Page 69 of Jar of Hearts
He pushed her back on the bed and rolled on top of her, one hundred eighty pounds of lean muscle pinning her down. It wasn’t much different from when he’d kiss her after a bad fight, when he’d try to win her back after slapping or pinching or punching her. So she lay still while he kissed her passionately, knowing from past experience that squirming and protesting would only make him feel angry and rejected. If she lay still and let him touch her, he’d eventually see that she wasn’t into it, and stop.
His hot breath was sickly spicy-sweet as he kissed her neck, her ears, and her shoulders, working his way down, pulling her T-shirt up. When he flicked her nipple with his tongue, she whimpered. It was so wrong, so incredibly, terribly wrong… but it did feel a little bit good, too. As horrible as it all was, she couldn’t deny her attraction to him. It was Calvin, after all, and this was their pattern. Plus, he was the only person in the world right now she didn’t have to lie to.
And she still loved him, god help her. Feelings like that did not evaporate in a matter of days, much as she wished they would, much as she knew they should.
She didn’t protest when he pulled her sweatpants down, or when he moved her panties to the side so he could find her wet spots and make them even wetter, the cool spice of the cinnamon on his tongue adding a layer of deliciousness that made her gasp. She was disgusted with herself but unable to help it. He had touched her like this so many times before, and he knew exactly what to do, exactly where to apply pressure, and for how long.
When she heard the sound of his belt unbuckling, her eyes opened. They had never had sex before—not real sex, as she thought of it, not intercourse. She was a virgin, and she pushed his hand away, trying to sit up on the bed.
“We can’t,” she said. “Calvin, please. You have to go.”
He grinned, his teeth shining in the dim light of her bedroom. “Remember how I always told you we would wait until the righttime?” he said, unzipping his jeans. His erection was obvious through his briefs, and he massaged himself through the thin material, never taking his eyes off her. “This is the right time, Georgina. I won’t see you again after tonight. I want to be the first man that’s ever been inside you.”
“No,” Geo said. “I don’t want to, okay? Please—”
He was on top of her before she could continue, and the weight of him felt heavier and more forceful now. One hand pinned her arms down over her head, the other spread her legs open wider, pulling down her panties. She was wet from his earlier touch, but she didn’t want to be touched anymore. She didn’t want this to go any further. She wanted this to stop.
She wrangled an arm free and thumped him on the back. “Calvin, please, I don’t want to—”
“I’m going to be your first, Georgina. So you don’t ever forget me.”
His penis entered her, suddenly and forcefully. The pain was searing and intense. She cried out, and he put a hand over her mouth, continuing to thrust inside her, going deeper, and it hurt more than she ever imagined it would. She clawed at his back, her short fingernails ineffectual as she tried to scratch him. This was not the Calvin she thought she knew, who’d always been gentle with her sexually, who took pride in pleasing her. This wasn’t sex at all, was it? This was something else entirely.
This was dominance. This was taking something he wanted that she didn’t want to give. This was rape.
“Stop,” she whimpered, when the hand covering her mouth slipped a little. “Please. Stop.”
He heard her, of course he did, but Calvin was in own world, where the only thing that mattered to him was what he wanted, what he needed. Nothing else existed. Eventually, Geo went limp, letting her arms rest on the mattress. There seemed to be no point in fighting. Fighting made it hurt more. Fighting made it worse.
Karma had come for her, and it was terrible.
He left the same way he came in, through the window. Geo never saw him again after that night. Not until years later, not until the trial.
Kaiser had asked her the other day if she ever worried about Calvin coming back for her. She’d told him that she wasn’t concerned, which was true. Calvin had already taken the best part of her the night she’d watched him rape and murder her best friend. What was left, he took the night he raped her in her own bedroom, with her father sleeping right down the hall.
Geo stares at the empty Mason jar on the nightstand now, the one that used to contain all her innocence, all her goodness. She’d kept it all this time. A therapist might have a field day trying to analyze why she had never thrown it away and, more important, why she’d kept it in a spot in her bedroom where she could clearly see it.
The answer was simple. It was punishment for what she’d done to Angela. And a reminder of her own trauma, her own pain, which she’d brought on herself for being so young and so stupid.
Her phone pings. Geo checks the text message, her heart lifting a little when she sees it’s from Kaiser. A small smile crosses her lips. Maybe it can work out between them… as long as she never tells him the whole story.
No one, not even Kaiser, could love her if they knew the whole story.
Her face falls when she sees what he’s sent her.
Two more bodies found in the woods behind St. Martin’s. Adult female and a child, killed same way as the first two.
A second message follows a few seconds later.
Calvin spotted in town. Stay inside. Lock the doors.
PART FOUR
DEPRESSION
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
