Chapter 25
Ayla
I haven’t slept well in months. Some days, I would pray for the prick of a needle, so tired that I didn’t give a shit what happened to me while I was knocked out because I knew I was getting the rest my body needed.
Sitting on the bed with Nash only a handful of feet away doesn’t offer any more comfort than if he were still on the other side of the door. If anything, it’s worse. His low breathing, the sound telling me he doesn’t fear me at all, fills the room.
It’s annoying in that way that a lover’s snores take over the night when they should’ve gotten dressed after the deed was done.
I pick at one of the scars on my forearm, living in the bite of pain that is somehow connected to the underside of my ribcage.
How the echo of it spreads out across my body, I’ll never understand, but it’s always been like that.
I scratch at the back of my upper arm, feeling it just below my belly button.
This phenomenon was never discussed in nursing school, and I always felt like I was the only one to experience it, so I never asked.
I didn’t want to be seen as the weirdo, despite my inability to ever really make friends.
I imagine it’s why Alani believed me so easily when I explained on that first phone call that I just gave up my entire life in Plano and joined a medical group traveling to Guam.
I had no one but her to walk away from. No one left behind asking questions or searching for me.
I have no one to blame but myself for my lack of connections.
I worked my shift and worried about my sister.
I didn’t have time for much else. I never ached for any other connections, and that’s on me and my codependence on my sister.
I think Alani was more than a little happy to go to college.
I think she was beginning to feel smothered by me despite the long hours I worked.
I thought I needed to protect her from drunk drivers, but apparently, there were all sorts of evils I never considered.
I lose count of how many times my stomach grumbles as he sleeps.
I haven’t left the room, but I’ve considered a myriad of consequences if I take a couple dollars from the wad of cash on the bedside table.
I’d only go as far as the vending machine on the ground level right under our room, but I know the dangers in that.
I still feel like a captive. I’m attached to this man whether I like it or not because I’m not capable of providing for myself right now.
I have no friends, no money, no knowledge on how to get across the border by myself.
I’m a female which makes people think I’m easier to victimize, which may be true, no matter how much I fucking hate the thought of it.
I don’t even know why I want to get back so badly. Texas doesn’t offer any more protection than I have here. If anything, I have even less. Once we get across the river, I don’t doubt that Nash will cut ties with me.
Hell, I don’t know why he’s so fucking willing to help now. Is it guilt?
I should tell him it’s misplaced. I’ve done just as horrific things to him as he’s done to me. It should be a wash. My gender shouldn’t matter. It makes him no less a victim.
I shake my head, hating to even think that damn word. I hate it as much as I hate the word orphan, but my dislike for both doesn’t make either any less true.
Anxiety makes my chin quiver. No money. No family other than Alani, and she’s at college. It’s not like I can knock on her door and bum a spot in her fucking room.
My apartment was emptied. Hell, they took my car when they took me, no doubt having it chopped to pieces and sold on the black market. Not that a beat-up old Corolla would bring much. If anything, the effort was put forth to keep suspicions being raised about my disappearance.
I have a bank account, and Slick mentioned that deposits were made, but I have no ID, no debit card to use to pull money from that account.
All I ever wanted was normal. It seemed impossible after losing both parents in a tragic accident, and now, it’ll never be possible.
I know my eye is still bruised from rolling off that table to get away from the gunfire, and that means I can’t go to my sister until it’s healed.
I have two more days until I can make my scheduled call, and that seems like a lifetime from now.
I know any change to the status quo will only bring questions from my little sister that I never want to answer.
The call coming from a different number after months of consistency is problematic enough as it is.
My eyes don’t grow heavy until after the sun starts to rise, and I know staying awake has more to do with training than nerves. Now that it would be considered okay back at the compound to go to sleep, I find it increasingly difficult to keep my eyes open.
Nash shifting on the bed, a groan escaping his parted lips, makes falling asleep impossible.
I know what the man was forced to do, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have come to the same conclusion on his own.
He seems more the type to not have connections to anyone rather than the type to protect someone he cares for, despite Pirro having something to threaten him with.
I feel locked in place when his eyes open. He doesn’t blink or look away as he sits on the edge of the bed. He hasn’t gotten but a couple of hours of sleep, but I’m envious of what he did manage while I stayed awake and watched him.
