4. Tessa
4
TESSA
I fell back against the seat as the man put me in the backseat. He hadn’t broken a sweat, not in fighting those men nor in carrying me. Despite my furious wrestle to get free, he held me tight and didn’t come close to dropping me once.
Now I had a better chance. The need to survive charged through me, and I funneled all that rabid energy into kicking at him. Both my feet flew to the side. My kick wasn’t effective as he dodged to the side and avoided the impact.
I tried again, and again, using my whole body to lunge at him. The need to run, and run hard , wouldn’t fade.
When those men ganged up on me, they overpowered me. It seemed that this man was determined to do the same. I’d locked my mind when those men used me so horribly. It was a dark, numb stasis that I snapped out of the second I heard this newcomer rush up close and beat them off.
Now, terrified all over again at the idea that this bastard would do worse by me, I was filled with that sharp need to fight. To flee.
“Calm down.”
He did not just say that. He did not. I flung out harder, punching and kicking to no avail. On my back on the seat, I was overwhelmed with the panic that this guy was going to rape me as well. My stomach revolted. My heart banged wildly with a superspeed pulse that dizzied me. I couldn’t catch my breath, and this asshole dared to repeat that inane command.
“Calm down.”
This stupid fucker. Telling a woman who was just gang raped to calm down . I glared at him, letting him see the anger in my eyes at the lamest, most idiotic thing he could tell me.
Still, he caught me and kept me in the car. “Calm down.” This time, he said it slower. His voice carried authority, but he wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t begging for me to chill. He wasn’t mocking me. He was simply instructing me to deescalate the situation.
Heaving a hard breath through my nose, I stared at him and stopped fighting as much. Feeling his hands on me—anywhere—was too much. After being raped and violated like that, I couldn’t stand the contact of anyone even near me. That was how strong the need was to run and scream. To cry and drop into a ball of sorrow and anger.
“Get in the car,” he ordered.
Fuck no. Fuck this. I wasn’t going anywhere with him. He’d beaten off those other men, but I didn’t know what that meant. Was he trying to help himself to me, beating up the others just so he could cut in line to rape me? Did he plan to drive me away, hurt me more, then kill me?
In the back of my battered and stressed mind, already fucked from the trauma of what just happened, I knew that being transported wouldn’t bode well. In kidnappings, that was the rule they preached at self-defense courses. Never be moved. Stay in one place to be found.
“Get in the car.” He lowered his gaze to my knees as my lower legs hung off the back seat. I saw the indecision in his eyes. He was about to grab my legs and force me in the car, but he seemed to understand I’d lash out even worse if he touched me again.
“Now.” He looked to the side, ever so slightly. This twist gave me a view of his profile, and it showed the same look of anger that facing him fully did.
“Now,” he said again in a low growl. He rested his hand on the top of the car and leaned in without touching me.
The white fabric of his T-shirt stretched. All muscles. He was a brute, a bodybuilder of a tall man. Through the material of his shirt, his tattoos bore a sharp contrast, every line and shading making him look that much more dangerous, that much more of a rebellious bad boy.
He was strong. He could overpower me just the same as those others did. But he was calm, confident, and taking charge.
“Get in the car. I said I would help you.”
How the fuck can I trust you? How the hell do I know what that means?
While I had the evidence of him scaring off those men and intervening, I had no clue who this guy was. I’d never seen him before, and I would’ve remembered a masculine face like his, hard angles, rugged features, faint beard, and all. His light blue eyes were strikingly bright, piercing me with the demand to look at him.
He clenched his teeth, tightening his jaw, and it emphasized the ink he had up along his neck. Every inch of him was hard, toned muscles, and I shrank back further from him. This man could kill me with a simple twist of his hands. Until I knew he meant what he said, that he’d help me, I couldn’t get over the gut-wrenching anxiety at the thought of his easily killing me.
“Dammit,” he growled, looking away as though the sight of me disgusted him. He was furious, but not at me. “Get in the car.”
He seemed mad but in control of his anger. It wasn’t a gentleness, but something similar.
I scooted back over the seat, feeling the smear of blood that would likely cover the cushion. He didn’t care. He didn’t flinch, waiting until my legs were further in the car.
I was insane to believe him. I would be crazy to ever trust another man on this planet after what happened to me in the alley. But I recognized that he would get his way. He knew it, too, waiting me out. I had no chance to get around him. I couldn’t fight my way to freedom. Glaring at him and praying he’d drive me to the cops, I obeyed and kept scooting all the way back into the car.
“Hurry. Before the cops come.” He shut the door as that warning rattled in my head.
No!
Before the cops came? I had to go to the cops. And he wanted to avoid them.
I was in a worse situation than before, but instead of crying or succumbing to the lure of blanking out and going numb, I resorted to more fury.
He slid into the driver’s seat and immediately engaged the locks. They weren’t standard issues. No matter how much I tugged on the handle, I couldn’t open the door.
“Stop,” he instructed, calm yet mad.
He pivoted in his seat, flashing a knife.
I screamed—muffled with this gag—and shrank away from his reach.
“Stay still.”
How about fuck no! He wouldn’t kill me easily. I wouldn’t behave and just let him stab me.
“Stay still,” he repeated as he reached back toward me. His fingers gripped my gag, not me , and he deftly sliced off the nasty rag.
I coughed, breathing too quickly. As I licked my lips and gasped in steadier inhales to better fuel me through this panic, he turned, started the car, and sped off.
