Chapter 29 #2
Maybe that was it. The word I’d been looking for. Something to describe how Beck made me feel when I was with him. Safe. Cared for.
And without him?
Utterly bereft.
I blinked fast, trying to banish the sting behind my eyes before it could spill over and make this whole thing worse. Darby didn’t need to see me cry again.
“But he’s nothing if he thinks he can just throw you away,” Darby said, his voice low but firm behind me.
I didn’t reply as he continued. “Listen, Cherry. Don’t ever let some man—any man—decide what you’re worth. And I don’t mean the money. Pretty things and paychecks are well and good, but we’re more than that, all right?”
I should have nodded. Instead, I lay quietly until the silence made me shift away. I untangled from him with a murmur of apology and sat up.
I didn’t know how much I was worth. I didn’t even know who I was outside of the Dollhouse, outside of Beck’s gaze.
When I looked at myself, all I saw were fragments: the body that tried to consume me, the name I’d made like a wish that might never come true.
I didn’t know what was really me, or if I was real at all.
Thinking of my mother on the car ride over had been an aberration. Not unwelcome, just strange. It left me wanting more—memories perhaps, to soften the sharp edges of what I’d lost.
But how was I supposed to feel better about losing one thing by dwelling on everything else I didn’t have?
Frustration escaped me in a grumble. “Darby, I don’t know anything about myself. And the things I know, I don’t like.”
He shifted again, tucking his feet under himself and draping his tail across his thighs. The end twitched seemingly of its own accord as he pondered.
“Is it anything you can change?” he asked. “The bad parts, I mean.”
“I don’t see how.”
Silence descended again, dense and heavy. I let my head drop back and stared at the ceiling, needing a blank slate to calm my busy mind.
“I want to perform,” I said. “I love being onstage. I love the music and the spotlight and the way people look at me when I’m up there. But…” I paused to offer Darby a remorseful look. “I hate the VIP rooms. I feel trapped there. Like a bug in a jar people shake because it lights me up somehow.”
“So, you’re a firefly.” Darby smiled. “I loved those when I was a kid.”
I wanted to say I had too, but I didn’t know. Surely, though. There must have been something mundane before this madness. Something as normal as little bugs that shone like stars in the blanket of night.
Darby looked wistful, and maybe I should have asked about his past, his life. It might have triggered something or helped me see the man inside his demon skin. We’d all been mortals once, and we’d all been so ready to return to Earth because it was home. Even if this part of it didn’t feel like it.
Glancing over my shoulder, I glimpsed the steady red light filming every minute of this. Were there microphones too? Could Maslow hear what we were saying? Did he care?
I hoped he did hear because it might be the only way I’d ever be brave enough to tell him the things that came out next.
“I don’t want to live in a room with a camera on me like I’m some never-ending act. I love to perform when I choose it. But this isn’t a choice, and I’m scared that if everything’s always on display, there won’t be anything left that’s really me. That I’ll forget where the show ends and I begin.”
The statement left me wrung out and limp, but Darby stiffened.
“There’s a camera in here?” he asked. “Right now?”
“Of course there is,” I replied. “They’re everywhere.”
He sat up and scanned the walls until he spotted the device. His jaw ticked in agitation, and he shoved away from the headboard, moving to sit beside me instead so we both faced away from the camera’s lens.
Then he leaned in and rested his horned head on my arm, and I took a breath.
“I’m tired of being hungry all the time.
Of needing things I hate needing. Of having to smile and flirt and pretend I like it when people touch me just to keep from feeling worse.
And I’m tired of this…” My features pinched in a bitter frown.
“This magic I have that makes people want me, because that means I’ll never know if they actually do. ”
Beck felt betrayed, that much was clear, and honestly?
I did too. It was like I’d deceived us both, but in different ways.
I’d charmed Beck somehow, lured him like the siren Maslow said I was, and I’d been carried away by my own song, believing some well-to-do higher demon could see me as more than a rent boy with a ridiculous price tag.
Darby’s arm slipped around me again, steadying me against the threat of another breakdown.
“I don’t want to enchant anyone. I just want—” My voice was the first thing to crack. “I just want someone to care about me because they want to. Not because I made them.”
Darby snuggled into me with his tail wound around my middle. “I care,” he murmured. “You didn’t make me.”
My heart flopped like a fish out of water, and I turned into him, grabbing hold and pulling him down so we were lying back to front.
He squealed with surprise but swiftly relaxed into my embrace.
Given our height difference, he fit neatly inside my frame, a small, snuggly thing that I couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting to cozy up with, dicks in asses or no.
“I thought I was comforting you,” Darby complained, but his happy wiggle betrayed his true feelings on the matter.
I puffed a sigh into his hair. “Yeah, well, you’re tiny, and this feels nice too.”
“It does,” he agreed, then tensed. “But maybe not in the middle of Porn Central Station. Don’t want Mazzy jerking it to the sight of us looking sweet on each other.”
The thought of Maslow palming his dick to anything made me want to gag. I released Darby and rolled over to sprawl on my back with my hands over my face. My palms muffled the words as I groaned, “Ugh, you ruined it.”
Darby sprang off the mattress with a laugh. “Come to my room. You aren’t staying here.”
Peeking between my fingers, I saw him standing by with a mischievous grin.
“You mean it?” I asked.
“Sure.” He beamed wider. “My bed’s only a twin, though, so we’ll have to get real cozy unless you’re okay with sleeping on the floor.”
It was the first reason I’d had to smile all day. “Thanks,” I said.
He nodded, then spun away, but not toward the exit. “One last thing,” he called back.
Skipping over to one of the display cases, he slid the glass door open and pulled out a jiggly purple dildo.
The thing was massive in his hand, long and girthy with exaggerated veins.
He gave it a wiggle before approaching the opposite wall and stopping beside the video camera.
Sticking out his tongue, he made a show of licking the suction cup base of the phallus before slapping it over the camera’s lens, obstructing its view of the room.
When released, the rubber cock wobbled comically, and Darby erupted into laughter. He hurried away, catching my hand as he passed and towing me along behind.
It was a rescue I didn’t have to bargain for. No contract, no fine print, just the gentle encouragement of someone who wanted me to be free.
Maybe that shouldn’t have meant so much, but it hit differently.
Maslow had pulled me out of Hell, but he’d done so with chains in mind. He’d dressed it up as mercy and spun it into a story where I owed him everything. Then he told me to be grateful, reminding me constantly how he’d “saved” me.
Darby didn’t save me; he just led me out of a place I didn’t want to be.
And somehow, I was more grateful for that than anything Maslow had ever done.