Ronan
I knew I’d feel a thousand times better the moment I heard Cat’s voice today. She’s like medicine, stilling my racing thoughts, calming my aching heart. The very first word she spoke when she picked up her phone brought immediate relief and, after talking through what happened with Miranda yesterday, Cat even managed to make me smile, hell, even laugh. This girl is pure, undiluted magic.
I can’t believe she waited to open her college admission letters, and her loving gesture of waiting to find out the fate of her future until we got to talk today does not go unnoticed. No amount of healing or therapy is ever going to get me to a point where I don’t believe, with all my heart, that this perfect creature that is Cat is way too damn good for me.
Alright, so she got into NYU and Duke. Both great schools. I can’t imagine it’ll be an easy choice. I’d obviously love to have her as close to me as possible—I don’t have a choice but to attend Columbia unless I want to forego college altogether, but what the fuck would I do instead?—but we could make North Carolina work, too. Hell, we’ve made Montana work and that’s without getting to talk to each other every day, so at this point I’m convinced we’d manage any long-distance relationship if Cat decided she wanted to attend Duke. I’m certainly not going to stand in her way. Whatever this girl decides to do with her life—even if none of it involves me—I’m going to cheer her on because that’s what she deserves.
“Ran, if you only knew how—” She abruptly stops talking.
“Baby?” I’m met with silence. I wonder if we got disconnected. “Cat?”
“Sorry, Ran, I…” The rest of her sentence gets stuck in her throat.
The sound of her voice sets off alarm bells in my head. “Baby, what’s wrong?” I ask sharply, tension seizing my muscles.
I hear her swallow, then attempt to clear her throat before she squeaks, “Nothing.”
“Bullshit, baby. What just happened?” I know something’s wrong. I’ve always been good at picking up on people’s energy, their posture, the tone of their voice—it’s a skill I had to learn from an early age—and whatever just happened, Cat’s not hiding it well. She’s obviously shaken. I can hear it in her inflection, the quick breath sounds whooshing into the phone, how much higher her voice is. It’s tight and panicky.
I’ve only ever heard her react this way one other time, exactly seven months ago to the day. Holy fuck. “Baby? What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing, Ran.”
The quiver in her voice, her tone strained like she’s desperately attempting to suffocate tears, causes an almost unbearable need to get back to her.
“Baby,” I start as calmly as possible. My heart’s pounding in my chest like it’s trying to break through my ribcage, and a sudden spike in adrenaline speeds up my breathing. “I’ve only ever witnessed you be this flustered one other time, and that was when you got a text from your ex...” I trail off, giving her every opportunity to tell me what has her so freaked out.
She still doesn’t say the words.
“Cat, is it Adam?” I finally ask, wishing, praying that she says “no,” that it's not that big of a threat to her safety.
But instinctively I know she’s going to respond in the affirmative. My heart drops into my stomach when a bloodcurdling, heart-wrenching sob echoes through the phone, the word “yes” buried in her cry.
I close my eyes and focus on my breathing, determined to remain as grounded as I can, even though angry flames lick at me, stoking a volatile rage I’ve only ever felt the one time Adam stalked Cat to New York, when he dared put a hand on her. “He texted you?” I ask, each word a punch, though the question sounds more like a statement.
“Yeah,” she whimpers, her voice quavering.
Images of Cat crying, her gorgeous hazel eyes full of despair, tear at my heart. I stand, pacing a restless back-and-forth pattern as I attempt to gather information, console her, and simultaneously figure out what to do about this piece of shit from thousands of miles away.
“Baby, please just talk to me, okay?” I urge softly, my voice soothing despite a blistering fury boiling in my chest, scalding my insides. It’s like I’m made of fire and lightning. “Is this… How long has this been going on?”
A ragged breath sounds through the phone, and I prepare myself for the inevitable. As much as I want her to tell me this is only the first time Adam has risked contacting Cat after I beat his ass, I have a strong feeling it isn’t.
“Since…”
Silence.
“Since when, baby?”
“Since you left for Montana.” A renewed cry makes its way into my ear and straight to my heart, squeezing it so tightly I can feel her pain.
