Chapter 4
FOUR
A soft scraping sound rouses me from fitful sleep and a dull pain throbs deep in my head. I have no idea how much time has passed but the burn of exhaustion still stings my eyes.
It really feels like I could sleep for years and still lack any desire to crawl out of this bed.
Shifting just enough to peek at the floor, I see Bo on the carpet, lying on his stomach with his puzzle board in front of him, one piece in his hand as he scans for its home in the patchwork outline.
Molly lies at his side, tail twitching until she sees me stir. A running leap vaults her onto the bed where she bumps her head against my cheek and curls up on my pillow, her purring rumbling along my neck. My arms feel too heavy to scratch her ears the way she likes.
“She lives,” Bo muses, tilting his head. His eyes are too sharp, too aware. They always have been when it comes to me. “How are you feeling?”
I simply blink at him, taking register of my body. Noting where there’s still a dull pain, and remembering this uncomfortable boot on my foot. Beyond that, all I want is to sink into the mattress and never emerge.
Hollow. I feel hollow.
“Tired,” I say instead. “You?”
He hits me with that overcautious look again, but must decide to let me get away with my lie.
“Okay. The new house is beautiful.” He tries his puzzle piece in a new place, then chews his lip when it doesn’t fit.
“I met Jesse’s dad, who is…wild. He’s wild.
Noah’s parents are here too,” he adds, when I don’t say anything. “They seem nice-ish.”
“Nice-ish?”
“Yeah, his mom is sweet, but his dad might take a minute to warm up to us.”
I ponder that, weighing my curiosity with my dread of moving. “Where’s Noah?”
“Locked himself in the computer room. Only comes out to smoke or grab more coffee.”
Part of me had expected him to be passed out in the corner, waiting for me to wake up so he could keep bullying me into not being mad anymore. He’s relentless. It’s his nature to want me to bend to his will, and he’s not here?
I should feel relieved that he’s kept his distance like I asked, but I don’t. Somehow it just makes this emptiness inside me expand.
The clock ticks several silent minutes away on the wall with me watching him fit several pieces into the puzzle before the dampness of my pillow registers. Is that from me? Reaching up, I touch my fingertip to my cheek, then pull back my hand and watch as I crush the tears between my fingers.
How strange? I don’t feel sad right now. I feel nothing so deeply that I didn't even feel these tears crawling down my face.
“Em,” Bo’s concerned voice cuts through my musings. He’s on his feet and at my side, brushing my hair from my forehead before I can tell him I’m fine. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
He shifts me toward the middle of the bed and climbs in next to me, his strong arm pulling me close again so that we’re face to face on the pillow, his thumb slowly brushing along my cheekbone. “Can you talk to me?”
I close my eyes, focusing on the warmth of his body, and force my tired brain to think.
What's wrong?
Noah did not betray me, and that should make me feel better.
Less angry. Every single thing points right back to Eric and Bundy.
Everything. There’s just this violation from someone inside Mercy stealing the footage from the cabin and sending it out to strangers.
What’s the motive? Unless Noah's keeping more secrets, I can’t imagine why someone would even risk themselves to do it.
But beyond that, there’s this unshakable shame that I know I shouldn’t feel, and yet it burns in my stomach anyway. I’ve tried to shed that preoccupation with the purity that was forced on me my entire life, but it’s still a voice in the back of my head. A brainwashing that refuses to break down.
My parents, Eric. The strangers who surely watched them and saw me as an object.
Everyone who saw that video now thinks of me as dirt.
And it shouldn't matter. My parents never even declared me missing, and Eric is playing god knows what part in a trafficking ring. On top of that, the situation with Jesse’s sister, Lily.
Those people are the worst of the worst, so it shouldn’t matter to me what they think.
The truth sort of smacks me in the face right then. No, it’s not them whose opinion I care about. It’s us. Noah. Bo. Jesse. Seeing the emails made me feel dirty, and now all I can imagine is them feeling that way about me.
