CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
“I saw in your chart that at some point during the attack you were rendered unconscious. I was reassuring you.”
“Oh.” Now Maude felt like crap. “So yes, he tried to do that. But . . .”
Edmund could see something else was on her mind. “But what?”
Maude had to think how she could phrase it. “It seemed to me that raping me wasn’t what he was there to do though.”
Edmund stared at her. “Why would you say that?”
“Because of what he did. I thought he was there, not to rape me, but to kill me.”
When she said those words, Edmund looked alarmed. “Why would you think that?”
“When I first saw him, I thought he was the guard in the booth. I thought he might have gone in those woods to relieve himself or something like that.”
But Edmund was shaking his head. “Guard duty isn’t twenty-four hours a day. It’s from five a.m. to nine p.m. The guard would have been gone by the time you made it back up front.”
“I didn’t know that. That’s why I assumed he was the guard.
But then a feeling came over me that told me real quick that something was off about him.
I was even backing up and was about to run away, but he was too fast and too strong.
He grabbed me and forced me into those woods.
Then he knocked me down so hard it took my breath away, and then he held me down with his big body on top of me. ”
Edmund’s anxiousness was getting the best of him. “And then?”
“And then he started choking me. And I mean so hard that I just knew I was seconds away from . . .”
Edmund’s jaw tightened. That bastard could have killed her?
He assumed it was a rape and run. Though that never happened in his neighborhood that he knew of, there had been a couple of incidences in that area of town before.
But he wanted to kill her? He closed his door on her and sent her away to be killed?
He sat in his guilt. It was just that heavy on him.
“Then the light from a car that had driven up shined on my face and my attacker saw my face I guess more clearly. And it was like he had a sudden change of plans and while he held one of his hands over my mouth, he removed the other one from my neck and was trying to take off my jeans. But he couldn’t do it.
He needed both of his hands to even unbutton those jeans.
That’s when he briefly removed his hand from my mouth.
And that’s when I screamed as hard as I could.
I was gonna make the earth hear my scream.
I didn’t know it was my Uber driver’s lights that had shined in those woods.
I didn’t know my Uber driver had driven up until he heard my scream and yelled if somebody was back there.
Then I saw his light. They said it was a flashlight.
But I passed out after I saw that light.
But the police said that my attacker ran away before he could strangle me or rape me or do anything to me. Thank God.”
Maude could see a strained look on Edmund’s face as if her story had struck him to his core. “Did you tell any of this to the Police?” he asked her.
“I told all of it to them.”
“And?”
“And they still put it down as an attempted rape. They weren’t trying to hear what I had to say.”
That upset Edmund too. “They’ll hear what I have to say,” he said as he stood up and felt the side of her neck again with two of his fingers.
The mistreatment she had to endure angered him.
All because those professional fools could only see a powerless black woman with nobody in her corner.
But as of this moment she had somebody in her corner.
She had him. And he was definitely somebody.
Then he placed his hand on her shoulder as he looked down at her with that pensive look again. “Was that true?”
“Was what true? What I just told you? Of course it’s true!”
“What you told that nurse about your next of kin.”
Did he mean the fact that she didn’t have a next of kin? “It’s true,” she said.
“What about your parents?”
“Dead.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes.”
“Siblings?”
“I had a sister, but she died too.”
Edmund needed to know. “How?”
Maude hadn’t spoken of it in years because nobody cared to know. But since he wanted to know, she told him. “We were arguing, my sister and I, and my father reached back and slapped me.”
“He slapped you?”
“That’s how he was. My sister was his favorite. My mom’s favorite too. And so they never blamed her for our arguments. But while he was so angry that he slapped me, he had forgotten that he was driving a car. So he lost control and we flipped and crashed and everybody in the car died.”
“Except for you?”
Maude nodded. “Except for me.”
Edmund could see the guilt all over her. Was that why she shied away from people? She didn’t want to hurt anymore? “How old were you when it happened?”
“Six.”
That young? “Who raised you?”
“My aunt. At least until I was sixteen. Then she and her husband and their baby left and told me I wasn’t welcome to come with them.”
Edmund was surprised. “She abandoned you after what you’d been through?”
“They said I was strong and grown and I didn’t need them.”
“Was that true?”
Maude hesitated. “No.” But she didn’t want to talk about that. “What about you?” she asked him.
Edmund didn’t know what she meant. “What about me?”
“What about your parents? Are they alive?”
He knew she was deflecting, but he allowed it. “Very much so, yes. They live in Maine. That’s where I’m from.”
“It’s just you and Natasha as siblings?”
“And our baby brother, yes.”
“Are you married?”
“Never.”
“A girlfriend?”
“Never.”
How could he say that when that woman left his house that night? Wasn’t she his girlfriend? To Maude, she certainly acted like there was some kind of relationship gone bad. “Your job is your companion too then, hun?”
“Is it yours?”
Maude hesitated. “Yes. Is it yours?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
Then he stared at her. What manner of woman did he have on his hands? “What happened to that boyfriend you mentioned to the nurse?”
“He got married.”
“While he was dating you?”
Maude nodded. “At least I thought we were dating for sure. But he said I was mistaken. He said we had broken up the same day we met.”
“Is that true?”
“No! That made him feel better by lying like that. Like every man that’s ever lived he wanted to cheat, but he was a brother with a conscience. He needed an excuse to do so. With his pathetic ass.”
Then a look of hurt came into her eyes and she looked away from Edmund. But he saw that hurt, and it bothered him. He began massaging her shoulder.
His touch, that massage, felt so good to Maude that she almost allowed a soft sigh to escape her tongue. She needed that massage! She wanted him to massage her other shoulder too. Or even all over!
But when she looked into his large eyes and they appeared more sensual than his usual contemplative look, as if he needed that massage just as much as she did, she couldn’t help it.
She glanced downward at his midsection. And that was when she saw that he was fully aroused, and in a huge way. She looked back up into his eyes.
They stared at each other as if they had a connection so powerful that it was baffling to them both. They stared at each other until the nurse supervisor walked into the room and broke the spell. Edmund calmly, reluctantly even, removed his hand from her.