AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Relief nearly makes my head spin, but I push it aside because her admission is monumental. Nyssa is an enigma. She gives nothing away for free.
I know I’m definitely different after that… encounter. Maybe she is too.
“What do I make you feel?”
Again, she tries to push away but I hold her tight. “Tell me, Nyssa. You have nothing to lose and nothing here can hurt you.”
Pain washes over her face, probably a hundred memories hitting her all at once. I’m not privy to what she’s thinking right now, but she had another thousand I saw through the crystal.
“You just… make mefeel, and I’ve spent a good chunk of my life learning how to be numb. And when I was numb, I was invincible. Nothing could hurt me. It feels very dangerous to let that protection go.”
“Why did you want to feel numb?” I ask, then hold my breath, waiting to see if she’s ready to let me in and reveal all the things I already know.
She shakes her head but doesn’t try to pull away. “It’s not important.”
“It is to me.”
Her eyes lock with mine, and she seems to be searching to see if I’m lying.
I’m not.
Nyssa’s gaze falls to my chest. “I did a lot of bad things in my life, and—”
“Stop.” Her head snaps up. “I’m not interested in what you did. You’re in Hell already, so it doesn’t matter. I’d like to hear what happened to you that made you think it was better not to feel anything at all.”
“It’s not important.”
“You said that once already, but given that I’m asking again should clue you in that itisimportant.”
“Why?” she asks, exasperated. “I’m a lowly human who’s not even really alive. Just a plaything—”
I jackknife upward, my arms banding around her, my face to hers. “Don’t ever refer to yourself as a plaything again. How can you even say that after what we just shared?”
I kiss her, long and slow so she has time to digest those words. When I pull back, I ask one last time. “Tell me who Nyssa McKnight was.”
Nyssa’s eyes lock with mine. “She was abandoned. Abused. Beaten.”
My heart pounds because she’s giving me her life, one word at a time. After her mother died, she went into the foster system and never came out. She got shuffled among group homes at first, having to defend herself from the older kids.
“Molested. Overlooked. Forgotten.”
At age fourteen, one of the older foster kids took it upon himself to teach her about the birds and the bees in a very hands-on way. He threatened to kill her if she told anyone.
“Raped. Discounted,” she says quietly.
The man she killed—Vince—was her foster father in her last home at age fifteen. He took her virginity in a very painful way. After he left her room, she packed a small bag, stole money and credit cards from his wife’s purse, and ran.
“Desperate.”
Nyssa lived on the streets thereafter. Ran with a bad group of kids who forced her to steal to be able to stay within the safety of their group. She knocked over her fair share of old ladies, making a grab for their handbags. The kids eventually turned on her, beat her badly, and took what she had.
“Used. Minimized.”
She unfortunately learned her body was the only value she had to help her survive. She sold it often in dingy back alleys to buy food and drugs, necessities she felt she needed to make it.
A tear slips out and runs down Nyssa’s cheek, and it’s enough for me to break my silence. I call forth the crystal, and it appears in my hand. Loosening my hold, I lean back slightly to show it to Nyssa.
“What is it?” she asks.
