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Cole didn’t ask me any questions. He didn’t force me to go and stay inside his house. I quivered in the night, not from the cold but from the nightmares. I wake up at dawn from another nightmare and drive to college at 7 in the morning. I don’t even bother telling Cole that I am leaving, because when I wake up, his car is gone. Early morning gym, I guess. I am grateful that he let me stay here.

I have an exam for which I haven’t studied at all. I write enough to pass the exam and I leave. While exiting the class, I bump into someone accidentally. Okay fine, I didn’t bump into her accidentally. I walked all the way to the other side of the campus to find her. I wanted to talk to her. One last time. When she wasn’t around that piece of shit.

“Justine…We need to talk.” I approach her with good intent. She couldn’t have forgotten years of friendship in one night. Could she?

She crosses her arms and looks in the distance. “If you are here to apologise about last night, I am all ears.” Her expressions don’t match her words. It almost feels like she cannot look me in the eye. As if she’s…but her words are the venom that sucks the life out of me.

“Excuse me?” Apologising? For what? My blood is boiling. I was here to reconcile our friendship, and she dares to ask me to apologise?

So I change my mind. “I am here to tell you that I am going to file that complaint against your rapist boyfriend.” That is not at all why I came here to talk to her. I wanted her to be by my side. I need my best friend.

“Don’t you–” she looks around to see if people heard us. “If you do that, I will have to tell the cops that you are making this all up and that Jake was with me when all that happened.” her words do not falter. Unlike my entire life. Which is breaking apart. Piece by piece.

I am in utter disbelief and hurt beyond I can imagine. “Alright. Thank you for being the best friend I needed.” I say sarcastically. “I was also here to tell you that I cancelled that trip to Cabo.” It was my 21st birthday this weekend and my dad had bought both of us a trip to Cabo to have fun. I had been looking forward to that trip so eagerly, but I cancelled it last night.

It was the first thing I did. Thankfully dad had selected the refundable option, so I was refunded the entire amount for the trip. How could I go and have fun when all of this had happened? How could I pretend that I was happy when I wasn’t? I didn’t want to pretend. I couldn’t anymore.

“Alright then.” She has tears in her eyes. She looks at my bandaged hand from yesterday that I had injured myself as she walks away. Just like that. I stand still. Watching life pass by.

“Riya?” I feel a hand on my shoulder and I flinch. Scared. “Are you alright?” those ocean blue eyes stare into my soul. “Raven, if there is anything–” I don’t hear anything past Raven before I run in his arms and hide myself from the world. I don’t say anything. And he doesn’t either. He just holds me there tightly. Tears stream down my cheeks and my sobs get louder. Pulling more and more attention.

“Raven…” his voice stings in my heart like poison. Numbing my heart even more. Yet, making me feel. Feel something. Anything. Proving that I am still alive and all of that happened.

“I…I can’t hold it in anymore. Please…Help me.” Help me . Those are probably the bravest words I have ever said in my entire life.

When I take two steps back and assess his face, I notice that we have similar dark circles under our eyes. “What happened, Riya?” I wipe my tears and try to be strong. I need support. I can’t do this alone. If I am going to go through with this. I need a lot of support.

“Will you help me?”

His eyes mellow and concern is all over his face. Yes. I am asking my ex to help me to put the man who sexually assaulted me behind the bars. “With my life,” he replies. We clearly still loved each other, but if he is going to help me we need to keep those feelings aside and work together.

“Thank you. I will text you— wait you don’t have…”

“I do.” he waves his phone. “I bought it last night.”

“Alright. I will text you the place and time to meet. I have some important stuff to deal with right now. And then I will–”

“Whenever you want. I will be there. You could call me to the deepest pits of hell to help you and I would still come.” My heart softens a bit. But I cannot let it waver just like that. It was broken once and I cannot give him the power to break it again.

“Well, right now it feels like I am stuck in a place worse than that. But thank you.” I force a smile.

◆◆◆

“Why do you need so much money?” my sister shouts again.

“I told you I wanted to buy a new Chanel bag.” I lie to her. I have found a new place to move into. It is a spacious one bedroom kitchen apartment. Not too far from school. Better area, better security. The only problem was they wanted my bank statement to show that I have more than enough money to move in immediately. I have enough to pay the security deposit and rent. And after getting the security deposit for my previous apartment, I will have more than enough. I even got my refund back for the trip, so all I need is a couple more grand in my bank and that will seal the lease.

“Ri…” she takes a long long pause. “Alright. I am sending you the money.”

“I will send it back to you as soon as I get my new cards.” If I had my card, I could easily transfer money from one bank to another. My bank account has been locked since the transaction frauds. And I had to call the bank to let them know that this transaction was going to be made by me. Losing my wallet cost me a lot.

“I also have something to tell you.” she shies off.

“What is it?” I ask her.

“I am sorry. For that day. I know I shouldn’t have–”

“It’s alright.” We never apologised to each other. And I know that she was acting out of character because of the issues between her and Keith. She probably took out her frustration on me. I know my sister. I know how much she loves me.

