Jake
“Want to trade war stories?” I asked, staring up at the ceiling.
We were lying on my bed and my mind was at war with my hard-on. It wanted a distraction from the fact that a beautiful woman was horizontal in the bed next to me and the fact that I hadn’t had sex in close to a year. The lights were still out, thanks to the blizzard, and the fire had died down so there was only a hint of light left in the cabin. Something about the situation made me want to talk—maybe get to know the woman I appeared to be stuck with for the next day or two.
She turned her head to look at me. “What makes you think I even have a war story?”
I turned my head to look back at her and for a moment I was distracted by how beautiful she looked in this light. “Something tells me you have one.” And when she looked away to stare at the ceiling, I knew I was right.
“What about you? What’s your war story?” she asked in an obvious attempt to change the subject.
“The whole world knows my story,” I said, folding my hands across my chest. “I want to know yours.”
There was silence—except for the gentle lick of flames in the fireplace stretching out between us. Finally, Mackenzie sighed.
“What happened?” I asked.
“His name was Derek Jones.”
“Your war story involves a guy?”
She turned her head to give me a pointed look. “Do you want to hear my story or not?”
I smiled at her and then turned back to the ceiling. ‘Sorry.”
She sighed again and I was beginning to realize how much I liked the sound.
“I didn’t even know he existed,” she started and I was expecting a love-gone-wrong story about heartbreak and unrequited love. But then she kept talking and I started to feel an ugly tingle in my stomach, realizing her story was going to be so much worse than that.
“Until my last year of college he was no-one to me. But apparently I had smiled at him once and it had set off something inside of him. Something crazy. Something delusional. So when I was busy cramming for exams, he was busy taking sneaky photographs of me and plastering them to his bedroom wall.” She closed her eyes and I had a terrible feeling about where this story was heading. “I don’t remember our first meeting, but he did. And that night he decided he was going to make me his.”
“Z, you don’t have to do this,” I whispered, I didn’t want her to relive whatever nightmare I imagined she had suffered.
She turned her face to look at me. “It’s okay. Now. It’s good to be able to talk about it without the nausea and fear that used to cripple me.”
I felt an unexpected wave of protectiveness spread through me.
She sighed softly. “Derek was unwell. And in his sick mind, he and I were in some kind of relationship. He became obsessed with the idea of the two of us together.” I felt her pause and lick her lips before continuing. “I didn’t realize I was being stalked but then I started to notice strange things happening. At first, it was just little things, you know. The odd hang-up in the middle of the night. A bottle of my favorite wine turning up on my doorstep. Things being moved around in my bedroom. Then things started to disappear. A pen. A pair of earrings. My watch. Knick-knacks. Underwear. . .”
Disgust swirled in my belly and I felt my fingers curl at my sides until they were balled into fists. I couldn’t let myself imagine what he did with her underwear.
Mackenzie continued to stare at the ceiling. “I thought I was preoccupied by exams but then it all started to fall into place. When Derek’s need for my attention truly ramped up.” She gave a little shake of her head and then turned to look at me. “That’s when the real fun started.”
“Z—”
“He didn’t win,” she assured me quickly, and then she smiled, but it was close-lipped and I was pretty sure it was to reassure me and downplay the horror she’d endured. “Not in the end, anyway.”
She was quiet for a moment and we both stared up at the ceiling—me, trying to digest what she was telling me with the swell of anger in my chest at the thought of what she had endured.
Then she startled me with her next words.
“He got me,” she said simply, and when I realized what she had said and what it meant, my throat tightened. “I had been studying at the library and had lost track of the time, so it was late when I left. He had been waiting for me. Watching and waiting in the darkness. When I was walking to my car he came up behind me knocked me out and took me to the pool house on campus.” She inhaled and exhaled deeply, while I held my breath. “I woke up tied to a chair.”
I swallowed heavy and the sound seemed loud in the silence. Her words bit into me and I started to dread the details.
As a pro-athlete, I’d had my fair share of unwanted attention by crazed fans, but nothing, nothing, like this.
“He told me he loved me. That we belonged together. I pleaded with him to let me go but all he would keep saying was that he wanted some alone time with me. That we could swim and kiss, and make love in the pool.” She frowned and her words faltered a little as she recalled her horror. “I still hate the smell of chlorine.”
Nausea swirled in my belly. I couldn’t stand what I was hearing.
“He hadn’t counted on security noticing the extra light on in the building. Thankfully, before he could get me in that pool . . .” She sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know if I would ever have gotten out of that pool alive if the security officer hadn’t stopped him.”
Beside me she was as still as a church mouse. Almost detached from what she was recounting to me. And I could only imagine it was through months of therapy that let her recall such a terrifying ordeal without even shedding a tear.
“What happened to him?” I asked, thinking he had better be rotting in some jail cell somewhere.
“State psychiatrists decided he was too mentally unwell to stand trial.” I heard her swallow and sigh deeply. “That his actions were because of an undiagnosed illness and not one of malicious intent.”
“He’s not in prison?” I asked in disbelief. Anger flared in the pit of my stomach and again my fists curled into tight balls at my side.
She shook her head. “No. He’s in a private institution for the criminally insane. Even though there was some concern that he was quite sane. But his daddy is a pretty well-known judge back in Arizona. He had a lot of connections. His son was never going to do jail time.”
That anger I had in the pit of my stomach a minute ago? Yeah, it was a white-hot repugnance swirling deep inside of me.
My arms instinctively went around her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m holding you. What does it look like?”
She didn’t fight the intimate closeness of our bodies, in fact, she relaxed and settled against me and I would be lying if I said it wasn’t the most amazing feeling in the world.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I whispered, planting a kiss on her forehead.
“Thank you,” she whispered. A safe relief settled across her face, and she settled against me again and murmured, “your turn.”
I retreated away from her a fraction. “Not tonight. We should try to get some sleep.”
I felt her relax beside me even more.
“I am pretty tired,” she murmured. “Good night, Jake.”
I smiled but her eyes were already closed.
“Good night, Z.”
* * *