by Kailin Gow
I gave up my dreams of going to Stanford partly because of him, and I almost gave up my body to him. I knew that he loved me or he wouldn’t have gone through such lengths to be with me. But was I enough for him sexually and emotionally to get him to heal and turn away from his past?
Chapter 17
I didn’t even make it to the showers.
The door slammed shut behind me as soon as I opened the door and walked into my apartment.
A large hand covered my face, my mouth, while I struggled to free myself. I stepped down on the masked intruder’s foot, which caught him by surprised, and elbowed him as hard as I could. He let go of me long enough for me to turn around and use the palm of my hand to push up into his nose, throwing his head back.
He stumbled, and that gave me the chance to try to run out the door, but another masked assailant blocked the door. Was there another way out?
I ran to the nearest door near me…my bedroom. The assailant blocking the door followed me, getting close enough to grab at my hair.
He pulled me back before my hands could reach for the door, and I fell into his chest, pushing him down. His body broke my fall, but I was trying to stand up. Wearing a dress and heels today was not the best outfit to run in. I didn’t care. I had to get away.
“Don’t run!” his voice shouted.
“Like hell I won’t,” I brought my knees to his groin as hard as I could, causing his hands to fall off me while they grip his balls. “If you touch me again, there’s plenty where that comes from.”
I glanced over where the other assailant was supposed to be, but didn’t see him.
If I head into my bedroom now, I knew I would be trapped, and then I’ll have to wait it out, but if I tried to make a run for the outside door, I could get away.
I decided to go for it, but reached into my pocket, and pressed an emergency button on my phone. I didn’t know who to call, except Collins, but most likely he was still busy. I hit 9-1-1 instead, and then left a brief message with Collins. “Trouble. Here in Apt. Help!”
It would take a few seconds for me to reach that door and I’ll be out, running for the building’s security.
Too late, as soon as my help message sent, a hand grabbed my hair from behind, and I was pulled back into the arms of the first assailant. This time, he was prepared for a fight.
I lashed out with my elbows, both of them, but couldn’t make contact as he swerved his torso to miss my blows. My heels were trying to stomp down on his feet, but he knew that move already. So I bent forward, using my butt to crash into his groin and my weight to make it hurt, and tried to slip out of his grip.
He let out a yell and moved back, but with one arm, he still held my waist. “I love this fierce side of you, Sam,” he said through his mask. “It’s very sexy. Oh you are making me so hot for you, I can’t wait to fuck you over and over again. Me and my friend there.”
My heart stopped, and I was paralyzed for a second. I knew that voice so well. It’s haunted me for so long. Billy.
My body reacted by wanting to recoil in fear.
Oh no, I cried inside. This is not happening. My body was shutting down.
Billy pulled me to the sofa in my living room and sat me down. He took off his ski mask, and threw it on my table. He smiled, his white teeth grinning like a toothpaste commercial. The breath in me was knocked out as I stared at him. He had grown, like I had. Instead of the awkward teen that tormented me, he was now a man who was about six foot two inches, with muscles, a gash near his blue eyes, and another near his temples, leading to his dirty blond hair. He looked like a surfer and the handsome boy next door football player, rather than the boy who molested me throughout junior high and then tried to rape me.
He sucked in a breath before sitting right next to me, putting his hand on my thigh, which I tried to push away. “You are looking really good, Sammy.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” I said, trying to turn away.
“Aww, Sammy, is that the way to treat an old friend?” Billy said, moving his hand up my thigh headed in the direction of what was underneath my skirt.
“You are not my friend,” I spat.
“Oh but I am. We’ve known each other for how long? You’re the first girl who was ever nice to me.”
“My mistake,” I said, trying to move away from him.
“Oh, don’t be that way, Sammy,” he said, his face moving closer to me. “You smell so good, and you’re pretty now than you were when we were kids.”
“So now you’re nice to me?” I asked.
