Private Message (17 page)

"God, I am so relieved that you are OK." He sounds breathless. I don't want him to feel relief, because I don't feel relieved. I want him to feel the hurt that I have felt for the past three years!

I have to do this. "It was you."

"What was me?"

My eyes start to sting from trying to hold in my tears. "It was you who brought me to this same hospital three years ago."

He just looks at me.

"At the concert, Ben! I was just about to be raped and you attacked the guy, but by the time you got back to me, I was trampled to a fucking bloody pulp! Then you bring me here to be seen by your father, and then you leave! You just left me." I can't help the screaming and the now-heavy crying. This is something that I have held back every day since that horrible night. Not letting anyone know about what happened.

His eyes are wide. He stands and steps away, but doesn't leave the room. "That was you?"

"Yes, that was me. You would have known that if you didn't abandon me at a hospital like you just found a motherless infant by a dumpster! That's how I feel, I feel like I was so unwanted, not worth the time to wait and see if that girl was going to be OK. But you couldn't do that, could you, Ben?"

He drops his head into his hands. I can see the defeat overcoming him; he doesn't know what to say to me, and I don't think there is anything he could say to make me not hate him. So I go on, getting it all out, just like how I have wanted since that night to the guy who tried to force himself onto me, and to the guy who started out the hero and in the end became the villain.

"Before that show I was already tortured and tormented every day. My father didn't give a shit about me or the way I wanted to live my life. My only friend was my mother. I never had a real boyfriend, because I was the weird girl. Music was my escape, that's why I love it so much. I am free to be who I am and love what I love.

"That's why I was at that show that night, as you know James normally went with me, but he couldn't go that night so I went alone. I wasn't going to miss this show. I was having a pretty bad week, so this was my night to vent. Everything was fine until the headliners were halfway through their set, when this guy started rubbing himself up on me from behind. Not wanting that kind of attention, I told him to get lost and to look elsewhere. He didn't take no for an answer. Not the first time, the second, third fourth or fifth. I turned to slap him and he punched me in my stomach and I dropped. I tried to stand but he backhanded me across my face.

"I couldn't talk, I couldn't think. The next thing I know I am on my back on the sticky beer-soaked floor and this guy is over the top of me, grabbing my chest, licking my neck, and then he started to undo my pants, then his own. Then he was gone.

"But I was so dazed and lost, and before I could get up people started a mosh pit next to me. I was stomped on, kicked into. I have flashes of being in a car and seeing the city lights passing above my head. Then on a gurney being wheeled down a bright hallway. Then it's morning and I am all alone in a hospital room, alone. I didn't know where I was and how I got there.

"Then I realize my worst fear, was I raped the night before? Did that horrible human being take something so personal and private away from me? After an exam they revealed that I wasn't, but that didn't make me feel any better. I just can't wrap my head around a guy who saves a girl, and then abandons her."

That's my story. He has to make his choice now. Stay or go. The same decision he faced three years ago.

I am so stoked. This is my big chance to prove myself at the magazine. They finally gave me the opportunity to cover a show by myself. Before, I was an assistant and a go-fer. It's not the sold-out kind of show I want to cover, but hey, I got to start somewhere, right?

While one of the opening bands is on stage, I get to conduct my interview with the lead band. I know their stuff, and they fucking rock!
Keep it cool dude, keep it cool.
I finish, pack up, make my way to the side stage to watch the show. This is my dream job. I get to hang around some of the people I love and idolize, and be up close and personal to the stage.

I high-fived the last opening band as its members passed, clearly on a total adrenalin high. The closest I ever got to that feeling was doing a few small-ass shows with Dan in our senior year of high school. We weren't exactly the most kick-ass band in town, but we had fun. And I learned how to play bass pretty good. Man, those were good times. But when he went to college on the east coast and I stayed here on the west, to go to school with Nicole we didn't see each other much, therefore no play time. And with my best friend and band mate gone, I stopped playing.

The front-liner band, the one I just go to know and interview, run past me to take the stage. I know this is going to be good. They are just starting their fourth song in the set, something fast and upbeat, and the crowd is getting amped. I can already see a few smaller mosh pits being formed. I see girls flashing the band. Holy shit! Yeah, I will definitely be trying to hook up with one of those girls tonight. I need to get laid!

I see a short blonde girl dancing with some douchebag a few rows back. She doesn't look too happy; the guy behind her is grinding her ass pretty good. She looks really upset. What, trouble in paradise, babe? I can't help but watch this lover's quarrel. But something doesn't feel right, and I don't normally feel anything towards a girl or her feelings. Not since I caught Nicole fucking our professor. But this girl in the crowd, there's something going on. Something I don't like.

I see the guy punch her in the stomach. What the FUCK? What the fuck is that asshole doing? She can't be any taller than five foot three, and doesn't look more than hundred pounds. She's gone. Where is she?

Shit.

I run to the side exit door, to get into the crowd, I shove past the security guards and make my way to where I saw her standing. I finally spot her and she's on the floor trying to stand up, but then the motherfucker backhands her right across the face. Why am I even caring? What if this is their normal relationship? Foreplay, perhaps? No.

