Not The One

Chapter Six: Whom To Believe?
by sammo_00

It took fifteen minutes for the police to show up, and it was the longest fifteen minutes of my life. How on earth do you deal with sitting next to the guy who was hired by your older sister to rape you and then saves you from other would be rapists, also hired by your sister? On the one hand, the man had utterly destroyed my life, my trust in myself and in my fellow humankind, but on the other, he had saved me from death, and maybe even worse things. For all I knew, the men were going to subdue me and then take me somewhere to inflict even worse pain, degradation and humiliation.

So how do you deal with that? I didn’t know whether I should try to kill him, or buy him chocolates and a card saying “Thanks for saving my life.” Obviously I couldn’t kill him because there were witnesses around, and yet, I couldn’t quite bring myself to turn to him, look at him and say those two small words. Who could?

And yet, I couldn’t help remembering the pain and sorrow clearly evident in his eyes when he…hurt me. I felt like I was looking in to his soul in those moments and it would have been extremely difficult to fake those emotions. Of course, I wasn’t exactly in the most secure frame of mind at the time, so I could be remembering wrong. Not that it matters. In the end, all that mattered was that he destroyed a young girl to save his own hide. That’s cowardly in my book.

But he had saved my life today. He had…protected me. Does that negate what he did before? Somehow cancel it out so now we’re equal again, on even ground? Should I even be considering this? I mean, he raped me! He tied me up, and he was going to kill me! It doesn’t matter that he had a gun to his head. He was going to do it! But he had murdered that guy, the one who jerked me down from my car. Jack had, as reluctantly as I wanted to admit it, risked his life to save my own. What did that make him? Was he himself trying to make up for what he did? Or did he really feel bad about it? Maybe he was just trying to square himself with God.

“Penny for your thoughts,” a voice interrupted my rather heady musings. I looked up and found myself staring into the deeply concerned eyes of one Sam Morehart.

“Sam!” I gasped, immediately jumping up to wrap my arms around his neck. I closed my eyes, not noticing Jack stiffen, his eyes narrowing as Sam held me just as tightly. I quickly released him though, my face flushing. “Uh, what are you doing here?” I asked, trying to calm my racing heart. Why did Sam always affect me that way?

“I’m a cop Mary, this is what I do,” he laughed, that deep laugh that made my stomach roll over on itself. I fidgeted.

“Uh, no offense Sam, but isn’t this a conflict of interest?” I questioned him, looking up at through my eyelashes so it didn’t feel like I was looking him directly in the eye and accusing him of something.

“How is it? I worked the original case all those months ago, remember?” Sam said, glancing over at Jack, then looking back at me. Then his hand went to his pistol and he whirled his entire body towards Jack, pulling and cocking the gun in one fluid motion. “Hands against the car buddy, right now!” he shouted, assuming a shooter’s stance. For a moment, I just stared in surprise, then leaped forward between Sam and Jack, who was standing there with a similar look of surprise on his face.

“Sam, put the gun down!” I yelled, putting up my hand. “What are you doing?”

“He’s the guy, isn’t he?” Sam shouted. I had never seen a guy so out of control. His eyes were almost bulging out of his skull, and there was a vein throbbing in his forehead. His hands were twitching and I was scared out of my mind that he was going to accidentally pull the trigger and shoot me. “He’s the guy who raped you, isn’t he? Don’t lie you bastard! Tell me!!”

Jack just stood there, his mouth slightly agape. For a moment, I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, but the fact that Sam was pointing a gun at the guy who had saved my life kept me from laughing hysterically.

“Put the gun down Sam,” I said forcefully. “Jack saved my life. He didn’t do anything wrong; now put the gun down.” I took a step forward, my heart about to jump out of my chest. They say there is nothing like staring down the barrel of a gun, and I have to tell you, they were completely right. It took all of my strength not to stare at that dispassionate black eye, through which I could so quickly meet my end. But I knew that, for whatever reason, Sam was freaking out and I had to calm him down before he did something he would later regret. I reached forward and laid my hand gently on his trembling arm and exerted a slight pressure. “Put the gun down Sam, before you do something you’ll regret,” I said softly, willing him to look at me.