I can’t turn it off.
I look at Bo, and the things we’ve done with each other. Things I let Noah direct us to do. Even though I know it’s not true, It’s hard to turn off the thought that I’ve done something wrong, and this is my punishment.
My mother’s voice reverberates in my head, reminding me that men don’t actually want what comes easy to them. Especially when it comes to women.
“Bo?” I say, voice raspy.
His arm curls around my thigh, pulling it up over his to bring me as close as possible. “I’m right here.”
“You’re still my best friend, right?” I ask, unable to keep the tremble from my voice. A wave of self-revulsion threatens to drag me under. Weak, useless Emma. Everything’s changed, everything is wrong. I have nothing to fall back on and it feels so damn lonely.
“Why would you ask me that?” His strong hand slides to the back of my head, cradling me to him. “I know this hurts, but fuck every single person who saw us. Fuck Eric, fuck your parents. You shouldn't worry what they think of you.”
“It’s not them. It’s me–I’m thinking badly of myself. I barely recognize me. I’m not the same person I was two months ago, and it’s a little terrifying.” I peek up at him. “I don’t want you to think differently of me.”
His grip tightens on my thigh, holding me in the present with him.
“I don’t. What’s happening here, with the four of us, it’s the realest fucking thing I’ve felt.
Think about it, Em. All your life was built up to be a trinket on the shelf of a shitty man, in a pretty house.
No family, no anything. You’re meeting yourself for the very first time.
Without your mom, without her moral bullshit rules. ”
My heavy eyes watch him, hanging on each word. Lulled by the steady rhythm of his thumb on my cheek.
“All I see when I see you with us is someone testing themselves, trying new things. Seeing what fits and what doesn’t. I think you just need to decide if what you're trying feels good.”
His steady thumb travels down until his grip is under my chin, forcing me to keep my gaze on his “Does it feel good, Em?”
I shiver and the truth is a whisper on my tongue. “I don’t feel anything right now.”
His hand flexes. That fierce look on his face hardens, and his thumb pushes up on the soft skin under my chin, forcing my face to tilt upward.
I’m met with a kiss, slow and hungry. It’s unlike Bo, who's always been so gentle with me. But this is different, it’s desperate. An attempt to pull me free of the depression sinking its claws into me.
“Come back to me, honey. Come back to us,” he mumbles against my lip, sending a shiver down my spine. He drags his tongue lightly along my bottom lip, reveling in the way I shake at the sensation. “You are stronger than this.”
His hand trails my thigh, and my body clenches at the touch, a tiny gasp swallowed whole by his mouth as his fingers melt the cold from me. “I said, does this feel good, Em? I want an answer.”
This is Bo. My Bo. Who would never hurt me, even when my presence in his life has shaken his own to pieces. I clutch his side at the thought. “I’m sorry,” I apologize, and he nips a punishment at my bottom lip. “It’s good. I can feel this.”
“Good,” he whispers, hands tightening in my hair. His mouth lightens, becoming gentle. Dragging along the seam of my lips to the corner, where he places a feather of a kiss. “As long as this feels good to you, then you are where you're meant to be, Em. Safe. At home with us.”
I let his words sink in, where they warm the edges of the numbness that’s settled inside me.
Home. With him, and Jesse. With Noah.
“Jesse said in a year we won’t need to hide. That things will go back to normal someday. I’m putting my trust in him for now.”
“I’m finding it hard to trust right now, Bo.”
He pauses, hand gliding down my leg. “What do I always tell you, Em?”
My lip quivers. I don’t deserve this friendship. “That you’ll always protect me, no matter what.”
“Right, and it’s true still. There is nobody here you need protecting from, okay?”
I sigh, my eyes closing. “I’ll talk to him. I will. Thank you.”
We lie like that, curled up with each other as the hour slips to the side. His heartbeat in my ear. Steady, warm and strong.
Exactly like Bo.