Page 43 of Escape

I knew we were older now, and a lot of time had passed. It was likely we both had changed a lot in the time we’d been apart from one another. But deep down, I believed I knew Josie just like I believed she knew me. Who we were at our cores hadn’t changed, and that was the woman I was ready to put everything on the line for.

And when it all boiled down, I certainly wasn’t prepared to have her blaming herself and apologizing for what had happened to her.

I was still sitting beside her on the bed, having just held her in my arms for several long minutes as she cried. With every tear she shed, the guilt I felt grew stronger and stronger. She deserved so much better than she got in life.

“But I really am so sorry,” she insisted. “I should have listened to you. None of this would have happened. I thought I’d be fine. I thought I knew how to escape. I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Josie, honey, I do this for a living,” I explained. “I’ve worked with a lot of people who’ve been in a similar situation as you, so I knew better. I should have done more.”

She shook her head slightly as she eased her body back against the mattress. “You tried. I wouldn’t listen.”

Placing blame wasn’t helping either of us. “Look, there’s nothing we can do about that now. It’s done, and we just have to move forward.”

“You have to teach me.”

“What?”

“I need to learn self-defense, Huck.”

She’d just barely woken up and been evaluated by her doctor. We were having our first real conversation since we shared pie with each other a few days ago. And after everything she’d been through—both the physical and emotional trauma—all she could think about was how she was going to defend herself. I’d never deny her that. When the time was right, I’d teach her. But for now, Josie needed to trust I could keep her safe while she focused on letting her body heal.

I took her hand in mine and stroked my thumb across her knuckles. “I’ll teach you anything you want to know. But let’s make sure you’re completely healed and cleared for stuff like that before we dive in. Until then, I promise I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

As I continued to run the pad of my thumb over her hand, Josie’s good eye drifted shut. Every time I looked at her and saw what he’d done to her, I questioned whether I’d done enough when I paid him a visit. It would never feel like I’d given him all that he deserved.

On the bright side, what I’d said seemed to have helped Josie, because there was an unmistakable sense of peace that had settled over her.

She sat in that for a moment before looking at me again. “I don’t know how to thank you for coming so quickly. You have no idea how relieved I am to still be alive.”

That she thought I needed her to thank me was crazy. She had no idea the lengths I was willing to go for her. Then again, it wasn’t like I should have expected her to understand that. Until now, until all of this had happened, I hadn’t known, either.

“I’m glad you called me. But I am curious about something, if you think you’ll be okay talking about it,” I returned.

She shifted slightly in the bed, wincing as she did from the pain in her ribs. “Okay. I’m bracing myself for this.”

Shaking my head as I offered a reassuring squeeze to her fingertips, I said, “I don’t want you to be worried, Josie. If it’s too much to talk about right now, we don’t have to. I’m just… well, I guess I’m curious how things seemed to be going well and suddenly took such a horrible turn.”

Josie’s fingers twitched, and she remained silent for a long time. With the swelling and bruising around her eye, it was difficult to read her. I didn’t know if she was against sharing altogether, or if she was reliving the nightmare inside her head.

Realizing I’d probably made a mistake in asking her to recount any part of it, I said, “I’m sorry. This is too much for you right now.”

“It’s not that, Huck. It’s just that… well, I’m afraid of how you’ll react once I share the truth with you,” she explained.

She was scared. That was the very last thing I would have hoped to hear when it came to how she felt about me. “There isn’t anything you can’t tell me. Josie, I’d never lay a hand on you. I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

“I know that. I promise I trust that I’m safe whenever I’m with you. But this might be difficult for you to hear.”

So, she didn’t fear me. She feared how hearing the truth would impact me. She’d endured it, suffering the devastating blows to her body. If she could do that, I thought I was getting off easily by simply listening to how it happened. “I’m sure it’s not pleasant, but I assure you I want to know how it happened. You don’t need to be worried about my reaction. I want you to be able to share it and give the burden to me.”

Josie hesitated for a few beats before she finally shared, “He found your card.”

“What?”

“As I told you a few days ago, I had a plan to escape. I’d been saving little bits of money from my tips for weeks, but I couldn’t just keep that money anywhere that he could find it, so I hid it inside a box of tampons under the bathroom sink. Kurt would never have a reason to go in there, so I figured it would be safe. I don’t know what prompted him to look in there that morning. Maybe he knocked it over when he was getting out a roll of toilet paper. I’m not sure. But he found the money. And when he questioned me about it, I told him I was trying to save in secret so I could surprise him with a birthday gift.”

“He didn’t buy that explanation?” I asked.

“No,” she rasped. “Not only is his birthday three months away, but he found the business card you gave me in there, too. So, he put two and two together and concluded that I was planning to leave him.”

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