?”

Lindsey had submitted to the examination, the questions from the nurse, the doctor, demanding in spite of their objections that Zach stay by her side—she squeezed his hand the whole time—not because she wanted to, or even thought it was necessary, but because he had insisted she report it. But this, this woman claiming she just wanted “to talk”-that affront was just one step too far.

She’d heard the woman whispering with the cop in the hallway, but hadn’t seen her again after she’d left her business card.

“Ready to go home?” Zach looked up when she came out of the bathroom, still tugging up the sweats.

Home. She didn’t have a home anymore, she remembered. She couldn’t ever go back there again. Part of her was gleeful at the thought, but another part ached with a loss that made no logical sense at all. Zach slipped his arm around her waist, tucking her discharge papers into his back pocket. She made her best effort not to wince at the pain as they made their way down the hospital hallway, ignoring the eyes of the cop, who was still filling out paperwork at the desk and talking to the social worker Lindsey had kicked out of her room.

“It’s gonna be okay, baby,” Zach murmured, pushing the button for the elevator, his hand moving up to cup the back of her neck, massaging with his thumb.

She nodded, stepping in as the doors opened, and couldn’t believe how much she wanted to trust him.

“I should have stayed at the hospital!” Lindsey groaned as Zach turned off the alarm and flipped on the light next to the bed for the thousandth time that night.

“Open your eyes,” he insisted, pulling her arm from across them.

She sighed, blinking at the brightness, shaking off the dream she’d been in the middle of-something about swallowing small blue marbles, one after another, until she felt impossibly full. His gaze moved over her face, flickering between each of her eyes in studied concentration.

“Okay,” he said finally, giving her a reluctant nod. “We can go back to sleep.”

“Ha.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “Aren’t you supposed to heal best while sleeping? I don’t think getting up every two hours constitutes sleeping!”

“Sorry, baby.” His smile was infuriating as he reached for the light switch. “At least we don’t have to get up in the morning.”

“You’re worse than any nurse,” Lindsey muttered, yanking the sheet up over her shoulder and turning away from him. The weekend, she realized-no school for her, no work for him. But what about Monday? What then? Would everyone know what had happened? Her reputation had been in shreds for years, she didn’t care a bit about that.

Whatever she had done before, had been her choice, she reasoned. But this time…

“You cold?” Zach pulled the comforter up to join the sheet at her neckline when she shivered.

“No.” She winced at the pain of his touch on her tender back. “Yes. I don’t know.” He lowered his head to touch hers in the darkness, kissing the top of her ear. “I wish…”

“Don’t say it.” She didn’t think she could stand another ounce of kindness or pity.

Zach sighed, his breath warm on her neck. “I don’t think I have the words, anyway.”

“Good.”

He feathered kisses over the back of her neck, pushing her long hair out of his way. “Sleep…”

“I was,” she sighed as he settled in behind her, pressing his chest to her back, forgetting, she knew, but she couldn’t help her gasp of pain at the sudden pressure.

“Ah damn!” He moved back a little, his big hand resting on her hip. “Oh damnit, Lindsey. Damn them!”

His sudden change, the vehement anger in his tone, startled her. The Zach she knew didn’t get angry, not really. The hand moving over her hip shook, and she knew it was trembling with rage.

“I could kill them.” He whispered it under the cover of the darkness, as if he’d been afraid to speak the words aloud before, in the light, with all its possibilities. “With my bare hands.”

She believed him. “It was my own fault.”

“No.” His grip tightened, and his hand would have made a fist if he hadn’t been squeezing her hip. “I don’t care what you said about the little games you play- played,” he made his insistence on past tense perfectly clear, “with these guys.” His voice broke and she heard nothing but his breath, harsh and uneven, for a moment. “No one deserves what happened to you. You didn’t do this to yourself, Lindsey. You didn’t beat your back into a bloody pulp, or…or…”

It was like he couldn’t make any more words. She gave a strangled little laugh that sounded more like a sob to her own ears than anything else. “Didn’t I?”

“No,” he murmured, pulling the sheet aside, exposing her back to the air. “Oh my god, no, sweetheart, no…” His lips moved over her back, kissing the wounds there. The deeper ones he had carefully bandaged before they’d gone to bed, but there were too many to cover completely, and it was the shallow ones he kissed now, over and over. It reminded her of those few memories she had of her father, of falling down and him putting on the Band-Aid, kissing it and making it all better. “Please don’t believe it. Not for a minute. You didn’t ask for this. It’s not your fault.” She didn’t believe it-couldn’t-and she cringed away, rolling to her belly and clutching the pillow. He didn’t stop touching her, his fingers grazing lightly, cautious, as if he were petting a shy animal, his lips murmuring words against her back, and he kept on whispering those awful, painful words.

“I know you’re hurting.” His breath was too warm, too human, too comforting. It made her want to cry and she fought it-hard. “God, baby, I could tell from the first minute I saw you. It shouldn’t be possible for a girl your size to be carrying around so much pain.”

“No,” she choked, begging him to stop, knowing he wouldn’t. This was worse, his tenderness, his kind words, worse than the rape, worse than anything.

