Chapter 30
thirty
. . .
Raw
Ten years ago
desiree
twenty years old
I sat in the police station waiting area, a ball of bumbling nerves. The last thing Taven had said to me as he was taken away in handcuffs through a door was, “Call my mom.” I had no idea when I’d get to see him again. But I wasn’t leaving, that was for sure.
Snake guy was in the hospital. He had a concussion, abrasions that required stitching, and they were monitoring him for internal bleeding. He had been found unconscious and rushed by ambulance, though upon awakening, one name stuck out in his head—Taven Carlisle.
I thought we didn’t even know the guy, but according to Taven, he’d “partied” with him before and always had a feeling he was a creep.
I was scared to say anything. Do I tell my story? Explain that Taven had been protecting me, that it was self-defense? But I remained silent, afraid that would be viewed as me corroborating the story snake guy was saying, and that I was just trying to come up with a plausible excuse.
I looked around at the waiting area, which was surprisingly bright with large windows overlooking the parking lot. There were standard simple black chairs, like in a doctor’s office, and a long desk area with police officers behind glass windows. The whole place looked like it could have been any old government office building, not necessarily a place where people were taken and fingerprinted and who knows what else. I wondered where Taven was now. Was he in a cell by himself, or sharing it with some big, burly dudes that had far more criminal experience than he did?
At least I had the good sense to act quickly after the police showed up at Taven’s apartment. I had slipped back into my dress and heels, then topped it with one of Taven’s sweatshirts. I must have looked ridiculous. I took Inferno and followed Taven, who was handcuffed in the back of the police car. I wished so much we could be together for this part.
I had pulled into the parking lot and parked his baby in the last row as far from any other cars as possible. I’d never driven Inferno without Taven in the car with me, and even then, it was usually just when he had too much to drink. I was determined to treat it with care, though. As if that one thing that was within my control could be enough.
Walking into the station was terrifying. I had to be buzzed in—what was I even supposed to say? “Hi, my name is Desiree Hatson and I’m here because my friend—maybe boyfriend, it’s not really been established yet, though I did sleep with him last night, so let’s cross our fingers—anyway, he was taken here in handcuffs, and I thought I’d just swing by and say hi.”
Would I even be allowed to see him? I had no clue. Getting in trouble wasn’t exactly my thing, and I was clueless about how any of this worked. Would there be bail? How long would that take? I wished Melissa was with me. I wished I could call my mom and ask for advice, but I feared her reaction once she learned that I was sleeping with the enemy.
So I prepared myself to follow Taven’s orders. His cell phone had been confiscated, so I had to call from my own. I had his mom’s number, thankfully, though I don’t ever recall a time I had actually called it.
With shaking hands I scrolled through my contacts to her name, took a deep breath, and pressed the call icon.
She answered.
I explained that Taven was in jail. That it wasn’t his fault, that he was protecting me. My voice was shaky, and I rambled everything out as quickly as I could.
“Desiree,” she said, cool as a cucumber. “Are you in the police station right now? Inside?” Lynda’s tone surprised me.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“Please do not say another word.”
“What?”
I heard her sigh on the other end of the line, the only indication that she was feeling any emotion throughout this exchange. “Walk outside, please. Did you drive there yourself?”
“Yes, in Inferno. In Taven’s car, I mean.”
“Good. Go outside and sit in his car. I’ll stay on the line. But not another word until you do, do you understand? You’re in a police station, dear. Everything is being monitored, there are cameras, you must assume that anything you say is being studied.”
I nodded, as if she could even see that, and did as I was told.
Once in the safety of the car, I explained what had happened in greater detail. Every piece I could. She asked questions to fill in blanks, and I answered them. It felt infinitesimally easier to speak here, with the quiet and familiar comfort of black leather and the scent of Taven surrounding me.
When she asked if I had reached out to rape crisis, I balked. “No. Why? Was what he did rape?”
If I’m not mistaken, I heard a slight tsk. “Desiree, your body was penetrated without your consent, and with force. Yes. That is considered rape. The laws vary state to state, but there is no mistaking a sexual assault took place. You need to get a rape kit done immediately.”
My stomach dropped. A rape kit.
But of course, it was too late for that. I had sex with Taven afterwards. And now I needed to explain that. To his mother, of all people.
Lynda had been furious to learn of what “idiots” we had been in the aftermath of everything. She insisted I get a rape kit anyway, and I initially refused. The last thing I wanted was to be poked and prodded once again, knowing there would be no evidence other than that I had had sex with Taven, without a condom, and his semen was inside of me.
But Lynda insisted that being evaluated by a medical professional would legitimize my claims of self-defense, convincing me to do it despite my fears. I would follow orders and do whatever I could to help get Taven out of trouble. I went alone, smiling and politely making the most useless conversation with the kind nurses trying to distract me from my hell. A victim advocate offered to hold my hand. I let her. She looked to be about my age, with smooth pale skin and a nose ring, and I wondered aloud how she had gotten into this kind of thing. She explained that she was a volunteer. She was planning on heading to law school and the court experience she sometimes got in this role was useful. She wanted to work to prosecute the bad guys one day.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her my greatest crush was currently being considered a bad guy.
