Chapter Ten
Brooklyn
The sound of giggling and quiet shushing pulls me from a fitful sleep. “But mommy,” Chastity’s little girl, Amelia says, her voice carrying into the living room where I spent the night on the couch. “I want to watch toons.”
“Just wait, baby,” Chastity murmurs, “Brook will be up soon and then you can watch your cartoons.”
“No,” Amelia wines.
“It’s okay,” I interrupt, trying to stave off a toddler meltdown. “I’m up, I’m up. You can come watch your shows.” I tell Amelia, sitting up and looking over at her as she moves to hide behind her mommy’s legs.
Getting up, I fold the blanket and place the pillow on top of it and then turn to the duo that is still in the kitchen. Chastity is kneeling on the floor in front of Amelia, talking to her on her level and giving her her full attention.
Wrapping her arms around the much smaller girl, Chastity pulls her daughter into a hug.
I turn away, not wanting to intrude on this mother/daughter moment but I can’t help but overhear Chastity as she murmurs, “I love you, Bug,” and from the corner of my eye, I watch Amelia look adoringly up at her mom as she pulls back and replies, “I love you too, mommy!”
Amelia skitters on into the living room, wasting no time with booting up the TV and then getting it turned to the correct channel for her cartoons.
I turn wide eyed to Chastity, my surprise clearly obvious by the grin staring back at me.
“Girl, that’s nothing She knows how to use my cell phone better than even I do.” Then with a shake of her head she says, “Kids these days are on a completely different level then what we were.”
I glance from Chastity to Amelia, who is now bouncing around on the couch as she sings along to some song that is on the show that she’s watching, the back to Chastity again, and the only thing I can say is, “Wow.”
“Right?” She has this look to her that I’ve never seen before but she seems to be honestly and truly happy.“So…Amelia?” I hedge, curious about that story.
We both pull out bar stools and take a seat at the bar but instead of answering immediately like I’d expected, she looks away, picking at a broken part of the countertop. Just when I think she isn’t going to answer me she sighs and with her gaze still averted, she says, “So, yeah. That was a huge cluster fuck of a situation.”
I look at her, confused and waiting for her to elaborate, but when she doesn’t, I ask “What do you mean?”
“One of the John’s that I’d been fucking, he’d refused to wear a rubber. We both know that’s not that uncommon,” she says, but then stops speaking and looks over at me, as if waiting for me to confirm what she says, so I nod in agreement and while she’s not wrong, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to refuse being with anyone who wouldn’t wear a condom. Teddy made sure that I was covered there, thankfully, but not every girl is as fortunate as I am─if that’s what you can even call it.
“Any way, I had gotten sick and was on antibiotics. I tried to explain to the guy that we would need to use back up protection, that there was a chance that my birth control could fail due to the antibiotics. He didn’t believe me. I tried to leave and that must have pissed him off because he came at me then.
“He punched me in the face, broke my nose, dislocated my jaw. He fractured my ribs.” As she explains all this, I can picture the whole scene in my head and what I’m picturing makes me feel sick to my stomach. “At some point, I guess I passed out and he must have raped me after that.
“When I came to, I was in the hospital. I don’t know who called it in, or how they were alerted, maybe he did it. I don’t know. They said when they got on scene, no one else was there, only me. They told me that they suspected sexual assault due to the state that they had found me in and asked for my consent to do a rape kit.
“I told them that I’d had sex recently but that I had used protection. They took note of it, but when the presence of semen was found…”
Chas’s voice dies off, but the gravity of what she went through and the amount of pain that she’d endured is beyond obvious.
“Oh, Chas…” Tears fill my eyes as I watch her try to pull herself back together. “I am so sorry. I should have been there for you.”
She shakes her head back and forth, sniffs and wipes a few stray tears away before saying, “How could you have known, Brooke?”
“I don’t know. I just should have,” I reply, feeling like the worst friend ever.
“You couldn’t have known. And you were facing your own literal hell. Every. Single. Day. A bad thing turned into a blessing. It’s the only way that I got out, it’s because of her,” she says, pointing toward the little girl in the living room. “Her and the help of one person. Someone who never gave up on me, not even when I wanted to give up on myself.”
She grabs hold of both of my hands and squeezes, “*That*,” she says with a twinkle in her eye, “is why I’m *here* and free.”
“Who?” I ask, wondering if whoever helped her get out would be able to help me. “Who helped you and how do I find them?”
“Oh, sweetie,” Chas says with a hint of a smile pulling at her lips. “You already know him and he’s not too hard to find either.”
“I do?” I ask, taken aback slightly because the only cop that I know is…*no. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t mean…*
“Jackson Jones.” Chas says his name like he’s God’s gift to man, but she has to be wrong.
*He was at Teddy’s.*
“There’s no way,” I say, immediately in denial of even the idea that it could be him. “It can’t be him.”
As I try to vehemently deny what Chas insists is true, memories from last night assault me.
*The passion that flared between us*─But that doesn’t mean *anything*, I argue.
*How he made me fall apart─in more than one way*─Spiraling is *not* a good thing, Brooklyn!
*How he seemed to see the broken parts of me*─or maybe he saw vulnerabilities.
*How he seemed to actually care*─but did he really though?
But I still can’t help but wonder, *is it actually possible?*
*Is Jackson the answer to becoming free of this life?*
“It was really Jackson that helped you?” I ask Chas, desperation and hope lacing my words.
But, even as I ask the question, more moments from last night emerge.
*Jackson, stroking his cock while standing in the doorway to my room as I pleasured myself.*
*How he didn’t hesitate to let me suck him off, even* demanding *that I make him cum*
*His* need *to fuck me, so much so that he didn’t even use a condom.*
That one hits me because…”Fuck…” I murmur as my head shoots up toward Chas immediately as panic begins to set in, “Chas, fuck. We need to go to the clinic. I need the morning after bill and to get tested.”
I hang my head, feeling so damn stupid. “How sis I let this happen?” I murmur as fear and anxiety begin to swallow me.
“Hey, Brooke, don’t go there, okay? I’ve got you.” She says, snapping her fingers in front of my face as she tries to literally snap me out of my spiral.
I don’t know who the man is that helped Chastity when she needed it, but one thing that I do know for certain is that Jackson Jones is no savior of mine.
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