“What if the cops want me to—?”
“We have four weeks to the wedding. It’s a few hours out of a day if we want it to be. Just us, and we don’t even have to be at the cabin if we’re needed elsewhere, but whatever happens we will fight this.”
He clutched my hand, and smiled. “Okay then.”
With that settled we sat mostly in silence, and it was a few hours of stale coffee and old cookies before the door opened and the officer who was running this case came in to talk to us. He was followed by the team lawyer, and a serious Mark, and they sat down.
“Adam Isaksson has voluntarily attended his local station, after a search warrant was executed focusing on computers in his possession. At first glance certain images were found at his residence, including evidence of videos. I’m afraid we can’t share much about the case at this time.”
“Video of me?” Jacob asked quietly.
“We’ve only just collected what we can, there’s a lot more to go through.” The officer didn’t drop his gaze once, and I felt the tension in Jacob subside.
“I don’t want to see any video of me. Ever. Can we go now?”
It looked as if the cop had something to say but Mark and the team lawyer moved between him and us.
“We’re leaving, they’ve had enough. My car is waiting,” Mark said. “Let’s go.” The cop never said a word.
Hand-in-hand, Jacob and I left the station, following Mark and the lawyer, and I don’t know what I expected when I stepped outside but it was nothing like I thought it would be. The weather was the same as when we’d arrived, no one we met in the corridors looked at us differently, the outside world hadn’t shifted on its axis.
And I still had Jacob. So everything would be okay.
Nine
Jacob
Two days later, I woke at four a.m. from a terrifying dream where I was in a pit, à la Silence of the Lambs, staring at Adam grinning down at me. I came awake with a scream of horror that woke Ryker and probably half our neighbors. Drenched in sweat, shaking, I got out of the sodden sheets and into the bathroom before I threw up. Ryker knelt beside me, his cool hand moving in soothing circles on my wet back.
“Fuck,” I huffed, angry as hell at myself for being so weak. I’d been solid as a rock for the past forty-eight hours. Doing what needed to be done. Work, the cops, pressing on with the wedding despite Ryker’s long, worried looks.
“You should talk to someone,” he whispered as I dry-heaved. “There’s no shame in getting help.”
“You help me,” I grunted then spit into the toilet, my gut bubbling with stress, anxiety, and fear. I hated that the most. The fear. I’d never been scared before, not really, not since I’d hit six-foot and kept going. Now, I was scared. Of some guy I could beat into paste if I wanted to. It made no sense, but there he was, in my dreams, terrifying me. He’d been charged with a whole ream of things, including video that incriminated him, but that included none of me. If there was some then he’d not kept it, or maybe he didn’t record the first night or… shit. Talking to someone about what’d happened was a horrific thought.
Ryker kissed my shoulder. “I’m not a professional. Please, baby, talk to the team shrink. Or someone from the college. I know you think you have to be Mr. Stoic all the time, but this kind of shit goes deep. Please, for me? Maybe someone connected to the team?”
I glanced at him hunkered down beside me. I never could refuse the man a damned thing.
“Okay yeah, I’ll talk to someone, but not that Charlie guy.”
“Cool yeah, no, Charlie is awesome but you need a pro. Let me make some calls. You okay? Want to go back to bed and try to get some sleep?”
“Oh hell no.”
So we went to the living room, curled up under a throw, and watched some old MythBusters reruns until the sun came up. I held Ryker to me, my nose in his curls, and stared unseeing at the explosions taking place on the screen. I couldn’t shake that dream. It lingered in the darkest corner of my mind for hours. It was still with me when I walked into the very feng shui office of Lita Morgan, a sexual assault therapist the college had on staff as part of their Title XI Office and Advocacy group.
Dr. Morgan was a petite woman with a soft speaking voice and incredibly big brown eyes. She had a tight afro, was maybe hobbit height, and thin as a rail. A strong breeze could’ve carried her off like a dandelion blow. Her office was all blues and tans and yellows, as were the furnishings. She was dressed casually, a billowy caftan in an African print, and Chucks. I tried to stay focused on why I was there, but as soon as we sat down I had to comment.
“Nice Chucks,” I noted.
She smiled and crossed her legs, bouncing that sneaker up and down. “I wear them all the time. High heels suck. Do you like sneakers?”
“Yeah.” We had a ten-minute discussion about Nikes, which led to Ryker, who loved sneakers and left them lying all over the apartment. Then we chatted about Ry and me, our pasts, the wedding, and what kind of dog I wanted in the future.
“A herding dog, maybe a red heeler,” I said, smiling at the memory of the one we’d had when I was a kid. “Rex. I want a red heeler named Rex. And he could ride out with me and Ryker, once Ryker works up the courage to get on a horse, and we could check the cattle on our ranch. We’re going to have a ranch someday. And a dog. Rex. Yeah, Rex would love our kids too. Heelers are great dogs. I wish I had one. They’re protective too. Rex would have kept Adam at bay and… and…”
The world kind of collapsed on me and I bent over, covered my face, and cried inconsolably for several minutes. Doctor Morgan kept handing me tissues and telling me to let it out, but men weren’t supposed to sob like soap opera stars. Men sucked it up. Men got on with it. Men didn’t let little mealy shitheads assault them.
“That’s not at all the case, Jacob. Sexual assaults happen to both men and women.”
Damn it, that was not supposed to have been said out loud.
“There was… he didn’t… shit.” I blew my nose and shot to my feet, the room feeling considerably smaller than it had ten minutes ago. “He didn’t do that to me. I’m not sure what he did… there are videos that he made but I can’t…” I walked to the window and looked out over the U of A campus. Students milled around on the lawns, enjoying the second week of January in short sleeves. Back home we’d have been asshole deep in snow. “I miss snow.”
“Does snow make you feel safe?”
I plucked at the blind that was at half-mast. “It reminds me of home when I was a kid. My mom making breakfast, me and Dad doing the milking, the cold snap of bitter air in your nose and the calls of the cattle. I miss that.”
“You had a good childhood by the sounds.”
“The best,” I sighed. I turned from the quad to stare at my therapist. “I wanted to give that kind of upbringing to my kids. Then I discovered I was gay, and there was that upset, and then I couldn’t keep the farm from being sold. I knew it was my responsibility and we lost our home. And now… now there’s this mess. I keep letting my parents down.”