Chapter 39 - Rachel #2
“I look like him, Rach. That’s why you always freak the fuck out when I’m there, isn’t it? And you wake up? After a nightmare?”
My eyes clenched close. I wished I could say otherwise, but while he wasn’t wholly right, neither was he totally wrong. In this instance, neither was great.
“Yes,” I whispered miserably.
He let loose a sharp breath at my confirmation.
“It’s not as facile as that, though. My rational mind knows you didn’t do it.”
“But you’re not rational seconds after you’ve just woken up from a nightmare where you’ve been raped again.”
I sucked my cheek into my mouth and bit down. Hard. “No, I’m not.”
“I always hated Grizzly. I didn’t realize he was a rapist though. Dad always let him get away with shit and he shouldn’t have. He was nothing special as a councilor.”
Still with that same, musing, watchful tone.
This was starting to feel odd again.
Was he angry or upset?
“You saw me without a beard or stubble the other day, Rach.”
“Yeah. I did.”
The pause was loaded, heavy. With what, I didn’t know, until he ground out, “Did I look like Grizzly then?”
My throat suddenly felt tight. Thick. Hope, hot and heavy, settled in my heart. “No.”
He released a breath. “You’ve never slept with anyone…” A hiss sounded down the line. “I know something happened at college. I… I’m not… did—”
For the first time in his life, Rex was clearly lost for words.
Helping him out because it was too painful not to, I muttered, “I never slept with anyone by choice.”
“God help me,” he breathed. “Do you know how much I fucking love you? Do you know what the fuck I’d do to keep you safe? And I didn’t. It wasn’t enough. My own goddamn blood hurt you, and then that bastard—”
Though I heard his pain, felt it now, finally, his words rammed their way home.
I’d misunderstood.
He hadn’t been asking if I’d had consensual sex with anyone.
He’d been saying that he knew I’d been attacked in college.
My throat closed again, but before I could choke, he rasped, “The second Gunner got in touch with me and told me what had happened, I nearly fucking killed myself riding over to your apartment.”
Gunner had been there?
Watching over me?
I thought about Hunter, covered in blood. I thought about Aurora, screaming. My mind turned blank. Black.
Dizziness hit me.
He’d known all along?
I’d imagined he’d picked together the pieces, but not the outright facts.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“Got rid of the body.”
His voice was flat again.
“I was too late to protect you though. I’m always too fucking late.”
“Rex?”
“What, sweetheart?”
“I-I think I’m going to be sick.”
I heard him yelp my name but I threw my cell down onto the chair and darted inside. Almost skidding as I made it to the bathroom, my knees ached as they collided with the tiled floor.
Heaving, I puked up what I’d eaten, and that was when I felt some hands in my hair and a soft humming noise.
I smelled a fruity perfume and a bump nudged me in the back.
“It’s okay,” Giulia said softly, her fingers still in my hair as she held it away from my face. “It’s okay, Rachel. Get it out.”
My stomach ached from the purge, and I twisted to look at her, eyes wet as I demanded, “What are you doing in here?”
“Rex called Nyx. He wanted me to check on you.”
My bottom lip wobbled. “He knew.”
“About the baby?”
I shook my head. “He knew about the guy who hurt me in college.”
“Does that come as that much of a surprise?” she asked kindly.
“Isn’t Rex like the MC’s God? Sees all, hears all, knows all?
” Her words were too much like Hunter’s mockery from weeks before.
Goddamn men knowing everything but not reacting how I thought they’d react.
Giulia, unaware of my thoughts, pursed her lips.
“Well, apart from where the Sparrows are concerned. His omnipotence is on the fritz with them.”
I stared blearily at her.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “Didn’t mean to get philosophical on you. Are you okay?”
“H-He said he got rid of the body.”
“Isn’t that what they do? Clean up after us?”
“I didn’t kill him,” I whispered.
“Who did?”
“One of my best friends.”
“So, he was protecting him?”
“I-I guess.”
“And was there a police investigation?”
“N-No. It was more of a missing persons case.”
The parallel between the murder of Aurora’s husband and David, Indy’s receptionist, was uncannily similar.
