Into the Flames

by Multi-Author

  “Go away!” I shrieked, putting my hands over my ears. I wasn’t safe. I’d never ever be safe again. Ever. “Please.” I sucked in a breath. He crawled under the steps and touched my leg. “Don’t touch me. Please. Don’t.”

  He sat cross-legged, hunched over, barely fitting in my hidey-hole, but at least he wasn’t touching me. I put my face back on my knees and hugged myself close, ignoring the screaming agony coming from every intimate body part I possessed. “Jane,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Look at me.”

  I lifted my face, flinching when he touched my cheek. “Oh dear Jesus. I…I’m sorry. Come on, Jane. Let me help you out from under here. There’s a medical crew. They’ll take you…”

  “No!” I screamed, lunging over onto my hands and knees to crawl away from the pain. But that didn’t help. There was no crawling away anymore. I collapsed, face down in what must have been a pile of cloth left by a homeless person—the ones we’d ejected from this building a few days ago.

  “Give me a blanket.” I heard George say. Then someone covered me, wrapped me up, and lifted me into their arms. Sobs ripped at my throat again as I huddled into his chest, knowing who it was and knowing this was that dream I kept having, only much, much worse.

  “Sh…sh…” he said in my ear. “It’s all right now. I won’t let anyone else hurt you I promise. I’m going to put you on the—”

  “No!” I yelled and started struggling. “No. No. No. NO! NO! NO!” I heard myself howling the word I should have used but hadn’t when I’d just…lain there and let them do that to me.

  I wished they had killed me.

  “I’m holding her,” George said, his voice rumbling in his chest against my ear. “No more discussion. We’ll deal with it when we get to the ER. Now shut the fuck up and drive this thing.” I heard an ambulance siren as I clutched at George’s neck, not completely sure I’d ever be able to let go. “It’s all right, honey. Jane…shh…it’s going to be all right.”

  “Harriet,” I whispered through cracked lips.

  “What’s that?” I felt his lips on my temple.

  “Call me H-h-h-harriet.”

  He tightened his grip. I shivered, cried and finally, blessedly, I passed out.

  ~ PART TWO ~

  Chapter One

  “You don’t have to do this.” Lucy was sitting at my kitchen table, practically wringing her hands. “I’m going to postpone the wedding. I can’t do this while you’re…”

  “Oh good Lord, I’m fine,” I said, sipping tea and forcing my lips into a smile. It still hurt a little. Miraculously, I didn’t have a broken jaw, but it sure felt like the closest thing to one every time I opened my mouth wider than required to take in oxygen. I was only just now able to breathe some through my nose since it had been reset.

  I’d been released after a five-day stay full of all kinds of fun, up to and including Lucy’s poor fiancé, Dante, conducting my initial exam once they’d peeled me off George and given me a nice soft Valium-induced landing. I’d floated through a couple of days on IV morphine, getting my nose set, stitches in my vagina, and being pumped full of antibiotics and morning after pills. There had been a few times, around the two or three a.m. point, when I’d stare up at the bland hospital ceiling and sincerely wish for death. The concept of going back to work at that point made me want to puke, which I usually did on principal.

  “Is there a forget-it-ever-happened pill?” I had asked more than one nurse when they changed the bandages on my face and between my legs. “Just wondering.”

  They’d pat my arm, dial up the drugs, and I’d float away into la-la land, content for the time being with the soft forgetfulness that only hard-core prescription painkillers can provide. George sat by my side a solid forty-eight hours, Lucy claimed, growling like a mama bear if anyone but her or a doctor approached. He’d been convinced to go home by day three. I barely remembered him there before that but on days four and five, as I sat miserable and itchy from the drugs, he’d stopped by several times, bringing my favorite bottled water and M & M’s, which I craved for some reason.

  “Here,” he’d said the first time he brought them.

  “What the hell are those?” I’d been weaning off the pain meds and was crankier than a room full of dieting, menopausal women.

  He’d glanced at the package. “M&M’s. You said you wanted them.”

  “I never,” I had insisted, tugging the thin blanket up under my arms, trying not to scratch my raw, detoxing skin.