“I was always nice to you,” Billy said.
“Touching me and fondling me against my will, forcing me to do the things you wanted me to do to you by threatening me? All that is being ‘nice’ to me?” I spat. “You are one sick…” I stopped.
He was looking at me with a crazed manic look in his eyes. “Ah good times,” he said. “You’re the best girlfriend I’ve ever had.”
“I was never your girlfriend or anything,” I said.
“But you were nice to me,” he said. “Friendly to me, let me hang out with you at church and at school sometimes.”
“I was being friendly. That is a far cry from being your girlfriend,” I said. From the crazed look in his eyes, I knew I was talking to someone who was mentally unstable, stuck in some kind of sick fantasy world which he thought I was part of. There was probably no reasoning with him, but at the moment, it was a way for me to buy time before the police would arrive or Collins.
Billy leered at me, his face filled with lust. “You are one hot babe, you know that, Sammy. Always were. What guy wouldn’t want to bang you when they can?”
“You don’t have permission to, Billy. It’s my body, it’s my will. You. Don’t. Have. The Right. To Touch Me!” I yelled into his face.
Billy backed off and got up. “Wow, bitch alert.” He gestured to me to his friend who still had his mask on, sitting at the kitchen counter. “Must be because she’s with a rich boyfriend now so she’s so high and mighty,” Billy continued on.
He laughed. “This is the perfect plan. I get to have my cake and eat it too. I get to have Sammy, do what I want with her, while you get to collect the money from the boyfriend.” He laughed again. “Like your kind of thinking. You’re a smart one, if not just for a kid.”
The assailant got up from the bar stool and walked over to me, his eyes bright blue and looking at me with interest. He licked his lips. “She looks prettier today in that dress than when I saw her at the Center.”
What? I’ve seen him before?
He came over and raised his hand to touch my face. Softly and then reverently. He looked over at Billy and said, “We keep her as hostage only.”
“What?” Billy asked, angry. “I thought you said I can do whatever I want with her.”
“That’s before, now I’ve changed my mind,” the boy in the mask said.
I tried to see his eyes again. Maybe I can figure out who he is by his eyes? Blue eyes? Where have I seen them before? They were almost the same shade as Collins’ light icy blue ones, but his eyes were wider, not as kind as Collins eyes, but…
“Tate! You promised,” Billy said.
Tate. The name hit me like a punch. Tate. Collins’ brother who just got out of jail.
“I didn’t promise that you can hurt her,” he said, looking at me and licking his lips nervously.
“So what are we supposed to do with her?” Billy asked. “I know what I want to do. Been dreaming about it for years.” Billy turned to me and said, “You know, Sammy, I masturbate to you when I go to sleep at night. Does that make you feel powerful? Does that make you want to slap me?”
I clench my teeth. Despite Billy’s football player looks when we were in school, there was always a reason why I never felt attracted to him. He was mean, smelled badly, and would torment me. “Billy, whatever sick universe you came from, saying all that and threatening me like that will not make me want you.”
Tate came over, a
nd took my hand leading me to a seat at the kitchen counter. “Don’t mind him. He’s a sicko. He’s dense in the head. Wouldn’t know the difference between a lady and a dog.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Tate,” I said. His eyes ran from my eyes to my lips and back to my eyes again. He licked his lips nervously.
“Gosh, my brother is one lucky SOB,” he said looking around the apartment and then fixating his eyes on mine.
“Why?” I asked.
“He’s got all this,” Tate said. “He doesn’t have to worry about anything. He’s got a girl like you.”
“That’s because he’s worked hard for it, Tate. It wasn’t always like this for him, you know. He had it bad when he was younger…about your age, I think.”
“I’m not a kid, if that’s what you think,” Tate said.
I looked at him from head to toe. No, he wasn’t. He was tall, about six foot, and muscular, built like a quarterback. Looking at his body, I would guess he was eighteen or even twenty. “No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re a man, I can see that clearly.”
