Chapter Twelve
Ash
Ihad the weirdest sex dream last night. I could only remember bits of it, just flashes, like the lights kept going out, but I knew it was still happening.
Wasn’t I with Cal? I remembered being in the bar with him. I’m sure I remembered hitting on him. Then there was sex. There was definitely sex, but it didn’t fill me with joy like I’d hoped. There was something wrong. Something weird.
“You’re awake,” Cal said, leaning over me in the strange bed, in the strange room. Everything felt off, like nothing was quite real. Were we in a hotel room? Why was nothing familiar here?
“Uh… where… we… did we?”
He looked troubled, and he was fully clothed, but when I checked myself, lifting the covers with shaking hands, I was definitely naked. My head was foggy, and everything seemed like a weird nightmare I could only just remember flickers of.
“You were wonderful, Ash.”
I knew that wasn’t Cal’s voice, because I was looking at him and his lips didn’t move, and besides…
it was a woman’s voice. I sat up with a lurch, my stomach seeming to follow seconds later, only it was less sure about being upright.
I was clutching the bedding to my chest, as I stared at an older blonde woman I think I met last night.
She was pulling on a pair of boots, as she sat on the end of the bed, but she winked at me when our eyes met.
“What?”
Cal cleared his throat and I ignored him, because I had no idea what was happening here, but something was very wrong. She shouldn’t be here. Why was she here?
“What’s going on?”
The woman stood up, moving in my direction, and something in me was saying to get back, get away from her. She was wrong, just wrong.
She tried to kiss my lips, and I shoved back from her as a shudder ran down my spine. Nope.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
She smiled, unfazed by my reaction. “Is that any way to treat the first woman you slept with? You made me feel so good last night.” Wait. What? I felt like I was moving in slow motion as I turned to look at Cal, who stood up from the bed, and straightened his clothes.
“Your stuff is by the bed, and the room’s paid up until eleven. You have about an hour.”
“What? Wait, what the fuck is happening here?” I tried to get up, but the room seemed to shift, and my balance failed, giving me a jarring landing back on the bed.
“Elizabeth, I’ll meet you downstairs,” Cal said, waving her off. When the door closed, he turned to look at me.
“Ash, this is the last time we’ll see each other, but hopefully last night helped you get back on the right path. Men don’t belong with men. We belong with women, and last night, you made love to that woman, and it was the right thing. It’s what’s always supposed to be.”
“WHAT?”
There was no way I’d fucking do that. I didn’t even like her, so there was no way I’d have fucked her. What the hell was going on?
“Wait, Cal, please! I don’t understand.”
He shook his head sadly as he reached the door. “This is goodbye, Ash. My path was to help you find yours again, and that’s done now. Move on.”
As the door closed behind him, I sat there in stunned silence for probably half an hour, just staring at the wall, like somehow it held the answers.
I couldn’t get my head around what had happened.
I couldn’t make sense of it. How the hell did I end up fucking that woman?
How? There’s no way I’d get hard for someone like her.
No way. That drink though. That knocked me off balance, and I was pretty out of it, wasn’t I? Did I dream that? Jesus.
I looked around me, spying the phone on the bedside table. I grabbed it with embarrassingly shaky hands and pressed zero, not knowing what else to do.
“Reception?”
Jesus, what now? “Uh, how do I make a call out? It’s local.”
I followed her directions, and when my dad picked up the phone, my throat choked up and I practically gasped out my words.
“Dad, help. I… I think I’ve been raped.”
It took dad Dory about fifteen minutes to reach the hotel, and when he knocked on the door, I was still wrapped in the bedding, and it took me a good few minutes to make it over there without tipping over.
He took one look at me and cursed. “I want names, Ash. Who am I killing for this?”
I scrubbed a hand over my face and tried to head for the bed again, but my legs got caught in the sheet, and I tripped. If dad hadn’t caught my arm, I’d have faceplanted on the floor right in front of him.
“He drugged you? Jesus, let’s sit you down, and you can tell me what happened.”
