Stepbrother Soldier: A Forbidden Military Romance Novel (16 page)

19

The waiting, after the newspaper hit the stands, was the worst. I
mean, I didn’t have long to wait before other news agencies, independent
journalists, angry readers, passionate supporters, and a whole band of other
people started knocking on my door. Not that I had a door of my own; after
leaving Jane’s farm, with tears in my eyes, I’d gone straight to a hotel, and
hotels would become my new home for a long while.

But I was waiting for the Admiral. Or some other official, at least. I
couldn’t hide anymore, and expected someone to be coming for me. Whether it
would be in supplication, or to lead me to a dimly lit room where unspeakable
things would be done to me in order to secure my silence, I wasn’t sure. But
the waiting…oh, that was hell.

Leaving Jane had been hard enough; I’d almost wanted to ask, or beg,
her to come with me. She was the first person, after the incident, who looked
me dead in the eyes, said she believed me, and offered to help. And that offer
still stood; if the case went to court, she was willing to testify against the
Admiral.

This would be a godsend; if his own flesh and blood was willing to
take the stand and call him out for being someone who couldn’t be trusted,
who’d laid his hands on his wife, who was capable of evil…that could be enough
to sway a jury in a case that otherwise had scant evidence. At the end of the
day, it was my word against his. And he had the U.S. Navy behind him.

The four other girls who had come forward would testify, as well,
though they all opted to keep their names private in the meantime. They weren’t
really girls anymore, they were women, but I kept thinking of them as girls,
since that is what they’d been when the Admiral had taken advantage of them.

I understood their desire to remain secretive; what had happened to
them had happened a long time ago, and they’d all went on to build lives for
themselves. It would be unfair for anyone to expect them to give up the normalcy
they’d managed to attain. It was I alone who shouldered the burden, who became
the target of angry tweets and letters and even death threats.

Every morning I woke up and seriously considering deleting my twitter,
which was constantly flooded with people either supporting me or tearing me
down. But I kept it going; social media was a weapon, and I needed all the
weapons I could get my hands on. Even if half the tweets directed to
“@christystarling” were lewd, violent, and cruel, there was another side that
was adamantly supportive, encouraging, and even helpful.

The Admiral wasn’t just keeping quiet from me; he was keeping quiet
from the whole world. While I was doing TV and magazine interviews and being
coached on “keeping my story straight” (which was ridiculous, since my “story”
was, in fact, the truth), he was dead to the world. A hashtag was created by
some of my supporters: #findjoewalsh. Some people were calling for blood,
others just wanted to hear if he’d defend himself.

But, of course, there’s two sides to every coin, and once
#findjoewalsh popped up, #protectadmiralwalsh followed, bolstered by those who
felt that someone of his military honor and caliber didn’t need to prove
themselves against accusations like mine.

As for the military, they’d released a single statement, as vague and
noncommittal as you might imagine:

We are currently looking into the allegations
against Admiral Walsh. We can neither confirm nor deny the accusations at this
time. The nature of military administration is necessarily private to ensure
national security.

It wasn’t long before the President had something
to say about it, too.

“We need a military we can be proud of,” he’d said at one rally
shortly after the story broke. “And we need a military that takes care of those
who lay down their lives for America. My administration is launching a
full-scale investigation of Admiral Walsh. But it’s important to remember that
America is founded on justice, not revenge, and all men are innocent until
proven guilty.

Admiral Walsh has dedicated his life to our great nation, and deserves
a fair trial, just as anyone else. But should it become clear that these
heinous acts were, in fact, buried by the U.S. Navy, rest assured that I will
not rest until our soldiers and civilians alike are safe from anything like
this happening again.”

Everyone was talking about it. Everyone was talking about me. I took
it all in stride, but Ashton had a much harder time dealing with the
viciousness which some news outlets and people on social media were treating
me. Things came to a head one day when, leaving an interview, I experienced the
first taste of what a target I’d become.

I was being ushered out the back door of the studio in Cincinnati
after a radio interview where I’d been treated harsher than usual. The weird
thing about interviews was that some of the interviewers were clearly on my
side and others weren’t, and the tone and direction of the interview often
hinged on the interviewer’s ability to remain professional. The man who’d just
lambasted me had not been very professional, and I was already feeling low. I
had to take the back door because the front was clogged with protestors,
representing both sides of the issue.

Ashton, who’d become my security guard by proxy, had his arm around my
shoulder, my head nuzzled into his armpit. We were allowed to do that because
of the death threats, and I usually didn’t gather much comfort from it. It’s
hard to see an embrace like that as romantic or even friendly, when you know
it’s because someone could potentially be aiming a gun at your head.

As we walked briskly through the alley, which would take us a block
away from the crowd, I heard trash cans clattering.

“Hey! Hey bitch! Hey, you fucking skank! Cum-loving bitch, how you
like some of this?” Before I could pinpoint the source of the voice or really
even rationalize what was happening, I felt what seemed like gallons of cold,
gelatinous liquid smacking into my body. It smelled like vanilla. Ashton broke
away from me as I stood, shocked, trying to figure out what the hell had just
happened, what was covering my body, now soaking into my clothes.

Yogurt,
I
realized, almost wanting to laugh at how ridiculous it was. The ironic humor
was gone in a second, though, when I heard a masculine cry coming from my left.
I looked over, blinking quickly as the cold white cream slipped down my face,
and saw Ashton’s back, his arms in the air, hands in fists, towering over a
fat, bearded man in a dirty T-shirt and baseball cap. The man was holding his hands
before his face as Ashton landed blow after blow on his prone body.

