Chapter 28

I’d just hung up my jacket when the door opened and Tricia slipped in behind me. She didn’t bother with her coat, just grabbed me and gave me the tightest hug she could. “I’m so sorry I made you worry!” she said and then pulled back and punched me hard in the arm. “Don’t you EVER think I’m leaving you again!” she snapped.

That brought Lana and Beck out of the kitchen and a couple of heads poked out the doorway to see what the noise was before going back to their talk.

“What’s up?” Beck asked, looking back and forth between us.

“Matt called me earlier when I was at Cheryl’s and I wasn’t as affectionate as I normally am so he got it in his head that I was gonna leave him,” she told them.

“Is that what you’ve been getting panic attacks about today?” Lana asked.

I shrugged apologetically. “Things with Cheryl hit a lot of my triggers,” I admitted. “It sent me into sort of a spiral.” I looked at Tricia. “I’m sorry. Between Cheryl and Zoe messaging me on Skype, my mind’s been working overtime.”

“Let’s put it to a better use then,” Tricia said and took off her coat, hanging it up. “I have things to tell you and you’ll have plenty to be irritable about without inventing something to take up the slack.”

“That sounds promising,” I said with a little groan of dread.

She kicked off her boots and the four of us went downstairs to hear the news. When we were all settled, she started to tell us about her visit to Cheryl’s. “She’s totally rewritten everything that’s happened in her memory,” she said sitting down. “She kept talking about how much pressure she felt to have sex with you and how uncomfortable she was with it. She said she hadn’t wanted to on Friday, but felt like she had to if she wanted to stay.”

My face darkened more and more with each word and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I see,” I said when she paused.

“Yeah, she’s even rewritten what happened that night in her head, claiming that she hated every second of it and that you were hurting her.”

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying very hard to remember that Cheryl was a victim and that she was mentally ill at the moment. “Lana, Beck,” I said without opening my eyes. “I think you should make Alice aware that Cheryl is saying these things and revising events so they paint her in a more favorable light.”

“First thing in the morning,” Lana said.

“I don’t even know what to say to any of that,” Beck said and I nodded in total agreement.

“Yeah,” I said flatly. “She clearly needs a lot of therapy. My big worry is that she’s gonna come back to school and start trying to get other people to listen to her bullshit.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Tricia said. “She didn’t say anything about the party in September, right? Why would she talk about you like that. Deep down, some part of her knows that you didn’t hurt her and that she’s having flashbacks to what happened in September.”

I nodded. “Well, I hope that she at least decides to say nothing,” I said tiredly. I looked up at Tricia with some concern and asked, “How are YOU doing?” I asked seriously. “You’ve had a pretty rough day, listening to all that.”

She nodded. “It wasn’t so bad as all that. I know you didn’t do any of what she was talking about. It was hard to listen to her say them, but it’s because she’s not well, right? Once she starts talking to her new doctor, she’ll start to recover.”

“Hopefully,” I said. “Recovery isn’t always an easy road to travel. She could be years before she can face what happened that night and separate it from what happened here Friday in her head.”

“When she does recover, are you going to forgive her?” she asked.

“I’ve already forgiven her,” I said. “It’s just more harm done by Marlene and the Watermans. Hopefully when she recovers, she’ll be in good enough condition to accept what happened and move on.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Some recoveries are messier than others,” I said and pulled off my shirt. I pointed to the scar on my chest. “Relatively clean recovery,” I said. Then I pointed to my abdominal wound. “Pretty messy recovery,” I compared and then moved to my shoulder. “Long, difficult recovery with a chance that it won’t be the same as it was before.” I paused and put my shirt back on. “The same is true for emotional wounds. Some of them you recover from cleanly. My mother freaking out at me and hitting me healed clean. I don’t resent her or fear her or mistrust her. My anxiety that I’m going to lose the people I love? That’s an ongoing battle.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I get that. Especially after what happened with Cheryl,” she allowed gently. “You’re not gonna lose me though. I was just trying not to set her off.”

I nodded. “I know that now,” I assured her. “I’ll be prepared for the next time I call and you have to play it cool.”

“Good. Now that we’re over that, tell me about those red marks on your chest and the bruises on your neck,” she smirked.

“Last night was ... EXACTLY what I needed to get Cheryl out of my head,” I admitted. “Gina reacted NOTHING like that. She’d be here now, but she’s working on a surprise for me that involves the new sewing machines we picked up today and she’s packing. Her parents amazingly enough, agreed to let her move in here.”

“I’m so glad she was really ready,” Tricia said and came to sit on my lap so she could get a better look at my neck. “She’s a biter, huh? I guess you’ll be keeping her away from your super-soldier?”

“Super-soldier?” I laughed. “Really?”

“Hey, I can make Captain America references too,” she said defensively.

“It’s a good reference, but Captain America’s sidekick is Bucky.”

“That’s descriptive,” she admitted. “But Super-Soldier makes it sound special in a way that Bucky isn’t gonna inspire.”

“Fair enough. You named it. She was very careful about teeth down there though,” I told her. “He’s a little sore from overuse, but he’ll recover.”

