Chapter Eight
Cal
The last few days have been awkward. We have text one another a lot, almost constant. With her shifts between the PIT and Skin and for me with Axe and working with Lexington... it’s hard to know where either of us are.
I am left confused on the text this morning though.
Jen: So, when we say hashing it out later what do we mean?
Me: Well, I know what I mean by it. What do you mean by it?
I toss back my protein shake and sign for Axe to follow me to the gym in my home.
This is our ritual. Wake up, be lazy for a few minutes, breakfast (cheerios and bananas for him, protein shake and a pot of coffee for me) then we work out. Well, I work out. He plays with the jungle gym set I had installed last year.
I check my phone one last time before I set my playlist on the overhead sound system and dock my phone right as 'Diary of Jane' starts her text comes through.
Jen: Well I think it means we are seeing what happens.
In a split second I know this workout is getting its ass kicked. She pisses me off more often than not. This is just one of many examples.
Me: I am pretty sure we both know what will happen, but I'll break it down for you. I said be with me. You agreed. Everything outside of that we could hash out. Example; secrets, betrayals, trust issues... whatever.
I take my phone to the treadmill and start my warm up, eyeing Axe who climbs his gym and jumps all of three feet down over and over again. Engrossed in his own world, I refrain from screaming fuck for his benefit. This woman is making me bat shit crazy.
Jen: I’m scared
I sigh and up the speed and start the incline.
Me: Well you told me the worst right?
Jen: The dangerous side yes, but there is so much that took place in that span of time. Nothing was worse than that though.
Me: Then we hash it out. Case in point Red
I wait for her response but after a while I focus on my workout uninterrupted and haul ass to the showers to get the kid ready for school.
By noon I hadn’t heard from her and it was driving me crazy. I can’t figure out what the hell else she is scared of. The bomb was dropped the other night and I did as she asked and sandblasted it the fuck away.
Maybe she thinks I need the details, sorted and detailed, but I don’t. I can’t hear it all because I have every intention of tracking those bastards down and ensuring they rot in prison. If I know the sort of shit she went through, fuck no I will kill them. I won’t be able to think rational like Cal did when he found out about Corey trying to kill Cassa.
I am from the Noah mindset of let the fuckers suffer, by any means necessary.
I shoot Chad a text asking him to come jam so I am warmed up for the first session in the studio with Lex. I need to have some music and with my emotions going ADD on me I need something to surface me or we are gonna have shit to work with.
Chad: Yeah Carrie is with Bright doing wedding shit. Noah's here, he's gonna cruise with me yeah?
Me: Hell yeah. Where’s Shame?
Chad: Final adoption interview for Ella's biological brother.
Me: I forgot. I need to wish them luck. My heads fucked up today.
I immediately shoot Shame and Sass a good luck text and reassure them they got this, when Chad texts again.
Chad: On our way.
Me: I'm in the studio.
I change the strings on my guitar and tighten them, some instrumental tracks I worked on last week playing as I work when they show up and I am relieved.
"I am losing it over here." I say and take the beer he hands me and crack it open. They both watch me closely as I pound the beer.
"Something happen?" Chad asks and sets his gear on the stand in the sound booth. I hand them my phone and let them read the interaction between us this morning.
"What the fuck else does she need?" I look to Noah for the answers.
"What the fuck was the worst of it and that bad?" Chad asks and I feel like shit for not thinking about him reading it, not knowing what the bad was.
"Jen was brutally raped by four dudes in a drug deal the night before she brought Axe to Cal's folks." Noah says, dropping one hell of a bomb on Chad.
"What the fuck?" I yell and look at him with complete shock. "Don’t tell her shit to just anyone!"
He takes a bite of his Low Mein they brought and looks at me like I’m the asshole. "It’s Chad dumb ass, the second-best people to talk to when dealing with a woman who has been raped. He's not a gossip whore or a clown. He can help you understand it."
Meanwhile Chad looks sick and sits slowly looking at nothing. "You okay?" I ask and steal some of Noah's noodles.