  “You did,” he’d insisted, opening them up and taking my hand. After he’d poured a few into my palm, he helped himself to the rest. I’d stared down at them, little chocolates covered in bright shiny colors, and burst into tears. He’d taken them from me and settled me back on the pillow with a smile that soothed my soul. “Open up, oh queen of the Nile. I’ll peel you a grape.”

  With a small whimper of pain, I’d opened my mouth as wide as I could and he’d placed the candies on my tongue one at a time as I sniveled and calmed, letting the chocolate melt down my still sore throat. After that first visit I remembered with the M&M’s and tears, we’d argued every time he showed up, but the second he’d stomp out the room muttering something along the lines of ‘God save him from stubborn women,’ I’d call him back, at least in my mind.

  He had the police at my side on day three. To his utter fury, I’d refused to talk to them. The doctors had their rape kit with plenty of DNA scraped out of and off me. The thought of rehashing the horror of that night and the sneaking suspicion I’d somehow brought it on myself was something I wanted to put off as long as I could. That made George apoplectic, but I kept telling him it wasn’t his rape to report and he should back the hell off.

  My current broker boss had appeared once, looking sheepish and saying things like ‘under the circumstances,’ and ‘indefinite leave,’ along with ‘bad for company PR.’ I’d started hyperventilating at the thought of giving up that goddamned deal after I’d been the one mauled by animals that night. That had brought on a cadre of nurses, one doctor, and George, who’d had to be restrained from punching said broker in the face for upsetting me.

  It was quite the drama from start to finish. Once I’d been delivered home, tucked into my couch and handed tea, weak over-the-counter painkillers and the TV remote, I’d felt utterly abandoned. I cried for an entire twenty-four hours. Then called Lucy and George but didn’t let them in when they’d shown up, somehow convinced that whoever was banging on my door was there to hurt me.

  And now, after seven days at home, mostly calm at least on the outside, I was trying to convince my friend not to postpone her over-the-top, destination wedding.

  “I’m serious, Janey,” Lucy insisted, wiping her eyes. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this now. I’m your friend before I’m anyone’s wife.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it, which made me feel claustrophobic. I eased out of her grasp with a weak smile and held onto my teacup for dear life.

  She finally left after filling my fridge with food I’d never eat. I had no appetite. All I wanted to do was sleep, which I did after she left, waking to take a shower and fall back into the tangle of sheets that could probably use changing.

  The next few days, George stopped by a couple of times to drop off more candy, which I ignored, and to try and convince me to file charges, which I also ignored. He left spitting mad each time. Eventually, I stopped answering his texts and calls. I let a few of Lucy’s wedding details distract me and on day ten post hospital-release, Dante came to take my temperature and check my bandages—all of them. He’d looked up from between my legs and declared me healed. Infection was no longer a danger.

  “Well, lucky me,” I’d said, sitting up and trying to maintain a modicum of dignity while sprawled on my bed—once my refuge from the world, now my escape from it—with my best friend’s sad-eyed fiancé cluck-clucking over my lady-parts and the state of their wounds. He left after it became clear I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I
fell into a restless sleep, waking around five p.m., ravenously hungry and so thirsty I could have drunk from the toilet.

  I downed a bottle of water so fast it ran down the sides of my mouth. Thus revived, I started poking around in the fridge, tossing out salads that had gone bad and finally grabbing a dish that looked like mac and cheese, and a bottle of white wine. It was a feast fit for a queen and left me over full but sated. After a long, hot bath—my first since I’d been given the all clear a few hours earlier—I wrapped in a robe and opened my laptop.

  Over two hundred emails sat unread in my inbox. I followed the process of my deal through a few email strings, noting that the rapist dickhead, Rick, whose name I fully recalled now, was going about his business while I remained on indefinite bad PR leave. An email from George caught my eye, so I opened it to find the e-vite to his FireBrew Brewery grand opening. ‘Great beer for a good cause,’ was his tagline. Clever. I smiled, recalling his diligence with me and wished I had the nerve to call him and ask him to come over and hold me in arms like he had that night.