I saw his eyes flicker towards me and for a moment, I saw, plain as day, a craziness equal to the craziness reflected in my sister’s eyes as they dragged her out of the courtroom in Sam’s eyes and my heart jumped in my throat. But just as quickly, it was gone and Sam was standing in front of me, his gun pointing to the ground. It was easy for me to believe I had imagined what I had seen but another part of me knew otherwise.

Jack took a step back, his eyes bouncing back and forth between me and Sam. I gently squeezed Sam’s arm and took a step back myself. “Are you ok?” I asked him, wanting nothing more than to get in my car and drive away and never return.

Sam nodded, not taking his eyes off Jack. “I’m fine,” he said curtly, re-holstering his gun and snapping it shut. “Just fuckin’ fine.” He turned sharply and walked away, his shoes slapping against the pavement. I turned to Jack and he just stared at me, his eyebrow twitching. That’s when I noticed he had a hoop in his right eyebrow. It looked almost hot on him. Then I shook my head. Hot? Jack? Yea right.

Another officer came over and took both our statements and after about thirty minutes, he told us we could leave. I didn’t want to go without seeing Sam, but the officer told me Sam had been called back to the station on other police business. I thanked him and turned to leave.

“Oh, one more thing ma’am,” the officer called out. “Don’t leave town for the next couple of days. We’re going to need to get in touch with you for some follow-up interviews and such.” I nodded, and he pocketed his notepad, then walked away. I took a step towards my car and noticed that Jack was sitting on the bumper, his head leaning against the back windshield. His eyes were open though, and he was watching me, his jaws lazily chewing a piece of gum.

“Now wasn’t that the most fun ever?” he said sarcastically. I rolled my eyes and went to walk past him but he reached out and blocked me with his arm. I turned and gave him the most withering stare I could manage but all it did was make him laugh. For a moment, I considered trying to slug him, but then I realized a part of me really wanted to hear what he had to say.

Mentally cursing myself, I heard myself asking if he had a ride home. He shook his head and I motioned him towards my car. What was I doing? Was I really going to sit in a car with the guy who raped me? Willingly? Am I crazy?!

For the first few minutes, there was just silence as I pulled on the interstate, but it was quickly broken by the ringing of my cell phone. Sighing, I flipped it open.

“Hi Mom,” I said wearily. I saw Jack give me a look out of the corner of my eye and I shook my head, indicating I wasn’t going to tell her what happened.

“Yea, I’m sorry. No, I’m fine Mom, really. I’ll be home in a bit, ok? Promise. Yes, I’ll get that shampoo. Ok Mom. Love you too. Bye.” I snapped my phone shut and dropped it in the center console. “Sorry about that,” I said, my eyes forward on the road. “My mom gets really worried about me now.”

“As she should be,” Jack said quietly. I glanced over at him and was surprised to see a look of utter despair on his face. He looked up and offered me a wan smile. “You know, I never meant for any of it to happen.”

And suddenly, I believed him. I could feel it bursting inside of me as the sun bursts over the mountains in a spray of color during the first few minutes of the morning.

I nodded. “I know,” I said simply.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” he said again and he put his head in his hands, slowly shaking his head from side to side.

“What do you mean?” I asked, reaching forward to turn up the heat.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen that way,” he repeated. “I was going to surprise you, you know.”

“Surprise me? Oh I would say you did that,” I replied sardonically.

Jack laughed softly. “More of a romantic surprise.” I looked at him in surprise and he nodded, not quite meeting my eyes. “If you want, I’ll tell you everything. Everything.”

I nodded, my hands tightly clenching the steering wheel. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear this, but deep down, I knew that I needed to hear this, if only to finally put the past behind me.

