Chapter Thirty-Six
Haizley
“The what?” I asked innocently.
“There was a prospect sitting outside. Where did he go?” Gunner walked across the room slowly. I knew he was mad. He was going to be even more mad when I told him what happened.
“Well, see... Amber called. She had to cancel her session ‘cause there was no one at the clubhouse to bring her over. So, I asked the prospect to go get her. They should be back any minute,” I added quickly.
Gunner closed his eyes, and I could tell he was trying to rein himself in. He took a deep breath, and I swear I could hear him counting under his breath. It made me smile that he had learned that somewhere and was using it.
“Why didn’t you just go to the clubhouse?”
“Because that poor woman never gets to leave unless she comes here twice a week. I wasn’t going to force her to stay cooped up because the men in her life wouldn’t make the time to allow her to get the help she needs.”
My hands were planted on my hips as I rallied the courage to stand up to the big ogre. I knew he was worried about my safety. But truly, I was fine.
Bullshit!
Ok, so maybe I wasn’t fine. But I hadn’t had a nightmare since that first night. Though that might have been because Gunner refused to let me sleep alone. Hell, he wouldn’t even let me sleep on the side of the bed. Whenever we slept together, he practically had me sleeping on top of him.
“Let’s assume I concede to your logic,” he started.
Shit, he was trying to use psychology.
“Why didn’t you go pick up Amber and bring her back? The prospect could have followed you there and back.”
I opened my mouth as I thought about what he said and quickly closed it before the protest escaped.
“I-I didn’t think of that.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Any time my attention caught on his hands, I thought about him putting those hands on me. It had been almost a week since the attack and he had slept in my bed every night. Yet, he never tried anything other than kissing me.
“Haizley!”
I shuddered at his growl. God, I loved it when he did that. I felt it roll over my body every time. Giving him all my attention, I focused on Gunner’s mouth.
He growled again, only this one was more feral, more sexual. “Eyes on me, baby.”
I wanted to point out that my eyes were on him, but when our gazes connected, I was struck dumb by the heat in his eyes. His darkened pupils looked like moss, and I knew he was struggling with this forced celibacy as much as I was.
Maybe more.
I took a step forward, and he stepped back. “Not the time, Haizley.” I heard the roar of a bike outside and remembered Amber. When she knocked, I moved to open the door, but Gunner stopped me.
“Where’s your phone?”
Um, that was a good question. I looked around the room and when I couldn’t locate it, I gave Gunner a sheepish look.
“I think it’s upstairs.”
Shaking his head, he yanked open the front door without looking. Amber stood on the porch looking startled.
“Oh, hey, Gunner.”
“Come in, Amber.” His voice was raspy, and I think even Amber could see he was angry.
“Everything ok?” she asked, looking between Gunner and me.
He looked at Amber and then at me. Mumbling something about later and the word spanking, he stepped through the door, pulling it closed behind him.
“Girl, you are in trouble.”
My face flushed, though I wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment, anxiousness, or arousal.
“I am.” The small smile that spread across my face made Amber laugh, and I knew anxious wasn’t what I was feeling. I was aroused by the idea of Gunner punishing me. And also embarrassed that Amber had witnessed it.
At the sound of yelling outside, I looked through the window. Gunner was laying into the poor prospect in the driveway. Now I felt bad, and my shoulders sagged.
“Don’t feel bad for him. This is how they learn. He shouldn’t have left you here alone.”
“But I asked him to.”
“That’s why he should have said no. He takes orders from the men, never the women.”
“Well, that’s not right.” I looked back through the curtain and saw the prospect standing there, stoic. Whatever Gunner was saying, the prospect accepted it.
“That is the way in an MC,” Amber assured me. “Come on, I’ve already made you late.”
“You’re my last appointment today, so we’re good. What would you like to talk about?”
With a heavy breath, Amber announced, “I’d like to talk about my father.”
“Ok.” Until now, Amber had avoided the topic of her father, other than glazing over it when I saw her the first day.
“Well, I told you what he had done to me. It started when I was twelve. Once I started getting my period. He made a comment ‘ old enough to bleed —’”
“Amber, you don’t have to say it. I am familiar with the abhorrent saying.”
“Well, he didn’t really believe it because he had me put on birth control to make sure I wouldn’t get pregnant. I was sixteen when I got away. After I killed him.”
She said it so calmly that I wasn’t sure I heard correctly at first.
“You killed your father?”
She nodded but wouldn’t look at me. Patients often avoided eye contact to avoid feeling judged. Despite our training and our best efforts, it was human nature to judge.
Amber wouldn’t find that judgment here, though. Not after what I had done less than a week ago.
“Do you feel bad?”
Now she turned her cold eyes on me.
“Should I? He was a bastard who was raping his daughter. Did he deserve to live? Should I have just run away, and hope he never found me again?”