“Fucking asshole,” Ashton screamed, ignoring the
man’s pathetic whimpering.

“Ashton! Ashton, stop!” I yelled, rushing to him and holding his arms
back, barely able to keep my grip on him. He was much stronger than me, and I
slid forward as I clutched one of his wrists in both hands, trying to keep him
from landing another punch on the helpless, cowering figure. A bucket lay
overturned near the scene, presumably the source of the yogurt.

“Fucking coward! Fucking piece of shit!” Ashton kept yelling, his face
red with rage, as I managed to get him to stumble back a few paces. His chest
rose and fell violently, his hands still clenched into fists. The man was
bleeding from a gash over his eye, and his face was just as red as Ashton’s.

“Shit, shit, Ashton,” I said, thinking that this was the last thing we
needed. I could see the headlines now: “Rape accuser’s psychotic stepbrother
assaults protestor”, “Starling’s step slams Walsh sympathizer”,
“Yogurt-throwing ends in punch-out”.

They’d call him violent, crazy, unhinged. They’d use it as more
evidence against me, somehow. I stood there, dripping yogurt, trying to make
sense of what had become of my life. Ashton’s breathing began to slow as he
realized the danger was passed, and in fact had never been there at all. I saw
guilt creeping into his eyes. The guy on the floor was a dick, sure, but he
probably didn’t deserve what he’d gotten, no matter how much he might’ve been
asking for it. He was still huddled in the fetal position, now crying.

“What do we do?” Ashton asked, turning to me. I
shrugged.

“We gotta call the police, I guess,” I said, knowing that if we
didn’t, the guy on the ground probably would. Was this going to end in a lawsuit?
Was Ashton going to get arrested? Either way, there wasn’t much for it. We sure
as hell couldn’t just flee the scene, not with the whole country watching our
every move. I sighed and pulled out my phone.

Within minutes, the area was surrounded by cops, an ambulance bleating
as it pulled down the small alleyway. The man was propped up against the wall,
wrapped in a blanket, his eyes downcast. But every once in a while he’d look
up, at me, never at Ashton. The hatred I saw in those eyes – it still chills me
to the bone.

Why do they hate me so much?
I wondered.
All
I did was tell the truth. I never accused
them
of anything…

That was the moment I realized, fully, how deep in I was. These people
didn’t just disagree with me, or didn’t believe me. They hated me. Really,
truly hated me. Something about me offended them at their deepest levels.
Whether they hated women, or hated anyone who said anything against the
military, or had some other deep-seeded hatred inside them, I was the perfect
outlet for their rage.

What if it hadn’t been a guy throwing yogurt? Suddenly, the idea that
I really needed protection, which I’d entertained as a “better safe than sorry”
notion, hit home. I wondered if Ashton had a gun. I shook the thought from my
head; I didn’t want to put Ashton at risk, either, and judging from his
over-the-top reaction to the guy in the alley, I didn’t necessarily trust his
trigger finger, either.

I was still covered in yogurt, by the way, and trying to tell the
story of what had happened was almost comical.
At least this time no one can call me a liar,
I thought as I
gestured to my ruined clothes and the goop that was still in my hair to yet
another notebook-wielding policeman.

Some of them tried to hide their smiles, others simply nodded and
avoided looking at me. I wondered what they thought of me. I thanked God they
were mostly professional. I only caught a dirty look from one of the cops,
surprisingly a female. That broke my heart more than any of the other looks I
got throughout the entire ideal. It made sense at least a little bit when men
would leer at me, but when a fellow woman did it I felt legitimately betrayed.

“Well, the guy doesn’t want to press charges, which is good for him
because we’d have to take him in for harassment and assault, anyway,” we were
finally told by a genial, red-haired lieutenant. He barely tried to hide his
amusement as he looked at the yogurt clotted in my hair. “If it were me, I’d
charge him for being a dick, too, but I don’t make the rules. You all can go on
now,
we’ve got everything we need here. But be
careful, and you keep those guns holstered, son.”

Ashton nodded, still seeming ashamed of himself. The lieutenant
flipped his notebook closed and looked around the scene, then turned back to
me, leaning in confidentially.

“Just so you know, I think what you’re doing is mighty brave, young
lady. I wouldn’t have the balls. I hope they put the bastard behind bars for a
long, long time,” he said, his tone turning serious as he spoke to me. I
smiled, surprised at the tears pricking behind my eyes. Sometimes, after things
like that, a kind word from someone who actually believed in me was enough to
get me bawling with gratitude.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, “I hope so, too.”

“Alright, I’m gonna have one of my guys escort you to your car. It’s a
madhouse out there. Word travels damn fast these days. Damn iPhones and
Facebooks, people start turning up to crime scenes before we can even get there
to shoo them away,” he said, waving over a young cop who trotted over, eager to
be of service. “Make sure they get on the road okay.”

“Yes, sir,” the young cop barked, placing one hand on my shoulder. He
looked at Ashton, who quickly took hold of my other shoulder. Bowing my head,
yogurt-hardened hair falling in front of my eyes, shielding me from the view of
the crowd, the two men shouldered their way through a screaming mass of people.
You couldn’t even make out a single word from the garbled shouting. But, they
parted easily, largely because of the presence of a police officer. A uniform
could do things that Ashton’s muscles never could.

Once we were safely inside the car, the crowd encircled us from a safe
distance, their shouts and screams a dull roar. Their faces seemed to blur
together, each one of them angry for one reason or the other. Just a sea of
open mouths and furrowed brows, attached to bodies short and long, fat and
thin, young and old, male and female.