Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
When the men grow tired of me, they file away, laughing at the mess they’ve left on the floor. Eric and Bundy exit first, the rest crowding out the door boisterously, as if leaving some kind of sports game. Like it fed them somehow to take the good in someone and rip it from their soul.
Two remain outside the door, peeking in at us through the glass like we’re animals that need studied.
They must think in our current condition we aren’t much of a threat, as nobody bothers tying us up again.
They’re probably right. I’m curled up on my side in the corner of the room, an awful concoction of things I don’t want to catalogue coating my body.
Duct tape covers my mouth, a hole torn through the middle for access.
Two nails are broken to the quick from the grip I had on the tile floor.
Even with all of that, Bo is in worse shape, having spent the entire time fighting to get to me.
The guards seemed to enjoy it, letting him get a little closer before beating him for the attempt.
They seem to love any excuse to hurt him, but they don’t need one.
We are at their mercy, and they don’t have any to show us.
Like I’m watching a movie, I see Bo manage to get one arm in front of him, attempting a kind of army crawl to make it to me. His breathing is ragged, ribs bruised, and it rouses me somewhat from my stupor. Then he’s here, his face next to mine and his hand touching my arm.
I try to interlace our fingers, the way we always hold hands, but the second we touch a torrent of silent tears start falling.
“Em…” His voice cracks and my chest aches with the effort to try and hold back the breaking of my own heart. “Em, I’m so sorry. I tried.” He swallows, his forehead meeting mine as we curl up in the dark. “I tried to get to you.”
I shake my head, cutting off his apology and brush my thumb across the blood on his cheek.
His finger tugs at the corner of the duct tape, giving me a moment to brace myself before ripping it away.
My mouth feels swollen from the rough adhesive, throat sore from the abuse it’s taken.
The reflex to spit everything in my mouth to the ground is nearly overwhelming, as if it would remove the traces of the strangers that are left behind.
It won’t, I reason. You won’t come clean so easily.
“Are you okay?” I ask, trying to take in every part of him I can lay eyes on. Cataloguing the harm they’ve done to him because of me. Because he’s in my life.
“I’m pretty sure most of this is bruising,” he lies.
“If they give us some time to heal up we’ll be better able to defend ourselves.
Maybe.” He bites his lip, eyes falling to my throat and the ring of fingertip-shaped purple marks that surely bloom there.
“Maybe they’ll leave us alone for a few days now that they think they’ve beaten us down. ”
No part of me feels like that is going to happen. Their cruelty is not a tactic, it’s a sport. And men like them don’t take breaks from winning. They’ll be back again when their high wears off.
I say nothing though, because Bo’s need to have hope is more important than our reality. “You shouldn't have fought them. I can’t protect you if you make them upset.”
His eyes darken. “Upset? I can’t just watch them…I can’t ignore it when you need me.”
The torment on his face hurts worse than the physical pain I’m in. Yet, this blank layer clings to my every thought, buffering reality. They hurt me, but I don’t feel it yet, not vividly.
Bo’s pain? That cuts me deep.
He pulls me into his chest and I allow us to fit together, removing any distance that they tried to put between us.
His heart is all I feel, as if it’s beating for the both of us.
Coaxing my own to keep going. The shock sets in, so that I go from feeling him behind me to somehow detaching from the room completely.
But peace is short-lived here.
The door cracks open again and I bite my tongue as a full-body flinch seizes my muscles. Bo’s arm tightens around me as if he can force them to leave us together.
It’s Bundy, strolling toward us with his hands behind his back. His eyes smile as he takes us in, beaten but still clinging together. “What a great show, Emma, thank you. These keepsake photos will help the memory from fading too quickly.”
His hand emerges, a polaroid notched between two fingers, and he watches my face as I absorb what he’s showing me.
Obviously it’s me, just an hour ago as I’m assaulted by several men. My body is partially blocked by those circling us, watching. How strange that this must have just happened and yet I don’t remember this exact moment. It feels like I’m witnessing a snapshot of somebody else’s nightmare.
I’d been staring out that fucking window, so that I didn’t need to see their faces and those smiles stretched across them. Their disgusting hands and low rolls of laughter as they took.
Glaring up at him, I wait for whatever he really has come here to tell me. That face making me wish I had the energy to scratch it to pieces. To dig at those eyes that watched me being defiled.
Bo’s anger, however, is explosive. “You sick fuck. Lock us up, but they’ll come for her, and I’m gonna love every second of watching you bleed out when they do.”
His eyes drop back to Bo and the protective way he curls around me.
“Ah, I hoped you’d bring them up. Now, I did in fact already have these pictures sent to your…
friends?” He glances back at me and winks.
“Recent videos have me thinking it might be more than that, isn’t it?
You’re something of a whore for them, including this one here. ”
My face flushes at the insult, Bo snarling as if to jump to his feet, but wincing in pain before he can move too far. I grip his arm just in case, because I know another outburst could get him killed.
“Anyway, now they know you’re being used by us as well. And they aren’t here though. Right? In fact, they haven’t responded at all.” He brushes my bangs from my eyes, gently, and I’d almost prefer him to hurt me. “Almost like they don’t care.”
He offers me a sympathetic half smile. “Something about you makes me want to lock you in my bedroom.” Nodding at Bo, the smile turns rueful. “Both of you. I rather like the look on Eric’s face when either of you gets touched.”
I stare him down, refusing to give him any response. If he wants me to beg, he’ll die waiting. Hysteria has fled my body, and now all I have is a complacency that’s dulled down to nothing. If it wasn’t for Bo, I’d ask him to kill me now.
It happened quickly, this splinter of my mind from fighter to hopeless. He’s efficient when he decides to break someone’s will. Or maybe I just hadn’t been as strong as I’d thought.
Standing, he turns to leave, shutting the door behind him with a click that means I can breathe again.
Bo squeezes my hand and I swallow. I want to be here for him, to cheer him up and take care of his wounds, but more than that I want to sink into nothing.
Unconsciousness would be preferable to this.
“They’ll come for us, Em. They won’t leave us here,” Bo says, his voice warm on my ear. He kisses my temple and I reach up to grip the side of his face, holding him to me. The thought of Noah briefly slices through my detachment, letting me free fall into the pool of shame I’m drowning in.
“What can they do, though? They’re outnumbered. If they come here to get us, it will be a suicide mission.”
I don’t say out loud what I’m actually thinking. What Noah will think if Bundy is telling the truth, and they’ve sent Mercy the photos. Would he be sick that I’m here with Eric again, that I’d let him watch as I was used?
That instead of fighting back like he’d taught me, I’d just shut down and let it happen?
It’s a gut punch. I want him so bad. I want him to come through the door, gun in hand and slaughter every man that’s ever stepped foot in this building.
I want Jesse to come in right behind him, and get my sweet Bo out of this place, sweep him away to somewhere safe.
I want to be back home with them all so much it fucking hurts.
God, it hurts. Every heartache I’ve survived in the last few months doesn’t come close to the wound these men created. I whine low in my chest, curling further in, blacking out whatever I can.
“Baby, come here,” Bo whispers, his hand on my face, my stomach. “Noah loves you. We all love you and they’ll come for us. Don’t forget that, no matter what they say to you. You hear me?”
I nod, but he can’t hear the men’s voice still ringing in his head. Over and over.
Who's an angel now?
Try to soar away, ha, ha, ha.
Can’t you fly, little angel?
No. It’s not about if I can get up again after this. It’s if I want to.
Right now Bo’s warm breath on the back of my neck is the only thing that keeps me from deciding that I don’t.