This brought a smile to Tate’s face. “So I keep telling everyone.”
“So how old are you, Tate?” I asked.
“I’m fifteen,” he said. “I’m not that much younger than you, Samantha,” he said, licking his lips nervously again.
“You know how old I am?” I asked, looking at him through his mask.
“I…I know about you,” Tate said. “I’ve seen a photo of you, and then I found you online. Then I read in one of your posts that you were working at Sawyer House.” He shuffled his feet, looking down. “I called once and got a Susan. I knew Susan was you, Samantha. I heard your voice on your father’s church welcome video on the website. Collins mentioned you once when he visited me in jail. I just had to meet you.”
“We were going to meet,” I said. I gulped remembering how Collins wanted me to befriend Tate, be his tutor, and maybe even a possible girlfriend before he realized that he loved me and wanted me for himself. Now the irony of it all. I was facing Tate, whom Collins had planned for me to meet from the start. But under completely different circumstances. “Look, Tate,” I said. “What you’re planning with me and Collins, it doesn’t have to be this way.”
“You don’t understand,” Tate said. “It does. Collins closed all doors of communication on me. One day, he stopped trying to get me out of jail legally. So the only other recourse was for me to accept our dead beat father’s proposal in order for him to get me out of jail.”
“Tate,” I reached out my hand to take his. I never felt the need to communicate more clearly than this moment. “You can get out of it. Come stay with Collins and me, and we can help you get back on your feet again.” I looked at him deep in his wide blue eyes.
“You mean that?” Tate asked.
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I mean it with all my heart, Tate. I want to help you.”
Tate visibly inhaled, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. Thank God, he could cry I shouted inside. That meant he wasn’t a psychopath like Billy. He could feel.
“Let me help you,” I said, taking both of his hands into mine now. “I don’t want to see you go back to jail. You have so much potential. I can see that, Tate.”
“Why do you care?” Tate asked so softly.
“Because I see Collins in you, Tate. He was once where you are. He lifted himself up to the man that he is today. I can see you doing the same, Tate. You have it within you. You just need to believe you can go on the right pathway and not fall back into being in jail, wasting away your life like that.”
“I can almost believe you,” Tate said, closing his eyes. “I want to believe you.”
“You’ll have to stop this plan you have with Billy before anyone gets hurt,” I said softly, not wanting Billy to hear.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Tate said. “Billy’s out because someone sprang for him, paid for his bail, and pulled some strings, too. We both owe my dad and his partners for us getting out of jail. Now we have to do whatever they want to pay them back.”
My heart fell. It was more complicated than I thought.
“Hey,” Billy’s obnoxious voice boom from across the room. “I’m getting hungry. So Mr. Brains, what are we going to do?”
“Do you have anything to eat?” Tate asked.
“In the refrigerator,” I said, thinking Barbara stocked it already.
“I check the fridge already,” Billy said. “As soon as I got here and was waiting for her to show.” He came over and said, “Go make that phone call to your brother, man. It’s time.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Tate said, looking at me. “My brother has enough to help us start over again. We don’t have to do this.”
“Like hell we do,” Billy said.
“No we don’t,” Tate said. “I don’t want a life like this forever. We can change things…”
“Okay,” Billy said. “Okay, so I wasted all my time getting to know this place, pretending to be the maintenance man in this building for a week so I can check out this apartment and the security system. I spent so much of my fucking time getting this ready, and now you’re telling me it’s a no go because what? You want a piece of your brother’s girl’s ass? You want to win her over like some kind of gentleman?” Billy leaned into me, grabbing my wrist and using his free hand to grope my breast. I struggled to get loose, but he was too strong.
“Let her go,” Tate said.
“The only way to win over this girl, and I know, is aggressively. Trust me, she likes it rough. It turns her on…” He leaned in and licked my face with his long tongue. I tried to move my face, but he held it with a vice grip. Then he moved his mouth over to crush his mouth against me so hard that I thought I bit my lips until it bled.
