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“Big whoop when I’m sitting here locked away on a mountain, afraid to talk to people or go outside.” She turns to face me, dropping her hand onto her upturned knee. “I thought, maybe, by getting my revenge, it might bring me back to myself. It might help me become the person I used to be. Not this terrified…”
She trails off, and I sit down and pull her into my arms. She stiffens, her shoulders tight and rigid. “I told you not to touch me.”
“Well, tough shit, because I plan to touch you. Often. Every day. Exposure therapy is a thing. Look it up. At the very least, we can take away some of that fear a little at a time.”
She stays stiff as I hold her against me. “I don’t think it’s working.”
“Patience.”
After another minute, she tugs out of my hold. “Don’t touch me.”
This time, I reach out to grab her chin, and she slaps my hand away.
I smile. Her face shifts from anger to confusion. “What?”
I get to my feet and walk out. Let her think about it on her own for a while.
8
ROSE
I can feel his hands on my skin, and I close my eyes against his face in the darkness. It’s my only defense. I learned a long time ago that he only hurts me worse when I fight back. Or he throws in a little humiliation for the extra effort on his part. Something tangles around my feet, and I think he’s tying me up. He’s never done that before because I stopped fighting him, and I just let him do what he wants.
No. I can’t let him tie me up. This time, I struggle, fighting the dry scratch of his hands as he shoves my thighs apart. Something else wraps around my arms, but I can’t see it. All I can feel is the restriction and him. His hands are still prying my thighs apart so hard I’ll have bruises where his fingers dig in.
“Stop!” I scream. Since I don’t usually speak during these…attacks…I expect him to at least hesitate, but he doesn’t. Nothing gets through, and I slap my arms up, shoving now, the former restriction stripped away from my wrists but still trapping my feet.
Tears flow down my cheeks now, and I’m mumbling, “Stop, stop, stopstopstopstopstop,” but nothing changes. Not the hard press on my thighs or my legs, not the acrid scent of his breath in my face or the rigid grip of his hands.
There’s nothing I can do, and if I have to go through this again, I’m not going to survive a second time.
I scream, a loud shriek that rings in my ears, and then I open my eyes. The room is bright despite the darkness out the window. Somehow, the snow out my window brings in light on its own.
I’m in my bed. Alone. My face is wet, my cheeks, my neck. My hands are wrapped in my blanket, my feet trapped in the sheet I’d kicked toward the end of my bed.
I let out a ragged sob and shake my hands out of the bedding, then tug my feet loose, so I’m lying in the sweat-soaked bed with my T-shirt bunched around my waist. I stare down my body, my stomach still scarred and in some places pink from Sal’s attack.
I’d been having a nightmare about being back there. Stuck again under his control with no way out.
The nightmares had been going away. At least, I thought they had. Maybe talking to Valentina today, hearing those bastard’s names, brought things back up for me. I slow my breathing, focusing on taking long deep breaths even as my heart pounds in my chest.
When I heard they were dead, all I could think about was I’d never get to kill them myself. I’d never make them feel the pain they’d made me feel. But now, staring at the white ceiling, I wonder whether Kai made the right choice in keeping it from me. For not telling Valentina the truth about my survival?
No. Obviously, I’m not as far along in my recovery as I thought. Would dealing with them myself have given me the closure I needed to actually put the past behind me?
I curl on my side and roll up to sit. Everything in my body aches, even my scalp. From the screaming or the tangle in the sheets, I don’t know.
When I get my heart rate under control, I stand, head to the balcony doors, and throw them open wide. Puffs of snow from the piles against the door fall onto the floor, peppering my bare feet. It doesn’t matter. I can’t feel anything but the deeply rooted body ache that radiates from my bones.
The soft, freezing wind against my legs doesn’t even do anything to jump-start me from the stupor. I’m so tired of this numbness, of alternating between nothing and intense pain with no middle ground. So fucking tired.
I sit on the end of the bed and cradle my head in my hands. The second I close my eyes, the nightmare surges up and, along with it, a wave of nausea.
No.
I lift my face again so the cold air can cut through it all, at least enough so I won’t throw up on my bedroom floor.
The air starts to help, but a deep rage takes the place of the nausea in my gut. They took my revenge from me, and no one said a word about it, thinking I didn’t get a say in how their ugly little lives ended.
