Page 23 of Liberating Lily

He grasped hold of her wrists, pulling them away from her head.

“Stop that, Lily. Stop it right now.” Fuck, he hated this.

Was this why she needed those sedatives? To calm her down? But Michaela had said they were only light. Surely, they weren’t the reason for her zombielike state most of the time.

Unless it wasn’t due to the drugs, unless she just zoned out because she was trying to get away from her mother and Rick. He couldn’t blame her for that, but it wasn’t a healthy way to survive. Neither was her reliance on sedatives to keep calm.

“What is going on with you, Lily-girl?” he muttered. “What the hell happened to you?”

She tensed in his arms, glancing up at him. “Let go of me, Harvey.”

“No.”

“Harvey, you need to let go of me now.”

“You need to realize that I’m never going to let you go.”

“It’s going to make going to the bathroom awfully awkward,” she said.

Oh, hell.

He stood with her in his arms and carried her back into the main bedroom, then into the attached bathroom. He set her down on her feet in the bathroom.

“I’m going to wait just out here with the door slightly open.”

“Why? So you can hear me pee?”

“Because I don’t like that every time I leave you, you try to run. And then you hurt yourself.”

“It’s nothing more than I deserve.” She turned away and walked over to the toilet.

“It’s nothing like what you deserve,” he told her before he left. He partially shut the door before speaking through the crack. “You deserve the fucking world and I’m going to give it to you.”

6

Lily stood and stared at herself in the mirror.

She looked terrible.

Why did she look so awful? When was the last time she’d actually looked at herself in the mirror? She didn’t always look like this, did she?

Although she usually wore a ton of makeup, didn’t she? Selena, her mother’s maid, would do her hair and makeup each day. She’d even choose what she wore.

What would happen to Selena now? To James? Was her mother truly broke?

She guessed she was. And she didn’t much care about what happened to Selena. The other woman had never been nice to her.

She did sort of feel bad for James. He’d always tried to be nice to her as far as she could remember.

Hopefully he got another job.

When had she taken off her dress pants and sweater? She was just wearing her shirt and underwear.

That was concerning.

“Lily, you finished in there?” Harvey called through the door.

Shoot, she hadn’t even used the toilet yet. Could she really go with him standing on the other side of the door? But then she didn’t have a lot of choice. Things were getting desperate.