“I just want to love you.” His forehead pressed against her lower back, and the sting she felt there was the salt of his tears. That realization broke her-Zach, crying, in pain-and all she wanted to do was curl into a ball and die.

“I don’t deserve you.” She sobbed against the pillow, the dam breaking, her body shaking with it. “I don’t deserve this.”

“Oh, baby.” Zach moved in beside her, taking her, fighting, into his arms. She tried to resist, shaking her head, pushing back, but he was too strong for her. “Please,”

he murmured into her hair as she began to give, letting him hold her. “Let me love you. Just let me love you.”

“I can’t.” Her strangled cry muffled itself against his chest, and he rocked her, back and forth, into a bed covers cocoon in the dark. “You don’t understand.”

“I don’t care.” He tucked her head under his chin, as if he could get her even closer. “Lindsey, I know more than you think I do. And I don’t care. Baby, I don’t care what you’ve done, how many other guys you’ve been with, the lengths you’ve gone to…just to hurt yourself.” She tried to make herself smaller against him, as if she could hide from his words.

“God, baby, you’re so full of that spite.” His words made her feel cold, achy, as if she had the flu. “Watching you do this to yourself…it’s like seeing you eat rat poison, but you think you’re hurting someone else, don’t you? You’ll show them, right?” He squeezed her tighter when she snorted and nodded through her tears. “And all the while you’re just killing yourself…”

“I know.” She drew a shuddering breath. “But I don’t care.” He sighed, kissing the top of her head. “Because if no one else cares…why should you?”

She nodded, holding back a full-blown sob, her throat closing off any words.

“I care, Linds.” He cupped her face in his hands, kissing her wet cheeks. “I love you. Do you hear me? I love you.”

Burying her face against his chest, she gave a deep, shuddering sigh, sliding her hand down over the hard, flat surface of his belly, reaching under the sheet to find his cock, soft in a nest of dark, kinky hair.

“Lindsey!” Zach jumped, startled, at her touch. “Oh, baby, no no…” He took her hand, pulling it up to his waist, wrapping it around him. “It’s so not about that.”

“It’s always about that!” she choked, trying to push him away, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead, he held on, rocking, until sobs racked her body, trembling them both. It was a while-to Lindsey, it felt like forever-before they subsided into little hitching noises, the same kind she used to get when she was very small and had been crying a long, long time. Zach kissed the top of her head, using the sheet to wipe the tears from her face, his chest.

“He raped me,” she whispered, the words lifting a weight in her chest like an anvil.

“I know, baby, I know,” he crooned, stroking her. “I’m so sorry…”

“My stepfather. When I was twelve.”

His silence stretched until he managed a breathy, strangled, “Oh…god…” in response, his arms tightening around her.

“I had never even kissed a boy before.” The words, once begun, seemed to form themselves now.

“Oh Christ.”

“There was blood everywhere.” She shuddered. “And I tried to clean it-he told me to, before my mother got home. I tried…” She sighed, remembering. The memory wasn’t far away, like it usually was—the circle-face of the moon through a pane of glass—instead it was close, bright, painful. She wanted to push it away and found she couldn’t. “He was always like that. I couldn’t ever do anything right with him. It never mattered what it was. I wasn’t ever good enough.”

“Oh my god, Lindsey,” Zach’s voice cracked and she could feel how tense his muscles were, felt his jaw clench as he tucked her head under his chin. The words came and came, spilling out of her mouth, a fountain of pain, and he listened, mostly quiet, his jaw working, as she told him everything.

“I remembered…” She tried to swallow the memory, but she couldn’t. It hurt more than any of the others. “When I was little-little and I’d fall down and skin my knee… I remembered my father, putting on that spray stuff that hurt and telling me to go to the moon…”

“The moon?”

”It was something we did…” She smiled through her tears, remembering her chubby little girl finger, pointing at the glass. “At night, he would show me the moon out my window before he put me to bed… so whenever I was hurt, he’d try to distract me, tell me to remember the moon… think about the moon…”

Zach nodded, just holding her.

“I think I got to the point where I became the moon,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She could see it, tucked neatly into one square pane of glass. “I went to the moon whenever he touched me, Zach. I went away. Whenever anyone touches me, that’s where I go. And tonight… I went there, too. I felt like I swallowed the moon tonight, and it burned…”

“Oh baby…” He gave a deep, shaky sigh, swallowing hard. “Can I ask… what about your mother?”

“I tried… once.” Lindsey shook her head. “She wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to know.” Her lip trembled and she pulled the comforter tighter around her. “She always loved him more than she ever loved me.”

“Oh no…” His denial didn’t make it not true, and she blinked back more tears.

“And after that… I just wanted someone to pick me up and tell me it was going to be okay, you know?” She felt him nodding. “But there was never… anyone. And it felt like… like I just kept falling down… over and over… and there was no one there…”

“To catch you?”

She nodded her assent, her throat closed tight.

“I promise you…” Zach’s voice was hard, but his hands, cupping her face, were tender. “No one is ever going to hurt you again. And I will always, always be there to catch you, Lindsey.”