Dad got me settled on the bed again, wrapped in the bedding, and made us a coffee with the in-room supplies, sitting down across from me.
“Ash, firstly, don’t worry about anything you tell me. This is not your fault, okay? I won’t judge, and I won’t blame you for any of it. I need to know though, because nobody fucks with our kids and survives it.”
I stared at the brown liquid steaming in the small mug and took a deep breath, wondering how the hell to explain something I had no real memory of, just a sickening feeling in my stomach telling me everything here was wrong.
“Wish I knew, dad. I… I met Cal in the bar downstairs, and he was with a friend. A woman. I uh… I know I had some weird girly drink with them, and she left, but we came up here, and… I think there was something in that drink. I vaguely remember feeling like I was going to pass out.”
Dad groaned, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.
“Jesus. Okay, did you pass out, do you know?”
I tightened my grip on the cup, wanting to crush it and feel something. Anything.
“There are flashes of stuff. I know there was sex, but… I … next thing I was waking up in this bed, and he told me… he said…”
Dad reached out and caught one of my hands, squeezing it lightly.
“No shame, remember? I need to be honest here though, Ash. I know you like this kid, but he dies for this. He raped my son, and I won’t-”
“No. It wasn’t him. It… it was her.”
Dad froze, his frown deepening. “Her who? The bitch from the bar?” For once, having super smart dads worked in my favour, because all I had to do was nod.
“Do you remember her name?”
My mind wasn’t clear on a whole bunch of stuff, I mean, some of the early details were clear, and I could see her face, but for some fucking reason her name kept eluding me.
It happened though. I was sure of that. I had a vague recollection of being touched, sucked, I remembered coming, and all of that was in weird flashes, but what suddenly hit me really fucking hard was that it happened here.
In this bed. On the covers I was wrapped in. Fuck. I didn’t want that touching me.
I lurched up from the bed, spilling coffee as I moved, and started frantically trying to unwrap the bedding.
Dad, to his credit, didn’t hesitate, getting up and helping me slip out of them.
From there, he helped me to the small shower, and lingered by the door in case I needed help, while I tried to wash her filthy touch from my body.
I think we ended up checking out later than Cal’s booking allowed for, but that was his problem. So would I be, though. He had no idea what the fuck would come for him, but I knew he’d pay for this. Maybe even with his life.
Callum
Guilt is a pretty powerful thing. I avoided Elizabeth as I left the hotel, and drove away, but I didn’t go home, because I couldn’t face my parents right now.
I went to the local park, walking through the woods, until I found a small clearing that nobody seemed to bother to walk out to, and I sat on the muddy ground at the foot of a tree.
What did I do? Why in the world did I do it?
Did I think it would help him like it helped me?
Did I think I could fix him? The look on his face when he woke and realised something had happened without his consent.
Consent. The one thing a person should always, always respect, and I’d forced him beyond any consent, and allowed a woman to abuse him.
That was what it was. Abuse. It was, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t that how I’d felt after my experience with her?
Didn’t I go back to my room at uncle’s house and cry for hours?
Why had I forgotten how it made me feel at the time?
Why had I forgotten that part? Why had I conveniently pushed it all aside, and dated the girls he insisted on, and pretended that I was normal?
When did that become as natural as being my real self?
When did it become part of me to just accept the touches of women without wishing they’d stay away?
Ash might have been a crazy fucker, but he’d trusted me last night. He’d come to meet me in good faith, and sure, he’d planned to force me into sex, but did he really deserve for me to turn that on him?
He never would have chosen her. I never chose her. I had no choice back then, and now I’d forced him through the same hell I’d been through.
I clutched my hair in my fists as my breaths started to turn to gasps, growing more ragged and agonising, until they were sobs, and then nothing could have held back the torrent of heartbreak and grief from escaping.
I cried. I cried like I’d lost everything. Like I’d destroyed my life. Like I had nothing left to live for. And I did it knowing that I’d done exactly that to someone else too.