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“There’s products in there if you’d like to take a shower,” Lev offers.
“With no door and you three standing out here? No thanks. I’d rather stink than get naked anywhere near you,” she spits, crossing her arms over her chest.
“If you’d like to shower, I promise, none of us will enter. The closet is full of your clothes,” I offer. Wanting to tell her that as my wife, I can see her naked whenever I want, but not wanting to make her any angrier than she already is.
“My clothes?”
“All yours,” Vik says, bounding forward and throwing open the doors to the enormous closet that houses all of our clothes.
She takes a tentative step forward and peers into the room. “Those aren’t mine.”
“You are our wife, we purchased everything we thought you would need, but please feel free to make a list of anything else you require and we’ll provide it for you,” I tell her.
“I’m not your wife,” she hisses, “And those aren’t my things. My clothes are in my closet back in Georgia.”
“I’m afraid they aren’t. Your landlord arranged for your remaining possessions to be disposed of when your lease terminated.”
For the first time since she opened her eyes and realized she wasn’t in America anymore, tears fill her eyes, falling down her cheeks, as anguish coats her features. “What?” she gasps.
“Your land—” Lev starts.
“I heard you. Everything is gone? All of my things? Everything?” She’s crying in earnest now and I step forward, needing to touch her, to comfort her. But as I reach for her, she jumps backward.
“Yes, everything is gone,” I confirm coldly, stepping back again.
“Gone,” she repeats.
“Alabama,” Lev starts, looking to me and Vik, as if one of us should find the right thing to say.
“I think I’d like to go to sleep now. I can’t do that with you all standing here staring at me.”
“You should eat—” I start.
“I’m not hungry,” she cuts me off.
“You—” I try again.
“I just want to sleep,” she says, her voice monotone, tears still rolling down her cheeks.
“Ali,” Vik tries.
Ignoring us, she turns her back and moves over to the enormous bed we had specially made for us. It’s more than big enough for the four of us to share, once she comes to accept her new circumstances.
Vik and Lev eye Alena warily, then glance to me. I shrug, unsure what to do when she won’t allow us to comfort her. Sighing, I head to the door and look into the retinal scanner to arm the lock. She might be tagged, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to give her the opportunity to run. We’re all locked in, until one of us unlocks it.
“Sleep well, just call if you need anything and one of us will be here,” I tell her. Turning away I stride to my bedroom and open the door, then pull it almost closed, leaving just enough of a gap to be able to hear her if she calls out during the night.
Sinking down onto my bed, I hear the low murmurings of Lev and Vik talking to her, then the sound of them entering their own rooms. Undressing, I step into my own bathroom, and shower quickly, washing away the stale air from the plane, before sliding under my comforter naked.
It’s almost dark now and I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours, but sleep doesn’t come easily, especially not when the sounds of her muffled sobs creep through the gap in the door.
CHAPTER 9
alabama
I never cry. Ever. It’s one of the only good things Aunt Darla ever taught me. “Never let them see you break,” she’d said. “Tears are a weakness that others can exploit, so swallow them down and channel that sadness into drive.”
In the two years since she handed me a bus ticket and a hundred-dollar fuck you, I haven’t cried once. Not when I slept behind a dumpster in ten-minute intervals because I was terrified someone would find me and hurt me. Not when I hadn’t eaten in so many days that I thought I might actually die from the pain of my hunger. Not when I finally got enough money to rent an apartment rather than sleeping in hostels and shitty hotel rooms. I don’t cry. But knowing that everything I’ve worked so hard for the last two years is gone. That all the things I’ve found, stolen, and bought are just gone, thrown in the trash, is devastating.
