Anxious Love (Love Sick #1) (22 page)

Robert turned me around and knocked my head into the wall. I saw a bright light flash and my head hurt. He pushed me closer to where his frat brother was raping Dana. Tears ran down her face, but he had his hand over her mouth as he pounded into her.

It broke my heart to watch her. I tried to turn away.

"No. It's just about to get good." He shoved my head into the wall. The white light flashed brighter. I felt something thick and warm running down my temple. The pain grew worse as my eyes struggled to focus on something... anything.

He removed his hand from her mouth, and Dana tried to scream, but no words came out. The music was so loud, and it was dark.

I reached out and touched her arm, but the guy turned her around and bent her over a chair. I tried to turn and push Robert off me. I had to save my friend.

I pushed back and gasped when Robert's hand found its way under my dress. He groped me inside my panties, running his fingers inside me and palming my core.

"God, you're so wet. See, I knew you wanted me."

I tried to scream, but nothing came out. My head hurt, and my body ached, and my heart was beating erratically.

My body went limp, and the world around me grew fuzzy and quiet.

I felt myself falling, and I waited for the hard thud, actually welcomed the pain that would come when my body hit the ground, but it never did.

I heard a muffled argument around me and my insides burned where Robert touched me.

I had the sensation of being lifted and my body floating through the crowd. Before the world went completely dark, I caught one more glimpse of Dana's hands trying to fight as another guy, I didn't recognize, pushed himself into her.

"The next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital."

"Geez, Leah." He'd dropped my hand well before the end of the story. Although the story didn't end there.

I stood up and went to the kitchen. I needed a bit of distance to continue. While Ryan was taking the news as well as could be expected, it wasn't what I expected, if that made sense.

I knew I couldn't create someone’s reactions; as much as I wanted to think he would show me love and compassion, his expression showed disgust and pity. I leaned on the counter.

"My parents and Michael arrived a few hours later. I had been out of it for over twelve hours. No one was sure what happened to me because I was left in the waiting room. I didn't know who brought me to the hospital until the hospital security showed me the photo of David carrying me in and dropping me off. When the police questioned him, he said he found me passed out on the front porch of the fraternity house and didn't want to get his fraternity in trouble because of the party, so he brought me to the hospital and took off.”

"They look into it further?"

"Not at first, but the next day, my roommate texted me. I was surprised; it had been three days since I was left at the hospital, and she hadn't called or visited. She said she needed to see me but asked me to text her when I was alone. I asked her what happened that night, but she didn't answer.

"When she walked in, I knew something bad had happened to her. She was such a beautiful girl." I smiled thinking about my friend when we meet. "She was from Alabama and a true Southern Belle, with the accent and everything. When she walked in, I stared at her. She hadn't slept or showered in three days. Her hair was pulled up and a mess. She wore baggy jeans and a sweatshirt and she keep her hands in the sweatshirt pocket. Her eyes darted around. I asked her to sit down on the bed next to me. She stared back.

"You okay?" she asked.

I nodded. I was afraid to ask her the same questions. Clearly, she wasn't.

"What happened to you?" she asked.

"I don't know. I don't remember anything before two nights ago. The last thing I remember was the two of us heading to the frat house and then it's all blank."

Tears sprang to her eyes and she backed up. As soon as she hit the wall, she shuddered and turned around as if someone was behind her. She turned back to me.

"You don't remember?" she asked.

"Dana, what happened to you?"

She hugged herself, the tears streaming down her cheeks. I stood up and walked over to her. I pulled her into a hug.

She relaxed into my body, but then pushed me away. "You have to remember."

"What?"

"You have to. They raped me. All of them. Please," she pleaded. "Please tell me you remember."

"Oh, my God. Dana. Who?" I reached for her sleeve and pulled her over to the bed. "Who raped you?"

"Robert?" She said it like a question. I searched her face. "Malcolm and Jacob."

"No," I said, but not as a denial. It was a statement of astonishment.

"You were there. You watched. They made you watch."

It was my turn to recoil. I stood up and backed away from her. No way had I witnessed something like that and not remembered.

I shook my head, and she reached out for me. She grabbed the front of my hospital gown. I tried to push her away, but she was taller and stronger and pissed off.

"You have to remember. If you don't, they are going to get away with it."

"No, I don't remember. I'm sorry."

"They were going to do the same to you."

I pushed her away with all my might. By that time, the nurse had heard the argument and came running into my room.

"Leah, are you okay?"

"Please, you have to remember."

"Young lady, I think you need to leave," the nurse said.

My roommate broke down in tears. She stared at me as she walked out holding herself. When she was gone, the nurse turned to me. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," I whispered as I crawled back into bed. Whether what she said was true or not, something had happened to her, and I didn't feel right about her leaving. "Can you go make sure she is okay? I think she needs help."

"Sure." The nurse headed out the door. "Try and get some sleep."

Ryan stood up and leaned across the island that separates the kitchen from the dining as if he wanted to be close to me, but still give me my space. I lean over from the other side, not touching, but close enough to feel his energy

"That night, I had a nightmare about what she said. It was so vivid, the detail. I felt what she would have gone through. When I woke up, I ran to the bathroom and threw up to the point of dry heaving. I couldn't stop shaking. When my parents came in, later that morning, I knew something was wrong. They told me Dana had taken some pills and killed herself in our dorm room.

