Page 88 of Riding the Pine

I hate that she’s right. I hate that we need to even think about photos, and my stomach sours as I pull my phone back out and turn on the camera function.

I take a picture of her whole body. She’s like a broken doll. Her pants are around one ankle, her legs slightly apart, bruises that are very clearly from human fingers on her thighs.

Rage boils my blood as I snap pictures of her shoe a few feet away, a puddle of vomit near her face. Tears trickle down herface as I lean closer to her to capture the bruising on her face and around her mouth and neck.

Whoever did this to her is going to die.

I snap so many pictures I start to wonder if it’s overkill. And when I move to back up, I step on something hard.

It’s a phone.

I take even more pictures of the phone on the ground, pull out one of the three Ziploc bags I brought with me, and turn it inside out. Without handling the phone with my own hands, I coax it into the bag through the plastic. I don’t know what might be on it, or not, but if nothing else we’ll at least be able to figure out who her attacker was since I assume it was him who left this trusty little clue.

Athena watches me seal up the bag and gives me a stiff nod, satisfaction pooling in her chocolate-brown depths right there with the terror and the agony that aren’t leaving her haunted stare.

A bolt of agony of my own spears into what’s left of the somehow still beating organ in my chest. My poor Athena.

“I should call an ambulance.” I pick up my phone but her trembling jaw and quick shake of her head says no.

“Can’t risk it getting out.” Her speech is slow and through gritted teeth like each word physically hurts her to say. Having had a busted-up face before, I can confirm that it likely does.

Again, not wrong. She’s connected to a high-powered father, if the press got wind of this, she’d be under a limelight neither of us want her to be under right now.

“Your brothers?” My voice cracks on the two words. At the end of the day, she called Apollo first, maybe she didn’t want to see me like this, maybe she didn’t think I could handle this situation. Either way, my phone didn’t ring, and I can’t ignore that.

Another shake which makes her groan. “Later.” She tries to pick up her arm, but it doesn’t get very high off the ground. “Rape kit.”

I nod, it’s stiff but it’s all I can manage. Hearing her say the word rape, confirming that the worst assault imaginable to a woman has happened to my girlfriend, triggers some part of my brain. This isn’t something I have time to react to right now. I need to keep pushing forward, and if I let myself process that word and what it truly means, I might collapse into a heap and never stop crying.

Kneeling next to her, I want to soothe her pain. I want to cover her broken and damaged body and take her into my arms. I want to protect her from everyone and everything, but right now, I’m afraid to so much as breathe on her.

I’ve never seen her looking so frail, so scared, so traumatized.

That haunted look in her eyes will, in turn, haunt me for the rest of my life.

Covering her, I decide, is the next thing I need to do, but she points to the pool of vomit. Shit. That’s evidence, right? In every crime show they always collect the vomit. That explains the spoon.

Ziploc number two comes out of my pocket along with my spoon. Stupid me thought she meant a small spoon, so this may take a while, but I know it needs to happen. “Wait, should we leave it for the cops?”

She shakes her head. “Animals.”

Every word makes her wince. There’s dried blood on her face, the bruising is darkening even while I’m kneeling here, and I just want to take care of my girl.

I nod and go about picking up as much of her puke into the bag as I can without bringing any of the grass or dirt with it. I can’t say I’m very successful. When I try to pull up her pants, she stops me again.

“Like this.” She must be in so much pain.

I hand her the bag of her own puke to hold while I scoop her up off the ground. Despite the overwhelming urge to snuggle into her, I don’t want to upset her any more than she already is, nor do I want to contaminate her. Right now, she’s the crime scene.

I think she sleeps while I drive to the emergency room, when I open the door, she jerks awake then cries out in pain.

“Gurney?” I ask into the backseat.

She shakes her head. “You.”

Abandoning my car, I slide her out of the backseat. When a security guard tries to come at me for leaving my car there, he takes one look at Athena in my arms, his eyes go wide, and he ushers me inside.

I don’t give a fuck if they tow my car. It’s the middle of the night; the ER is largely empty when we walk in. “It’s okay, Bright Eyes, I’ve got you. Just hang in there, okay. Help!”

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