I explained to the nurses that I had sex after the incident, and that we didn’t use a condom. They asked if I was on birth control, and I told them no. They asked if I was concerned about getting pregnant, and I admitted I was. They gave me a Plan B pill, had me swallow it with instructions to try to keep it down for at least two hours. They gave me crackers to help. I wondered absently where I was in my cycle, if I was now killing a potential baby Taven and I may have created. I hated that I would never know, but I knew it was for the best to be safe.
Lynda called around to the best of the best local lawyers, and I impatiently waited to hear back from her while undergoing tests and examinations at the hospital with the sexual assault nurses. My phone would eventually ring, and I’d answer to hear her cursing that all the best lawyers were in court, and that we’d need to wait. Mr. Carlisle was on a flight on his way to us, and he’d be arriving soon. An hour later, Lynda called to say that a lawyer was able to make it to the station, and I, once again, was ordered not to say a thing other than to explain that I had been assaulted.
Taven was finally put in front of a judge that evening and was released. I was back at the station by that point, and Mr. Carlisle was waiting for us on the sidewalk. I was mere minutes away from falling apart, trying to keep it together and fighting my trembling lips the whole way back to my apartment.
Taven walked me to my door, and I stepped through the threshold and abruptly closed the door behind me with promises to call him tomorrow. I couldn’t stand the look of sympathy on his face, and the last thing I wanted was to have my breakdown in front of him.
Katja, my roommate, held my trembling body while I sobbed over the events of the past twenty-four hours, but as instructed by the Carlisles and the lawyer, my lips were to remain sealed throughout the investigation. Rumors spread fast, and we didn’t want the wrong narrative out there.
Eventually, I was told to explain what had happened, under the guidance of Taven’s lawyer. Explain that the person found bleeding in a back alleyway had been hurting me, and that Taven had acted in response.
But there was no proof. It was his word against mine. I was seen at the bar with him. Kissing him on the dance floor. Leaving the bar with him. Nothing could prove penetration by the guy. Our friend Felix confirmed that he had to pull Taven off of snake guy, but that he didn’t know why the men were fighting.
The best evidence we had with the whole thing was the bump on the back of my head from the guy slamming me into the wall, and a few bruises on my chest and arms and knees, all of which had been photographed with me standing in the hospital exam room raw and exposed.
Taven’s argument was self-defense, but because he was determined to have used “excessive force,” he was still charged. First offense, no weapon involved, so lower charges and a minor penalty of probation and fines. The guy sued, naturally. There was money to be had, and hospital bills to be paid. All in all, the lawyers kept saying that Taven was lucky.
The whole thing saddened me. And while I know he went too far, I also knew Taven’s heart was in the right place. How would his life have been impacted if that had been a felony charge? If he had been working toward some goals that would now be obliterated as a result? It disgusted me to think about.
And I hated more than anything that because of one wrong choice on my part, trusting someone I shouldn’t have to join me in getting a simple breath of fresh air, I had been sexually assaulted and dragged through the nightmare of having to share my story again and again, continually reliving it under questioning eyes. I became more numb each time. A repeated cycle of sharing details of the night. How short my dress was, what kind of underwear I had on that the guy was able to slip his fingers inside me. That part was the worst.
Fingers inside me.
How many fingers?
I don’t know, I didn’t count.
But that’s how it was.
Trauma isn’t just some big experience that happened. It’s the repetition of reliving it that’s traumatic too. It’s the wound on the mind left behind as a result. And when you’re sharing your story with ears that are looking for a completely different objective that has nothing to do with helping you heal, that wound gets picked at and examined until the original damage is now ten times worse.
All because I was made to rehearse with the lawyers, talk to the police, everyone—all to ensure that every detail was exact and told with consistency to help Taven’s case.
This is when my spiral of depression began. A slow and steady decline that had me becoming a sliver of a version of myself, locked within my original body.
Once everything was settled, I stopped seeing Taven. I just couldn’t do it. I ignored his calls and texts until they eventually ceased. Looking at or speaking with him reminded me of that night, of everything we had been through in the aftermath. I was too ashamed to talk to him when I realized I had used sleeping with him as a distraction to attempt to erase the previous events of that night.
Only, it didn’t. It only further fueled my shame, and in fact, because I hadn’t sought help in the first place, it made things worse.
How is it that when you’ve been put in the position of a victim, it’s your responsibility to ensure your next steps are done perfectly, no errors allowed? That it’s your responsibility to make all the “right” choices, when it was someone else that made one major wrong one? It infuriated me that my way of attempting to cope and survive in the aftermath of that night was now viewed with ridicule. It felt vicious and unfair.
My mom barely spoke of the whole thing once she found out. Lynda had urged me to call her—gave her “blessing” that I could tell her, and I shared this weight I had been carrying around, finally breaking down on the phone with my mom about a week after Taven’s arrest.
She told me not to tell my father, that this was between us. She assured me that I was strong and it would be okay. She came to visit me, and we laid in bed together that whole first day, just watching movies and eating junk food. Two women just doing the best they can. She told me she had been sexually assaulted before too, and that it gets better, little by little.
Her words comforted me, as surprising and simple as they were. I was starved for any kind of reassurances by that point.
After my mom left, I went into work mode.
And I stayed there. I spent the next couple years focused on my studies like it was the only thing in the world that existed. No more bars or drinks or guys, just work. An obsession with all things school and my part-time jobs.
I graduated with honors a full semester early.