Never Have I Ever (47 page)

Upstairs contained a den. Another sofa and slightly smaller television along with bookshelves galore dotted the space. A guest bath connected two guest rooms on either side of the den. Charlie led me in and began running warm water while I pulled off my shirt with a wince and a low curse below my breath.

When I went to toss the shirt onto the sink I finally got a good look at myself in the mirror. I looked about as bad as I felt. My hair was so tangled I thought for sure there would be no taming it and I might have to cut it as short as Charlie’s to fix it. More bruises darkened my throat and jaw. My lip was swollen and busted where Ethan had slapped me. Sweat and blood and—
shit
—even semen clung to my face. It mixed with the grime of being abandoned at the mouth of the desert to peg me as a vagabond more than a successful physicist.

Charlie left the bathroom for a minute while I gave myself the once-over. She returned with a sad smile which told me I’d thank her later for the small digital camera in her hand. I only acknowledged her with a subtle nod as I crossed my arms over my chest to allow her to snap the first photo.

One after another, she let the camera do the talking while she documented my condition. I knew it had to be done; the humiliation of it just began to take its toll.

She let me look at the photos while I soaked in the peaceful warmth of the tub. I only really took the time to study the wounds inflicted by the whip. These were not the sexy marks of a lover. They were open welts stretching in every direction across the canvas of my skin reminiscent in some places of hamburger meat. Ethan did exactly what he sought out to do: he hurt me irreversibly. Though the bleeding had stopped for the most part some time ago, I realized stitches were a necessity for several of the larger gashes lest the wounds reopen. One of the more prominent of them crossed from the top of my right shoulder blade down to my left hip. Another reddened the length of my spine.

I dropped the camera over the side of the bathtub when I finished scrolling through the photos on the camera. It clattered to the tile where Charlie was kneeling while a renewed round of quiet sobs rolled through me. I curled my arms around my knees as I pulled them to my chest. How could this have happened? How did I ever find myself in that situation? I never asked for this. Or, maybe Ethan was right; maybe I had been asking for it all along. I never did listen to him. I was so stubborn I thought I could try to change his mind. It never occurred to me to stop trying.

Blessed Charlie; she tried with such kindness to keep me from slipping further into those thoughts.

“The red’s fading,” she said as she ran a washcloth over my right forearm.

I tilted my head towards her and furrowed my brow in confusion. She couldn’t have been talking about a part of my body. None of this would fade anytime soon.

“In your hair, I mean.
The dye.”
She hooked some of it between her fingers and held it up to show me. “It’s fading. I bet it looked lovely when you first colored it. I like the strawberry of your natural hair color and the contrast of the dark red. If you want I can dye it for you again later.”

“Maybe… not convinced red’s my best color.”

She caught the off-brand of gallows humor and smiled. “Purple then.
Or blue.”

I sniffled out a terse chuckle. “How about a color my body hasn’t already been forcibly dyed today?”

After theatrically looking me over, she tapped her chin with her index finger and nodded resolutely. “That leaves shock white or clown orange.”

“I take it back, red is still a good color,” I laughed. It hurt to even do that.

An hour—and about twenty gallons of water too much—later most of the grime had been scrubbed clean. The soap stung, but she took care not to put too much pressure on the wounds when she cleaned them.

Miracle of miracles, my hair wasn’t as trashed as I expected. With the liberal application of conditioner the majority of the strands untangled themselves. Charlie braided it over one side of my shoulders to prevent it from accidentally brushing against my back and causing me undue pain. She earned even more points in the Savior column when she presented me with a pair of pajamas she owned. There was little special about them save that the shirt was a halter top style with a very low cut back. The overall pink hue of them left little to be desired, but I wasn’t about to turn them down. Both the pants and shirt were an acceptable one-size-fits-all otherwise I would have been screwed. I wasn’t a big girl; there was just no way I’d fit my happy size-eight ass into her size fours.

Howard’s persistence about me seeing a doctor extended so far as to somehow convince one to make a house call. Charlie had just shown me into one of the guest bedrooms upstairs when there was a light rap on the cracked door, followed by Howard entering with a man several years younger than he. The man appeared to be the penultimate result of America’s melting pot. I couldn’t quite pin down his race. He was clean shaven with short brown hair and a rather unassuming face.

“Piper, this is Doctor Andrew Price. He’s a friend, and he’s here to help.”

I shrank back on the bed. ‘Friend’ usually meant something pretty specific to the people I’d been hanging around with recently.

“Another Dom?”

“No, not at all,” Dr. Price assured me. “My wife’s a Domme in a local fetish circle. I’ve never been interested in the lifestyle. I’ve been on-hand to treat one or two accidents at the club, though, so I have first-hand experience with similar situations.”

“Oh,” I said. That about summed up my feelings on that particular subject.

Dr. Price dared to come a little closer. “May I have a look?”

For some reason I glanced to Charlie for an affirmative. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the man; it was that I never saw him before in my life and thus wanted nothing to do with him. Charlie helping me bathe was one thing. She was a woman. An unspoken understanding grew between us the moment I walked through the door. Any man’s touch under any circumstances right that second stirred the bile up a little.

“It’s okay,” she said. “He’s good at what he does.”

Grudgingly, I turned my back to the door to give him a good view of the work he was in for. He set a bag down beside me and sat himself down behind me to examine the wounds. He lied well, telling me things didn’t look quite as bad as we thought. The gaping holes and throbbing pain in my back begged to differ, but I let him lie to me. I didn’t possess the strength to argue with the person who was holding a series of very sharp instruments and stitching me up.