I exhale deeply. So many thoughts race through my head, the most prevalent of them: why didn’t she tell me? But I know why. Because she didn’t want to burden me; didn’t want to worry me when she knew there was nothing, and I mean nothing I could have done to stop Adam from terrorizing her. The thought alone threatens to take me down a fucking rabbit hole of guilt at my weakness, my god damn inability to keep her safe because I was barely even keeping myself alive, so I shut it down. I cannot allow my conscience to eat at me now; I have to focus on Cat, on what I have to do to make sure she’s safe. God, I’m going to kill this asshole.
“Does your mom know?” Fuck, how I wish I could pull her into my arms, or better yet, find this absolute low life of a human and end him and then pull her into my arms.
Her wails are like razor blades cutting into my skin. “N… no.”
I shake my head, eyes squeezed shut as I rake my hand through my hair. I’m beside myself with worry for her and wrath at her ex. “Baby, you have to tell her! She knows Adam stalked you. You have to tell her,” I say. “You have to tell her he’s back. This—”
“I can’t, Ran,” she cuts me off, her voice raw, cracking, so full of pain. I detect shame, too, like I did when she first told me about Adam, when she told me about how she thought her drinking and flirting meant she had led him on and therefore was deserving of the abuse he inflicted on her.
“Yes, you can, baby. You have to!”
“No, Ran. No…” Another deep cry breaks from her chest.
I give us a moment—for her to quell her sobs, and for me to get control over my breathing.
“Why not, Cat?” I run my hand through my hair again. A profound sense of not being in control, of my inability to protect her, causes my skin to crawl with anxiety.
“Ran…” she cries.
My name on her lips, the tone of her voice—full of desperation, a cry for help—tears me apart. “Baby, please. Just talk to me! What’s going on? What is he doing to you?”
“You… you’re going to hate me. I don’t want to lose you!”
“No, baby. You’re not going to lose me. I could never hate you. Please just talk to me.” I’m begging at this point. “I love you, Cat. Please talk to me!”
More silence passes between us as I listen to her cries. She works to get control of her breathing, to stem the tears. When she finally speaks, her voice is raspy and worn, strained and cracking. “He has nudes, Ran. Of me. He… he’s been threatening to post them on the internet if… if I don’t send him money and… and new ones. And he’s been threatening you.”
My heart contracts in my chest as though I just took a plunge into ice-cold water. “What do you mean he has nudes?”
“He has nudes,” she repeats, choking on her own words as though I’m force-feeding them to her.
“Okay, Cat, I don’t… I don’t understand.” But I do understand. She’s telling me her ex has photos of Cat naked, and he’s extorting her with them to get her to send him money and new ones… Holy shit… new ones! “Wait…” I trail off as the realization, the truth slams into the pit of my stomach as if someone dropped a boulder from ten feet above.
“Ran…”
I slump onto my bed. “Baby, did you… Have you sent him pictures of you while… while we were together?” The room spins around me with my blood pumping hotly in my veins.
No actual words pass her lips, but the garbled cry is confirmation enough. Pain like a white-hot knife pierces my gut. Holy shit, she’s been doing this behind my back. “What… what kind of nudes?” I squeeze my eyes shut so tightly little bright patterns flicker through the dark of my eyelids. I don’t know why I inquire about the details. It certainly won’t make me feel better, but for some reason I just need to know what kind of photos he has of her. There are degrees, after all. Are we talking topless? Underwear? Fully nude? Is she touching herself, posing suggestively?
More silence follows my question as she works to compose herself. “At first it was just… just my breasts exposed. Some of these pictures… I didn’t even know they existed. I think he took them when we were together, when I… when I was blacked out at a party. But… but some of them… I don’t know, Ran.”
I don’t interject. I want her to keep talking. I want her to finally tell me what’s going on.
“I know there are pictures he took of me without my consent, but some of them… it looks like I exposed myself willingly.” Another sob. “I just can’t remember it, Ran… And then last year after… after you and I got together, when I was in Buffalo for softball camp, he contacted me. I just ignored him like I always did. I didn’t want anything to do with him, Ran…” she tries to explain through her tears. “But he just kept at it and then he sent me a picture of me… of my breasts. He said he’ll post it on the internet if I don’t send him a new picture right then and there…” She’s so worked up, her cries so desperate, she’s gasping for air.