Uneasily, I tilted my head down again, aware that the urge to puke hadn’t abated.
“Never spent as much time in a bathroom with another woman before,” Giulia mused. “Gotta say, I wish we chose one of your living rooms. It’d be a lot more comfortable than this.”
I spat out the last remainder of vomit in my mouth. “You can go, Giulia. I’m okay.”
“Nah, if you looked at yourself in the mirror, you’d realize what utter bullshit that is.” She sniffed. “Anyway, you’re coming to our meeting tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“I’m supposed to.”
“You should come. You’re as fucked up as we are,” Giulia said cheerfully. “Might do you some good. You might stop being so repressed.”
“I’m not repressed.”
Giulia snickered. “Yeah, okay, you tell yourself that. If you’re not repressed, then you’re depressed. Either way, for a shrink who ain’t a shrink yet, Tiff’s pretty good at getting us all to open up and talk about shit nobody wants to say out loud.”
Resting my arms on the toilet seat, I pressed my head to my bicep and whispered, “I don’t know if I belong there.”
“Why not?”
“Lily, Alessa, Amara, and Indy… God, they’ve been through so much.”
“And you haven’t?”
“Not like them.”
“There a limit on trauma and grief?” She arched a brow, but her bottom lip wobbled before she contained it to say, “By that logic, I shouldn’t be there either. Luke Lancaster only shoved a finger in me. Does that mean I wasn’t assaulted?”
“N-No. Of course not.”
“So, if you think I deserve to be there, why wouldn’t you deserve to be there too?”
Her logic was sound. I’d have thrown that reasoning at her too. But I was different, wasn’t I?
When I licked my lips, the taste of vomit had my nose crinkling. With a grunt, Giulia clambered up into a standing position after I helped support her, guilt hitting me when I realized I’d made the heavily pregnant woman kneel on the floor.
She peered in the vanity cabinet and passed me a bottle of mouthwash. “Here.”
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure. You’re going to come tomorrow, aren’t you? No more ‘supposed to?’”
After I swigged some of the mouthwash around my teeth and spat it into the bowl, feeling the disgusting taste disperse as I did so, I closed the toilet lid and flushed it.
“I’ll be there if you think I’ll fit in.”
She snorted. “Unfortunately for our guys, they’ve all picked women who’ve been fucked over by men. Really, they’re lucky that we don’t go to bed at night with knives and when they touch us, we don’t threaten their dicks.”
“Amara does.”
Giulia frowned. “She’d better not lop off my brother’s dick. Well, unless he deserves it.”
I almost laughed. “What would make him almost deserve it?”
“Dunno yet. I don’t know if Nyx’s dick could even be cut off. It’s half metal after all.”
My lips twisted. “He’s family, Giulia.”
“Everyone knows he has a cyborg dick,” she dismissed.
“You’re right, you know?”
“I usually am,” she said with a chuckle.
“No, I mean, about the Old Ladies. They’re all victims.”
“In one way or another,” she agreed. “Stone wasn’t fucked over by a man, but she nearly lost her life to someone. Tiffany didn’t, thank God, but she got kidnapped.” Giulia grimaced. “Honestly, it’s a wonder we’re all not locked up in an asylum, rocking back and forth in our straitjackets.”
“Trust me, been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.”
Her eyes widened. “You were institutionalized?”
I turned my gaze away. “I was. I didn’t… I mean, the straitjacket thing didn’t happen, but I was in a hospital.”
“Why?”
“A-After… my best friend, Hunter, he killed—”
“Your rapist,” Giulia supplied helpfully.
Well, I figured she assumed she was being helpful.
Mostly, I just felt like I’d been sucker punched.
I didn’t talk about this stuff. Not even to Rory. I’d discussed it with Scott and Craig, but that had been a lifetime ago.
“Yes. Him. I-I lost it.”
“Why?”
My mouth wobbled. “He said that he loved my curves and my belly.”
Giulia’s nose crinkled. “That’s disgusting. He raped you because you were pregnant? Eww. I’m glad he’s dead. That’s just gross. You don’t covet another dude’s baby momma. That’s wrong on so many levels.”
