Chase Me (13 page)

“I can’t get up,” I whimpered. “I really have to pee.”

Brooklyn got up and walked around to my side of the bed and helped me up. She kept a hand on me the whole way to the bathroom. My head felt heavy like it could fall off my neck if I didn’t balance it perfectly. I noticed I was in an extra-large t-shirt and smelled like a man. It made me gag.

“What happened?” I asked as I saw the bruises under the bathroom light. Brook didn’t have to answer because I already knew. It came flooding back to me like a rerun on the fox network.

“Kurt has been arrested and charged with assault and battery, and attempted rape. They don’t expect him to make bail. Taylor and I talked yesterday and the state is not going to press charges on you for the theft of a car if you agree to pay the money to get the blood detailed out of the seat.

“Why would they charge me? I’m a victim,” I spoke loudly enough that my brain felt like it was going to splatter as I peed into the toilet.

“You damn near bit his penis off. You stapled his balls – The staple had to be surgically removed as the leg on it went nearly an inch inside his testicle. That alone would have been impressive, but then you stole a car and dropped him off with the word rapist written in lipstick across his ass two blocks from the hospital in Central Park at night.”

I busted out laughing and it hurt. I cried, and giggled all at once.

“You don’t remember any of that?” Brooklyn asked with concern etching her face.

“I remember waiting all day. Henry kept me down there for hours. Then Kurt was there. I remember him wanting to take me to dinner, and -,” I stopped. I couldn’t say out loud what he did.

I wiped and Brooklyn helped me stand back up. I heard a whistle calling and started slowly walking out to go into the kitchen. I rounded the wall to see Mike and Eddie playing some card game while Taylor Cross boiled tea.

I hated the smug District Attorney, with his perfect black hair, his flawless tan skin and bright white teeth. His exemplary eyes that screamed guilty to everyone who looked at them.

“Why are you here?” I asked and Taylor smiled. I didn’t like him when he tried my case and I sure as hell wasn’t smiling back at him now.

“We were all playing cards wondering if sleeping beauty was going to wake up.”

I looked at Brooklyn and she nodded as she steered me over to one of the navy blue chairs that sat across from the couch. Then Brooklyn went and sat on the loveseat and leaned up to hold my hand.

“What is this an intervention?” I asked and everyone looked around the room. “I haven’t known Eddie long enough for him to be here if that is what it is.”

“May I call you Kate?” Taylor asked and my professionalism went out the window.

“You can call me whatever you want from your cell phone as you get in your cab to leave.”

“Kate, Taylor will be trying Kurt as a favor to me. I need you to cooperate. We know mostly everything, but we have a few questions.”

“Fine,” I sighed and sat back in the chair only to wince at the pain. Brooklyn made me tea and brought me pain pills.

“Do you remember where you stole the car?” Taylor asked and I shook my head. “Do you remember how you knocked Kurt unconscious or loaded his two hundred and ten pounds of dead weight into the back of a car?”

I shook my head, but I got this stomach sinking feeling they knew more than I did. Especially with Taylors tone.

“Do you remember saying no?” I nodded. “Do you remember where this happened?” I looked over at Eddie and then at Mike. I shook my head with the lie, but knowing Mike he would blame Henry and kill him for leaving me in that position. “Will you be all right working with Detective Stone on this, or would you like me to have them assign you a female detective?”

“I can work with Mark. He has seen me in worse shape than this.”

“Kate, I need you to think really hard. Was there anyone else with you? Someone who helped you get to the hospital? Anyone tell you not to talk about what happened?”

Bells went off in my head and made it hurt even more. I wasn’t raped because I hadn’t been alone. I scrunched my swollen face as I tried like hell to remember. My head ached, but there was nothing there. Just glimpses into what he made me do.

“Kate,” Eddie spoke softly and I jumped when his hands laid on my knees. I felt the hot tears strolling down my face as I looked into his eyes. I was angry. So very bitter, and even Eddie’s bedroom eyes couldn’t make this go away. No joke was going to fix this. A distraction was useless because now the video feed was playing over and over in my head. The way he grabbed my hair, and forced me to let him into my mouth. The way he backhanded me when I stood up for myself.

“Kate,” Mike called out and I flinched as they all backed away. I was stuck in my head replaying it over and over again. I couldn’t get it out. I couldn’t make it stop.

“Kate, listen to me,” Brooklyn yelled through my vision, but I couldn’t see her. All I could see was Kurt. Then I felt my body turned to ice, and I shrieked. I covered my head. “Kate!” Brooklyn screamed and I looked up to see I was in the shower. I was laying in the tub with cold ice water pouring down on me. “You were tearing your own skin off,” Brooklyn moved slowly toward me and showed me where I had tried to claw the skin off where he had left the first bruise.

“Brooklyn,” Taylor called out and I was left with Eddie in the bathroom with his back to me.

“I’m – I’m so sorry,” I cried as I shivered. I wanted him to turn around, to hold me, to make it better, but we both knew I would never be the same if he did. That everything would be lost.

