Hiding his growing turmoil, Rowdy waited, saying nothing, just encouraging her with casual strokes down her arm, over her silky hair, her cheek.
“We were at a park fundraiser.” She swallowed hard. “I tried to dodge him, but he wouldn’t leave me alone. He was obnoxious, being deliberately rude. He embarrassed me. So I was going to leave. I thought I had slipped away from his eagle eye by going out the back door of the pavilion. I figured if I could just make it to my car, I’d leave and then I’d stay away, regardless of Meyer’s business and the stuff Mom expected me to attend.”
Rowdy knew only too well how hard it was to outrun your problems. “He found you?”
She nodded. “I have no idea how he knew I’d left, but he was furious, saying I’d walked out on him. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t there with him anyway, that we’d arrived separately with no arrangements to hook up. In his mind we were a couple and I was just supposed to go along with that.” Curling in closer, her voice strained, she said, “He grabbed me. He’d been...rough before, deliberately hurting me, but not like this.”
“Hurting?”
For the longest time she didn’t reply, then she crawled up to his chest. “When you picked me up and carried me in here, you didn’t hurt me. Not at all. I knew if I said for you to stop, you would.”
“I’m glad you realize that.”
“We were sort of playing, and I enjoyed it.” She kissed his chin. “But every time Fisher would touch me, he’d...I don’t know. Squeeze my arms too tightly, push me too hard.” Her breath became more shallow, her words tight. “Everything with him was on the verge of being pain. It was almost like he enjoyed seeing red marks left behind. He’d hold my wrist so tight that I’d wince, then he’d look at it and...I don’t know. There was something in his eyes.” She swallowed, looked away and whispered, “Like maybe it turned him on.”
God, how Rowdy wished he had Fisher close at hand right now. “It was worse that night?”
With a trembling hand, she pushed her hair away. “He grabbed my upper arm and...and literally dragged me into the natatorium. I was so scared. I screamed for him to let me go but he wouldn’t.”
It wasn’t easy to ask questions when all he really wanted to do was hunt up Fisher and teach him the error of his ways. “A natatorium?” He’d never heard of such a thing.
“It’s a building that houses a pool. That time of night, with the fundraiser at the pavilion, it should have been locked. But somehow he had it opened.” She touched Rowdy’s jaw. “That’s the thing about Fisher, you know? He’s so well received in the community, so trusted, a supporter of so many causes, that he has unbelievable access...and trust.”
“You’re not alone now.” Rowdy wanted her to understand that. He hadn’t liked Fisher on sight, and now he had a good reason to chew on that dislike. “I trust you, not him.”
Her eyes grew wet. “That means so much.” Firming her lips, she stoically fought off tears. “No one else believed me, but I know Fisher intended to rape me. He deliberately ripped my dress and the way he kissed me—” She had to fight for another breath. “It hurt. I tried to turn away from him, but there wasn’t anything I could do.”
“Shhh.” He stroked her, kissed her and wished he could kill Fisher with his bare hands.
“I had his fingerprints on my arm for a week.” She looked at him. “And for more than a month, I could barely sleep.”
He knew all about having reality plague your dreams. Rowdy hid his rage and continued to soothe her. “How did you get away?”
She shook her head, as if remembering and sorting it out in her mind. “He’d backed me up to a wall and was trying to...to paw me. I wouldn’t hold still, so he just grabbed the front of my dress and tore it away.”
Yeah, Fisher was a dead man.
“When he tried to pull me down to the floor, I pushed away from the wall and we both stumbled. Fisher tripped over the material of my dress and fell backward. There was some pool equipment there and...I don’t know...he just sort of floundered and his feet came out from under him and I heard a big splash.”
Using his fingertips, Rowdy trailed up and down her arm. “You ran?”
Avery nodded. “It was dark and I couldn’t see that well, but I knew he fell in awkwardly. I heard the thud before the splash, but it wasn’t until later that I found out he’d hit his head on the way in. He ended up with a black eye and a busted nose and several stitches.”
“He deserved a hell of a lot more.”
She didn’t disagree. “Before I could even get home to tell Mom, Fisher had called them on his way to the hospital. He’d made up this elaborate lie about me accusing him of cheating and being furious.”
“Bullshit. You were furious at me and all I got was a soppy bar cloth to the chest.”
She gave a watery, tearful laugh and bent to kiss him. “I’m sorry about that.”
“You’ve long been forgiven.” He was glad to lighten her mood—but the teasing did nothing to alleviate the storm gathering inside him. He despised abuse at any time. But against a woman? Against Avery? That was almost too personal to bear. “I guess your folks believed you’d caused the problem?”
“They claimed I’d misunderstood and overreacted. He told them that he was upset at how badly I’d treated him, and my dress got ripped as an accident when I refused to talk to him. He said he was reaching for me and I shoved away—and of course, that’s how he fell in the pool and got hurt. But Rowdy, I swear, I know what he was going to do. He was so...ugly. So mean and out of control.”