Page 115 of Wait for Him

I take my phone from my pocket, set it on his desk and press play.

His own voice fills the room.

What are you on about? I'll have your father sent to prison like that.

Frank's mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

Nothing.

Speechless Frank is my new favorite Frank.

"Wesley turns himself in tomorrow. Which means the only thing left to explain is why you've known what he did for three years and sold your silence for a marriage." I pick the phone back up and slide it into my pocket. "She signs and she's out of my house today, or this recording plays for the full board and the police department when they come asking why you concealed his many crimes. Understood?"

If he only knew the half of it.

"Her citizenship, Marc." And there it is. The crack in his voice. The real currency underneath three years of power plays. "She can't go back to Dubai. She can't."

"Here's the thing, Frank."

I lean both fists on his desk, and the gauze around my knuckles does plenty of talking before I say another word.

"Had you come to me like a man and told me the problem, I would've helped her. You know I would've. That's the part that should keep you up at night. You never needed the leverage." I shake my head. "But you went straight to the power trip and the blackmail, and you spent three years of my life like it was your money to spend."

I straighten.

"So I mean every word when I say her citizenship is not my fucking problem anymore. That's yours. You made it yours the day you picked extortion over a phone call. Get her out of my house and get those papers signed. Today, Frank."

I walk out before he can find his voice.

Three years of holes punched in my walls. Of ducking things thrown at my head and explaining bruises to Dave with stories neither of us believed. Of coming home to my grandmother's china shattered across the kitchen floor because I didn't make it back for dinner. I sat through all of it with my mouth shut because Frank owned my silence the same way he owned hers, and somewhere along the way I convinced myself that a man taking it wasn't the same as a man being abused.

That's bullshit too.

Whatever happens to Elyse now, she does with her own two hands.

I'm done being the thing she was allowed to break.

Rose

"How have you been since our last visit, Rosalie?" Dr. Campbell sets a cup of coffee on the table in front of me before taking his usual chair.

"Thank you." I wrap both hands around the warmth. "I had a pretty rough episode a couple of nights ago. A good friend was able to get me through it, but it was probably one of the worst I've had in a while."

He nods and takes a sip from his mug, crossing one leg over the other and letting the silence do its usual work. Today it's a black button-down, green trousers, brown loafers. He's a nice-looking man, about my age, and I've always found him attractive in the way you find a locked museum exhibit attractive: appreciated entirely through glass.

That was on purpose.

I forced myself to choose a male therapist back when sitting alone in a room with any man made my skin crawl, and he's been a balm through some of my worst years.

A few months into our sessions, he'd asked me about it directly. Most survivors in your position request a woman. Why did you choose me? And because I've never seen the point of paying a man three hundred dollars an hour to lie to him, I told him the truth. I'd picked his photo out of the practice directory specifically because he was attractive, and that felt like the harder thing, so it was probably the right one.

He'd nodded, the way he does, and told me my instinct was sound. It gave me a place to practice holding attraction and safety in the same room, somewhere I kept all the power and nothing would ever come of it. Rewiring, he'd called it. Teaching my nervous system that noticing a man didn't have to mean bracing for one.

It worked, mostly. It's part of how I eventually learned to take lovers on my own terms.

The fact is, I'd found my mentor singularly attractive. He was older, accomplished, in a position of power and unhealthily good-looking, and yes, I looked up to him. The monster aside, his accolades were praiseworthy. I can still say that sentence, which tells you something about how deep the wiring goes. But the only reason I was in that building with him so late at night was because I had a crush on him and sought out his attention. I didn't want anything to happen. I never would have allowed anything to happen. But being alone in his orbit made me feel chosen, and had I not been attracted to him, I never would've put myself somewhere so vulnerable.

I know that's textbook victim-blaming.