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I choked.
The strangeness of an arm missing a hand or a hand lacking a finger or two. The sickening realisation that one girl was missing an ear, and another had a puckered scar running from her temple to her chin.
The longer I stared, the more maiming and torture appeared. Red scars and silver scars, raised ones and neat ones, almost every jewel had some imperfection, granted by a Master who ought to be dead.
Swallowing down a gush of venomous empathy, I rubbed my face and stopped looking.
It’s the drugs.
You’re still under the influence.
That’s why you’re in the middle of mostly nude strangers.
I braced myself and tried to see past the history of abuse and focus on why they were all curled around me, tighter and tighter, forming a spiral of body parts with me in the centre.
What happened?
Are they okay?
My breath came shallow, my throat stinging from all the salt I’d cried last night.
Last night?
More like only an hour or so ago.
Sunshine poured through the high barred windows and the door to the cavernous bathroom glowed with burning sunlight.
Too bright.
Far, far too bright for my sorrow-stinging eyes.
My bladder pressed uncomfortably, and my hip ached from sleeping on the stone floor.
But I wasn’t cold.
If anything, a sheen of sweat covered my chest thanks to the body heat of so many.
I-Is this real?
And if it is…how had they survived such torture and unhappiness?
I’d only spent one evening being molested, and I’d shattered.
It made me feel stupidly weak compared to the Chinese girl missing two fingers and the black woman with only one ear.
A dark-haired head closest to me suddenly rose.
I stilled as Peter opened blurry, bruised eyes and pushed himself upright with a groan. Kirk’s arm fell off his bare waist, and Rebecca mumbled in her sleep, cuddling closer to Citra, who rested her head on Nancy’s thigh. Dane, with his mohawk, snuggled into Corine, and she burrowed closer to a boy I didn’t know.
I was literally in the middle of warm skin and brave hearts.
“Hey,” Peter croaked.
I swallowed, coughed, and swallowed again. “I-I’m not imagining this?”
Gently extracting one of his legs from beneath a sleeping girl I hadn’t spoken to, he eased his knees up and hugged them. “Your crying woke them. They came to see if you were okay.”
I flinched.
I couldn’t fully remember.
Didn’t want to remember.
The crack inside me had been enough.
The release of all those hot, painful daggers behind my eyes and the churning, heart wrenching grief inside me.
I’d held back the tears for as long as I could.
But when I broke? Well…
I shrugged. “I’m sorry for the scene I caused.”
Shaking his head, he gave me a soft smile and cupped my shoulder. “I’m not. It was a relief to have you let it out. To have you purge what happened.”
I flinched as images erupted.
Henri.
His knife.
His cuts.
His tongue…
I recoiled from Peter’s hand, cupping my breasts and shifting my legs to hide the very part of me Henri had taken without consent.
How could I forget even for a moment?
How had my mind pushed it away long enough for Peter to remind me?
The awful thing was, I didn’t need reminding.
Last night was a part of me.
It’d changed me on a cellular level.
And I had no idea who I was now that it was over.
I shuddered as more images returned.
The breaking, the bleeding…
The shallow cuts on my body would heal, but my heart never would.
Devastated didn’t come close to how I felt. Betrayed? Of course. Confused? Definitely.
But guilt curdled most of all.
He’d asked me not to fight him, and I’d fought.
He’d begged me to remember our promise, and I’d forgotten.
I couldn’t forgive what he’d done, but I couldn’t lay the blame entirely at his feet either.
Peter dropped his hand and stiffened. “You’re thinking about him.”
I looked up and met his soulful brown eyes. “W-We had a deal…and…I broke it.”
“We?”
I slouched, aware I’d almost slipped. Henri’s secrets. Henri’s covert mission. I might hate what he did and vaguely remembered hating him with a thousand suns last night, but…if there was the slimmest chance he could pull himself back from this, then…I couldn’t spill his truth.
This was bigger than me.
This was for them.
“Doesn’t matter.” I rubbed my face. “None of it matters. It’s done.”
“That’s it, huh? You were in pieces last night. You almost turned catatonic in my arms as you cried. It took all of us hugging you to stop your shivering long enough to get you to sleep, and now you’re just forgiving him? I mean, I’ve seen some sick shit in this place and dealt with a hundred broken people, but that? Wow.”
“Of course I’m not forgiving him.” I scowled. “It’s just…complicated.”
“Complicated?” He bared his teeth. “It’s the simplest thing in the world, Ily. He hurt you. I drugged you against your will. Be mad at me. Be mad at him. Be mad at the whole goddamn world, but don’t you dare shut down on me again. You shut down, and it’s all over in here. I won’t let you check out. I won’t let you fade away. And I definitely won’t let you take responsibility for what he did.”
