“Yes.” She traced the top edge of the thin hospital sheet covering the hospital gown the nurse insisted she wear. Her voice was almost inaudible, but she couldn’t seem to make it any stronger. “But I always tell them no.”
“What?” The detective leaned in, tucking a stray blonde hair from her ponytail behind her ear. “What was that?”
“I always say no.” Lindsey still didn’t look up, feeling something burning in her throat, but she went on. “It’s a game. It’s a thing. I just…I like to say no, and have them, you know, do it anyway.”
She felt their eyes on her and didn’t want to look up and see their faces- especially Zach. She half-expected him to get up and go, right then. The silence seemed to stretch forever, and then, finally, the detective spoke again.
“How are they supposed to know the difference?”
“I don’t know.” Lindsey shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Did you have an agreement with these men? Did they know that your ‘no’ meant yes?”
Lindsey thought of Brian-of all of them, he was the only one who really knew the game. Had he told the new ones, the others? She didn’t know, but figured he must have. His continuous apology, both verbal and non, told her that much. They knew the game, but when her “no” had turned insistent, when even Brian knew she didn’t want to play the game anymore, the others had gone on.
She remembered Smooth, the look in his eyes. He didn’t care about the game-
he didn’t want her to like it, and most especially, he didn’t want her to be in control.
Everything he did made it clear she was helpless, powerless before him. He’d known she didn’t want what they were dishing out, that her “no” had really meant “no.” But there was no way to tell the detective that. How could she possibly defend herself? And if she told this woman there
“No…” Lindsey sighed. “It was just a game I played in my head.” The detective, who had kept her distance the whole time, business-like, writing in her little note pad, took a step toward the bed. Lindsey flinched, only able to bring her eyes up to the level of the woman’s badge.
“That’s a dangerous game, Lindsey.”
She snorted, finally looking at the woman’s face through half-closed eyes-she couldn’t open them any further, and they were still crusted with blood. “Obviously.”
“We’ll have a sketch artist contact you and I want you to look through our mugshots.” The blonde-her name, officer Deborah Bills, was embroidered on her uniform pocket, and Lindsey wondered for a moment if the woman had done it herself-
closed her notebook and tucked it away into that pocket for safekeeping. “If you can identify the suspects and there is enough evidence to charge them, you’ll be asked to testify.”
The thought made Lindsey’s stomach drop, but she just nodded. “Can I go home now?”
“You’ll have to talk to the doctor about that.” The officer took a card from a holder and put it on the adjustable hospital bedside table. “This has my number on it. If you’ve forgotten anything, or there’s something new you have to say, give me a call.” The doctor insisted she stay, but Lindsey signed herself out AMA. “I’m eighteen, I can do that, right?”
The doc was a short, Asian woman with a cruel mouth that twisted when she was mad-like now-but kind eyes, and she looked like she wanted to say, “No,” but she didn’t. “Technically, yes.”
Zach spoke up then for the first time in what felt like hours. “I can take care of her, if she wants to go.”
The Asian doc looked him up and down for a moment, and finally even her mouth softened with a resigned sigh. “She’s had a good deal of head trauma. Check her often during the night, look at her pupils…”
Lindsey ignored the rest, hopping off the bed like a five-year-old who just got her own way and, after checking one last time with the doc, went to take a shower. It was
more painful that she would have believed, in more ways than one. The hot water over her lacerated back and legs hit her like sharp needles, and anywhere she touched herself with the soap felt bruised and broken. She didn’t even attempt to wash the purple and, in some places, near-black nubs of her breasts, just let the suds from her shampoo drip down her body-and that burned, too, in the little cuts and nicks along her abdomen and the front of her thighs.