He looks up at me, sad eyes and concern. "Jenny was raped?"
I realize as does Noah, that to him this was new, ugly and as her friend it saddens him.
"Dude, I’m sorry. I have had the time to adjust and Noah has known forever." I say and hand him a beer.
"You’ve adjusted to four men brutally raping the woman you love?" He asks me in a seriously annoyed tone.
"Love?" I ask and both Noah and Chad shake their heads.
"Dude, so not the topic to debate right now." Noah says and I see Chad, still in shock and decide he is right.
"I see daily the way it twists Carrie up. She carries so much burden over her abuse. What she could have done differently and still to this day she needs Noah to pull her out from time to time, though our Trust me game is nothing like theirs. I have to be understanding, no matter how brutal it gets and there are times I can’t deal."
I hate the reminders of what she and Noah survived. Their past reads like the worst horror scene ever created, and dealt to them by the hands of their sadistic father.
"How do you feel knowing he is behind bars?" I ask, because I am seriously getting involved to catch these lowlife fucks.
"I would feel better if he were dead. Don’t give a fuck by the means. Let the scary mother fuckers get him, let cancer get him...fucking let him hang himself. Just want him six feet below. I settle for prison."
Noah raises his beer. "Cheers to that, but I remain hopeful."
"I want her to go to the cops." I admit and wait for their reaction, yet both seem to ponder it.
"She won’t." Noah finally says and shakes his head. "We wouldn’t either. It's a pride thing. It's easier to keep the secret even if it festers than to admit to strangers and the public in our case that you were weaker than the demon that tortured you. Heaviest pill to swallow and not choke on it. Jen will never rat them out for many reasons."
"You seem okay with that. She deserves justice." I say and scrub my hands over my face before linking my fingers behind my neck.
"Cal..." He says and rests his arm on the production desk. "Jen is from the ghetto. The streets. It is all she knows and those are the laws she lives by. She might hang with the rich, but she is white trash beautiful and those are her thoughts not mine. She won’t rat those fucks out just like I didn’t rat the bickers out. Snitches get stitches and you don’t seek the taboo out and then cry when it hurts you. Carrie and I came from money, but we lived on beans and rice and whatever scraps of happy we could find. There is a different world neither of you could understand and it’s because you had what we didn’t. No better no less, just living on a different set of life’s rules. Hard knocks are a bitch buddy."
I try to take in what he says and realize I know very little about Jens life. When we were young and hung out, we stayed on the clean side of Gig, never beyond the bridge. I only crossed into her world once... she always came to mine.
I was raised in a moderate sized home full of love and vacations and big Christmas’s. I never had to work for my guitars or bikes or cars. Good grades, dinner on the table every night. Nothing bad happened in my world and evil was for other worlds not mine. I never knew it existed until I met Carrie and Noah.
"I want justice." I pause, knowing it isn’t true. "Fuck that I want vengeance. Viking shit. I wanna hurt them in a way they will forever suffer. It's fucked up."
"Me too." Chad says and I believe him after his rant on Cody Beckett.
"Keep it to yourself, especially with her thinking she deserved it. You'll piss her off." Noah says and Chad sighs.
"She thinks that?" He looks so lost and Chad is the heart of us. Nothing about emotional shit freaks him out. Noah is strength, Chad is heart, Shame is funny and I am awesome.
Poor guy can’t handle this darkness sometimes.
Noah explains what happened and I feel my stomach drop. "What?" I ask, queasy and ready to explode. "They did what?"
"Yeah..." He looks at me with drawn brows and confusion. "What did she tell you?" There is guilt in his tone and I know he feels like he just betrayed Jen.
"That she was looking to score drugs, no money and the four took her to a room and took turns threatening to kill Axe if she didn’t comply. I didn’t even know it could get worse, so please continue."
He shakes his head no. "Not a shot in hell. You heard enough and even that makes me feel like shit."
