Chapter 16 Lily
LILY
I shift restlessly in the bed, my head groggy and body aching.
The ache isn’t just in my muscles. It’s in my bones, my joints, my very breath like I’ve been worn down from the inside out.
I roll over onto my stomach and feel a crackling over my chest. My mind snaps awake with awareness and I bolt up in the bed with a groan.
The light hits my eyes and I raise an arm to shield them from its harsh rays.
Once my eyes adjust, they dart frantically around the room.
My hotel room.
Relief punches through me—sharp and fleeting—before the questions rush in like a tide.
How did I get back here?
How did no one notice me being taken?
How did no one notice when I was brought back?
I immediately grab the bedding and hold it to my chest in a ridiculous form of protection from the silence and unknown.
The night shirt I’d had laying on the bed is on me.
Did he change me? Where is my—and then I see the dress I had on, folded neatly on the chair in the corner as if it were waiting to be worn again.
The sheets smell faintly of detergent, of bleach—sterile and clean—and I cling to the freshness of them. It takes me a second to catch my breath, to even out my pulse, and to believe that I’m truly here.
Alone.
He kept his promise.
I’m safe—physically—from what transpired.
Memories and sensations crash against one another like a demolition derby. Flashes of skin, shadows of hands, the weight of bodies. All three blur together in a way that makes my chest constrict until it hurts to breathe.
I curl into myself, knees to chest, with my arms protective around them.
And if I didn’t feel the ache in my limbs, the tenderness between my thighs, the wax dried on my chest, and the bites of pain along my back, I’d swear it was all a nightmare.
Even my skin feels wrong, like it remembers more than my mind will let me.
The abduction, being fucked every which way imaginable, and then nothing until waking up here in my bed in my hotel room.
Bile rises when I recognize those memories were reality and I choke it back.
The room spins for a second, like my body’s rejecting the truth faster than my mind can process it.
What I’d hoped was a dream was nothing of the sort.
My body protests but I’m off the bed in a heartbeat and running into the bathroom.
I can’t turn the shower on quick enough, can’t wait to rid my body of the reminders that still brand me: the feel of their fingers, their scents mixed with mine, the dried wax, the salt on my skin.
It’s still there, clinging in a way I can’t shed.
Mentally scattered, I step into the tiled enclosure without thought.
The shock of cold jolts my mind to the present, my voice crying out and echoing over the tiles.
Why didn’t I yell for help yesterday when I was being raped and held against my will, but I cry out now because of something as menial as a cold shower?
The hypocrisy of it guts me. Proof that nothing I do in this moment makes sense anymore.
The question circles in my mind, my body sagging against the chilled wall behind me, my conscience trying to disengage from the facts.
The guilt.
The doubts.
The truths.
Why didn’t I fight harder, resist more? Did I allow everything to happen? Is this on me?
The questions whirl in my mind, dragging me down, demanding an answer I can’t afford to give.
The temperature of the water then heats, cold to hot, frigid to inviting. Was that me yesterday? Resistant and unwilling, then accepting and compliant on a turn of a dime?
I fight the urge to vomit as I question myself and what I should or shouldn’t have done. Of the things I found pleasure in. The things that keep playing like a movie in my mind no matter how hard I try.
“Oh God.” It’s a repeated refrain as I stand mid-stream and let the scalding water burn lines down my skin. With a bar of soap in my trembling hands, I scrub every inch of my body with a vigor that feels like my life depends on it.
My hands slip and the bar shoots from my grip as if it knows it can’t clean the stain away from what was done. The steam suffocates the small bathroom but is no match for the weight smothering my soul.
I reduce the bar to a sliver and immediately open another package of the cheap hotel soap and begin anew until my skin is pink, raw, and abraded.
But it’s not enough. I’m still dirty, still tarnished—inside and out.
I take my fingers and lather them with soap and slide them between my legs and inside of me, trying to wash every trace of them away as best as I can.
I’m frantic. My swollen, abraded skin stings when the soap hits it, but it doesn’t matter.
I can’t seem to erase the claim he staked.
Tears fall. My body shivers. I open my mouth to let the scalding water fill it and burn my palate.
I gag on the water but it doesn’t help. His kiss is still there.