  Instead, I replied ‘yes’ to his invitation and dashed off some replies to a few of the email conversations involving my deal and my rapist colleague, grinning at the thought of how shocked that asshole would be when I reappeared in his life. I crafted a carefully worded email to my boss, copying the head of the legal department, stating that to force me to remain on indefinite leave would bring on a lot more negative PR than they’d bargained for. I implied I wouldn’t press charges against Rick as long as I was allowed to return to work, given back any of my clients that had been parceled out, and fully reinstated at my previous commission split.

  After another hour of email box cleanout, I sensed myself fading but felt for the first time that maybe I’d survive this—as long as I was not forced to sit here in this cluttered, smelly condo, convalescing from something that I would never, ever truly recover from in my soul. Fuck those assholes, I thought, sipping from the second bottle of wine. The best revenge is to succeed.

  On a total whim, I snagged my phone and sent George a text asking him to come with me to Lucy and Dante’s wedding. I stared at it a while, willing it back. Then he answered me.

  George: A date? To a wedding? That sounds pretty scary.

  Me: Grow a pair. Come with me. It’ll be fun. She’s managed it down to the smallest detail with my help of course.

  George: You sound like you’re feeling better. Ready to file that police report?

  Me: Why do you ruin everything by bringing that up?

  George: I’m not going with you unless you promise to press charges. They raped you. It’s a goddamned crime. If they’d murdered you do you think they’d still be walking around free?

  I dropped my phone and let tears roll down my face. When a call came in from G. Lattimer, I turned the phone off and threw it against the wall for good measure.

  Chapter Two

  The weekend of Lucy’s wedding was picture perfect. She positively glowed and Dante grinned like goofball with eyes for nothing and no one but my friend through the entire mid-morning ceremony. I was her only attendant, and Dante’s brother, David, stood with him. The sixty or so guests got fed a delicious lunch. As the bar and the band got set up for afterward I snuck away, feeling tired and sorry for myself. I was determined not to cloud my best friend’s special day with my attitude.

  Even at the end of August, the afternoon air was pleasant in Mackinac. I wandered outside and spent an hour in a huge rocking chair, wrapped in a quilt and sipping a mimosa on the Grand Hotel side porch. I made a few decisions as I sat there, warm from the inside, still sore in unmentionable places, including my heart.

  Wow, I’m quite the sap these days, I thought, pondering how my return to the office on Monday would be received. I’d come too far to let some jerks who couldn’t manage to get a girl to go to bed with them any other way than to force it on her ruin anything for me.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and knew before I looked up into his deep brown eyes that George had made it up here for the weekend after all. Something like a thrill of anticipation ran down my spine, followed closely by a tingle of fear. I smiled at him and pointed to the rocking chair next to me. “Howdy. Cop a squat.”

  He sat with a loud exhale and stuck his long legs out in front of him. He had on khaki’s and a pink oxford cloth shirt that looked soft enough to curl up in and go to sleep. “You’re late,” I said, looking out over Lake Michigan, shimmery in the afternoon sun. A waiter appeared at his elbow, and George ordered a local beer. I kept sipping my mimosa, comfortable and content in the silence.

  “You realize of course that I think I could love you,” George said after nearly ten minutes of silence, punctuated occasionally by laughter, a tinkle of ice, or splash from the lake far below.

  I smiled into my glass. “No, you couldn’t. You do love rescuing me though. And you’re good at that. I think it may well be encoded into your DNA, this rescuer-hero thing.” The rocking chairs creaked. A fan turned lazily overhead. The waiter brought us both more drinks.

  “She used to tell me that too,” he said.

  “I’ll bet she did.” I didn’t want to look at him. It would hurt too much, and I knew it. “Thank you by the way. I never said that I don’t think.”

  “You did a few times when you were drugged up. You also said I had an amazing—”

  I held up a hand. “Stop. Please. I don’t need any more humiliation.”

  “An amazing sense of humor,” he finished, meeting my eyes with one dark eyebrow arched. I laughed.

  “All right, touché. But I assure you that you couldn’t really love me, George. Although it’s sweet you drove all this way to tell me that.”

