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I didn’t like it.
But I kept my head down and did my best to ignore them.
My house was nice. It was small with two bedrooms, a decent size living room, and a cute kitchen. I didn’t need a lot of space because it was just me. It made the rent cheaper, so that was also a perk. I used Cane’s money to pay for my first semester of school as well as my rent. I wanted to get a job, but since people were still so interested in me, I thought it was too soon.
I hoped I would have a normal life eventually.
I thought about Cane every single day. He was in my thoughts first thing in the morning, in the middle of the day, and then when I went to sleep. He was usually in my dreams too, and I was surprised a lot of them were sexual in nature.
My body missed the sex.
But I missed the rest of him too.
I wondered if he was thinking about me when I was thinking about him. I wondered if he wanted to call. I wondered why I didn’t call.
The last time I’d spoken to him on the phone, I slipped up and told him I missed him.
Imagine what else I would say if I spoke to him on a regular basis. It wouldn’t help me move on. It wouldn’t help me get back on my feet. It would just hold me back as I tried to move forward with my life.
The campus was exactly as I remembered it, but now it was totally different.
Because all the students knew exactly who I was.
Every time I wanted to talk to a guy I thought was cute, he usually steered clear of me. Making friends was a lot harder than it used to be because people treated me like some infectious disease. Group assignments were awkward. Members of the group would meet up without me and finish the project without asking for my input.
They avoided me.
I knew they didn’t hate me for what happened. I knew they just didn’t know how to act. They didn’t know what to say since I’d been trafficked and used as a sex slave. It’s not like we needed to have a discussion about it, but just having them look at me made me uncomfortable.
I was in my hometown, but it felt like a different planet.
It didn’t feel right.
The only thing that hadn’t changed were my parents. They treated me like I was delicate, but they were just as happy to see me as they’d always been. My mom still made dinner for me and dropped it off because she knew I wasn’t much of a cook.
I missed Gerald.
I missed the smell of the Tuscan countryside, the way the olive branches stuck out and brought shade to the backyard. I missed the sight of the vineyards, the smell of wine. I missed sleeping in that enormous bed with supersoft sheets.
And I missed the man I spent my time with.
Would this feeling ever go away?
Or was Cane right about everything?
This place wasn’t my home anymore.
He was home.
I had dinner in front of the TV that night then did some work on my computer. My teaching credential program was all about papers and group projects. In a few months, I would be placed into a classroom for my student teaching. I looked forward to that the most. That was the aspect of the job that excited me. I wanted to work with kids every day, to impact their lives the way they impacted mine.
But I had to do this first.
I finished my work then went to bed. I’d bought new furniture since my parents didn’t want to part with my old things. They wanted to hold on to it because it still contained my essence. If I ever got married and moved away, they wanted me to have somewhere to stay when I visited.
I couldn’t picture myself getting married.
No man even wanted to look at me.
I was damaged goods to them. I was disgusting. I was a victim.
I lay in the dark but couldn’t sleep. I had class first thing in the morning, but that didn’t make my eyes shut. I stared at the ceiling, wearing the shirt I’d stolen from Cane. I wondered if he’d noticed the theft over the last few weeks. Or maybe he had so many shirts he didn’t even care.
I stared at my phone, and a sinking sensation started in my stomach.
I missed him.
I missed him more now than ever before.
But I shouldn’t call him. I shouldn’t interrupt his life. If he was moving on, I didn’t want to sabotage that.
But I had no one else in the world to talk to. He was the only person who really understood me. He was the only man who knew what I’d been through. I didn’t need to explain anything to him. He understood me.
