“You changed my life.”
“You f**king wanted it,” he says. His words ring like peals of laughter around the room.
My heart thuds.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
But I’m alive, so I welcome it.
“I wanted you to violate my body?” I ask quietly. His face scrunches up. “When I was begging stop, stop, stop, that made you think I wanted it?”
Suddenly, he jumps forward and grabs my shirt. He twists his fist in it and jerks me against him. He’s hard against my hip. He’s turned on? Of course, he is. He reaches for my hair and grabs it. Why is it that men like him go for the hair? Because they can, I guess. I freeze and let him snarl into my face.
“You f**king wanted it because you’re a little whore just like the rest of them,” he snarls, his face so close that his spit hits my cheek like raindrops. He lifts his hand to backhand me. I almost find myself flinching, but then I do what comes naturally. I block his blow. He startles and yelps when I spin him around and pin him with his arm behind his back.
“How does it feel?” I ask quietly beside his ear. “To be overpowered.”
I set him free with a shove. He rubs his shoulder, his face a snarly mass of hatred. He reaches for me again, and I block him and then hit him in the nose with the heel of my hand. Blood spurts from his nostrils and rolls down over his shirt. He raises his hands like he’s going to try to grab me again, but I knee him in the nuts. He goes down holding his gonads. I crouch beside him and look into his face.
“How’s it feel?” I ask again.
He starts to get up, but I’m not going to allow that. I kick him in the side of his face with my tennis shoe and he falls heavily against the floor on his stomach. A bubble of spit rises from his lips, and he spits it out. I see a speck of white and look closely. Crap. He just spit out a tooth. Didn’t mean to do that. A laugh rises within me, but I bite it back. I still have things to do to finish this.
I put my knee in the center of his back and reach for the lamp on the end table. I drag it onto the floor and it breaks into shards, but all I want is the cord. He grunts as I dig my knee into his back and bring his hands up behind him. I wrap the cord tightly around his wrists and ankles and bind him up into a crooked bow, his legs taut. He lost his shoe in the scuffle, so I pull his sock off and shove it into his mouth. Then I call out. “Susan!” I say.
She opens the bedroom door, and her eyes grow wide. They’re rimmed in red and I feel really bad for what I just made her listen to.
“Would you unlock the door?” I ask her. I jerk my thumb toward it. “The front door.”
Just as she opens it, the police rush into the room. They take me in, and stop. Pete rushes in right behind them. “What the f**k?” he asks.
But I’m calm. I smile up at him. “This is him, Pete,” I say.
“Who?” he asks. He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“The man who raped me,” I admit. And finally a sob rolls off my chest. “It’s him.” I point toward the lump on the floor.
Rage immediately takes over Pete’s face. He advances toward Ben, and I feel like I have to get between them, even though the police are now in charge. Pete shoves me to the side, and I can’t stop him by pulling on his arm so I throw myself onto his front and wrap my legs around his waist, clinging to him like a koala. He seethes with rage. But I can’t let him ruin his life. I can’t let him hurt that bastard, no matter how much I’d like to see it happen.
“What the f**k, Reagan?” he breathes, taking my face into his hands so he can look into my eyes.
I lay my head on his shoulder and hold him tightly, finally allowing the emotion to hit me. I sob into his Pete’s neck until he drops into a chair and just holds me straddling his lap. The police ask questions and he answers them. Edward and Susan stand arm in arm, and Susan tells them everything she heard.
I hear the words “DNA” and “evidence collection” and “this might be enough.”
I lift my head and look into Pete’s face as they usher Ben out into the hallway in handcuffs. “I did it,” I say. I sniffle, but a chuckle falls over my lips.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.
“I didn’t want you to kill him,” I admit.
“You kicked his ass, princess,” he says, and he suddenly grins.
“Yeah, I kind of did, didn’t I?” I say, and I start to laugh. I can’t help it. I’m sure there are others, and I just made sure that the ra**st will pay, at least for my crime and possibly for others as well.
Pete gives Edward a wad of cash and tells him to take Susan and Gonzo to the arcade. They leave, still excited about what happened.
I lay on Pete’s lap until I think his legs will probably fall asleep. But he doesn’t move me. He just talks quietly into my ear about how amazing we are. How wonderful we are together. How proud he is of me. How scared he was when he saw the police coming through the door.
“He touched me, Pete,” I say.
He stands up, his hands clutching my bottom, and he carries me into our bathroom. He sets me down carefully, unwinding my legs from around his waist. He undresses me slowly and turns the water on.
He comes into the shower with me and soaps me gently and slowly, washing my hair with tender fingers. “He grabbed my hair,” I say.
Pete rinses me and washes my hair again. “I’ll wash it all away,” he says.