Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 76022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
But it wasn’t long before he was following me home after my shift, before he was standing outside my apartment building with binoculars.
My world, already smaller thanks to no classes or soccer and all my friends going back to their hometowns for summer break, narrowed further.
I didn’t leave my house except to go to work.
I accepted rides home from the bouncer or other servers.
I tried to have Coach Dover blocked from the bar. But my boss claimed he never did anything wrong.
Too quickly, the next school year began.
Then there he was again.
Hands moving over me under the guise of training me, of checking me for injuries.
It was around then, too, that he found me on my socials. Then came the messages. Hundreds and hundreds per week. All of them unanswered.
My roommate finally got sick of it, dragging me to the dean and demanding I tell him what was going on.
The investigation went on for weeks, and I’d started to lose hope that anything would change.
Until we showed up to practice to find the assistant coach was now taking over as the head.
I’d been so focused on getting him off the soccer field that I never stopped to consider that without a job, he would have nothing but time to follow me, to send me increasingly scary messages. About how we were meant to be together, how he was going to marry me, and what he was going to do to me on our wedding night.
That was when I finally did it.
I went to the police and begged for some help.
I got a meeting with a judge.
I was granted a restraining order for a year.
And I finally, finally felt like I could breathe.
Not only couldn’t Coach Dover get close to me physically, but he was also banned from contacting me online as well.
I was finally free.
For a few blissful months, it seemed like everything was finally on track.
Then summer break came around.
My roommate went home to her family.
I picked up shifts at the bar when they found themselves short-staffed again.
It was all just very normal.
Happy, even.
Until I came home one night at nearly three in the morning with a migraine hammering behind my eyes, reeking of booze, but almost four hundred dollars richer.
I’d been thankful for the dark apartment as I walked through, stripping out of my beer-stained shirt and shorts, ready to take a quick shower, down some pain meds, and fall into bed.
I was in my bedroom when something made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
Something felt wrong.
But I couldn’t place what.
Not until I saw a shadow moving out of the corner of my eye.
Only it wasn’t a shadow.
It was a man whose restraining order had expired.
A man who had a year of pent-up obsession to express.
I tried to rush toward the door.
But he was right there in front of me, blocking my way, telling me to hear him out, demanding I acknowledge how perfect we were together.
The more I insisted he leave, that we talk somewhere else in the daylight, the more agitated he became that I wouldn’t hear him out.
When I tried to move past him, he grabbed me.
It was like the second his fingers touched my skin, he lost any control he had left.
He backed me up against the wall, ran his hands down my arms, over my belly, then up… up.
My legs unfroze, and I ducked under his arm.
I ran half-naked into the hallway, banging on doors as I went, yelling for someone to help me.
It was the dropout pothead at the end of the hall who answered, letting me into his apartment while storming into the hall with a bat swinging in his hand.
By the time he checked around, though, my coach was long gone.
The cops who showed up claimed that I had no proof there had been any sort of break-in, rolled their eyes when I insisted that I was very careful about locking my door when I left. And when I kept going with the story, they went as far as to say it sounded like I had a date over, led him on, then caused a scene when I decided not to go through with it.
As they walked off afterward, I heard them grumbling about dumb college girls.
This time, when I tried to get another restraining order, the new judge wouldn’t give it to me.
Without that barrier, Coach Dover was everywhere. I got a new phone; he figured out the new number. I changed jobs; he tracked me down. I tried to be normal and date; he told the guy horrible stories about me.
Then, worst of all, I got news that Coach Dover went to his union and forced another review of his conduct. No one spoke to me. Just the other girls who had been on the team at the time, all of whom said Coach Dover had never been inappropriate.