Falling back from the force of his speed, I rubbed my face and worked on reclaiming a natural closure of my mouth, licking my lips, swallowing hard, and working my jaw. I sat there and processed that he’d removed the gag.
If he wants to kill me… Does this mean he’s a sociopath who listens to his victims scream?
“I want to help you.” His voice hadn’t lost that hard edge, but again, a tiny voice had me thinking he wasn’t mad at me.
“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, trying a few times to get the words out with my croaky voice.
He replied by handing me a sealed bottle of water from the cupholder. “Drink.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” In any other circumstance, I would’ve felt bad to talk with that snark. He was my rescuer—maybe—and he was due some respect for that save. But I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was locked too deep in survival mood to know if I could trust this man or whether he’d actually rescued me at all.
“Where are you taking me?” I said again before he could respond to my snark.
“My home.”
“No.” I shook my head, spilling some of the water that I’d drunk. His home? So he could keep me captive there? “No.”
He narrowed his eyes at me through his reflection in the rearview mirror. “I’m taking you to my home to help you.” As he said the words, he furrowed his brow, almost as though he questioned his decision.
“No. That’s not…” I shivered as flashbacks of those men raping me filled my mind’s eye. It’d just happened, and blocking out the memories wasn’t something I’d perfected yet. Tears burned anew as the car went over a pothole, jolting me on the seat.
My ass hurt. My vagina felt so raw. Reminded of the horror I'd suffered, I slipped back into that scary state of wishing I wasn’t alive to feel this anymore.
The shame. The fear. The anger. They coalesced into an angry storm that had me freaking out with the chance to voice it all.
“No one” —I choked on a hard sob— “No one will want me now. I’m damaged. I’m all damaged goods now.” I couldn’t see past the blur of tears, and I swore my soul was crushing my heart. My chest was too tight. My head was a heavy mess of darkness and despair as the first reactions punched through me.
“Elliot won’t want me now.” And in a truly sick way, I felt free. I was glad that I would finally have an excuse to not be with him. Never in a million years would I have wished this to happen this way. Never. But if I had to take hold of a silver lining…
“Who is Elliot?”
I shook my head, almost forgetting for a moment that someone else could hear me say such a thing. Something that didn’t fucking matter among everything else. Elliot wasn’t a priority. Surviving what happened to me was.
“Your husband?” he guessed as he drove.
No. Never. I sniffled, trying to breathe steadier.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” This man was a stranger. I didn’t know yet if he was a friend or foe. With his bravery to fight off my rapists, I wanted to believe he was a good person, a caring stranger who refused to be an innocent bystander.
Telling him anything about myself seemed like ammunition that I didn’t want him to have.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I caught his hard glare in the mirror again, and I shook my head, refusing to answer.
“Who are you?” he tried instead.
“No one.”
He cursed, so quietly that I couldn’t hear. When he stopped at a light, he frowned at me. “Do you want me to take you to the hospital?”
He should. I needed medical help of some kind. Blood was leaking from me where it shouldn’t. I was ripped. Bruised.
Raped. I was raped. Admitting that fact was too cruel of a fate to accept, and just thinking it brought more hot tears to my eyes.
“No hospital?” he guessed from my reaction.
I couldn’t speak, drowning in this agony again. I needed to get checked out, but I couldn’t afford any medical care. I was past due in paying off my dad’s old debts, and my mom worked as an LPN at one of the nearest hospitals.
Facing her wasn’t possible. I wasn’t sure if I ever could after what those men did to me. Not because I felt disgusting, but because she’d realize I was damaged goods and wouldn’t be an option for Elliot anymore.
“Do you want me to take you home?”
I shook my head. “No. I can’t face my parents.”
“You live with your parents?”
I began to nod but stopped short. He was prying for information again, and the more I stuck to closing my lips, the better. I didn’t know if I could trust him. My trust was shattered too far.
I could not go to my parents. Not now, and I wondered if I ever could. I was supposed to be their good girl, the obedient daughter they wanted to marry off to a high and mighty lawyer.
“Then let me help you inside.” He parked, and I just barely had time to register that he’d stopped at a huge but old house. It wasn’t rundown to a point that it looked like a vacant dump, but I saw signs of it needing a lot of care.
Before I could protest or even think of anything else to say, he opened the back door and held his hand out. Walking would be a challenge with the soreness between my legs, but I was determined to avoid touching this man. This stranger. This… knight in shining armor?
I stood, eyeing him closely. Paying attention to him and this place was a distraction from the distress in my mind and heart. But I was too cautious to engage in anything more than putting a name to his face. Until I could think for more than a minute without resorting to tears and panic, I had to take this slowly.
“What’s your name?” I asked as I stood and took a step from the car.
“Romeo.” He closed the door, watching me as though he feared I’d fall. He’d asked me who I was and I had yet to answer. But he didn’t pressure me to reply now as he gestured for me to walk up the steps. The first one I climbed on burned my knee, and I nearly crumpled to the ground.
“Let me help,” he said as he pulled me into his arms and carried me up the steps. I didn’t have time to freak out at his touch because the heavy pause after his words indicated that he was still waiting to know my name. He didn’t cop a feel. He didn’t glance down at me with any hint of the predatory evil that those three men had. In his blue eyes, I saw something that seemed a lot like concern.
This stranger caring about me… It was a wild thought that I yearned to hold on to.
I swallowed hard. “Tessa,” I said quietly as he brought me inside. “My name is Tessa.”