“Amber, there is no judgment here. Let me ask you those same questions? Do you think you should feel guilty?
“No.”
“Then why do you?”
“Because I should. I should feel guilty for taking a life. Violence isn’t the answer to the bad things in life.”
“Amber, look at me.”
I waited a few minutes before she finally focused on me.
“Tell me what happened.”
She sniffed, and I stood, gathering a box of tissues I kept on the counter and set them down next to her on the couch. I didn’t hand them to her. I didn’t want her to feel like she was expected to cry. But I wanted her to know it was ok if she did.
Sitting back in my chair, my hands clasped together in my lap, I waited for her to begin.
“It was my sixteenth birthday. I didn’t have any friends. I think the kids at school knew what was happening, because none of them made an effort once I started pulling away after the first time. So, it was just my father and me. He said he had something special planned for my birthday. After dinner, he gave me a present and sent me to my room to put it on. It was lingerie. He bought me things to wear on occasion, so I didn’t think much of it. But when I went back downstairs, a couple of his friends had arrived.”
I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear more but knowing she had to get it out.
“He had planned something special alright. But it wasn’t for me. He and his friends took turns at first. They took care not to hurt me. But they were drinking, and the more they drank, the rougher they got. Until they decided they no longer needed to take turns. Their reasoning was ‘she’s got three holes and there’s three of us.’ It was morning by the time they’d had enough.”
Amber didn’t cry. She stared out the window, her voice almost robotic as she went into detail of what her father and his friends had forced her to endure.
I had worked with sexual abuse survivors since I started my internship, and never had I encountered someone that had been through what Amber had been through.
Most of my patients had been rape survivors. Date rape or stranger rape. Incestuous rape was so much worse. And so much harder to overcome.
“Would you like to talk about what you did to get away?” I asked, knowing there was a reason she wanted to talk about this now.
“His friends left, and I took a shower. While I washed those men off me, something switched on inside of me. I’ve read the statistics. I know about Stockholm Syndrome. I think that’s what I was suffering from. He was my dad. I didn’t know anything different. He had conditioned me to believe he loved me in a way no one else would. I believed him. Until then.”
Amber stood and walked around the room. Her steps were stuttered and anxious. She turned and looked at me.
“Are you going to report me?”
“No, Amber. I am bound by therapist/patient confidentiality,” I assured her.
“Even if I tell you I committed a crime?” She snorted a small laugh. “I should have asked that before I told you I killed my father.”
“As long as you don’t tell me you are going to commit a crime in the future. That, I would be mandated to report. For your safety and the safety of the other person.”
She nodded, then walked around the room for a few more minutes before settling back on the couch. I stayed quiet and let her work out how much she wanted to share.
“I waited until dinnertime. I acted as though everything was normal. Never letting on that what he had done had crossed the line for me.” She scoffed. “As if he hadn’t already crossed the line.”
She pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and laying her chin on her knees.
“Would you like a blanket?”
She shook her head, then buried it against her knees. “This is harder than I thought.”
“Take your time, Amber.”
She sat up, her eyes turning cold again. I recognized it for what it was. She was going somewhere else. Somewhere she felt safe. Somewhere she could disconnect from the story she was recounting.
“I let him take me one last time. I participated willingly. I gave him the best fuck of his life. When he passed out, I slipped out of the bed. In the kitchen, I quietly opened the drawer. The bastard was so stupid, or maybe I was because I waited so long. But he never restricted me from anything. He never hid the knives. Even the big ones.”
She turned to the window again. Staring through it, she continued, “I pulled out the largest knife we had. Holding it at my side, I walked back to the bedroom we shared. I wasn’t allowed my own after he started fucking me. I climbed back on the bed and laid the knife next to him. Then I climbed back on him. Picking up the knife, I held it behind me while I squirmed over his soft dick, waiting for him to harden. I knew he would wake once he felt me over him. He opened his eyes and looked at me. I had never willingly given myself to him until that night. He smiled, thinking I wanted more. His hands went to my tits, and he squeezed them roughly. He got off on my pain. Lifting his hips up, he tried to enter me. I kept myself still. I needed him to be so consumed with what he was doing that he wouldn’t notice what I was about to do.”
“Amber, why did you wait for him to wake up?”
Her eyes snapped to mine, and the woman I saw before me was not the same sweet easy-going woman I had met before. When she smiled, there was a frisson of fear that washed over me.
“I wanted that bastard to know what was happening to him. He was going to experience every moment. Just like I had for years. His hands grabbed onto my hips, and he ground me against him until he worked his dick into my pussy. That was when I struck.”
Her eyes glazed over, and I wondered if she was back in that room.
“When his eyes closed in rapture, I lifted my arms, both hands wrapped around the knife, and I plunged it into his heart. I will never forget the way his eyes snapped open and the look of shock on his face when he realized what I had done.”