“This didn’t really start with your sister six months ago,” Jack began, clearing his throat. “It started about a year and a half ago, when I was still at school, and the most ridiculous crush on this amazingly hot girl in my geography class.”

I blinked. I was in a geography class three semesters ago. But that’s just coincidence. I opened my mouth to ask him about it, but he kept on talking.

“I didn’t know who she was at first, only that she was pretty and seemed really nice and really smart. Of course, being who I was, I couldn’t work up the nerve to talk to her, not even try to hold eye contact with her. She was too good for me. That’s what I kept telling myself. But I couldn’t help myself. I’d sit two rows directly behind her so I could see her without being obvious, and when I saw her walking around campus, my entire day would be that much better. Then I got kicked out of college because of failing grades and I started working at the moving company to pay bills that my parents weren’t paying for anymore,” Jack said sadly.

“Wait a minute,” I interjected. “How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?” he responded.

I shrugged. “Thirty or so. Maybe twenty-nine.”

“Try twenty-three,” Jack replied and I couldn’t hide my shock. He was only three years older than me. I opened my mouth, but closed it when I realized I didn’t have anything to say.

“So I didn’t see that girl again for a while and slowly started forgetting about her. You know what they say: out of sight, out of mind. Until about six months ago when I showed up this house to move furniture and I saw someone who looked almost exactly like her. And even though it wasn’t her, all those old feelings came rushing right back. I realized that this girl might be related to the one who had hired us, and I set out to find her, unobtrusively, of course.”

This was beginning to tread into familiar territory here and part of me wanted him to stop talking. I knew the girl he was talking about now, and I didn’t want to hear the rest of the story. But I kept my mouth shut, letting him talk, with some sort of detached curiosity.

“I was carrying an armchair out of the house when I almost ran straight into Chuck, who wasn’t paying attention where he was going. We managed to steady it, but the commotion drew the attention of the woman who hired us, who motioned us into a side room. We figured maybe she wanted us to move something else, so we followed her willingly. When we entered the room, however, she slammed the door behind us and pulled a gun on us. There was a moment of surprise, but then I went to charge her and she roundhouse kicked me in the ribs. The doctor told me she fractured one of my ribs. Chuck just stood there, whimpering in fear.” Jack paused, and I could hear his breath quiver as he inhaled deeply.

“She told us she wanted us to go upstairs to the room with the closed door and the music pounding, and that when we went in there, we’d find a girl naked on the bed and we could do whatever we wanted to her. She told us though, that when we were done, we had to kill the girl and not to worry, that she would cover for us. I tried to object and again, she punched me, right where she had kicked me before,” Jack sighed. “Never before in my life have I hit a girl, but good God if I didn’t want to kill her. Especially when I walked into that room and saw you lying there. In that one instant, I hated myself for agreeing to it, and hating you at the same time for being in that situation.”

I swallowed. I knew the rest. It had been playing on an endless loop in my end for the past six months. Now that I thought about it, I remembered seeing the pain present in his eyes, though I shrugged it off as an emotional pain. Apparently though, in this case, it was both emotional and physical. I tried to speak and found that I was on the verge of tears.

“Mary,” Jack said quietly, “I’d like to ask your forgiveness for what I’ve done, but I know that I don’t deserve it. I really fucked things up and I don’t think there is anything I can do to make up for the pain I have caused you. Part of me, however, was glad for what happened, if even in a slightly twisted way.”

“Glad?” I had found my voice and now it had a ring of insanity to it. “You were glad to finally have a chance to rape the girl you had been crushing on for a year? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said frantically. “What I meant was, I found you and I was a part of you for a while…”

“A part of me?” I shrieked, my voice steadily rising in pitch. “You raped me!”

“Mary, I love you!” he cried with anguish. I just stared at him, a look of disgust mixed with anger on my face. I opened my mouth to say something, but there was a sudden loud honk and my world went upside down.

A/N: Reviews make me happy!! Please let me know what you think!!!!