“Why don’t your show her your back?” Lana suggested playfully.

“What happened to your back?” Tricia asked, getting up and pulling at my shirt. “Let me see.”

I stood up and took it off again, turning so she could see the scratches. “I haven’t seen them, but I think they look worse than they are,” I told her. “They don’t really hurt.”

“She clawed the shit out of you,” Tricia said, tracing one of the scratches from the back of my neck diagonally down to my side.

“Well, I was a little distracted at the time,” I admitted. “We were disobeying doctor’s orders. I’m supposed to avoid girl on top sex right now.”

“You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?” she spun me around and started prodding my stomach gently.

“There wasn’t even any discomfort,” I confirmed to her. “As a matter of fact, I’m doing incredibly well today. After all the walking I did yesterday, I expected my leg to be bothering me, but I ran with Dawn today and it felt good. I’m fine. I was out running when you called back.”

She looked at me critically. “So your stomach feels good and your leg feels fine. What about your shoulder?” she asked, touching it gingerly.

“It doesn’t feel bad,” I told her. “I haven’t been pushing it the last few days, but I did my regular exercises today and they felt good, even a little light.”

“You think this means you’re getting better?” she asked hopefully.

“I think I’m pretty much recovered except for the shoulder,” I told her. “I hope that’s well on the way to recovered too.”

“Ask Diego tomorrow when you’re at practice,” she said lightly. “Until then, what are your plans for this evening?”

“Spend time with you three,” I said. “I have some more news about today though.” I kissed her sweetly and put my shirt back on, which made her pout. She’d been having fun tracing her fingers over my body.

I sat down and pulled her into my lap. She curled up with me and kissed me before wriggling her nose. “You need a bath,” she said critically. “You HAVE been running today.”

“I have. It feels good to be able to do something again,” I said pleasantly. “That’s not what I wanted to tell you about today though.” I kissed her again and started telling them about introducing Gina to Mark and Char and them hiring her to help out around the shop three days a week.

“The same people that made our costumes?” she asked, surprised. I nodded and she laughed triumphantly. “We’ll finally find out what you have planned for a costume this year! Emma’s had us all on the lookout.”

I shrugged. “Mark’s doing most of the design work. She’ll be working with Char. By the time she gets to see it, you’ll have pried enough hints out of me to figure it out. She won’t see it for months.”

She made a frustrated sound and punched me in the arm again. “Why are you keeping it a secret?” she demanded.

“Because it’s ambitious as Hell,” I admitted. “I’m actually inventing tech to make it work. More like I’m heavily modifying existing tech, but it amounts to the same thing. If it doesn’t work, I’ll have to go to Plan B so I’ll have something to wear. It’s also a lot of fun. I had no idea how much Emma gets into it when there’s a surprise to be had. When I was going to do something big for Christmas, she freaked out about not knowing and it was the same when I had her pack the ring before she got on the plane.”

She blinked at me. “So you’re doing this because she goes nuts over surprises?” Tricia gaped at me.

I grinned. “It’ll keep her entertained all year long,” I said with a chuckle.

“That’s just MEAN!” she complained.

“Not really,” I said. “Sooner or later, I’ll give her a little hint and then another one and she’ll gather the breadcrumbs and piece it all together. Think of it like a long-term scavenger hunt. She’ll be picking away at the details for months and when she uncovers my surprise, she’ll be thrilled with herself for figuring it out.”

“So you made a big deal out of this secret costume just to entertain her?!!?”

I nodded and grinned. “THAT part is secret though. If she knew I was doing it on purpose, it would spoil the game.”

“And what are you gonna do to entertain me?” she asked with a smirk.

“I think it starts with a shower,” I said lightly. “Possibly followed by many hours of curling up and holding you close.”

“No rough, back-clawing sex?” she asked, disappointed.

“Not tonight,” I told her reluctantly. “I’m a little sore from last night’s marathon. Gina and I both needed to be wild last night. Maybe that’ll be normal with her, but I know we were both out of control last night.”

“It was kind of hot watching you fuck her ass while you were biting her neck,” Beck said. “I’m gonna want you to do something like that for me when the time comes.”

“He put it in her butt?” Tricia asked her, wiggling her ass in my lap a little.

“Oh yeah!” Beck said. “They fucked like it was the only thing keeping them alive.”

I shrugged. “I tried to tell her that what happened to her in September wasn’t about sex, it was about violence, so I still considered her a virgin until we made love. She said it was the only virginity that she had left to give me, so I don’t think I did a good job of explaining how I felt.”

Tricia patted my cheek and kissed me again. “You’re pretty close to the perfect guy,” she told me. “Just one or two little tweaks and you’ll be flawless. You told her just the right thing.”

Lana nodded in agreement. “Gina and I talk about everything,” she told me. “You don’t know how much that meant to her. She wanted to believe it with all her heart.”

“She should,” I said simply. “I believe it, so she should too. It’s like I said, her virginity isn’t about when or how her hymen broke. A lot of girls break theirs doing sports. That doesn’t mean they lost their virginity to gymnastics mats or bicycle seats or saddles. Virginity is about the first time they accept a lover and learn to give and receive pleasure.”