Kara ran to her car through a rain shower, pulled the door open and got in, slamming the button to lock all the doors. She started the engine and cranked on the heat in an attempt to stop the shivers that ran through her body. She hugged her arms against her torso and cried.
"Damn him!" she cursed. "Damn him to hell!" She could feel his ejaculate where it had slid down her inner thighs. She could smell him on her skin.
She rested her forehead against her steering wheel and tried to calm her breathing. She needed to get as far away from HIM as possible, but it wouldn't help her to have an accident. Finally she felt calm enough to drive and backed out of her parking space. She carefully swung her car around to head for the exit of the parking lot. When she was facing the direction of the jobsite trailer, she could clearly see Kyle in the doorway watching her. She tried, only partially successfully, to stop her sobs.
Instead of driving to her normal restaurant spot, she just drove home. She didn't know how she could face the possibility of coming near to Kyle again. Once home, she used her phone to send Tim, her boss, an email explaining that she had gotten suddenly sick while out for lunch and was going to take the rest of the day off. Then she shut off her phone before she could receive a reply. She pulled off her clothes and threw them away before climbing into the shower to wash Kyle off of her skin. She sobbed as she scrubbed. She didn't get out of the shower until the water turned cold. She dried herself and crawled naked into her bed, too tired to do anything else.
It was well past midnight when she woke up in the darkness of her room, her heart pounding with fear. It took her a few minutes to calm down, telling herself that she wasn't in any immediate danger. She crept through her little house to the kitchen in the dark, looking for her purse in order to get her phone, before realizing she had left it in the bathroom. She found her phone and took it back to bed with her in order to plug it in to the charger before turning it back on. She saw a message from Tim telling her to take as much time as she needed which brought a tear to her eye. She knew he'd been worried about how many hours she was working.
She got down to business, searching for information on the construction company working around her building. She knew the name of the contractor; the name was on all their equipment including Kyle's trailer. She was looking for who to file a formal complaint with when the company's homepage popped up and she gasped, dropping her phone out of suddenly nerveless hands. It took her some time to calm her breathing and still her shaking hands enough to pick her phone back up and look again at the homepage. If featured a picture of four men abreast, grinning, their arms around each other's shoulders. "Three Generations - Working for YOU" the banner read.
Kara read with a sinking stomach the short blurb that explained that the company founder, his son-in-law, and the grandsons still ran the company together after over 50 years in business. Kyle was clearly a grandson. So much for reporting him to his management, she thought. She had already considered and rejected going to the police and reporting what had happened to her as an assault, but she knew in her heart that it would be a case of "he said vs. she said" and she would be ruined no matter what came of it in court. It was a fact that she had begged him there towards the end. She felt sick just thinking about it.
She crawled back out of bed and got dressed in pajama pants and a t-shirt so that she could go to a 24-hour pharmacy and buy a 'morning after' pill to at least put her mind at ease there. She couldn't face the idea that she might carry his child. He had already violated her terribly, a pregnancy would just prolong that. She acquired what she was looking for and slunk back to her house, took the pill in her bathroom, tossed the packaging in the trash and crawled back into bed.
She tried to sleep but couldn't stop thinking about Kyle. She was just so... angry. She had liked him. If he'd asked her on a date, she would have accepted. She had been fantasizing about him for weeks. And then he took from her what she would gladly have given him if he'd only asked her nicely. She finally fell into a restless sleep and woke up exhausted when her alarm sounded. She lay in bed and decided to take the day off. Actually, since it was only Thursday she sent an email to her boss telling him she wouldn't be in until Monday. What she really needed was a long weekend of watching Netflix and eating ice cream. On the plus side, she was no longer so angry at Kyle, just incredibly sad at his betrayal of her trust, her heart aching for what might have been.
Right at 11:15 in the morning she had just finished watching The Martian and was in the kitchen making herself a plate of hummus and pita when her doorbell rang. She was startled by the noise but went to the door nonetheless. She could see through the leaded glass door panel that a man stood on her porch holding an enormous bouquet of dark blue irises. The doorbell rang a second time before she reached the door. Annoyed, she yanked it open.
"Can I help you," she asked impatiently.
"Flowers for Miss Jenkins," a familiar voice said, as he pushed his way into her home.
"No!" She tried to shut the door on him, but he again proved much too strong for her.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Kara," Kyle said, pressing the bouquet into her trembling hands. "I'm here to apologize. I brought you lunch from your sandwich shop."
Kara looked at him over the flowers, her blue-gray eyes wide and filled with tears.
"I'm really sorry, Kara," Kyle said, his deep voice husky with emotion. "Yesterday I... I let my animal instincts take over. I lost control. I just took what I wanted. I had no right. I'm sorry." He ran his hand through the mop of sandy blond hair at the top of his head back toward his crown.
"I really, really like you," he knew he was babbling but he couldn't help himself. "You're gorgeous. You know you're incredibly smart. I've been thinking about you day and night for weeks. I want you so bad... I want to... Can we maybe start over? I know I don't deserve a second chance. But I have to ask."
Kara considered him for a long time without saying anything.
"Give me a minute," she said and went into her kitchen to find a vase for the flowers.
Kyle looked around her foyer. Her house was pretty much what he would have expected of her he thought, suppressing a grin. It was a tiny 1930s era Arts & Crafts bungalow, the exterior painted a slate blue. It was feminine, but not excessively so. From where he was standing just inside her front door he could see that most, if not all, the rooms had rich oak hardwood flooring. The living room featured an enormous overstuffed brown leather sofa piled with throw pillows and draped with an afghan in navy blue, hunter green, and burgandy. Two navy blue wingback chairs flanked the fireplace, and there were several bookshelves holding more books than he had ever seen in one place outside of a library or bookstore. The walls that were not covered in shelving had some nice oil paintings and watercolors. Two were of purple irises, which caused Kyle to do a mental fist-pump at having picked out the right kind of flowers for her.
He took the two steps that brought him to the doorway to the dining room. It was easy to tell that the round oak pedestal table rarely hosted a meal for more than one. At one chair there was a single placemat, a paperback book open face-down next to it, indicating that was where she sat to eat. In front of another chair was a neat pile of mail, a letter open next to it. At a third spot a mouse pad, headset, and power cord were obvious indications that Kara worked from there on her laptop. Kyle sat down the bag holding her sandwich on the placemat and waited for her.
Kara walked into the dining room carrying the irises in a tall crystal vase and sat them in the middle of the dining table. It wasn't lost on Kyle that she kept the table between the two of them, giving her some protection from any moves from him.
"The thing is, Kyle...," she started and stopped, not looking at him. "The thing is. I'm really, really angry at you. You took... You took my choices away from me," she said, her voice halting. "I told you to stop!
"I liked you," she said, finally meeting his eyes. "I thought we were friends. The fact is, I was hoping you'd ask me out on a date. I wanted to get to know you better. But all you wanted was a quick... fuck. I guess?
"I don't know how we can start over," a sob caught in her throat. "You hurt me very badly."
"I know. I am so, so sorry."
"I don't trust you. I don't know how you earn that back. And I can't be friends with someone I don't trust.
"You told me the first time we talked that if I had anyone act inappropriate towards me, I should tell you and you would make sure they were disciplined. But who do I tell when you are the one being inappropriate? Your dad is your boss! I looked it up on the internet last night. 'Inappropriate', ha! That's rich! It shouldn't apply to both cat-calling and assault..."