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It can’t be what he says…
It can’t be that I’m fighting a monster who is just like him, a monster who comes alive in his presence, despite the pain of it.
“I should have taken you out sooner,” I continue.
“I’m not angry at you for not getting me out. We had a plan. We knew going in what we were doing, and frankly, I think we did a damn good job of keeping our cool. I’m mad because…”
She drops her head, allowing another tear to fall onto the hardwood beneath her small feet, glistening like a diamond in a moonlit cave.
“I know there are whole pieces of your life you hide away from me. And I know we haven’t been dating that long, and you don’t owe me your whole life story, but… sometimes shutting me out like that, it makes me feel like… none of this is real. Like it’s some experiment.”
The word makes my body seize.
She trembles as she searches my eyes, the tremors making her so vulnerable, so open, so delectable. Her fear is so pure that it renders me ravenous, wakening the beast inside me.
“Can you understand why that makes me afraid?”
“I know you’re afraid. I’m afraid too.”
I'm afraid I can’t run fast enough while carrying her to escape the threat of darkness following us.
“What did they say?” she asks, her body wilting a little, forcing me to restrain the torment of desire that her weakness arouses in me. “When you went back there?”
Vigor drips from me at the memory of how gracious she was despite the humiliating words fielded at her as she tried to eat. I glanced at her face when Gabriella was sitting down. Her eyes were eager, hopeful, as if the arrival of new people filled her with relief.
Little did she know that not one of them had good intentions towards her, especially not Gabriella.
“Do you want to know, Indigo? The truth?”
“They didn’t like me?” she asks, her voice quivering.
“They didn’t likeus,” I correct. “They don’t think we fit.”
“Fit? I mean, we spent less than an hour with them. How do they— They don’t even know me!” She takes a step back, pink splotches seeping into her neck. “And as forfitting, no offense, but your mom looks like some trophy wife who daren’t sayNoto her rich husband. He glares at her as if she’s his property and nothing more. I’ve felt more love exchanged between two goats I once saw at a local petting zoo.”
“My father’s not interested in love. He’s interested in submission. That’s what he gets from her.”
I stiffen as I realize to what degree I also need that from her.
“Oh, and I suppose I’m notsubmissiveenough for his tastes… or is that just one of a hundred things they hate about me? What else should I add to the list?”
“You want to torture yourself?” I suggest.
“I want to know. I really want to understand how to meet their exacting standards. I guess the hair was mentioned?”
“My mother fixated on it.”
“See, I told you I shouldn’t wear it down! We should have broken them in more gently.”
“If it wasn’t the hair, it would have been the earrings, or the clothes, or the voice, or the tone, or your parents, or any number of fucking things.”
“So, even if I’d bleached my hair to straw status like your mother, I wouldn’t have been accepted,” she scoffs. “Well, guess what? I’m not inferior to these people! In fact, I feel pretty fuckingsuperiorto most of them. For one, I don’t have the emotional range of a gnat, and therefore don’t judge people on the most ridiculous of superficial criteria and invite them to dinner with the sole intent of picking them apart.”
“Indigo.”
“And two, I don’t have the spiritual capacity of a freshly sanded toenail, so I don’t reduce people to nothing other than their outer shell.”
I take a step towards her, forcing her to peer up.