As he continues to stare, I can’t seem to do anything other than stare right back. Under his scrutiny, I have this urge bubbling inside of me to apologize for everything that’s ever happened to him, hating that I’m one more part of his life that he may need to overcome.
I try to look away but find myself unable.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry for everything they made me do to you. I’m disgusted with myself for all of it.”
He blinks but remains silent for the longest time before finally speaking.
“What do you expect me to say? Should I apologize too? Should I simply ignore the fact that you came so hard when I was hurting you? Should we ignore what our bodies liked while it happened? Do we accept that we’re deranged? What do you want me to say?”
I don’t know why I expected him to keep all of that to himself, as if it were the family secret no one spoke about. Although I have no right, I still feel a little betrayed at his willingness to bring it up.
I shake my head, unable to answer any of those questions.
“Who is Alani?”
I freeze, wanting to have a long conversation about his questions rather than talk about my sister.
He’s got more patience than I ever gave him credit for, because the man just watches me, his eyes traveling a path between my mouth and my eyes.
“My sister,” I answer, wondering if he’s going to end up exactly like Pirro.
She’s the only way someone can hurt me. I realized probably too soon how willing I was to feel pain and degradation in order to keep her safe.
I attempt to hold my head up high, but I know he can see the fear increasing inside of me. My hands grow clammy and my heart is threatening to beat right out of my chest.
“Tell me about her,” he insists, but it doesn’t feel like he’s threatening her.
That may be because I’m so desperate to find a connection to someone else.
I feel this constant urge to cling to any form of humanity that I can manage.
I didn’t find one in Angel, so I don’t know why I’m looking for an ounce of that with Nash.
I cling to the memory of Angel talking about him being carefree, a smile always on his face. What happened to the two of us has no other recourse than to change us from the inside out. It’s not really fair to judge his rough exterior when I’m exactly the same way.
“She’s at college,” I explain, risking everything on the off chance that this man is actually a good person, that he won’t use this knowledge against me like Cortez did from the second he had me in captivity.
“They threatened her.” It isn’t a question, but rather a statement that he’s been capable of deducing from clues given along the way.
“They allowed me to call her once a week. The lie was that I moved to Guam to help with a humanitarian group offering medical assistance to those in need,” I explain. “The calls were just another way they controlled me.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“A nurse,” I correct. “I think I would’ve fought them if I didn’t have the threat of losing that connection to her hanging over my head. It was both a relief and a means of torture all rolled into one.”
He drops his eyes from mine, but I don’t feel the relief I was certain I’d feel.
“Who did they use with you?” I ask, needing to know what connection he had in the outside world that made him so willing to climb on top of me the way he did.
I swallow against the idea that it didn’t take much. Some men just have that bad person inside of them. Some are just waiting for a reason to act in certain ways.
I don’t know this man well enough to make an assumption in either direction.
“You,” he whispers, confusing my sleep-deprived brain even further.
“Me?”
He nods. “Pirro told me that he’d fuck you with his knife if I didn’t do it. ‘Hurt her a little or I’ll hurt her a lot’ were his exact words.”
“That makes no sense,” I say before I can stop myself.
His lips form a straight line.
“I’m some random woman. There was no reason to protect me.”
He shrugs. “I can’t fucking explain it. I’m not some fucking protector.
I’ve never been the one to consider jumping in front of a bullet for someone else.
I’ve never met anyone I was willing to do that for.
But I knew from the moment the words left that sick fuck’s mouth, that I’d never be able to stand there and watch them hurt you. ”
I focus on my hands as I twist my fingers together, unsure of what he expects me to say.
“I have no idea why I was so willing to compromise that part of me, to become something I hate in order to protect you.”
I know exactly what he’s saying. I did that very same thing to protect Alani. I victimized others to keep my sister safe, and it’s something I hated having to do but still can’t bring myself to regret.
“I saw victim after victim come into the emergency room at work with injuries for sexual assaults. I told myself I’d rather be dead than to live and tell about it.”
He looks absolutely horrified by my words. “Ayla, I—”
I hold my hand up to stop him.
“It wasn’t until I was faced with that choice that I realized how weak I was. I didn’t want to die, but I was willing to if it meant Alani was safe. I can’t say that things would be different even if she wasn’t threatened.”
He nods as if he may have struggled with the same ideas.