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I was so relieved I started crying harder.
He seemed to take that as an invitation to pull me into his chest, embracing me.
It was almost comforting. The size and shape of him, so big and hard, reminded me of Dante.
But this was not Dante. This was a middle-aged cop who I knew I couldn't trust.
Was he going to leave soon? Please, please leave soon.
I tried to pull away, but he held me fast. I started to struggle, and he let me know how strong he was by bear-hugging so hard that I couldn't move.
If only I could stop crying, maybe he'd leave.
"Hey now," he murmured into my hair. "You're safe here, sweet girl. I'm just trying to help you. Just cooperate, okay? And know this: You can tell me anything. I know you're a good girl, right? I can see that, and I want you to know that if you have any questions about what happened to you, you can always come to me, with anything, okay?"
"I just want to be alone," I gasped into his chest.
"Okay. Okay, I get it. But you call me if you need anything, okay?"
I agreed to, just to get him to leave.
When he was finally gone I stood shaking at the door, twisting the bolt, again and again, to be sure it was locked.
I may have been in shock. I didn't feel right. I wasn't sure what to do.
I felt dirtier, more raw than I had even after the attack. Somehow, this had felt like even more of a violation.
I took a shower and rubbed my skin until it burned.
What had just happened hadn't been normal procedure. I knew that, of course, but what could I do about it?
Who could I tell? The police? He was, sadly, the nicest one I'd met so far.
I knew absolutely that I could not tell Dante. He was a maniac when it came to that sort of thing. He'd fight anybody. He didn't give a damn. Cop or not. Adult or not, he'd go after this creep and end up in jail. I was certain of it.
It took a few days, but I worked up the nerve to call his partner, Detective Flynn, to try to tell her how he'd acted toward me, but she quickly put me in my place.
She was not inclined to believe anything I had to say, in fact she wanted to give me an earful.
She told me in no uncertain terms that I was nothing but a troublemaker, just like my mother, who she enjoyed informing me, spite in every word, had stolen her boyfriend from her in high school and was still feeling the sting of it.
Just my luck.
And who else did that leave? The sheriff? One of the other cops? It was just a list of people that hated me, that thought I was trash, people who had become absolutely convinced a long time ago that I was the problem.
I thought that interview was the worst of it, and the worst had been bad enough.
But the blows just kept coming.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire."
~Charles Bukowski
PRESENT
DANTE
