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I couldn’t go back to Lucia. I couldn’t go back to Anteros. I couldn’t go anywhere. So I drove in the general direction of New York, hoping something would come to me. I tried not to think about what Anteros had revealed, tried not to dwell on the reason I was in the car in the first place. I’d been searching for family since this hell started, but never imagined it would lead me here. Never.
This isn’t a fairytale, Frankie. Stop looking for a fucking happily ever after.
I swiped my cheeks. I hated that he knew me so well. Even through all the mud and tar, I had been searching for a happily ever after. I told myself it wouldn’t end well, but in my mind I saw a dad who wouldn’t beat me and a mother who wasn’t dead. And they would love me. Like Harry Potter looking in the Mirror of Erised, I was mesmerized by the vision of them.
Then he told me the truth.
And it all shattered.
I gripped the steering wheel. The car went too fast and was hard to control. It was raining and snowing, combined was more like slush. The car’s bright headlights didn’t really help to see the road, just illumined the wetness and made it look like a tar pit. I tried to bring back memories of driver’s ed, the few classes I’d gone to. I didn’t have my license—hadn’t gotten a chance with Papa and being sick and not having a birth certificate. I’d never needed it, never had anywhere to go.
Mio cuore, I will show you the world.
I swiped at my cheeks again, trying to focus on the road and not on the constant loop of the night playing over and over again, but trying to rid myself of Anteros was like ripping out organs. He was just inside me. When Anteros had plugged me at the penthouse, I’d been so determined to show him he didn’t own me that I told him he would never be inside me, no matter what he put in my body.
What a fucking lie that was.
Even hating him, even destroyed, he was inside me, owning me, forever. It wasn’t fair that Anteros brought me the most pain I’d ever felt and the most pleasure. Those things should be mutually exclusive, those persons separate.
“Fuck,” I said aloud, rubbing a hand over my forehead. Where the fuck was I going to go? The one man I’d thought might finally be home had proven again that he was hell. When was I going to stop falling for it? When would I le
arn that he was the enemy?
When we’re together, it’s not empty. We’re filled. We’re fire. The world isn’t just color, we set the colors on fire—and you know it.
My face got hot and tight with unshed tears. It was so unfair that his touch, his kisses, his words all felt like home, but his actions said hate. They said betrayal. I removed a hand from the steering wheel and brushed my lid before a tear could fall.
Everything was black except for what my blue headlights briefly illumined. The brief glimmer of trees. The curving of the street. A slick green street sign with bold white letters that read New Jersey.
New Jersey, the very first hell I’d called home. Maybe my home still had the key under the mat. Maybe I could pretend none of this ever happened, go back to the closet, and act like it was all a bad dream—that was, if nothing had happened to my house. More tears threatened to fall at the prospect of returning home, of having to return home.
The blue gaslight dinged. Fuck. I didn’t have any money and I was still miles from New Jersey. The sign a few yards back had said the exit up ahead had gas. Maybe I could beg the attendant.
I was nearly running on empty, too. My arms were weak, barely capable of turning the wheel, my head heavy, limbs sore. I needed to get to Jersey or I was going to be a hazard on the road.
Okay, more of a hazard than I already was.
I pulled into the exit, still thinking about the night and about what Anteros had said could have happened to me if I’d been sold. Could that really have been my fate? Life with Anteros had been hell. What he’d described was unimaginable.
I felt sick to my stomach when I pulled up to the gas station and the smell of gasoline burned my nose as I got out of the car. It had stopped rain-snowing but the asphalt was wet, reflecting the fluorescent lights. It was deserted, the station itself boarded up, so there went my idea to beg. There was only one other car in the lot, a sandy-colored sedan that looked dirty. I couldn’t see the owner, and I wondered if it was abandoned too.
I had no money. I was next to an ostentatiously nice car, with no shoes, in a stained dress that was getting soaked by the wet ground. To top it all off, I was fucking sick. No hiding it anymore. My head drooped, my eyelids were heavy, and I could barely stand.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
What the hell was I going to do? I rested against the car and stared at the lone street sign for the onramp to the freeway. Maybe I could hitchhike. I hadn’t seen many cars on the road with me, and I was pretty sure hitchhiking on a freeway at night in the rain/snow was dangerous, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I rubbed my arms harder.
“Hey, girlie.” I jumped at the voice, turning to find a man approaching. He wasn’t much taller than me, but he towered like he was. He put his arm on top of the car, on top of Anteros’s car. That shouldn’t have made me angry, but it did. His eyes raked over my body. Slowly. Carefully. Sizing me up like a steak at a butcher shop.
Not good.
“I was just leaving,” I said, pushing off to open the door.
“Now hold on.” I’d partly opened the door but he held my arm so I couldn’t get it all the way. I eyed the little sliver of freedom being withheld from me. I didn’t dare look at him, didn’t dare move.
“Let go of me,” I said. I tried to keep my voice strong. Screw trying to sound menacing—I was just trying to not sound shaky. To the naked eye, we were evenly matched. He was my height but scrawny, skin tight on his bones. If I had been at full health, I probably could have taken him, but I was sick. I had to be smart.
“You don’t want to do this,” I hedged.
