Page 43 of Tame Me

“I mean, he cares about Tabitha, too,” I say.

“Yeah, but taking Tabitha would be far riskier than you,” Reid says honestly. “You don’t have any family. The benefit is that they must not know that you and Giovanni are connected, so that is good.”

“As much as I hate to do this, we will have to suspend the program until this can be settled,” Thane says. “We can do day classes, but housing people there who have already been through significant trauma is risky.”

“Yeah,” Reid says with a sigh. “Let’s just focus on this, and then we can go from there.”

“Ayla, you are to stay with one of us at all times,” Thane says to me. “I don’t care what it’s for; you stay with us. Okay?”

“I will stay close,” I confirm. Thane wraps me in a tight hug and kisses the top of my head. “I’ll be okay. I’ve come too far to get myself killed.”

Now I just have to convince myself that I’ll be okay…

Four Days Later

I am so sick and tired of this house. Thane found someone to buy it, and they are paying way too much for it, I think. I guess technically that’s what it’s worth, but I think we should just set it on fire. Reid said arson is a felony, though, so I guess that idea is out.

We have been working night and day to get this place clean. This is the best it’s looked in my entire life. The fact that I’m leaving with only my mom’s box of belongings is even better.

I’ve never had a chance to go through it. Dad would never let me touch it because it upset him too much, I guess. He got rid of everything else when I was a baby, but he shoved this in the attic where I couldn’t get to it. Now he’s dead, so it’s mine.

I wish I had gotten a chance to meet her. I don’t even know what she looks like, but I’m guessing her box has pictures.

I am sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with the box in front of me. Thane and Reid are sitting next to me while Giovanni is across from me. I pull the top off the old cardboard box, and it’s filled with pictures, notebooks, a baby blanket, and a lock of hair in a Ziploc bag. Why would he save that?

I pull a picture out to look at, and Thane laughs. “Something funny?” I ask.

“Baby, you could be her twin. She’s beautiful,” Thane says.

“You do look just like her,” Reid says.

“I’d fuck her,” Giovanni says with a shrug, making me laugh. “Look at this one.”

Giovanni hands me a photo of my mother, but she’s much younger. Sixteen maybe. “Jesus. That’s basically me.”

“You were the cutest kid, too. You had buck teeth in elementary school. I think I have photos somewhere,” Giovanni says.

“I had to grow into my mouth, okay?” I laugh. “Dad never kept photos of me. I’d say that was weird, but he frequently came in me so…”

“What is this?” Reid asks, holding a stack of papers. I look at it, and it’s an order of protection against.. Maybe Dad.

“Lenord Hastings,” I say. “I mean, Dad was Lenord, but…”

“Uh… Ayla,” Giovanni says, handing me his phone where he has an article pulled up.

“Local man, Lenord Hastings, was arrested for an alleged assault of a local teen. Officials say that Hastings is fighting for parental rights to the child conceived during the assault. Hastings is attempting to block the teen from having an abortion performed,” I read aloud. The article includes a much younger photo of Dad, and I suddenly feel nauseated. “This happened three hours away.”

“About a year later, there is a report of a missing three-month-old baby girl,” Thane says with a sigh. “Her name is Ayla Jennings. Mother is Allison Jennings, eighteen. She is believed to be with her biological father, Lenord Hastings.”

“Fuck,” I say. “We moved here when I was four. I remember moving here.”

“I remember that, too,” Giovanni remarks.

“Maybe he was just getting the heat off him before getting closer again,” Reid says.

“Yeah, He was always weird about cops, but I figured that was because he whipped me with a belt so frequently that I almost always had bruises, and when I was older, I was raped almost daily.”

“So… Do you want to call her?” Thane asks. He holds his phone out, and on the screen, he has a phone number dialed. “She’s still looking for you, according to the social media posts looking for you over the years.”