Ryan reached out and whipped a tear off my face. I bit my lip, stood up and whipped my face with the back of my hand.

"My dad started asking me if she was depressed or if something had happened to her, but I couldn't answer him. I couldn't speak or scream or cry. I shook all over and couldn't breathe. The nurse called for help, and people keep rushing in and out." I shivered as the memory of that day came back. "When I woke up the next time, I remembered everything. It came flooding into my brain like a time-lapsed video on repeat. I laid there in the dark, the images of those guys doing that to her.

I look away from Ryan. He had tears in his eyes and I was close to losing it. He came to my side of the counter and pulled me into his arms. My tears returned in earnest. He kissed my forehead and rubbed my back.

"I relived it, remembering the horrible things he’d said. The things he did to me, the things he and his friends did to Dana. It was my fault she died. I could have helped her. I could have saved her. I failed."

"Oh, Leah." Ryan held me tight. I clung to him. I had told the story several times and it hurt as if it happened yesterday. When I regain some control, I stepped back.

"A couple of days later, my parents drove me back home and checked me into a hospital in Dallas."

"That's when you went into the hospital?" Ryan asked, urging me to continue.

"Yeah, my doctor diagnosed me with general anxiety disorder, and for me, it manifests itself in panic attacks, blackouts and a form of agoraphobia." I shook my head. "A lot of fancy words to say I have trouble dealing with the outside world."

"That's why you are a night owl,” Ryan said with a nod. It was like my little quirks all made a lot more sense to him now.

It made me smile.

"I found a sensible workaround for my disorder living here. I could still go to a restaurant but at four am and as long as I sat near an open door or window. As long as I had an escape route." I giggled, and it made Ryan smile, too for the first time. "I could wander the city at night and during the day avoid the crowds. During Mardi Gras and other busy times, or if it got to be too much, I went to the lake house. It was all working out fine... until I met you."

Ryan returned to the table. I sat next to him. I reached out and touched his arms, ran my fingers down his forearms. He didn't pull away. He took the information better than I thought. His face showed little emotion.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

"The guy you were with ..."

"Michael."

"Yeah, what did he think about all this?"

"He didn't believe me. Robert had already told him some story about how I agreed to participate in an orgy with him and his brothers." I shook the thought out of my head. It made my face hot thinking about how fast Michael dismissed me.

Ryan ran his hands over his face and through his hair. He looked out towards the balcony. "How ..." His voice trailed off. He shook it off and started again. "Over the last three years you've been dealing with this, how are you doing that?"

I didn't mean to laugh, but I had asked myself the same questions. I always came up with the same answer. I had too.

"Medication helps, when I'm doing it right." I squeezed his arm. "My therapist is amazing. It's one of the reasons I moved to New Orleans. He was a visiting resident at the hospital I was in and when he left, I followed him."

Ryan narrowed his eyes.

"I know it sounds weird, but people move for all sorts of reasons, a quality psychiatrist is hard to find."

Thank God, Ryan smiled. I missed that smile.

"Besides, Dr. Brady helped me find my passion again."

"Writing?"

"Yeah, he had me write my story. I was an English major and I remembered from my creative writing class the elements of a good story. I went through my notes and the professor had us create a beat sheet of popular stories. I followed it and created a fictitious version of the events leading up to the rape and ending with Dana's suicide. It was therapeutic to write it like that, with some distance between what happened and the words on the page.

"You still have it?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I actually got it published. Under another name, different from the Kinsey Cane pen name you know about."

Ryan stared with his mouth open.

"Dr. Brady had some contacts in publishing and he sent them my manuscripts and they made me an offer a week later."

"Wow," Ryan said with his hand over his mouth. "That's scary."

"Tell me about it. It happened really fast. I panicked, but then we found an agent through a friend of my families. I meet with her through FaceTime and explained my situation and she took over from there. They published it six months later."

We sat in silence for a long moment. Ryan seemed to have questions, but he didn't ask them. I needed to know what he was thinking.

"What do you want to ask me?"

"What happened to the guys?"

"Nothing."

Ryan stood up fast and turned his back to me. He turned back around and held his hands up.

"Doesn't it bother you that nothing happened to the guys who did this to you?"

I stood up.

"Yeah, it does bother me. The police did an investigation. They had no evidence and no witnesses. They said my testimony would be unreliable because of the brain injury I sustained during
the incident
."

"
The incident
that never happened?" Ryan squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and sat back down.

I nodded and sat down, too.

"Something did come out of the investigation. Robert's father, who is a state senator in California, came to visit me in Texas a few weeks after it happened. He basically offered me three million dollars to keep quiet. It was his son's trust fund. He was cutting him off. Tired of his son ruining his chances of becoming president one day."

Ryan scoffed, but then he looked around at my place. I knew what he was thinking.

"I told him about the book. I even let him read it. I told him if he promises not to block the publication, I would drop any claim now and in the future against his son and take the three million.

"He agreed and paid the money."

"And that's how you live like this?"

"No." I shook my head. "I live like this because my novel was good. I had a unique story and am a talented writer, and my agent is a badass who sold it to the highest bidder."