“Get up, baby. I don’t have a lot of time,” Bruno said, pushing her off his lap. “And I gotta get inside you. It’s been too long.”
Crystal found her feet, though her knees felt soft, like they couldn’t possibly hold her weight. The walls seemed to spin around her.
Bruno grabbed her, kissed her, pulled at her clothing. Her shirt went up, her bra got tugged down. His hands were everywhere, big and hot and harsh. He opened the button on her jeans. Then the zipper. He shoved the denim down over her hips. It chafed at her skin.
“Turn around and brace yourself,” Bruno said in a ragged voice.
And that was when Crystal got out of her head. Out of her body, actually. She had the weirdest sensation of floating, and then somehow she was on the other side of the room. Or, at least, it seemed that way, because instead of seeing the dull white of the plaster wall in front of her face, she saw a couple about to have sex up against a wall, as if she’d become a casual observer not involved in what was going on. The woman’s bottom and thighs were bared, as well as her lower back, showing just the tail ends of her scars.
The man shoved down his own jeans, baring the heavy, corded muscles of his glutes and thighs. He reached a hand in between them and grunted in frustration. She was too tense, too closed. He yanked her hips farther away from the wall. Another moment of attempted consummation. More frustration. Because her body wasn’t responding. Refused to respond. He smacked her ass hard enough to leave a red handprint against the fair skin.
“Damnit, what the hell’s wrong?” Spitting into his hand, he reached between them again.
Keys rattled at the door.
Crystal-the-observer slowly turned her gaze away from the couple, who hadn’t yet heard the sound, and watched the door ease open.
Bruno gasped. “What the fuck?” He jerked his pants back around his waist. “Jesus, Jenna, what are you doing here?”
Crystal boomeranged back into her body. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. It was damn close to every nightmare she’d ever had converging into a real moment in time.
Jenna’s expression was total abject horror—brow furrowed, mouth agape, cheeks flushing with anger. “I live here. What are you doing here?” Her eyes were like blue fire as they whipped between his open fly and Crystal’s disheveled clothing.
Oh, God, Jenna, stop. Crystal pulled her jeans up but couldn’t get her fingers to master rebuttoning them. “Sorry, Jen. We just got carried away, didn’t we, Bruno?” She smiled up at him, trying to distract him from what Jenna had just said, and the tone with which she’d said it. “Can I get a rain check?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his neck.
His eyes unnarrowed, just the littlest bit. “Yeah, yeah, tomorrow. Or maybe Friday. I gotta see,” he said, his voice just a few degrees above frigid. “Wrap that food up for me.”
“Uh, yes, sure. Of course.”
Jenna glared at Crystal as she crossed the room, and Crystal threw her a look pleading for her to rein in her anger for just a few minutes. Once Bruno left, Jenna could dump as much of it on her as she wanted.
Crystal’s hands were a jittery mess as she grabbed plastic bowls and matching lids from a cupboard and hefted big slabs of lasagna into one container and thick wedges of cake into another. She pulled a handled brown bag from under the sink and packaged everything up for Bruno.
“What’s your problem?” came Bruno’s voice from the living room.
Crystal’s stomach plummeted to the ground. For a long moment, there was silence. Crystal returned to the living room, still death-gripping her hope that things wouldn’t get worse. “Here you go,” she said, as he finished donning his jacket.
“You wanna know what my problem is?” Jenna asked.
All the blood rushed from Crystal’s face. She felt it, because the room started spinning again, and she perceived sound like it had traveled through a long tunnel. “That’s enough, Jenna,” she said as harshly as she could.
Bruno wrenched the bag from Crystal’s hands and stalked toward her sister. He grabbed her jaw. “Yeah, I’d say that’s more than edamnnough, Jenna. Learn not to bite the hand that feeds you,” he said, shoving her away. She stumbled back a step, and he pushed by her, yanked open the door, and slammed it shut behind himself.
Pale and shaking, Jenna gaped at Crystal for a long minute, then she slipped the security chain across the door. “You want to explain what that was all about, Sara? Why I just got accosted in my own home?”
Crystal grappled to respond, but whatever force had been holding her upright for the past fifteen minutes stopped working at that very instant.
The room went wavy, her skin grew clammy, and her knees buckled. Crystal’s body went into a free fall.
The tenor of Jenna’s words changed. From anger to panic. “Sara!” Jenna rushed to Crystal’s side, to where she’d fallen in a heap in front of the couch.
Crystal curled into a ball and hugged herself as hard as she could.
“Sara? Sara, please,” Jenna said, stroking her hair and her face and her arm. “Tell me what to do.” More stroking, and Crystal became conscious that Jenna’s fingers were wet from where they’d wiped at her cheeks. Someone was making the most mournful sounds, long, low wails of grief and loss. “Sara? Did he . . . did he rape you?”
No, he didn’t rape me, she thought, shaking her head against Jenna’s thigh. The one bright spot in this whole mess. Her body had locked up so completely that he hadn’t been able to penetrate her. Though, had Jenna not come home when she did, Crystal knew Bruno wouldn’t have been deterred much longer. It hadn’t always stopped him in the past.
“I’m gonna call nine-one-one, sweetie. I’ll be right back,” Jenna said, stroking her hair again.
“No!” Crystal said, twisting to grip Jenna’s wrist before she rose. “No, don’t. I’m okay.” Her voice sounded warped, strained.
“You’re not okay,” Jenna said, a deep frown on her face. Though it was one of fear and concern, not anger.
Crystal shook her head. “He didn’t rape me. He didn’t hurt me. I promise,” she rasped.
Jenna eased back to the floor. “You didn’t look okay. When I came in . . . God. Sara, you looked like you were three seconds from a panic attack.”
“I know,” Crystal said, hiccuping. “I know.” She pushed onto her hands, but the sudden movement left her dizzy.
“Don’t rush,” Jenna said. “Just lie here with me for a little bit.” When Crystal laid her head in Jenna’s lap again, Jenna rubbed her back. “You’re the one usually taking care of me,” she said.
“Yeah,” Crystal said. “I never mind.” Her breathing shuddered, and the crying left her wrung out and headachy. She had to pull herself together.
“Well, I don’t mind either. I just really hate seeing you this way. Nobody should get to do this to you,” she said, keeping her voice as calm as she could as she rubbed wide circles over Crystal’s back. Jenna’s hand slowed. Stilled. “Sara?” she asked in a high-pitched voice.
Crystal closed her eyes. She’d been so wrapped up in herself, she’d forgotten. For a moment, she’d just let herself be comforted. And now Jenna knew. Now, Jenna had seen.
Slowly, the cotton of Crystal’s shirt slid farther up her back, just a few inches, as Jenna leaned around her.
Jenna gasped. “Oh, Sara. Oh, my God. What is this? Oh, my God.”
Crystal’s tears started again, and she burrowed into Jenna’s lap and wrapped her arms awkwardly around her waist. Jenna leaned down and returned the embrace as best as she could. They cried together for a long time.