I push and shove my way through the crowd to reach the douchebag. I can't hold back; it's like I lost all control of my body. Just like how I was before we left London. I grab his shoulder to pull him off her and I see that his pants are undone, and I notice that her pants are just below her hips. Was this fucker going to rape her? And as if in a movie, the perfect song starts to play from the band on stage, one that plays what's going on in my head. The lead singer growls out, "When my fist hits your face, and your face hits the floor. It'll be a long time coming. Bet you got the message now. 'Cause I was never going. Yeah, you're the one that's going down."

I have him on the ground in the back of the room, straddling him, and my fist meets his face, blasting away, and I don't stop until one of the security guards pushes me off of the guy. I look down at him. He isn't moving. I can't even make out any facial structure.

"Hey, man you gotta get out of here, before someone calls the cops," the security guy says to me, but I can barely hear a thing he's saying between the music and the blood coursing through my ears. I remember the girl.

Running back to where she was, I don't see her. I keep going in that direction when I see her still on the floor. Not moving. Shit. There are mosh pits in full force on both sides of her. I see a few larger guys in boots kicking into her, not even seeing her lifeless body on the ground. I bend down and scoop her up.
Damn, she is a tiny little thing…too bad I can't see her sweet face, it's covered in so much blood…

People barely move as they see me carrying her out of the building. Jerks. As I walk to my car (thank god I chose that tonight over my bike), I keep checking to make sure she is breathing. Man, her nose is messed up, and she has a lot of cuts on her face. One particularly long one on her cheek from when she got slapped. I swear to God if I didn't kill that fucker tonight, he will be done if I ever see him again.

I open the back door of my vintage black GTO and lay her gently across the back seat. Christ, any other day, if I have a girl in my car, if she even looks like she might puke I won't let her in. This car is my baby, right along with my bike, and typically I won't have anything in it that could stain or rip the interior, but I don't seem to care that her blood will stain the shit out of my backseats. I just need to get her to the hospital, and I hope my dad is working tonight.

I pull up to the emergency room entrance and the attending physician looks in the back seat. I can tell by his face that he assumes I did something to her. That I hurt her. The thought sickens me to my core. He opens the door and sees all of the blood and her disjointed body and calls for backup. I start to get out of the car to help when the guy tells me, "You can't park it here. You can go park your car in the visitor lot over there." He nods in the direction of the lot.

I jump back in, close my door and I watch them load her on to a gurney and wheel her in through the sliding doors. Shit, what am I going to do? I walk back into the hospital, hoping that they got her back right away. I walk to the admitting desk and approach the young pretty attendant.

"Excuse me, hi, that girl that was just brought through can you make sure that Jack Mitchell attends to her? That's my father and I want him to treat her." I sternly tell the girl, who is obviously mind-stripping me. Yeah, I get that all the time, sweetheart.

She puckers her lips and bats her eyes. "Of course, I'll page him right away. Would you like to speak to him yourself, Mr. Mitchell?"

"Yes, please." I take a seat.

I feel a hand on my shoulder about fifteen minutes later. "Ben? What's going on? I was told to see the young woman who was just brought in. I just looked her over and she is pretty banged up. What happened?"

I hear a little accusation in his voice. What did I expect? I was thrown out of three schools in four years back in London for tearing people up. But I would never lay a finger on a woman, especially one as small as her.

I explain, and I hope from what I described, he can treat her better.

He nods, and I think he believes me, "I will have the attending OB/GYN examine her, if that's the case. And the rest, well, I can fix her up."

I nod.

"Do you want to wait to see her?" my father asks. Do I? I shouldn't care.

I think about it for a moment. "No. I don't even know the girl. What good would it do if I stayed? I would probably just freak her out. Finding some weird guy waiting around for her."

He nods. "I'll see you at Sunday's dinner then?"

"Yep." And then my father is off, back to work.

I don't know how to take care of someone other than Caroline, but that's different. Maybe I can ask Dad about how she is in a few days. Maybe I should just forget about it. I have no fucking idea. I am sitting in a hospital waiting room wracking my brain on what I should do, seeing that helpless girl on the floor so hurt…I don't know.

I'm not ready to handle something like this. I got to get out of here. I need a drink and a pair of legs to get lost between, hopefully that'll take the edge off.

What's wrong with me?

I feel much better this morning when I wake up in the hospital bed. Well, physically better. My heart could use some work.

Apparently I can't just call a taxi to come get me, and I am forced to decide between calling my mom or Erin. I could call James, but he already feels the need to protect me, and I don't want to worry him anymore. Ugh, if I don't call my mom and ask her to get me, she will eventually find out and rip me a new one.

"Tess! Where have you been? I have been trying to get a hold of you the past few days." Yup, that's my mom, not even a hello, just straight to the point. Gotta love her.

"I have been really busy at work, school and I even made a new friend."

"Oh, that's great, Tess! We will have to get together this week and catch up." Ha. Little does she know that time is now.

I sigh. "That's why I am calling, Mom. I kind of need you to pick me up at the hospital."