Page 53 of Forbidden Want

“You’re worried about him?” he asked. “This is way more than leaning on you, Scamp. You should be fucking mad.”

“I think you and Lach have got that covered,” she said without the energy to muster any kind of emotion. Maybe the pain meds numbed those too. “Please just tell him.” Her next request wasn’t so easy. “And I… there’s something else.”

His frown returned. “What?”

“Do you know where it happened?” Even she wouldn’t be sure which was the right alley. “Where they…?”

“I can find out.”

Licking her lips, her mouth was drying again. “I was carrying a flash drive.”

“In your purse?”

“It wasn’t in my purse.” Had they stolen her things? The purse wasn’t important. “I need you to find that drive… please. Find it and hide it.”

“What was on it?”

The door opened behind him and a guy in a white coat came in with a woman in scrubs. “How are you feeling?”

“Sick,” she said and tugged on Strat’s hand. “Please.”

“Okay,” he said and kissed her knuckles. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Strat, thank—”

“Don’t worry about it anymore,” he said. “Consider it done.”

He backed out of the way to let the doctor get close. Once he’d left the room, all the tension she’d been holding dropped. Her friend needed to think she was strong. That this would bounce off.

“Your brother said you consented to the rape exam.” She nodded. “I can do it or the nurse can.”

“Whatever,” she said, closing her eyes. “Just do whatever you need to do.”

“We need to ask if you’ve had intercourse in the last seventy-two hours.”

The last seventy-two hours? She wasn’t sure she could count to seven, let alone seventy-two. “Monday,” she said. “I don’t know what day it is.”

“Thursday,” the doctor said. “Did you use protection or is there a chance—”

“We used a condom,” she said, refraining from adding “a lot of them.”

“Okay.”

“But it was…We got rough sometimes.”

“Not this rough,” a sympathetic female murmured.

She smiled at the woman standing by the end of the bed.

“Did he force you?” the doctor asked.

“No!” she said and winced. “No, I just wanted to… if there’s bruising down there, it doesn’t necessarily mean…” Her throat closed. Shit. Why was she…? At least this time she noticed the tears. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” the doctor said. “We’ll just get set up.”

To investigate her body. To poke and prod and… How could a life change so quickly? She’d been fearless and forthright. Always willing to push herself and there, in that moment, she couldn’t even say the words.

It would get easier. It would.

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