“It is not your fault.”

“I didn’t – I wasn’t,” I sobbed. “I’m not a whore.”

Eddie started to talk, but I couldn’t hear anything he had to say. I wasn’t in a place to listen.

“I’m a soda pop girl,” I bawled into the pouring cold water. “I’m a tasty treat,” I wailed as the reality of my choices came to life. “I am not a slut!”

Brooklyn barreled back into the room and I kept telling her everyone over and over again. It was my life and my choice to be who I was and I still made no apologies for it. I wasn’t a saint, but I wasn’t a sinner who deserved what happened.

“You said no,” Brooklyn said sternly. “No means no. You didn’t do anything wrong! If you believe anything I ever say, you need to believe that.”

Chapter 11

The weeks came and went. Henry paid my rent in full, and I now had a driver to take me to my mom’s chemo appointments and to the garage. Henry had agreed to leave it open until I didn’t have to wear a brace because it would lower moral at the company to wear it in the office.

“How is my favorite daughter?” Mike asked. He and my mom got married right after the incident with Kurt. I looked over at the calendar and smiled when I saw it had been exactly a month.

“I’m really good dad,” I said sweetly and my attention turned to the red 1966 Ford Mustang Fastback sitting in the back of the garage. “Why is that one back here?” I asked as I hadn’t seen Eddie since the incident.

“He broke the fan blade,” Mike stated with a shake of his head. “Someone should take the time to talk to him so he will stop breaking the cars in hopes of seeing you.”

I ignored the comment and walked over to the car. I ran my fingers across the hood, but it didn’t carry the same feeling anymore. I was broken and I didn’t know how to get my sass back.

“Hey Mike,” I called out and he looked around the hood of an Oldsmobile from me. “I’m gonna fix it and take it to the track.”

Mike merely smiled as I pulled my hair back from my face and I leaned over the hood. Shorter pieces of my hair fell forward out of the band. A reminder of what had happened. When they arrested him he had pieces of my hair tightly wound in his hand.

I had to shake the thought from my mind, and get to work on this car. Eddie and I knew each other for a few days. It wasn’t a lifetime, even though it felt like one. It wasn’t love, even though I fought myself hourly to not call him. He was a drug of choice I never tried, but had wanted to.

There was no more one night stands. No more partying or going to the club. I got up showered, drank coffee, went to work, returned home, had dinner, and went to bed. There was constantly someone with me courtesy of my sperm donor. I didn’t know if it was to keep me safe, or to keep me from biting anymore cocks.

“Kate,” Mike called over my shoulder.
“You should drive it over to him and let him know that you are okay when you get it done.”

“And let Daddy dearest find out I went somewhere without my driver who looks like he could be broken in half by a five-year-old,” I put as much fake sarcasm into that as I could.

“Kate, the man is worried,” Mike kept on.

“Tell him to read People Magazine if he wants a good story. I’ll be featured in the life’s most boring category next month.”

“Sometimes Kate, you are as stubborn as your mother,” Mike said in passing, but it made me grin. A true smile. Something I hadn’t had in a month.

A few hours later, I had fixed the Fastback and had driven her to the race track. With one hand on the wheel and one on the shifter I was ready. I closed my eyes and put everything out of my head. Brooklyn was moving out this in a few weeks, and in a week I would no longer be in a brace. My mom was doing better, but I felt like the doctors were withholding information. Kurt was offered a plea deal to keep me from having to see him again, but Taylor didn’t offer him much. I think it was six months off the maximum sentence. Kurt still had not accepted it.

All of these things combined led me to this race track where I could drive faster than my problems could fly. I opened my eyes and turned on my Ipod and placed the buds in my ear because you couldn’t get Black Sabbath on eight track, and then tightened my seat belt.

I pulled up a little closer to the line and then waited for the other driver to get off the track. One he pulled out I let off the clutch and pressed the gas to the floor. The tires burned as the car jumped forward and I quickly slammed it into second and then third. Within two minutes I was clearing the governor at eighty-five miles an hour. It wasn’t nearly fast enough, but being able to race this car was everything to me.

Even racing I couldn’t put the changes behind me.

The wind in my hair.

The thrill of the road.

The sound of the engine purring.

And the way the car just seemed to know what I was thinking made it all worth it, and I used to love it. I couldn’t get enough and now I wondered how much gas I was wasting.

I hugged the curve on the tenth lap a little too tight and it caused me to slam on the brakes. Something you never do. I saw the smoke as the car came to a stop and I lunged out as the track employees came running out with fire extinguishers.

“I am such an idiot,” I chided myself as I watched his brake pads go up in flames, and ruin the paint on the wheel wells.

I called my driver, and a tow truck and let them come and get us both. I didn’t have the money to fix the damage and those parts are hard to come by. It would have been no big deal if only the pads needed replacing, but with cars that old anything the fire got near would have to go. Which meant I had to call Henry and ask for the money.

“Dad,” I responded with my best ass kissing voice. “I need to borrow about ten thousand dollars.”