AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I wait a few seconds, checking if she’s for real and when she turns around, hugging her pillow, I understand she doesn’t care if I stay or leave. I get under the covers with her and stay far from her.
After a whole minute of silence, I finally ask what I’ve been dying to know. “I need to ask you if Jake is okay.”
She moves and I think she’s about to reply but she suddenly sits up, grabs the vase on her nightstand, and pukes into it. I shoot up, shift over to her side, and hold her hair back, patting the top of her head.
“It’s okay,” I murmur. “Rachel said it might happen.”
When she finally stops, I run to the bathroom to get her a cloth and I grab a bottle of water from the fridge.
“Here,” I say softly as I hand her the bottle. She struggles to grab it from my hands, so I tilt it to her mouth and help her drink. She mumbles something but I don’t get it. I feel like she’s worse than when she went to bed.
“Are you okay?” I quiz. She tries to lift her head to talk to me, but her chin falls back to her chest straight away.
She mumbles something and I lean down to listen. “I didn’t hear you,” I admit.
“What would you do to gain back control over your body?” she asks, and I frown in confusion.
“What do you mean?” I put the bottle of water on her nightstand.
“Nothin’,” she slurs. She lets herself fall back on the mattress but she either said too much or not enough.
I escape to the bathroom for barely a minute to clean the vase. I don’t want to leave her alone too long.
When I walk back in she’s in the exact same position.
“Rose…you can talk to me. What did you mean exactly?”
She opens and closes her eyes multiple times, looking at the ceiling.
“I’ve got no control over my life, Goody. I never did. But the worst is not having control over my body. It hurts. And I don’t want to hurt. So I’m left with trying not to feel anything.”
This is the clearest sentence she’s managed to form until now.
I sit on the bed next to her and put a gentle hand on her forearm. “Who did this to you?”
She snorts sarcastically and eyes me before looking back at the ceiling.
“Mateo,” she attests, her eyes fixed on an imaginary spot above us.
There is no hesitation, no lie. Just the cold, hard truth. I grimace at the revelation and my eyes uncontrollably fill with tears.
“He did it for five years,” she keeps going. “Every time we were alone. But it was worse this time because I ran away.” She explains this like it’s logical. A worse punishment for running away from abuse.
I’m lost for words. My hand slides down from her arm to her hand and I squeeze it like my life depends on it.
“Why?” I manage to push out of my tight throat. I’m willing my tears not to fall. This is not about me, this is her pain.
“He wants to marry me one day. But…” she scratches her throat, and I can hear that she struggles with the rest. It’s like her tough act has gone, her defenses have fallen. “He has ways he prefers, with everything.” Another pause. “He likes to inflict pain.”
I feel sick to my stomach at her words. She doesn’t need to explain. I understand in which ways he likes to inflict pain.
“And he wants his wife to like his ways,” she adds. She starts laughing but it’s a crazy one. “I don’t.” She scratches her throat again and the next words come out so pained, I don’t think I’ve ever heard this kind of pain in my life. Her gaze doesn’t leave the ceiling. “So he teaches me,” she whispers like it’s a secret no one should know. “But I don’t want to. I don’t want to be his wife and I don’t want to enjoy pain.” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “It’s agony,” she chokes on her words and I can’t stop my tears from falling.
This is a horror story. This is the most awful thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I can’t help a sob as I fall back on the bed. She’s squeezing my hand back so hard it hurts but I want it all. All her pain, all the bruises, and the things she keeps inside. We’re now both looking at the ceiling, the only light in the room is the one coming from the bulb in the hallway.
“Rose…you can’t go back,” I plead.
“How?” she sniffles. “He really thinks he’s going to marry me. He believes it so so deeply. He’s obsessed, Jamie.”