She wanted to deny his words, to tell him she didn’t need him-she didn’t need anyone-but that part of her was far away now. He’d managed to find a way into the biggest, most secret part of herself, and she couldn’t push him away anymore.

“I don’t care how hard or how far you fall,” he murmured, kissing her wet eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. “I promise I will be there to catch you.”

“I’m sorry,” she choked, wrapping her arms around his neck, pressing against him. “I’m so sorry. I love you so much, and I am so, so…” His kiss stopped her, his mouth hard, too hard, and she cried out. He stopped, panting, and she felt the anger in him. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” He sighed, his fingers moving over her sore, tender lips. “I’m sorry all of that happened to you. I’m sorry you think it was your fault, that you deserved…” He shook his head, swallowing the words. “Lindsey, if I could take it back… if I could get my hands on him in a dark alley somewhere…”

“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured, throwing a leg over his and snuggling in closer. “None of it matters anymore. I have you now… I have someone, a place to be, to feel safe.”

“Oh damnit…” His arms tightened again. “This is so not the right time to tell you this…”

Her head came up sharply, her heart thudding. “Tell me what?”

“…I’m leaving.” He winced when she gasped, sounding as if she’d been punched. “I’m being deployed to Iraq.”

“Again?” She frowned, feeling indignant. Just how much time could one man serve for his country, she thought selfishly.

He sighed. “I go when they tell me to go, baby.”

“I don’t want you to go.” She pouted, trying to imagine her life without him, and found it more than a little difficult.

“And I don’t want to go.” He leaned back on his pillow, throwing an arm over his head, and stared up at the ceiling.

She approached him cautiously. “You can’t get out of it?”

“You can’t tell the U.S. Navy no, sweetheart.” The flash of his smile gleamed in the dark. “But here’s the thing…” He sat up on his elbow, earnest now. “I want you to stay here. Stay here and wait for me.”

“Wait?” The word felt weighted in her mouth.

“You’re graduating in a few weeks. I’ll probably be gone through the summer, no more…”

The whole summer? She sighed. “When are you going?”

“June twenty-sixth.”

“So soon?” She heard the whine in her voice and tried to curb it. That was only a few weeks after graduation.

“I’m sorry.” He leaned back again, this time throwing his arm over his eyes. “It’s terrible timing.”

They were quiet for a while. Lindsey watched him, his chest rising and falling, and wondered what he was thinking. “I don’t want to stay here without you,” she said finally. ”This is… this is your home, not mine. I don’t belong here.”

“Yes you do,” he insisted, up on his elbow again. His eyes flashed in the dimness. “Want me to prove it? We’ll go the justice of the peace tomorrow.” She laughed, incredulous. “Was that a proposal?”

“Yeah,” he said, serious, reaching out for her hand. His swallowed hers as he squeezed and then pressed her palm to his lips. “Yeah, it was. Lindsey, will you marry me?”

Her heart soared, but she tried to make light of it, still. She snorted and gave him a shove. “A shotgun wedding?”

She heard him grinning. “Well, for it to be a real shotgun wedding, you’d have to be pregnant… not that I’d object.” His hand moved over the smooth, flat expanse of her belly, but she pushed him away, sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

“Where are you going?” His hand moved to encircle her wrist.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “Zach…I can’t get pregnant. Not anymore.”

He sat up then, too, moving in behind her. She leaned her head back against his chest and told him her last, biggest secret. “He made me get an abortion after that first time.” She felt him stiffen, but she went on anyway, needing to tell someone, needing to tell him. “And then, you know, he got me the pill. But I stopped taking them.” She laughed in the dark, remembering how angry, how defiant, how ridiculously naive she had been. “I thought maybe, if I had a baby, my mom would have to…”

“Oh Jesus.” He rested his forehead against her hair.

“But it’s never happened.” She shrugged. She had stopped worrying about it a long time ago. What kind of mother would she ever be, after all, she reasoned. “All this time…I’ve never gotten pregnant. And I haven’t exactly been careful.”

“Oh, baby I’m so sorry…” He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her into his lap, her back against his chest, rocking her. “It doesn’t matter. I love you. You. Do you get that?”

She nodded. She did get it-for the first time, maybe ever. Turning in his arms, she straddled him, up on her knees, to give him a long, tender kiss. She felt him smile against her lips.

“Well the good news is the hospital says I’m clean,” she whispered into his ear.

“Not even one STD. You know what that means?”

He chuckled. “Is that a yes?”

“Oh yes,” she agreed, wiggling in his lap.

“Not that.” He laughed, pulling her back into bed, covering them both. “That can wait.”

“To what, then?” she teased. “Your romantic proposal?”

“What else?” He snorted.

She hesitated, biting her lip. “It’s a definite maybe.”

“Well then you better sleep on it some more.” He squeezed his arm around her shoulder as she snuggled up and rested her head on his chest. “My alarm’s going to go off in another hour so I can check on you.”

She groaned, rolling her eyes before closing them and drifting almost immediately into the soundest sleep she could ever remember.