He Ruined Everything

He Ruined Everything
WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SEXUAL ABUSE AND 'SUICIDE ATTEMPT' PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THIS IS A FICTIONAL STORY, AND THE AUTHOR DOES NOT RECOMMEND YOU BREAKING THE LAW, OR HARMING YOURSELF! PLEASE REACH OUT TO THE PROPER LINES IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING IN SILENCE! PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION AND REMEMBER, THIS IS NOT REAL!
____________________________________________________________________________

The officers moved quickly after the shot. Hands grabbed her arms, not rough but firm, guiding her off the dock while radios cracked and boots pounded against wood. Someone wrapped a blanket around her shoulders even though she did not remember asking for one. The lake swallowed the blood and the body, and the sound all at once, and the only thing that stayed was the echo inside her chest.
‘He just raped me.’ She thought to herself. 
The words never left her mouth, never rose to her throat; they just sat low and heavy in her stomach, pressing upward every time she tried to breathe. An officer asked if she was injured, and she heard herself say no before her head nodded.
“Did he touch you?” the officer asked carefully.
‘He touched me everywhere.’ She said to herself as she shook her head no.
 “No, he just apologized to me, and before I knew it, he kissed me, then shot himself.” The lie did not feel like deception. It felt like containment. If she opened her mouth and let the truth spill out, it would not stop. It would not stay neat and manageable inside a police report. It would become something else entirely, something that would reach Jake before she was ready.
They sat her on the back bumper of a cruiser while paramedics worked somewhere behind her, voices urgent, movements sharp and practiced. She kept her eyes on the water, on the dark place where he had fallen, refusing to turn around. If she looked, she would see him again, and if she saw him again, she might collapse.
He apologized tearfully, then shattered her completely in every final, unforgettable way before saying goodbye in the most heartbreakingly way possible. 
Her hands clenched beneath the blanket, fingers digging into her palms hard enough to ground her in something physical. The night air slid over her legs and under her dress, touching skin that no longer felt like it belonged to her. She swallowed and forced her shoulders to remain straight, refusing to fold in front of strangers.
Jake. The thought of him broke through everything else. What do I tell Jake? The question hit harder than the gunshot.
If she told him the truth, he would never forgive himself for letting her walk onto that dock alone. He would blame himself for not fighting harder, for not breaking through the officers who held him back. He would carry that guilt like armor, and it would slowly carve into him.
If she told him, he would see her differently, not with disgust, but with devastation. She could survive anger. She could survive shouting. She could survive tears. She could not survive Jake looking at her like something fragile that had been ruined.
An officer crouched in front of her, voice gentler now. “Ma’am, we need to take you home. You’ve been cleared to leave if you’re okay.” Cleared. The word echoed strangely in her mind as if a body could be cleared simply because it wasn’t bleeding. As if violation required visible damage. 
She stood on legs that felt disconnected from her torso, letting them guide her into the cruiser. The door shut with a heavy click that sounded final, sealing her into a small space filled with the smell of vinyl and cold air. As the car pulled away, red and blue lights fading behind them, she kept her eyes forward.
The lake disappeared from view, but the feeling in her body did not.
The drive home felt longer than the one that had brought her there. She watched trees pass by like dark silhouettes against the night, their branches bending in the wind without breaking. She wondered if that was what survival looked like, bending just enough to keep from snapping.
‘He just raped me.’ The words were quieter now, not less true, just buried deeper.
Her thighs ached where his hands had gripped her. Her hips felt bruised where he had pressed her back against the dock post. The memory of his breath against her neck replayed in fragments she could not stop, each piece sharp and unwelcome.
Part of her hated that her body had remembered him. That was the worst part. Not the force, not the fear, the memory, the familiarity, the way her heart had betrayed her for one suspended second before terror swallowed everything.
She pressed her forehead against the cool window and closed her eyes. She imagined stepping into her house, imagining Jake’s face when he saw her. He would search her immediately, scanning for injuries, checking her arms, her neck, her hands.
“Did he hurt you?” he would ask.
‘Yes… No… Not in the way you think...’
She could already hear the answers forming, practiced and careful. She would tell him Mike apologized. She would tell him Mike was unstable. She would tell him Mike said goodbye before he shot himself. All of that was true. The truth, but rearranged. The cruiser turned into her driveway. The porch light was still on, and Jake was there, waiting.
He stood at the top of the steps when the car stopped, his posture rigid, his hands fisted at his sides like he had been holding himself together by force. When the door opened, and she stepped out, his eyes moved over her quickly, searching, assessing, and counting.
She forced herself to keep her breathing steady. He reached her quickly. His hands cupped her face, thumbs brushing her cheeks, his voice low and urgent. “Are you hurt?” he asked, his eyes scanning her body without touching too much. She shook her head.
“No,” she said. The word tasted like metal. He pulled her into him then, not gently, not loosely, but fully, as if he needed to confirm she was solid and real. She pressed her face against his chest and let him hold her, feeling the warmth of him, the steadiness of his heartbeat. For a brief second, she allowed herself to feel safe.
Then the fresh memory returned. His hands, his weight, and his whispers. She pulled back slightly, afraid Jake might feel it inside her, afraid he might somehow sense the wrongness still clinging to her skin. He didn’t. He just brushed her hair away from her face and exhaled slowly.
“They said he shot himself,” Jake murmured. Renee nodded, tears forming in her eyes. “They pulled him out of the water,” he continued. “They’re still working on him.”
Working on him.
The phrase struck her strangely. She had assumed he was gone, that the gunshot was the end. A flicker of something passed through her chest, not hope, not fear, just confusion. Jake searched her eyes again. “Did he say anything to you?” he asked quietly.
‘Yes…He said he needed me…He said he was sorry while he forced himself inside me…’ 
“He apologized,” she said instead. Jake’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t interrupt. “He said he loved me,” she continued, her voice steady, controlled. “He said he ruined everything.” That was true. Jake closed his eyes briefly, absorbing it.
“Did he… touch you?” he asked softly. The question landed exactly where she expected it to. Her mind split in two. One part screamed to tell the truth. The other wanted to protect the man standing before her.
She shook her head. “No,” she lied. Jake studied her face for a long moment, as if measuring the space between her words and her eyes. Then he nodded slowly and pulled her back against him. She let herself sink into his embrace, let him believe she was intact.
By the time he led her inside, by the time the door closed and the house wrapped around them in familiar quiet, she had already sealed it away.
The dock, his force, the way she froze under him, and the most haunting part, the man she still loved at a distance, taking his own life because he was so sick and knew he had gone too far and was just simply… lost.
Those memories would not enter this house, would not live in their bed, would not sit at their kitchen table. She would carry it alone. Because some truths do not heal when spoken. Some truths detonate, and she was not willing to blow up the only thing in her life that still felt whole.