Page 106 of Exactly What I Needed
“Tell me what happened,” she prompted and dragged a chair to the side of my hospital bed.
My gaze slid to the corner of the room where that hooded figure of death reappeared as she settled onto the brown cushion. And I offered him the little amount of feeling that was left in my veins. (22)
As a blissful, empty, and cold numbness settled over me, I loosed my lips and slowly relayed the events to the best of my ability—which wasn’t much since I was passed out for most of it.
Silence draped the room like a heavy, wet blanket that scratched at every open wound once I finished. A steady drum of distant voices floated into the room from the hallway, mixing with the steady beep of the monitor beside my bed.
And I felt nothing.
“Is there anything else we should know before I bring the nurses in for the rape kit?” The officer glanced up from her pad filled with the details I desperately never wanted to live again.
I stared at the blank cream wallpaper in the corner. In every nightmare, not once had I ever considered that this would be the one I was living. “Do I have to do one?” I croaked.
She shook her head and rested her hands in her lap. “No, but if he left behind any DNA—”
“He did,” I inserted quietly. Closing my eyes, I swallowed the bile rising in my throat.
“It’s your choice since we do have a decent amount of evidence already,” she softly added with a deep inhale.
I brought my gaze to hers as a random, new thought settled in my mind. “How long—If I had—If someone else—” I closed my mouth, unable to form the question. I wanted her gone. I just wanted to be left alone where nobody would touch me. Where nobody could hurt me.
“Would you like some water?” she offered, remaining patiently seated. I shook my head and took a deep breath for encouragement. No matter how much I’d had ripped away from me, I had to make sure the one person who had only ever helped me to fly remained unscathed.
“If I had consensual sex last night, oh and I guess this morning, and he…” I bit down on my bottom lip, ramming my eyelids shut. “I have an IUD and we’ve only been seeing… It’s just been him, so we didn’t use a condom, and he finished inside me. Will the rape kit…?” My voice trailed off as I tucked my face tighter into the pillow.
“Yes. Can you tell me who it was?”
I hated how invasive all of this felt. But I knew why they needed it. “Asher. Asher Stone. We—We—We had sex.” I cracked my eyelids open. “No one else, just him.”
She scribbled something more on her notepad.
“It was consensual,” I quickly added again, but whether that was more for me or for her, I wasn’t entirely sure. “At least with Asher it was.” A single wave of sickening pain ripped through my body, and I winced, tucking my cheek tighter into the pillow.
“All right, I’ll send the nurse in and go have a quick chat with him.” She rose from the chair and glanced at her partner, who had remained silent during the entire conversation. Her eyes darted back to mine as she grabbed the door handle. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
The walnut door swung open, and there he was. Asher still remained in the doorway, waiting.
I stared at him.
“Cosette,” Asher called out and collapsed against a cop who stood beside him.
“Oh, we’ll be in touch, but I think you should get an attorney to help with whatever fallout may come,” the policewoman added with a gentle sigh. “With Asher Stone being a public figure and Danny Vaughn having money, it can complicate things in a way you’d never expect,” she finished. I continued to study Asher.
“I’ll have my lawyer contact her,” Asher stated gruffly as a nurse in lavender scrubs and kind, blue eyes slipped into the room.
Another nurse spoke to him, but I heard nothing as the door shut him out once more. The world blurred again, and I slipped back into the cage in my mind. It was silent here. But the pain was gone. Nothing played within me anymore. Not a single note stirred behind the distant questions the nurse began asking me. Even the fear that had held me paralyzed seemed to have left when the Grim Reaper carried away the Cosette that Asher loved.
Chapter 36
Asher gently draped blankets around my body as I stared at the wall in his room—where I hadn’t found the strength or courage to move from in a couple days. He’d slept on the couch every night and brought three meals of fresh food into the room every day, but I couldn’t touch it. I wanted to wither away and feel nothing more.
It was as if he wasn’t really there and the world spun in a time capsule, drifting between reality and everything from that night. Danny’s black eyes haunted every waking moment, and the disgusting smile beneath that soulless gaze mocked me every time I closed my eyes.
The out-of-control spin reminded me that Sydney and Tera, two people I’d once considered my friends, had fed me to the wolf himself. They’d left me with him, where he took everything that he’d wanted without consent. But that really wasn’t the only time I’d been used.
No, nearly my entire life I’d been swept up in a cycle of what could someone take from me without repercussion. My parents took my childhood in order to get money, and they’d had the audacity to ask for more.Sydney had used me as a fucking maid her entire life. I was nothing more than some toy to play with, and then when I happened to get in the way of her plans, she’d discarded me to someone else who used me.
The only person who had never tried to take something from me was Asher. A tear slid hotly down my cheek, and I slid my gaze toward the man who stood in the doorway and was speaking to Kieron and Elysia.
