26. Not Ever Again
26
Not Ever Again
For the second time in far too short a span, I woke up in a hospital.
Like the last time, I felt like I’d been run over by a semi-truck. My hip ached, and most of my leg below my thigh was heavy and numb. I had a killer headache, and my vision was blurry. Another concussion, if I had to guess.
Blinking against the harsh fluorescents, I fought to remember what had happened to bring me here. I’d talked to the police this morning. Then Ben had sat in the sound booth with me. Why had we been in the sound booth? The musical had ended weeks ago. Hadn’t it?
Judging from the curtains surrounding me and the loud, hectic noises coming from the other side of the flimsy barrier, I was in the ER. Ben’s voice was close by, but the sounds were muffled enough I couldn’t catch his words. But I’d recognize his tones anywhere.
As if I’d conjured him, Ben ducked back into my curtain-made cubicle, lines of stress carved into his beautiful face. Our eyes met, and he jumped in surprise. Then he rushed to my side, taking my hand in his.
“Hey,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “You’re awake.”
“We gotta stop meeting this way,” I croaked with a loose grin. He didn’t laugh. “What? What’s wrong?”
Anxiety pinched his features. “You don’t remember?”
“I…” Disjointed images flashed through my mind, like a broken movie reel. “We were at school. In the sound booth. You had to pee.”
“That’s respect.” Eric’s voice filtered through my mind, and I frowned.
“Eric,” I whispered, and Ben’s grip on my hand tightened painfully. “Oh God, he—”
“You’re okay,” he said, smoothing hair from my sweaty forehead. “You’re safe now.”
I looked down at my hospital gown and cringed. “Why do they never let me keep my clothes?”
At that, Ben grimaced. “Evidence. They collected them for evidence.”
My clothes?
“Why? Was I bleeding?”
Instinctually, I touched the side of my head, but the scar was still a scar, not a reopened wound.
“You bled from one of your ears. You have another concussion.” He lowered himself into a chair beside my gurney. “Boyt fucked up your hip pretty bad too.”
I nodded. Yeah, I remembered that. The pain had been so vibrant. “I think I hit my head. Everything’s fuzzy.”
“I know. You gotta stay here for observation.” When I groaned, Ben gave me a chastising stare. “They need to monitor you.”
“I hate hospitals,” I whined, and he kissed the back of my hand.
“I know.”
“My head hurts,” I said.
He nodded. “I know. They gave you some over-the-counter meds to help.”
“Why don’t I get the good stuff?”
A wan smile played at the edge of Ben’s mouth. “They don’t want your brain bleeding.”
I snorted, then winced when it made said brain pulse angrily, which consequently made my stomach roil. “Oh shit.” I swallowed convulsively as nausea clawed its way up my throat. “I think I’m gonna throw up now.”
Ben scrambled to find something for me to throw up into and ended up shoving a bedpan into my shaking hands right in the nick of time. I puked into it, every heave causing more pain to wash over me, which fed the nausea. Lost in a pain-puke cycle, I dry-heaved into the bedpan until tears poured down my cheeks.
Crying like a baby, I let Ben wipe my face clean with a tissue before he sat down on the gurney beside me and bundled me into his arms.
“What happened?” I asked as my sobs turned to sniffles. “I don’t… my brain isn’t braining right now.”
With a shuddering exhale into my scalp, Ben tightened his hold. “I was gone for five minutes. Five minutes, and he—”
“Hey, it’s okay,” I crooned when he choked off. “I’m fine. See? Everything’s fine, Ben.”
“You weren’t moving. You were bleeding, and you weren’t moving.” He trembled so violently it made my vision blur, and my stomach clenched.
To make sure I didn’t puke on him, I turned toward him and cupped his pale cheek. “Look at me. I’m okay. He just pushed me around a little. That’s all.”
Ben’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “They want to do a SA exam, Si.”
Every muscle in my body locked, and my hip throbbed. “What? Like a rape kit? Why? He didn’t…” I forced my broken brain to remember. “He didn’t do that.”
“There was semen on your clothes,” he whispered, like saying it louder would make it too real.
“No,” I said, fingers tightening on Ben’s shirt. “No, that’s not—he didn’t—”
“Look what you made me do!”
I choked. “He came on me?”
