Page 38
I cannot unknow The Boarpit.
I cannot unknow the Boars.
I cannot unknow myself.
Something changed inside me the night I walked in the Boarpit for the first time, and everything that came after–every command, every touch, every humiliation, every moment of worship–rewired me. Morales’s drugs tried to twist it further, but there was a root underneath that belonged to me.
Taylor doesn’t see what I found there: power hidden under surrender. A voice inside me that had been whispering for years, now finally allowed to speak.
I inhale slowly. “You and I aren’t -”
“Aren’t what?” His voice rises. “I thought we had something.”
“We didn’t,” I say gently.
He stares at me, disbelief spreading across his features.
“You want the men who run that place?” he spits. “Is that what it is?”
I swallow. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“I mean, how do you even know about a place like that?” His eyes flash now, confusion twisting into something darker.
“Taylor, calm down.”
“Why is someone like you so comfortable in a place full of… of that?” He gestures vaguely, grasping for words he cannot quite bring himself to say.
The corridor feels narrower suddenly. The distant beeps fade under the thud of my heartbeat.
“Someone like me?”
“A nurse,” he says, stepping closer. “A good girl. That’s who you are here. That’s who my grandfather thought you were. Then you drag me into a den where men pay to… do things to girls. What does that make you, Georgina?”
His words sting more than I want to admit. Shame flickers in some old shadowy part of me. The part that still thinks good girls don’t kneel. Good girls don’t crave hands on their throat. Good girls don’t come apart under threats murmured in their ear.
I push that voice down.
“Y-You’re confused. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Taylor.”
“How long have you been going there?” he fires.
I take a step back. The wall meets my shoulder blades. Our quiet bubble in the corridor shrinks. No one passes. No one hears us.
“Don’t do this,” I mutter.
“Do what?” He moves closer. “Ask questions? You invited me into that world. You can’t just close the door now and pretend it was nothing.” He crowds me in.
His face is inches from mine now. His breath smells faintly of coffee and something stronger. I press my palms against his chest.
“Taylor, stop.”
He doesn’t.
His hands lift, fingers wrapping around my wrists, pushing them above my head and onto the wall. The sudden pressure knocks the breath from me. My heart kicks against my ribs.
He leans in, caging me in with his body, trying to force contact I do not want. His mouth dips toward mine.
Everything inside my head fractures. The hospital corridor vanishes. The white tiles blur into the white of Morales’s exam room. The fluorescent light overhead becomes the blinding lab lamp shining in my eyes. I feel phantom straps around my limbs, tight and unyielding. The echo of needles pricks my skin.
