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Thomas’ lips quirk. “I’ll allow it.”
“If she was too fucked up to do it, she was warned what would happen.”
At my pause, he asks, “What happened?”
“You can’t guess?”
“I need to hear it from you, Diana.”
I sigh and hide my face, unable to look at him as I admit how weak I was, what I allowed to happen to me. “He came into my room and he… I wasthirteen! I begged and pleaded and he didn’t give a shit!” I didn’t think I could cry any more tears, but I was wrong. “I learned quickly begging never does any good.
“And any time my mother was too strung out to service him, he came to me. For the next year and a half, and then…” I hiccup.
“Then?”
“Mom overdosed when I was fifteen. Stopped her heart. It wasn’t an accident.” My hands clench into fists, closing around the duvet so tight I might tear it. “She was useless to him, too addicted to be pimped out. But that was okay, he could ‘get rid of her’. He had another product.”
“You.” Thomas’ voice is little more than a whisper in the dark.
“He kept me locked up for three years,” I continue. “Some of the people who paid to rape meknew me. He beat me and raped me too. Withheld food. I needed to stay as small as possible, to look young. All my body hair was permanently removed for that reason, too. And he—”
The sob rips from me as I remember the doctor, and I can’t breathe properly.
Thomas kneels back at my bedside, not touching me but his warm hand is close. “Be strong, my dove. You withstood everything I did to you and will do in the future. You can be strong and withstand a memory.”
“He didn’t want to deal with a baby; it would put me out of work and take too long to sell it — he said he’dsell it— so he took me to a doctor and they performed a hysterectomy. He took my mom’s happiness. He took her life. He took my childhood. And he took my fucking future!”
I don’t care that I cursed two more times than I was allowed, and I’ll likely have my tongue burnt with hot sauce again. I can’t care. The trauma I repressed since I managed to survive what he thought would kill me is far greater than any momentary burn.
“Diana…”
“I know,” I say through my tears. “I shouldn’t curse.”
“No.” His voice is tentative. “May I touch you?”
He’s … asking?
I shrug. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, it does.”
I nod. Let him get whatever he is going to do to me over with. Maybe I will be lucky and die.
A hand touches my back, and instinctively my whole body stiffens. I don’t push him away, however. Whatever he’s goingto do, does it matter? But he doesn't do anything, just keeps a gentle, warm pressure there.
“I wish you had told me sooner,” he says. “Can you tell me how you escaped? You said if he found out you were alive, he’d kill you.”
Nodding, I say, “He had me gang raped and tortured the night before I turned eighteen. Then had my body dumped, thinking I’d die in the heat… I survived.” I did survive. The question is, why? “A good samaritan found me, brought me to a battered women’s shelter where a doctor treated me, and that was how I got sent to Rick’s building. And I had no job so I … resorted to the only thing I knew.”
Thomas exhales, rubbing my back some more. “My brave dove. Look at you, how far you’ve come.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “I haven’t changed. I’m still the same person you brought here and promised to break and mold into whatever perfect Stepford Wife you want me to be.”
Thomas arches an eyebrow. “You haven’t changed? You truly believe that?” He moves towards me and it takes all my strength not to flinch away anymore.
You know when he wants to hurt you,my mind chastises.Now is not that time.
His hand moves hair from my face and he tilts my head to look up at him. “You are a work in progress, yes. But so am I, my dove. You are stronger. Braver. More beautiful than I could have dreamed.”