“You need to let them to do the rape kit,” Ben said gently.
“He didn’t rape me,” I said, and Ben’s jaw clenched.
“Silas—”
“I’d know if he fucked my ass, Ben,” I snarled, making him flinch. Leaning my forehead on his shoulder, I breathed through the anger and fear crippling my lungs. “He didn’t do that.”
“But he did enough,” Ben said into my hair. “He left DNA. Let them collect it.”
The thought that Boyt’s DNA, that is cum was somewhere on me made me want to throw up again. Since there was nothing left in my stomach, I gagged uselessly, swallowing bile.
“Did they catch him?” I demanded as I took a shaky sip of water, Ben holding the cup steady for me.
“They will,” he said firmly. “Detective Rogers is coming to take your statement. And with the evidence on your clothes, he won’t get away with it this time.”
“He came on me,” I said, and Ben pressed a hard kiss to my temple.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, voice thick with tears. “I should have waited with you. I—”
“Stop,” I said, harsher than intended. Softening my tone, I tucked my head into the nape of his neck. “It wasn’t your fault. The same way it wasn’t mine. Leave the blame on him where it belongs.”
“If I’d been there,” he started again, and I pressed two fingers to his mouth.
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
As silence settled between us, I closed my eyes against the too-bright ER lights. A migraine bloomed behind my eye, and I buried my face in Ben’s neck. He hesitantly ran a hand through my hair, fingers massaging my skull. I sighed.
At some point, I was moved to a room with actual walls. Ben was forced to leave the room so the SANE nurse could perform the sexual assault exam. Her name was Brenda, and she was very nice.
Since my clothes hadn’t been disturbed, and I could clearly tell that Eric hadn’t actually fucked me, I didn’t agree to an invasive examination. Instead Brenda documented the light bruising on my throat, swabbed various parts of me, and bagged the clothes I’d been wearing when Boyt had… done what he’d done.
When the pain in my head made me want to scream, they finally gave me another dose of painkillers. It barely helped, but it allowed me to give a somewhat coherent statement to Detective Rogers.
Aunt June and Uncle Henry sat with Ben and I until the detectives left. Aunt June had called Will, of course, and I was unable to talk him out of flying back to Indiana. He was on his way to the airport when I called him.
“You have finals,” I mumbled into the phone, a cold, wet cloth lying across my eyes to block out the light. “And Cora’s due soon. Just—”
“If you think for a second that I’m not going to get on that plane, then you’re a fucking idiot,” Will ground out, and I huffed.
“You just got back, though.”
“I’ll see you soon,” was his only reply.
Ben slept in the hospital bed with me, holding me through the shakes that had settled deep in my bones when the shock wore off. I cried. I raged. I threw up some more. And Ben stayed through it all. I’d never deserve that boy, not as long as I lived.
The following afternoon, I was allowed to go home. Will drove me in his rental car, the bags under his eyes pronounced. But when I tried to apologize for making him fly back to Indiana mere weeks after he’d already been here, he refused to let me get the words out.
“You’re my brother!” he said fiercely, like it explained everything. Maybe for him, it did.
He fussed over me for several hours, and I didn’t exactly hate it. My head still hurt, any bright light making my brain pound. And my thoughts were disjointed and sluggish. Like with the first concussion, I found myself spacing out and losing myself in the conversation at hand.
So it was nice to lay back on the couch and allow Will to take care of me.
Ben, of course, came over. He also fussed. I felt like a pampered little princess as my brother and my boyfriend waited on my every need.
Okay, I felt like shit, so princess-level of good was far off. But I soaked up the care, accepting it for what it was. They fussed because they loved me. Who could be mad about that?
“So Ms. Winchester called,” Ben said as he rubbed the soles of my feet.
I was still on the couch, an arm thrown over my eyes to shield them from the light of the kitchen where Will was making dinner.
“Oh?”
“Amber’s lawyer reached out to her and Carl. I guess they’re all going to work together and collaborate. It gives us the best chance to make him pay.”
Lifting my arm, I glanced down at him. “Did they… arrest him?”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not yet. They have to build the case, you know?”
I hummed wordlessly.
“But with Amber’s testimony, proof on the cameras that Eric was there, and the… DNA.” We both flinched at that. “She thinks we can get him. Like for real, this time.”
