Page 54 of The Hacker
“We’ll see.” She locked her gaze on the sparkling wavelets in the pool. “Anyway, they dragged me behind a dumpster at the construction site. I tried to fight them but there were three of them.” Her vision started to gray out as she remembered the feeling of being utterly helpless. She had vowed never to feel that way again.
“Shit!” Leland hissed. His grasp had gone tight again. It anchored her and somehow pulled her out of the threatening panic attack.
“They decided that they wanted me naked. Since they were drunk, it took them a while to get all my clothes off. Jeans don’t rip easily.” She coughed as the smell of their vodka-laden breath seemed to fill her nostrils again. “That’s what saved me, because a campus security guard heard all the noise they were making as they yelled directions at each other. So the first one had just gotten on top of me when the guard found us.”
She panted a couple of times to stave off the wave of nausea. She’d fought them with everything she had in her, but one had held her arms while the other wrenched her ankles apart so that his buddy could settle between her open thighs. The nurse who’d treated her afterward had picked pieces of gravel and even a small nail out of her back from where she’d been pushed into the ground by his stifling weight. Thank God, he’d decided to grope her breasts before he raped her. The guard had pulled him off her just in time.
“Dawn!” Leland dropped his forehead onto their clasped hands. “I can’t imagine ...” His voice held so much anguish that she almost wished she hadn’t started this.
“It’s okay.” She forced her fingers open from her convulsive grip on the towel to reach over and stroke his hair. “You’ve helped me heal.”
He lifted his head enough to look at her. “I hate that I made you ... feel that way again when we were together.”
“Donottake that on yourself. I didn’t tell you. Icouldn’ttell you. Not right away.”
“I understand that one hundred percent, but I ...” She could hear the pain she was causing him.
“No guilt! You’ve been good for me.” She waved toward the pool. “That was good for me.”
He nodded although she could see that he was still beating himself up. “I hope to God they went to jail.”
This part was almost as hard as the attack. “No. They got suspended for the rest of the semester.”
“What the hell?! They attacked you! They tried to ...” He looked away, as though he couldn’t finish the thought.
“For obvious reasons, the university administration didn’t want it made public. They pressured me not to file charges. They had the nerve to say that since I wasn’t actually raped, it wasn’t that bad.” Tears burned in her eyes. Angry tears because the administrators should have protected her, not her scumbag attackers. Sad tears because she had been so young and naive. “I didn’t want to tell my parents because I knew they’d go ballistic. I thought I wanted to stay at the university so I figured I should go along with the plan. I kept my mouth shut and tried to pretend it hadn’t happened.”
Leland let out a string of curses.
“Yeah, that was stupid on my part. They offered me counseling but I believed them when they said without the actual rape, it wasn’t so terrible. So I didn’t go.”
Leland groaned. “And I’m guessing that you didn’t tell your parents.”
“I didn’t want to upset them. My father would have ...” She shrugged. “I thought I was okay.”
“But you weren’t.”
“Not even close. I couldn’t walk anywhere unless I had someone with me. My roommates got pretty sick of me always tagging along with them. So I missed classes. I couldn’t go to the library. My grades began to deteriorate. Finally, I gave up and withdrew. I think the administrators heaved a sigh of relief.” She shook her head to stop the memories. “I moved back here and got a job at the gym.”
“And you became an expert at self-defense because that’s how strong you are. If I’d known ...” He shook his head before he lifted her hand to his lips and brushed on a kiss so light and tender it made her want to cry. “Thank you for your courage in sharing this with me. I’m humbled.”
“You deserved to know.”
“May I hug you?”
Her gut twisted that he would feel he had to ask her permission. She scrambled off the lounge, her towel falling away, and curled herself onto his lap.
He kissed the top of her head and said her name over and over again as he held her ever so gently. Then he reached down to snag her towel and drape it over her shoulders and back. That broke her and she felt hot, salty tears roll down her cheeks.
“I’d tell you not to cry but I think you deserve the privilege,” he said, his arms cocooning her. “Cry as long as you need to.”
“I hate it. It makes me feel weak.”
His splayed fingers pressed against her back. “A weak woman wouldn’t have turned a terrible experience into a mission to help other women be strong.”
She lifted her head and swiped at the tear streaks. “It was Ramón who got me into self-defense. He gave me the gym space to teach my classes for free. Then he sponsored me for certification as a personal trainer.” She locked her gaze with Leland’s. “He pulled me out of my paranoia and allowed me to feel safe enough to go out in the world again. That’s why I can’t believe he’s doing something illegal at the gym. I can’t reconcile the compassion with the criminal.”
He let out a long breath. “I’m afraid I have bad news about that. But maybe now is not the time to discuss it.”