The worst of it came from the two whip marks I assumed would be pretty bad to begin with. After administering antibiotics and a numbing agent to dull the areas, Dr. Price painstakingly sewed an untold number of sutures into my skin. Butterfly stitches were used where the invasive ones weren’t required.

As for the rest of me; well, with the exception of a sprained left wrist the majority of my injuries were mercifully superficial. Abrasions, cuts, sore muscles, and a destroyed sense of self-worth was what I’d been left with. Howard and Dr. Price both sought to plant the seed of a hospital visit sometime soon to run a Rape Kit; a certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner would be required for that particular theme park ride. Unfortunately for me I’d scrubbed off a good chunk of the evidence left behind by the little demons Ethan threw me to. Besides, it wasn’t them I wanted to bring to justice as much as it was him.

While Dr. Price finished explaining the prescriptions he was giving me—mostly more antibiotics and Vicodin for the pain—Howard stepped into the den to take a phone call. Dr. Price left me with a sample pack of each prescription and warned me to eat before I took anything more. He also provided a morning after pill, the presence and prospective need of which brought me close to hurling. I was on birth control, but skipped the day considering Ethan kept me locked up. Better safe than sorry.

“Thank you,” I told him in a rather sheepish voice. Acting sheepish was new to me. I wondered if Ethan had taken my confidence from me as well.

“Try not to over-extend your back or shoulders otherwise the sutures will rip. I’m a phone call away if you need anything else,” Dr. Price said in parting. He let Howard wrap up his own phone call, only stopping long enough to give the man a firm handshake and a pat on the shoulder before retreating down the stairs and out the front door.

Howard sighed and pocketed his phone as he came into the bedroom. I would have been surprised if he was half as calm as he wanted me to believe judging by that sigh. “That was Noah. He’s on his way from the airport now. Storms delayed his layover in Hawaii.”

My voice pitched, “He’s coming here?”

“Post haste.”

“He can’t—I mean—I don’t want him to see me like this. I don’t want him to see me
at all
. I don’t think I can face him yet.”

“I won’t turn him away. At the same time I won’t force you to see anyone you don’t want to.” He then nodded to Charlie. “Charlotte can stay with you while I explain the situation to Noah. Are you hungry?”

I shook my head. Breathing was difficult enough. Food was not high on my list of priorities. “Not particularly.”

“Start thinking about it, all right? Vicodin is not a friendly drug on an empty stomach.”

Neither was the prospect of seeing Noah. Howard must have been psychic. Either that or he was just damned good at reading people. Or it was written all over my face somewhere behind the mask of awful. As I tucked my legs up onto the bed and stared out the window, he sat at the foot of it.

“Hey, look at me,” he directed softly.

I did.

“Scars are the proof you’re stronger than what tried to hurt you, duckling. Don’t be ashamed of them.”

I could have done without the platitudes. At least he was trying. In situations like this it really did boil down to the thoughts counting more than anything. I looked down and gave a bit of a sarcastic snort.
“Yeah.
Sure.”

“I also strongly encourage you to think about bringing Ethan up on charges. Get him out of your life.”

There was a thought. The likelihood of winning against him, though, that was the problem. Even with the support definitely at my back, Ethan always seemed three steps ahead of me. I was certain he’d have contingency plan after contingency plan in place to assure my failure. It began to appear the only course of action remaining was to pack up and leave the Los Angeles area quick as I could.

I
laid
down on my side above the quilt, the only semi-comfortable position I found. My head sunk into the fluff of the cool pillows. “I don’t want to think about anything right now,” I muttered into a pillowcase. “I just want to go home… back to New York.”

Howard left me to rest with Charlie at my bedside. She sat Indian style in an armchair by the window with a laptop, finishing up some files for their dance studio while I drifted on the cusp of sleep. I must say it was pleasant to have my own little guardian angel beside me.

I started to piece together a plan to apply at any observatory or lab that would take me back east just to cleanse myself of the torrid nature of the west coast.
Caltech or no Caltech.
Mount Wilson or no Mount Wilson.
Noah or no Noah.

I only might have gone insane without him in my life, but I’d
absolutely
go insane waiting for the other shoe to drop if I stayed. Noah’s whole world was here in California. I’d never ask him to leave it behind for me.

Frantic knocking on the front door broke my Vicodin-induced twilight. Charlie was looking right at me when my eyes snapped open into full awareness. The front door closed with a precise slam. A muddle of voices, one distinctly Howard’s and the other very much belonging to Noah, chased each other up the staircase to the den. My chest tightened. Noah was coming up to see me come Hell or high water. Howard couldn’t have stopped him with a thousand more men. The same thoughts clicked with my little guardian angel at the exact same moment.

“Crap.” Charlie sprang into action and moved with haste to close the door just as Noah reached the top of the stairs.

“Charlotte, no, don’t—” but she shut and locked it before he reached her. He knocked on the door and twisted unsuccessfully at the knob in frustration. “Open the door, Charlie.”

“Stop for a second,” I heard Howard tell him.

Noah’s anxious state only deepened with his denial of entry. “What happened to her?”

“Your brain-damaged brother took his fury for you out on her, that’s what happened.”

“Where was she? How did you get her away from him?”

“I didn’t. He let her go on a back road in BFE; almost all the way out to Palmdale. He kept her at his place the whole time I think.”

“Fuck. Fuck!” The banging on the door commenced again. “Piper, let me in. Let me talk to you.”

“Noah, knock it off. Let her be a while.”

“I want to see her! Piper, please.”

For a second I considered responding, telling him I was okay and not to worry so much and that
I
just needed some time.
A lot of time, actually.
Suddenly it sounded like Howard grabbed Noah and shoved him against the door with a clamor and an
umph
.