"So, what you’ll feel free to tell Chad all willy-nilly, but not me because she's mine?" I roar and kick the chair I was sitting in until it rolled and hit the catch before knocking over. "I can’t take this shit anymore. Her reasons... everything revolves around this shit."
"Think if it was Mya, Cal. Say these four dudes hurt her instead. Would you be content with someone else telling her story? Even in an accidental way?" Noah asks and the minute he brought my little sister into I knew he was right.
"I hate this." I say and lean forward, elbows on my knees and my hands in my hair.
"Then have a voice in it, don’t panic and flip out. Stay strong, show her you’re not running and demand answers. Not in a dick way like you’re doing now, but tell her you need to know because like it or not it is a part of her now."
"And if she refuses when I do?" I ask Chad, and fuck I want to heed his advice because he lives this shit every day.
"Make it clear you don’t need the gory details, and trust me man, you don’t. But you need to know the pain, the brutality." He grabs another beer and looks at me. "I told Carrie, right after our first time together that as much as I loved being with her, it was strange because her dad was in the room."
"What?" Noah yells and Chad calms him immediately.
"Look I get it its Carrie and that’s gross, but remember that night she was freaked on what got her turned on?" I can sense he is masking the truth to protect his wife, but also his nutsack. "She wouldn’t tell me why she flipped out, but that she referenced her 'experience' a few times. I told her that she needed to come clean at some point because fucking with him in the room was hurting us both."
"I do remember that now." Noah says and cringes. "She thought she was a sadist for liking it rough." He laughs and Chad glares at him.
"Come on man." He says all offended and Noah flips him off.
"Calm down GQ, the point was that it wasn’t about Cody. She needed a strong partner and never knew she did."
"So how do I demand it without being a dick?" I ask. I mean, demand in general is forceful.
"This isn’t going to work if I can’t understand." Chad says and yeah, sounds good but I am not suave like God's gift over here.
"She is so jittery right now, I am terrified to rock the boat. It sucks not knowing what she went through so I can help."
"Even with a play by play, you will never know because you weren’t raped. More importantly, you don’t want to know Cal. In Jens, it’s a damn nightmare and brutal isn’t a strong enough words. She isn’t healed yet, hasn’t scratched the surface and she won’t until she believes it wasn’t her fault. She won’t heal until then. That’s where you attack. Remind her every time she doubts, even the smallest thing, remind her she is strong." Noah has a knowledge that will open your mind in a way that only makes sense to the one supporting the injured. His advice is intense, and so very true.
"She blames herself for looking for the drugs. She doesn’t think she got more than she bargained for, but that she deserved it."
The thought is repulsive. No matter her worst moment, there is no blame there. They might have damaged her body, but they wrecked her soul.
"Blame is a tricky bitch and it changes depending on the situation at hand. Carrie sometimes looks at Noelle or Bowie and blames Cody one-hundred percent because he is simply evil. Other times though..." He shakes his head and looks at Noah for a minute. "Other times she blames herself. It was really bad after Candey died and Noah, well, he died for a while too. In all of that she blamed herself for not falling to his submission and allowing it."
Bile rises inside me and I can’t contain it as I rush to the bathroom and vomit, the topic too much for me at this point. The guys know that when I get in the room and am pale as a ghost and sweating like a pig.
"That’s normal too, you’ll always get sick and just gotta not let them know. Here though, let it out to us. We got you." Chad says and grips my shoulder in understanding.
"Am I strong enough?" I ask them both. "I mean I hid and threw money at the problem with Cass. I checked on Carrie but it was after days of trying to stomach everything when we learned the whole story... this is little man's mom. I gotta be strong for both?"
Cal, you already are. I assure you." Noah says and Chad agrees putting his knuckles out for a pound.
"I don’t think I can stay on this topic much more." I admit and for now I want to bury it and pretend it’s not real while I catch my breath.
"More than okay." Noah says with a sigh of relief and pulls out a joint. That we all agree on.
"Puff, puff, give. Mother Fucker."