I swallowed. “Y-Yes. It is.” Feeling nauseated again, I whispered, “Every day I got bigger, every day it was like my own body was a threat. I-I stopped eating…”
“You’re lucky your kid wasn’t premature.”
“She nearly was. But Rex got me… He put me in the hospital before that could happen.”
“No one at the MC knew?”
“No. I worked that summer and was in the hospital for Christmas.”
Giulia studied me. “Rex ain’t never said a word of this to anyone, has he?”
“I doubt it. He’s a very private man. We both are.”
“What? Private men?” Giulia tapped my arm with a smirk. “You definitely belong in our Posse, Rach.”
“Posse?” I frowned. “What?”
“Posse. It’s my gang of Old Ladies.”
“I’m not an Old Lady.”
She smirked at me. “You will be. Second he finds out you’re baking another bun in that oven, you’ll be branded. Mark my words. That’s when you’ll get the official invite to the Posse.”
She said that like it was a royal decree.
Rolling my eyes, I grumbled, “I don’t know if I want to be his Old Lady—not for that reason.”
Giulia’s snort was both kind and dismissive. Which was a lot to pack into a snort, but it helped that her eyes were gentle, and her hand on my arm was affectionate. “You’ve been pining away for him for years.”
“How do you know that?” I demanded crossly. “I’ve got a very successful—”
“Yada, yada, yada,” Giulia interrupted before I could finish. “What you have is no life. You work all hours God sends, you don’t do anything aside from sit at your desk and help criminals escape justice—which I’m not complaining about, mind you.
“You don’t even eat that much, and I think you used to drink because that’s a pretty hefty wine collection, but you can’t do that now you’re preggers.
” She sniffed. “Now, I’m a full believer that a woman don’t need a man if she don’t want one.
But you do. You’ve been wanting this one for years.
It’s clear to anyone with eyes when you look at him. ”
“That’s not true.”
“You should look in the mirror when he’s around. Trust me. This whole ice block chic thing you got going on starts to melt when he’s there.”
“No, that’s—”
“The truth,” she said firmly. “And Rachel, you know what? That’s okay.
Love makes the fucking world go around. The cynic in me wants to say it’s money and pasta, but nah, love is what puts fire in your belly.
It’s what makes getting out of bed worthwhile.
When you got the man at your side, why wouldn’t you want to see what life has to throw at you? ”
My mouth wobbled again. “I’m weak.”
“Nah,” she scoffed. “You’re hella strong. Rach, I cried. You saw me cry. I don’t do tears. If a baby can do that to me, why shouldn’t it fuck with you? Not even hard as stone bitches can escape estrogen.”
It wasn’t even just that.
It was what being pregnant meant. It was how Bear had died. It was knowing that Rex was building a relationship with our daughter while I was hiding away in New Jersey.
So many things had gone wrong over the years, and it was like it was all coming to a head at the same time.
Sucking in a breath, I rasped, “He figured out today why I can’t sleep with him.”
“Sleep as in sleep or fuck?”
“Sleep.”
She tipped her head to the side. “What reason’s that?”
I stared at her, the daughter of one of my rapists, and I wondered if she could handle the truth. The full truth.
“One of my attackers was his uncle. He looks like him.”
Giulia hissed. “Jesus, that fucking sucks.” Her brow puckered. “Can’t he, I dunno, dye his hair green or something?”
How the hell she made me laugh at that moment, I didn’t have a clue.
But it escaped me, bubbling past my lips as if I didn’t have any control over it. I slapped a hand over my mouth to contain it, but though she’d smirked at me at first, I saw the concern in her eyes.
“M-Maybe I’ll suggest that to him.”
“Do. I’d like to see him with green hair.” She angled her head to the side. “You said attackers. You mean… on that night?”
“No. The guy who was killed was another night.”
“You’ve been attacked twice? Honey, what the hell is going on with your head that you don’t think you deserve help?” Unable to look at her, I just stared down at my arm. She sighed. “Who was the other attacker?”
I swallowed. “Your dad.”