“That’s not all…” another long pause which makes me feel nauseous. If Keith had something to her, I would smack him straight across his face this time. “He proposed to me…and I said yes!” She squeals as she tells me the last part.

“What? When did this happen?” I felt bad for being left out of her life.

“Last week. He even asked me if he could help me in any way with setting up the company. And he has been acting so differently. It’s like he finally understands and respects my dream. And I can’t tell you how happy I have been these days. Oh Riya! If only you could see my face right now. It’s hurting from me smiling too much.” she sniffles.

“I’m very happy for you.” I really am. All I ever wanted for her is her true happiness. And if Keith has somehow gotten his brains polished enough to see the potential my sister and her clothing line has, then that’s all I want. “Congratulations!”

“You should come here. We will go out and celebrate! You, me and Keith. I promise you, this time will be different.” she promises. I’m sure it will be.

“I can’t. I’m going to Cabo this weekend. Remember?” I lie. I cannot bring myself to tell her about everything that is going on in my life. Especially not right now when she is so happy in her life.

“Oh right! Have fun with Justine!” She cheers for me. And I try to sound just as cheerful and hide my sobs.

“I will. And how's the company doing? I saw some designs on Instagram and I loved them!” She finally worked and released some of her designs and people were going crazy over some of them. I knew that she could do it.

“Oh my God! We already have so many people reaching out to see more of our designs. I have some models lined up as well. And can you believe that they approached me? I am flabbergasted. It feels too good to be true.” Under normal circumstances II would immediately reciprocate the same energy! But I’m just too exhausted to do it.

We talk for some more time and finally end the call on a good note. I feel like the worst sister not being able to tell her what was going on in my life. I just don’t want to rob her of her happiness. And along with that, I myself don’t know what I am going to do with this matter. I was going to talk to Jam– Marcus about it and ask his advice. Well, I wasn’t going to tell him the entire thing, just enough to know what happened. Because I don’t want James to end up in jail for murder.

I sign the lease and can move in the next day, so I have to find another parking spot to crash for one more day. But I will deal with that later. I want to meet Marcus before sunset and sort everything later. I text him the time and place and he responds almost immediately with a ‘Yes’.

We meet at the least popular cafe in the area because that ensures that there is no one around. Although the coffee there is the worst, that is Marcus’ problem because I am not much of a coffee drinker anyway.

“Hey…I could’ve picked a better coffee spot. But I’m not complaining.” He says too fast. I had picked the booth farthest from the counter so that no one would be able to hear us.

I flash him a forced smile and he does the same. He takes a seat in front of me, takes off his jacket and adjusts his legs and my gaze travels to the part where his T-shirt is too tight on him. His pecs and arms are screaming and threatening to tear out of his shirt, but now is not the time to focus on that.

He orders an iced coffee in the chilling weather and we both wait in silence for it to arrive before I start.

“So…What did you need my help with?” he asks me, getting straight to the point.

“Yesterday…”

“Riya…About that, I am very sor–”

“I am not here to talk about us.” I am rude. I know I am. Because I can see the hurt in his eyes but he quickly sweeps it away.

“Alright…”

“Yesterday when I left home. Something happened.” His face stays blank. As if he knew that something had happened.

“What happened?”

“Before you came and before I had called Siddharth, something had happened.” I clench my bandaged fist as I force myself to recall the horror. He rests his hand on mine, to console me. And I feel a lump in my throat. I see his eye fixated on my bandaged hand.

“What happened, Riya?” He is serious too now, yet I can see concern in his eyes. And something else as well. Fear? Perhaps.

“I had gone home and I had to use Justine’s shower and I was sad and drinking and when I came out, I felt weird. And…”

“And?” his voice was almost a whisper of fear.

“Jake…” I see him clench his fist as soon as I say his name. “Jake came into the room and he tried to…” my voice is barely audible, but he still heard me. He could hear my soul crying, yearning for consolation.

“Tried to or…” he immediately put two and two together. I had never doubted his ability to read my mind. Not never. Because he couldn’t read my mind yesterday.

A soft sob escapes my throat as I stare at my feet. Praying that my tears don’t fail me by falling down. “He did…But he…”

He rushes over to my side and wraps his arms around me. It is as if I can feel the world melt around us into nothing until it was just us. Safe. I finally feel safe.

“Raven…” This time there was anger in his voice. Vengeance. “I want you to tell me in detail what happened. Don’t skip out on anything.”

“Marcus I can’t relive it. Please don’t ask me to do that.” I would rather pour melting lava down my throat than relive even a second of that incident.

“I need to know how much of a painful death that fucker deserves.” I hold onto his arm, my hand barely being able to grasp onto his entire bicep.

“Please James…You won’t do anything stupid. That is not why I asked for your help.”

“I can’t help you if I don’t know what happened entirely. Please Raven. Tell me.”

A gasp does escape my throat this time along with some tears. A gasp of his name. “James…”