“And you sent him one?” I don’t know why I even ask. Of course she sent him one; she all but said it.
Her voice is meek. “Of my breasts… At first that’s all he wanted, but then…”
Oh no. Fuck, please, no!
“You sent him other pictures?”
She whimpers. “Yeah… Ran, I felt so horrible. I didn’t want to do this. Every time he made me send him another, it was like I was cheating on you. I didn’t want to hurt you, Ran. I didn’t want to, but… I was so scared. I was scared of Adam; I was scared he’d expose me to the world… I was scared my parents would find out… that you’d find out what I did…”
“But… I thought he was gone. I thought he left you alone after he showed up in New York,” I ask, trying to piece it all together.
“He was. At first. He contacted me the night before you left for Montana. Eventually I responded to his text pretending to be a guy who got a new phone and a new number. I figured he would think I changed my number, that he no longer had a way to contact me. It worked for a while, but then… he figured out I hadn’t changed my number and… Ran…” She trails off with a terrible sob.
“Baby,” I just breathe into the phone, trying to urge her on gently even though my insides fold with each additional detail.
“He… he forced me to send him money. Back in January, when he found out I didn’t actually change my number, he made me send him a thousand dollars.”
I’m clenching my teeth so tightly they might shatter.
“I don’t have that kind of money, Ran. He said if I didn’t send him the money within a few days, he’d sell the pictures he had of me. He said he’d have no problem finding people to buy them.”
By the way this story is going, I know she figured out a way to come up with the money. “So… how did you get it?” I’m pretty certain she didn’t ask her parents to spot her.
She cries so hard, I can practically hear the tears cascading down her beautiful face. “I’m such an awful person. Oh god, Ran, I’m horrible…”
“How did you come up with the money?” I’m scared of what she’ll tell me next. The worst possible images flash before my mind’s eye and I pray to god she wasn’t forced to demean herself in some way to get Adam off her back.
“I… Ran, I… I sold the skates you gave me for my birthday, and… I”—renewed sobs, even louder than before, make their way into my ear, squeezing my lungs and heart—“I… I stole some of the tips left at Murphy’s. I stole from Shane, Ran. I stole his tip and the tip from one of the bartenders. Oh god…”
My head is swimming. I take a moment to settle my breath, attempting to collect my thoughts, to gauge my own feelings over what she’s just confessed to me, but I fail. I’m more concerned with finding a way to comfort her while simultaneous planning this asshole’s demise—the best, slowest, and most painful way to stop this motherfucker’s black heart. I attempt several times to speak, but Cat’s cries are so loud, so unrelenting, that I decide to give her a minute.
“Baby?” I finally say when Cat seems to have calmed a little.
“I’m so ashamed, Ran,” she whimpers quietly. “It’s like everything just spun out of control. I don’t know what to do. I can’t find my way out.”
Holy hell, my feelings are all over the damn place. I’m fucking pissed. Undiluted rage courses through my veins, my right fist clenching and unclenching with unspeakable thoughts coming to life. I’ve never considered myself a gratuitously violent person, but fuck, I have a vivid desire to bash the guy’s skull in with my bare hands, to reach into his throat and rip his windpipe to shreds. It would feel fucking great, too.
I push the feelings deep down inside. They’re not helpful, and honestly, I don’t like it when I get like this, when I outright lose my shit, when I see nothing but a deep, dark red. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does I feel myself resemble my mother most closely. It scares me, especially after yesterday’s revelations.
I take a few steadying breaths, trying to collect and organize my thoughts. Right now I can’t deal with the piece of me that is deeply wounded by Cat sending pictures of her perfect, sacred body to some asshole while we were together. She shared something so vulnerable and intimate with someone who doesn’t deserve even a glimpse of her. I also can’t think too deeply about the things Cat did to come up with the money—the fact that she sold the hockey skates I gave her for her birthday, that she took some of Shane’s tips. I’ve had tips snatched from me before, and it sucked every time because I relied on them so heavily. What I need to focus on is Cat’s safety. Everything else is secondary to that.
“Is he asking you to send him a picture right now?” I ask, getting back to what started this whole mess.
