When Love's at Work Read Free

really. It was a memory. A memory of Derek
Worthington.
    Purity grabbed the water bottle she kept by
her bed on a side table and let the cool water refresh her dry
mouth. She reached for the phone and called Courtney.
    “ What’s up? Why are you
awake in the middle of the night?”
    “ I had the dream, uh,
memory again.” Purity tried to keep her voice from
breaking.
    “ I’ll be right
over.”
    “ No. No, Court, you don’t
need to come over. I just… I just needed to hear a friendly
voice.”
    “ That damn self-righteous
sonofabitch,” Courtney began. “They should have castrated him.
Strung him up by his balls and then yanked ‘em right off, or
worse!”
    “ I haven’t had the dre…
memory in almost a year. It was probably triggered by his phone
call.”
    “ He called you? When? What
did he say?”
    “ He called today, while I
was on my way to the fundraiser. He left a voice mail saying his
mother had a stroke, who knows if she did or not. Anyway, he wanted
me to call him.”
    “ Did you?”
    “ Hell no!”
    “ Did you report the
violation?”
    “ Not yet. I was so busy
today. I’ll send an e-mail to Brad Thompson on Monday. He’s really
good about following up when I call or e-mail.” Purity was tired of
documenting violation after violation. What good was a restraining
order if Derek just kept ignoring it?
    “ Maybe you should call
your shrink.”
    “ I thought about that,”
Purity replied. “She said to call whenever I need to talk, but I’m
feeling better. She said PTSD can be triggered by a lot of
different things.”
    “ Was it the same
memory?”
    “ Yes, identical to all the
others,” Purity paused. “It feels so real in the moment. I can
smell the cologne he was wearing, feel the texture of his hands,
the softness of the pillow… well, until he started smothering me
with it.”
    “ I’m all for sexual
exploration, but the whole asphyxiation thing just doesn’t make any
sense to me. I mean, how can lack of oxygen make your orgasm
better?”
    Purity didn’t have the answer to that
question. To each their own, Pure always figured, but she had not
been a consenting partner in Derek’s pre-planned theatrics. When
Pure managed to shove the pillow off her face, adrenaline gave her
the strength to knock Derek off balance. She scrambled from the bed
and ran for the door clad only in her skin. She hadn’t thought to
grab a jacket, a purse or her shoes. She had been scared, almost
literally, to death.
    Her fists became bruised from pounding on
the next-door-neighbor’s door wildly. Thank God the woman opened
the door and let her in.
    Derek was seething when the police arrived.
He tried to make it sound as if Purity was overreacting and their
sexual encounter had just gotten a little out of hand.
    Purity could see the signs now, in
retrospect. In the moment, though, she hadn’t noticed Derek
becoming more and more controlling. He had never liked Courtney or
Meg or Tapestry and had insisted that she spent way too much time
with them and not enough with him.
    Derek began telling her what clothes he
liked best on her and which way he liked her to wear her hair. It
all happened slowly, over time.
    It reminded Pure of that old saying about
putting a frog in a pot of boiling water. It’s hot and he’ll jump
out. But, if you put a frog in a pot of cool water and turn the
heat up slowly, he’ll boil to death. That’s what Pure felt like she
had almost done -- boiled to death -- only in her case it was
almost suffocated to death.
    “ Pure? Are you there?”
Courtney asked.
    “ Sorry. My mind was
wandering.”
    “ You can’t live in the
past. It’s over and Derek Worthington is never going to be in a
position where he can hurt you again, ever.”
    “ I know. My head knows. I
just want these stupid flashbacks to stop. When are they going to
stop, Court?”
    “ Are you sure you don’t
want me to come over? I can bring my baseball bat and if that
asshole even tries to show up while you