  He set his empty bottle down and rose, taking my hand and pulling me into his arms. When we kissed, it was like coming home. I broke away and reared back, glaring at him. “Don’t try to talk me into your fantasy, Mister Mysterious.”

  His half smile made me want to weep. But I didn’t. I’d shed enough damn tears in the past few weeks. I was sick of myself and of all my crying. “Let’s go dance,” he whispered, touching my lips with a fingertip before releasing me. We held hands like a comfortably married couple and wandered back into the reception hall. Lucy spotted me immediately and came racing over, stared at our joined hands then gave George a huge hug and kiss.

  “God I wish I could drink!” She motioned for Dante to join us. He brought three glasses of champagne and one of juice. As we toasted the happy couple, I felt George’s gaze burning a hole in me the entire time. “I love you, Harriet Jane,” my friend declared. “And if this baby is a girl, I’m naming her after you.”

  I groaned and put a dramatic wrist to my forehead. “Oh please, do not saddle the poor child with it I beg you.” Just then the band broke into a perfectly timed and romantic Sam Smith song. Dante pulled Lucy away. George took my hand and we danced, my ear pressed to his shoulder, until my feet started hurting and then I danced barefoot, with my face against his chest, the strong, steady heartbeat giving me strength.

  After a couple of hours of everything from ‘Louie Louie’ to ‘Happy’ to ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’ I actually felt hungry. As the hotel staff put out the dinner buffet, I collapsed into a beribboned chair and plopped my aching feet onto George’s lap. He grinned around the mouth of his beer bottle and rested a hand on my calf. I could tell he was nervous about touching me, and truth be told I was too. But I liked his hand there.

  I accepted a glass of wine from Dante as he made his way around the room, chatting with guests. Lucy sat with us, talking a mile a minute, before she got up to work the room, thanking everyone for coming and reminding them that dinner was now available, buffet style, and the band would be replaced by a DJ around nine p.m. I

  groaned, remembering her insistence that the day last all damn day for real, to give those who’d traveled so far to her dream wedding locale their money’s worth.

  “You
go ahead,” I said to George, taking my legs off his lap.

  He got up and stretched, and I experienced that familiar tingle of anticipation at the sight of his remembered physical perfection. This time, the fear stayed buried as he leaned down and gave me a soft kiss on the lips. “Let’s eat. Then let’s take a walk back out to the porch.”

  I nodded; overcome with a kind of happiness that was so unfamiliar to me it made me feel uncomfortable. We ate and chatted with tablemates. Once they sorted out that the man in their midst was indeed the Trey Lattimer with the new FireBrew Brewing Company in Detroit and the super sad back-story, he got bombarded by questions, luckily most of them about beer brewing and how he got into it.

  I watched him, taking in the perfect angle of his jaw, the way his Adam’s apple moved, and the stubble I’d never seen on his face before. My hands itched to touch it, to run my fingers through his hair, down his neck, to slip that pink shirt off and run my fingers down his strong back to his…I stopped, panic clogging my throat and on the heels of that the most intense nausea ever. I got up so fast I knocked a water glass over onto the pristine white tablecloth.

  Everyone’s gaze swiveled from admiration of George to annoyance at me. I shut my eyes a split second, hoping the room would stop spinning. “Excuse us,” George said smoothly, rising to his feet and slipping an arm around my waist. “My date isn’t feeling well.” The table made sympathetic noises I could barely hear. He led me outside and over to the porch railing. “Breathe, Harriet. Just breathe.” His voice hit my brain like a shot of expensive brandy, soothing, calming, and warming all at once. He kept his arm around me, running a hand up and down my bare arm in an almost absent-minded way.

  “I’m a wreck,” I whispered, talking more to myself than anything but not letting the tears flow. “You should get as far away from me as you possibly can.”

  He turned me slowly and put a large hand to my cheek. “Can’t,” he said, tilting my chin up so he could kiss me. The sensation of relying on someone so completely did not make me feel any better, even though it probably should have. I melted into him, welcomed his lips and tongue and allowed myself to enjoy it for a few seconds.