“Yeah. That, and more money,” she croaks. “He always tells me not to ignore him, that if I don’t send him a picture within a few minutes, he’ll leak the others or… or sell them…” Her voice breaks, unleashing a tidal wave of fresh sobs.
I’m beginning to understand it’s even worse than I thought.
I grind my teeth. “Do you know where he is?”
“I… He just texted and said he needs more money and that he wouldn’t hate it if I sent him a new picture and… and then he said New York is nice in March…” Her cries morph into outright wails. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this powerless before, even when I was at my mother’s mercy.
“And I… There’s something else,” she says. I can’t think of a way this could possibly get worse, but I’ve been wrong before. “He… he was seeing this girl—Annalise. In January, he put her in the hospital. He beat her really badly, Ran. They had to do emergency brain surgery,” she tells me, the fear audible in her voice. “There’s a warrant out for his arrest. They’ve been looking for him. He’s on the run. That’s why he needs money, and… he’s hurt me before. I know what he can do. I’m so scared, Ran…”
I stand from my bed and resume my pacing. Maybe this asshole is just trying to scare her, and he’s obviously doing a grand fucking job, too. But I know what he’s capable of and I’m aware there’s a pretty good chance this guy is back in New York. I’m hoping against all hope that, even if he is, he hasn’t figured out I’m not around to provide Cat with protection. Regardless, I’m certainly not going to let her go without.
I know what I need to do. I need to get home—I just don’t know how to do it.
But first things first. “Is your front door locked?”
“Uh…” I hear her walk down the stairs in her house. “Yes.”
“When’s your mom getting back?” I know there’s no point in telling her to call her mom now. Her mom puts her phone on Do Not Disturb whenever she’s with a patient. She wouldn’t even receive Cat’s call.
“She said a couple of hours.”
“Okay. Baby?”
“Yeah?” God, she sounds so tired, so emotionally exhausted, and I yearn to wrap her into my arms.
“Do not send this asshole any more photos. Do not respond to his messages. Ignore him!” I tell her, my voice firm and cooler than I want it to be. I gotta get control of my emotions—the hurt, the anger, the fear, and all the other unproductive feelings battling it out in my head and heart.
“But, Ran, he’ll—”
“No, he won’t,” I say. “Trust me, he isn’t going to post shit. This threat… that’s his only power over you. It’s the only way he can ensure he gets money and fresh…” I trail off. God, I can’t believe this fucking asshole has nude photos of my girl. Shit, I don’t even have nude photos of my girl. “I’m confident he won’t post or sell them. At least not yet.” I wouldn’t put it past him to do exactly that once he realizes he’s lost his grip on Cat. But we’ll deal with that if and when that happens, I guess.
“But what if he does, Ran?”
“Then he does. Whatever. Plenty pictures of naked girls on the internet.” I try to downplay it, but I can’t say that I’m fond of the idea of Cat being exposed like that. It makes me sick to my stomach. Man, that shit has to be illegal, right?
Fuck, yes, of course it is! I’ve heard of revenge porn and sextortion and all that shit. Man, we’ve been given lectures at school about that—ad nauseum reminders to always seek consent before engaging in anything sexual, about the dangers of sharing intimate photos and videos, how it’s illegal to send them to others, especially if the people in the pictures are minors.
“You need to tell your mom, baby. You need to get the cops involved.”
“The cops are already involved, Ran! They’re already looking for him.”
I sigh. “Yeah, okay.” I’m dismayed to think that they’ve been unable to hunt him down, that he’s able to extort money from Cat without getting caught. Isn’t there a way to track this fucker? “But you still need to tell your mom. If you’re too scared to tell her about the money and… about the damn pictures, then at least tell her he’s contacting you again, okay? I need… fuck, I just need you to be safe.”
Another long moment of near-complete silence passes between us, marred only by my deep exhales as I try to simmer the fuck down and her quiet cries.
“Baby, I’m… I’ll call you right back, okay?” I say abruptly.
“Why? What are you doing?” she asks, slightly panicky.
“Just… I’ll call you right back. Door’s locked, right?” I assure myself even though she already told me it was.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll call you back,” I just say and cut the call without another word.