Page 6 of A Step Too Close
“I don’t think you are a liar, Arden.”
“You don’t even know what happened,” I say with a snide tone.
“I don’t need to, sweetheart. I recognize the pain on your face right now. I see how the memories are flashing through your eyes, and the reel never stops rolling,” he says, taking my hands into his so I will stop picking at my nails. “Do you want to explain?”
“Yes,” I say tearfully, making myself look up at him.
“Start slow,” he says. “Keep your eyes on me so you can’t get lost in the memories.”
“Okay,” I say. “I was nineteen, and I had my own apartment. I broke up with my boyfriend a few days prior because his temper was scaring me, and he threw me against a wall when we got into a fight. Caleb accepted it and left, so I didn’t think anything of it… Macie and I had a fake ID, so we had gone out with some friends. The bar was only a few blocks from my apartment, so I walked home. I was tipsy, but not shit-faced drunk… I was so oblivious that I didn’t even know someone was following me. I never imagined that anything bad could happen, so I didn’t pay attention. When I got to my door, I heard movement behind me. I opened the door only to turn around and get shoved backward into my apartment by a man in a ski mask.”
The emotions are choking me out, so he stops me for a moment by hugging me. “Breathe, Arden. You are safe,” he encourages softly. When I relax, we pull apart and he resumes holding my hands to prevent me from pulling my nails off.
“I froze for a second and he came in and locked the door… I finally moved and I tried to crawl away, but… he grabbed me up off the floor and took me straight to my bedroom. He knew exactly where it was. He used his belt to tie my arms to the headboard before finding a scarf to cover my eyes and duct tape over my mouth,” I explain. “He wasn’t violent in the sense that he caused injury. I remember hearing the condom wrappers and the lube… He raped me over and over again. If it wasn’t him fucking me, he was using toys on me… My own toys… He knew exactly where to find them… He just… kept me on that bed. He’d let me up to take me to the bathroom every few hours. Outsideof water, he offered me nothing else… I spent three days being raped and forced to come, and I would be willing to bet my life that it was Caleb… He drugged me at some point because I woke up early Tuesday morning and he was gone. He left absolutely nothing behind… I called the police and had the rape exam done. Nothing came back. It didn’t prove rape, only that I maybe had rough sex at most. The detectives told me that sometimes we do things we regret, and this should be a lesson on why I shouldn’t be drinking.”
“That’s a load of bullshit,” he frowns.
“I never told anyone because I didn’t have proof. It was my word against no evidence. I never saw his face and he never spoke, but I knew. I knew it was him. Caleb was the first person I ever had sex with. He was my first real boyfriend… I was going to marry him, or so I thought. His temper got worse and worse, until I no longer recognized him. Macie is the only person I’ve ever told, and she only knows because she cornered me and made me tell her. She is like a bloodhound when it comes to noticing if someone is upset. She promised me she wouldn’t say anything until I was ready… So, I moved back in with my parents. I don’t date, but I do sleep with people. I coped by being a giant whore, so maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to do.”
“It’s normal,” he says. “Hypersexuality after a rape is extremely common. For some, it can be an impulse to seek those situations out to try to find some sort of control. It may be something you don’t actually want to do, but you do it as a way of being in charge of what happens to your body.”
“Is it normal to get men to hold me down and fuck me while I fight them? Because I do that too,” I say bluntly.
“Yes, Arden,” he smiles. “It’s called consensual non-consent, and it is a kink shared among a large number of sexual assault survivors. It’s risky to do it with someone you don’t fully trust, but it’s still healthy and normal. It doesn’t mean you wanted those awful things to happen to you, it just means that you want to be able to have a say in what happens to your body. You have a safe word and a way out, but you get to explore. There is no correct way to respond to trauma, Arden. I drank like a fish and fucked anything that had a pussy attached to it when Charlotte and Melody were murdered. Was it healthy for me to do that? No, but it is a normal reaction to trauma.”
“How long have you been sober?” I ask.
“Seven months,” he says.
“You… Did you stop drinking when I bugged the shit out of you until you agreed to let me come here?”
“I did,” he says. “I kept saying no because I was afraid that my drinking would affect my work and ruin you. I was also afraid of letting you get close and me liking you.”
“Do you regret taking me on?”
“No,” he says. “I decided that instead of telling you no because I drank so much, that I would tell you yes and just stop drinking. I was grumpy because I was going through withdrawals afterdrinking heavily for so long. I focused on helping you train and working cases. I purged my house of everything, and I decided that I wanted to get back to the reason I was doing this.”
“Why did you start?”
“Because if investigators had done their jobs to begin with, they would have found the evidence of Charlotte being stalked by a man who had a very long history of domestic abuse, aggravated stalking, and being involved in the suspicious deaths of his ex-girlfriends. I would still have my wife and daughter, and he’d be in jail,” Levi explains.
“I wanted to do this because I wanted to help people when the cops were too biased to give a shit,” I say. “I started researching and found that the vast majority of rapists will never see the inside of a jail cell for their crimes. That didn’t sit right with me, so I decided to try and make a difference.”
“I like that,” he smiles. “Now… What exactly triggered you?”
“I want to believe that you want me for me and not for how you can use me,” I say. “It’s hard for me to trust, but I am so fucking drawn to you that it’s conflicting. I feel as though I should run for the hills, but I don’t want to. I am completely willing to let you hurt me just so I can be near you, and that scares the shit out of me.”
“And when I threw the phone, it reminded you of Caleb,” he says, and I nod. “I’m sorry my temper scared you, Arden. I will do whatever I need to prove to you that I will never hurtyou. I understand the paranoia because it feels like letting you in is setting myself up to lose you. I am finding with you that avoidance is not healing me or protecting me. It’s making me a prisoner of my own mind and that is no way to live. Charlotte would not want that for me.”
“What was she like?” I ask.
“She was a lot like you,” he remarks with a chuckle. “She was a giant brat, but she was so sweet and kindhearted.”
“And Melody’s favorite color was yellow,” I say. “Why?”
“She always told me that yellow reminded her of happiness and her mother and I made her the happiest,” he says. “She was… so sweet and so smart.”
“I’m sorry you lost them,” I say. “No one should ever have to experience that. The fact you had to see it…”