“I guess it’s good that he jerked off on me then,” I said flatly.
Ben’s fingers dug painfully into my foot, but he loosened his grip when I hissed. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Me too,” I whispered, and he cocked his head. “I don’t remember everything. Like, not after I hit my head. I don’t think I did anything to, um, help him—”
“Jesus, Silas, shut up,” he said, not unkindly. “Are you seriously apologizing to me for the fact that he… did that to you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry. Because I was there. I was right fucking there, and I couldn’t—”
“Now it’s your turn to shut up,” I said, harsher than he had. “I told you. It’s not your fault. The same way it wasn’t your fault that night in the bathroom or backstage. He did this.”
Picking up my hand from where it rested on my thigh, Ben brought it to his mouth and kissed my palm. “I just want to protect you from pain.”
“Pain’s a part of life, love.”
“What if he’d tried to…” His chest hitched. “Do more? What if I’d gotten up there and you’d been—I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”
For some reason, I found myself saying, “I don’t think it was ever about that. Not really.” Ben’s brow furrowed, and I cleared my throat. “I won’t ever know why, Ben. Only Eric knows that. But I don’t think it was about wanting me like that.”
“How do you know?”
“Things he said.” I shook my head, not wanting to remember. “It’s probably nothing. I just… as much as I wanted to see him as this monster, he’s not. He’s just a guy. He’s just a person, like you and me. And hurt people hurt people, you know?”
“Are you defending him?” he asked, tone coloring in disgust.
“You’re seriously asking me that?” I glared at him, and he hunched his shoulders. “No one ever is justified to do the shit he did. I only meant that he isn’t some evil villain from a cartoon. He’s just a guy. He just chose wrong.”
Air whistled through his nose as he exhaled heavily. “I don’t like thinking of him as human. Because if he’s just like me, that means I could be capable of hurting someone like that. And I can’t live with that.”
“It’s about choice, Ben.” I squeezed his hand. “That’s what matters. We’re all fucked up. But we choose to be better.”
“Now you sound like the therapist,” he said with a teasing smile.
“Fuck, I need so much therapy,” I whined, and he kissed my hand again.
“Yeah, we both do.” He nuzzled my palm, whispering his next words against my skin. “When I saw you lying there, I was so scared. I thought I’d lost you.”
“Ben—”
“But I was angry, Si. I was so fucking angry.” His fingers dug into my hand, but I didn’t protest. “If Eric had been in that room, I would have killed him. I would have killed him dead.”
I didn’t believe that, but I stayed silent.
“So maybe I am like him, huh?”
“Ben,” I said sternly, and he looked up at me, face still pressed to my hand. “Come here.”
He shook his head.
“Ben, come here,” I repeated, and he sniffled and crawled up my body.
Ensuring that he didn’t jostle my hip, he wriggled into the space between me and the back of the couch, his head on my chest. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and kissed his head.
“You’re not your dad, and you’re not Eric,” I said into his hair. “If the roles were reversed, if I ever saw someone hurting you, I would want to kill them too. I don’t think that makes me a sociopath.”
He chuffed a laugh into my neck.
“We protect the people we love, and we get angry when they get hurt. It’s called being human.”
“Sometimes, being human is hard.”
“It fucking sucks,” I said, and another harsh chuff fanned over my throat.
Leaning in, Ben placed a kiss there too, where the fading bruise of Eric’s fingers were darkest.
“I love you,” he said, voice trembling. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m right here.” I guided his face up and kissed him. “I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
The next kiss was laced with pain and sorrow. It was desperate and a little rough. It made my fucked up head spin, but I didn’t tell him to stop. I kissed him back just as fervently, clinging to him until I wasn’t sure where I ended and he began. I didn’t care to find out. If it were up to me, I would stay adrift in him forever.
At school the next week, I was limping heavily, even with the use of my cane, but it wasn’t the reason people stared at me. By now, the news had spread. Amber wasn’t the only name said in hushed, pitying tones. They knew what Boyt had done to me, even if the details whispered behind cupped palms grew exponentially exaggerated.
But the truth was out there now, and there was no erasing it. We would get justice. For me. For Amber. For all the other nameless victims. For all those whose voices had been muted.
We would speak out.
We would fight.
We would not be silenced.
Not ever again.