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“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is!” He shouted so loud it felt as if the room vibrated.
Then the rage died and he was looking at me, but it felt like he wasn’t seeing me at all. “I was paid to sleep with women … men.” Oh God. “It gave me a roof over my head and kept my sister safe from the same thing. That’s who I am, Kat. It’s not fuckin’ changing because I don’t do it anymore.” He huffed. “Or maybe I do.”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. None of this does anymore. And I want you to leave.”
“You owe me!” I shouted. “You fucking tell me. You owe me that, damn it.”
His expression never changed, even when I yelled. It terrified me because nothing of the Ream I loved stood before me. “Tell me.”
Then he lowered his eyes from mine and shifted, but it was the smallest movement. “Then you’ll leave?”
My breath hitched. He wanted me to leave and that hurt more because it should’ve been me wanting to leave. I nodded and it was like I was saying yes to my own demise.
It was several minutes before he spoke again and when he did his tone was detached. “It was survival. A way of life. I got through it by being numb to what I did. It became easy after a while. I mean easy in that I could do it without throwing up anymore. The men … that was never easy.”
Oh God, Ream. I couldn’t even imagine Ream subjecting himself to that. He was so strong and confident like nothing could touch him.
“I was fourteen. Old enough to know what I was doing and still young enough to be wanted by the sick bastards. There was one in particular …” His voice trailed off and then stopped. I put my hand over my mouth as my stomach violently churned. “It wasn’t so bad though. My sister and I were looked after. Fed, clothed, went to school. It was just on Friday and Saturday nights I went into the basement. He said it was either me or my sister.”
“Your mom?”
He snorted and kicked the empty beer bottle, and I jumped when it hit the bed post and made a loud crackle as it shattered. “How do you think we ended up there? My mom owed the guy money for her drugs. You know what my sister Haven was named after? It sure as fuck wasn’t a sanctuary … Haven Dust—cocaine.” He shook his head making a huff with his breath. “We were her payment.” Ream shrugged. “He kept his word though. My sister never had to prostitute herself and I paid off our mom’s debt. Two years later it stopped. I didn’t have to do it anymore, but Lenny, the pimp, let us stay there anyway. We lived with him and his daughter. Ate together like a normal fuckin’ family, at least as normal as could be with a low-life drug dealer. I thought it was going to be okay, that maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.”
“You were forced to have sex with men and women, Ream.”
“No. Coerced. Not forced.”
“Same difference,” I muttered. Sudden realization dawned. “That’s why you had to stop. Why you froze when we were having sex? Why you … you don’t like my mouth on you?”
He nodded. “Sometimes the voices … I still hear them. It’s worse when I don’t have control and a woman down on me …”
“Has the control,” I finished.
He nodded. “A lot of times, I never made it through the sex … it was always ugly for me. But with you … you could stop them. Christ you did. Told you from the beginning that you changed something in me. Never liked having sex until you.”
I was drowning in confusion. I wanted to wrap him up in my arms and hold the boy who had suffered such a horrific circumstance, to bring the Ream I knew back from the cold darkness he was now living in.
“It was when Lenny died that things went to shit and I knew we had to get out of there. But we had no place to go and no money. Lenny’s friend Olaf moved in with us and I didn’t trust him not to … I was afraid he’d make Haven and I work downstairs … and I couldn’t do it anymore.
“And Haven, Christ we were sixteen and she was too fuckin’ pretty. There was one guy who used to come around and buy drugs from Lenny all the time. He’d watch her, it was really creepy, but he never did anything except watch her.” My heart started beating faster and cold shivers raced down my spine. “But when Lenny died … he stopped watching. He raped her. I didn’t know about it for months. Shit, I knew something was wrong with her. She was in her room all the time, barely ate, but she never told me until I saw the track marks on her arm one day. I went ballistic. She told me what happened, fuck what was still happening. The guy came to her room for months and I never knew. I never fuckin’ knew. He gave her the drugs. He fucked her up so bad that … I went after him. Killed him with a marble statue over his head.”
I gasped and my body was screaming to go to him as I listened with horror.
“It felt good. And I’d do it again in a second. I hit him over and over again until his skull was crushed and his face was unrecognizable. And to this day … I don’t regret it. That is the type of man I am.”
My throat was so tight that swallowing was painful. Haven. His twin. Raped over and over again. The drugs. Why he’d freaked over Brett watching me. My pain over Ream cheating seemed so inconsequential now.
“I knew we’d have to leave. Escape before anyone saw the body. Well, his daughter saw what I did but I didn’t care about her. We ran and lived on the streets, scared as shit that we’d be found and killed. Everyone knew everyone on the streets. An old woman found us sleeping in her shed one morning when we over slept. We always left before the sun rose; it was safer that way. But Urma saw us when she was getting her gardening tools, and she just smiled and asked if we were hungry. We stayed in the shed for a few months. I don’t know why she never called social services, but she didn’t. She even offered a place in her house, but I was scared that if Urma got involved in our lives she’d be in danger too.