Immediately, Tate was on Billy, wailing on him, while Billy punched Tate back.
I got a chance to step back while Tate and Billy went at each other. Billy was larger, stronger, and bigger. He tore off Tate’s t-shirt, while Tate grabbed Billy’s to pull him to him so he can punch him in the face. Billy blocked it, and punched Tate across the face. Tate stumbled back, and I can see him steady himself before standing tall, ready to fight Billy again.
He squared off his broad shoulders, his chest going up and down, causing his hard abs to ripple up and down. Like Collins, who had a tattoo of a dagger on his shoulder, Tate had tattoos all over his body. I looked away. He really didn’t have the body of a kid. As far as I knew, he was built like a fully grown man. He would have no problem finding himself a girlfriend once he’s settled and no longer on the streets.
Billy rammed into him before Tate knew what hit him, and knocked Tate against the wall, where he slumped down into an unconscious heap.
My mouth was opened in shock. I knew I had to get out now. There was no way to reason with Billy, and the way he looked, like an angry bull, he wasn’t done with his rampage yet.
I ran for the door, but he blocked it, catching me at my waist, and lifting me in the air. “Let go of me!” I cried.
“No, Sammy,” he said. “I never had the satisfaction of sticking it in you, and it’s haunted me all these years.”
“Move on!” I shouted.
“Can’t,” he said. “You’re my ideal girl, Sammy. No one else compares to you, and you’ve ruined that for me. I have to have you so I know.”
“I’m not your ideal girl. I’m not anyone’s ideal, Billy. Take me off that damn pedestal, and know I’m just a girl, a real life girl. Take me out of your sick fantasy world, please, Billy and let me go!”
He crashed into my bedroom, threw me onto the bed. He began unbuttoning his pants, unzipping it, then pulling it down.
I was suffocating. This was not sexy at all. This was not what I wanted.
“Now, I’ll finally get to have you,” Billy said, lunging towards me, and missing.
I grabbed the nearest heavy object… my Bose radio/alarm clock and chucked it towards him. It hit him on the he
ad, and he was dazed for a while. I got up to run to the bedroom door, but he was quick enough to block it again. “I’m getting tired of you avoiding me,” he said.
“It’s not avoiding,” I said. “It’s running. I want nothing to do with you, Billy. Get that through your thick ape-like head!”
“I waited too long to let this go,” Billy said. “Your Dad put me in jail, you know. Now I want revenge. I’ll taint his precious pure daughter that he’d warned me away from. I’ll make sure you’re nice and dirty so no one will ever want you again!”
I tried not to listen to his threats. I knew he was trying to scare me, to get me to melt down and not fight back. But as soon as I stop fighting, I knew that would be it for me. This time, Billy wanted more than sex from me. He wanted me dead.
I bolted to the bathroom, closed the door, locked it, and then to the closet where the half-door to the Production Room was. I shifted through the gowns and found the door, opening it, making sure the gowns didn’t look touched, and slipped through, locking the half-door behind me.
I turned around, facing the controls in the control room within the Production Room. How safe was I here? How long before Billy would find me in this hidden room?
I looked around…the room I was so afraid of had become my sanctuary.
I walked over to the Casanova bed…I was so tired. The exhaustion finally hitting me like a boulder as I laid on the comfortable luxurious bed. This was my chance to rest, to gather my strength again before I have to face Billy.
I knew I was going to face him. I had to in order to move on.
Chapter 18
The half-door from the closet door shook violently against its hinges. Billy.
He had found the hidden door in the closet, and now he was trying to break the door down.
As the door rattle violently back and forth, I ran to the door on the other side, slid it open, and ran to the living room. Now was my chance to get out, while Billy was preoccupied. I got to the door, and before I could open it, the door flew open, revealing a worried Collins.