The feel of the smooth skin of his cock sliding over my tongue remains.
I start to gag at the thought, water spraying everywhere as I choke and cough and attempt to draw in air.
Time lapses as the hot water burns welts on my skin. I welcome the forced focus on the pain, the cleansing of my flesh, because it’s easier to concentrate on that rather than the doubts and questions and thoughts that overwhelm my mind.
The ones I’m afraid to look at closer, find answers to. Because if I look too closely, I’ll have to name what I felt . . . and I don’t know which truth could be worse. How the hell did I orgasm . . . so many times while being abducted? How is that possible?
When I can’t stand any longer, I stumble out of the shower.
I go through the haphazard mechanics of sliding on the hotel-provided robe and pull it as tight as I can around me.
I’m freezing. But I know that the chill has nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the hollow ache inside me.
The muggy Italian weather permeates the room, but I’m so very cold.
With teeth chattering and skin feeling like bugs are crawling all over it, I double-check the lock on the door, and slide back into the bed.
But it’s now that I’m physically cleansed—that my eyes are closed and body is sinking into the mattress—that I can hear the cars on the street below and the sound of the vacuum in another room nearby.
My throat constricts.
It sounds very much like the room where he, where they . . . where I was. Did I just not pay attention before to the sounds in this room?
Was I really in this hotel? Was I held against my will just a few rooms down?
I try to process the possibilities. I have no idea, and the panic hits me full force again.
The thought is an unexpected blindside. Was I really being held so close to here?
Could I have screamed and stopped this emotional destruction? My heart thunders and hands tremble.
Listen. Focus on your surroundings. Everything seems the same as it did yesterday . . . or the day before yesterday. Twenty-four hours. I fixate on that. On the normalcy of everything, hoping my mind can shut down for a few moments.
Minutes tick by. Everything outside sounds the same as it did before I left for that damn bar—except the strawberries are now soft and melted—and yet every single thing in me has shifted. Forever been changed.
My mind goes there, and not by choice but out of necessity. What the hell happened? The whys, the what-fors, the answers for some reason I know I’ll never find.
Out of habit, I reach down to twist my bracelet, my small form of comfort amid this maelstrom but touch bare skin.
No.
It’s gone.
My bracelet is gone.
And my wrists, both wrists, have faint marks from the restraints. I can’t bear to look at my ankles, but no doubt they will have marks too. But my bracelet?
“Why?” I yell. “Why did you take me? Why did this happen? And why did you take the one thing that belonged to me? Wasn’t my body and soul enough?”
Will I ever survive this? The aftereffects of this?
I know the anger and the pain has nothing to do with the bracelet—it was an accessory. An anchor.
Although, it is a reminder of who I am beyond this moment.
Panic renews. I had it on. I know I did. I was toying with it at the bar. When I grew dizzy in the alley, my hands bracing the wall—it was on my wrist.
Did I lose it with him?
I shove out of bed, frantic to find it. To tell myself it’s here and it isn’t lost. I toss everything in my room—my suitcase, the sheets, under the bed, the couch cushions, but it’s nowhere to be found.
The tears come.
I need that reminder of my family—my boys—to hold on to right now, but when I look down, I notice the faint red lines ringing my wrists. Marks. Stains. Reminders to replace the bracelet that means the exact opposite.
No.
No.
No!
I hold them close to my chest and rub them to try and make them go away. But I know the truth. I know when the marks fade, I’ll still feel them—somehow, someway—because what was done to me will be etched in my soul forever.
I’ll think of a kidnapper I trusted in some inexplicable, screwed-up way, who tried to protect me, praised me, showed me an unexpected and sporadic tenderness.
How does someone wrap their head around that?
Kidnapping, drugging, and restraints are in no way consensual, so how did he make me feel like it was my choice?
The contradiction makes my stomach knot. It’s a paradox I can’t untangle without unraveling myself in the process.
Why did I wash away every trace of DNA from my captors and not go to the police?
It was a crime. Just because it was pleasure, doesn’t make it any less of one.
Now I’ll never get justice for the crimes committed against me.
Is it a crime when the captive orgasms? When she wants more—
Stop. Just stop, Lily.