AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Want. Ownership. Claiming, marking.
None of that is love.
Because he hasn’t said love.
He’s not going to. For him all that is enough.
For me?
I can’t.
I pull away from him. “I’m letting you off the hook, Christian.”
“What the fuck does that even mean?”
He stands there, frustration etched in the air around him.
And I break open. It’s a flood, and I can’t stop it.
“You know what they did, Christian? They didn’t just rape me. I don’t remember a lot of that.”
“Thank God.”
“No. they made me so vile and dirty and complicit. They drugged me. All kinds of things. I’m sure you read the report. Things that made me feel more, made me not care at all, made me float and let them do the things to me. And I hated myself every time.”
I force myself to breathe. This will end it. His stomach will turn and he’ll finally walk away and not taunt me with the offer of a part of him. Because when I’m done, he’ll want nothing to do with me at all.
I look at him. “I begged them. I asked them to do it. I helped. And more than once, they held me down and used a vibrator on me until they forced me to come and it was the most disgusting thing in the world. And so am I. They made me ask for it. And they turned me into something no better than them. Something so much worse.”
He breathes. “You—”
“No, I’m talking. Don’t you dare makeup things to make me feel better. Don’t you dare try and tell me all the things I know intellectually. I’m telling you what I feel, Christian. And I feel like a thing that is worth nothing. And you . . . you expose me and break me and make me believe it’s going to be okay. But it isn’t. You know why? You, there with my family? You all took the goodness away.
“I’m no better than those people who raped me. It’s all a dream, all of it. I can’t even claim the pain and the rest. I have humiliation, in great big warehouses. Now go away.”
For the longest moment he doesn’t speak, then he says, quietly, “You have nothing to feel humiliated over. Nothing at all, Mia. You’re a survivor and that’s what you did and—”
“Stop, Christian.”
“No. You can’t ever make me go.”
I look up at him, helpless. If he touches me more, I’m lost. I’ll take the scraps from him. And he’ll take what I’ve said and use it to stay by my side. If he does that, I’ll drag him down, too.
“Sweetness, we’ll get through this, you and I. We’ll make it work because we’re meant to be together. You can’t say anything to change that. To stop me.”
And he comes in to kiss me.
So, I say it.
One word.
“Banana.”
And Christian freezes, straightens. He steps back and almost stumbles. And then, wordlessly, he turns and walks away.
ChapterTwenty-Two
CHRISTIAN
