Confessions of the Soul Part 2
Glennon
“Does anyone really get over trauma?” she mused. “Or do we just get better at burying it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it depends on who you are. What you’ve known in your past. What you’ve been exposed to. Possibly even how grounded you are as a person.
“One of the women taken after Tilly, she came from a horrific life. Parents were addicts. When they died, she ended up in the hands of not only their dealer, but an addict and a pedophile on top of it. Used her through her teens as a way to stave off debts he couldn’t pay.
Used her for his own pleasure. She ran away from it all at sixteen and reinvented herself.
When she was rescued, she seemed to recover just fine.
I’m sure there were plenty of nightmares and unresolved issues, but now she’s a mom, has a successful career, and a partner who’d burn down the world for her. But Tilly?”
His voice trailed off, cluing her in to the fact that her story read much differently.
Another wave of guilt and grief rolled out of him.
How she knew that, she couldn’t identify.
Maybe the tension in his body? Maybe the tightness of his expression?
Maybe it was the dullness of his normally brilliant blue eyes. They looked dead.
She needed to remove that from him. Needed to get him talking. To purge the poison he was holding onto. She rested her head on his shoulder, her hand reaching up to thread her fingers with the ones around her shoulder. “Tell me about her.”
The ghost of a smile rested on his face, obviously remembering what he loved about her.
“Came from Silicon Valley royalty. All the advantages. Young. Rich. Beautiful. Spoiled,” he countered, “but kind. You couldn’t help but want to indulge her.
Despite coming from wealth, she wasn’t afraid to work hard, and she became a social-media influencer by the time she left high school.
Made her own fortune with the gig. She specialized in fashion—designer clothes, makeup, that kind of thing.
“She joined The Library the day she turned twenty-one, and if you looked up the words ‘submissive brat’ in the dictionary, her picture would be next to the definition. She was a bit of a wild child, so my friend Cosmos entered into a Dom/sub contract with her for six months. She was way too young for him, but she needed a very strong Dom to keep her in line, and one who also wouldn’t crush her spirit.
“I’ve always wondered how people bounce back from trauma. Is it a product of upbringing? Someone who comes from the worst succeeds better than someone who comes from the best? I think that’s far too neat an explanation.”
He paused then. He was working through something, his brow furrowing, a frown taking over for the nostalgic smile. What he thought the answer was, maybe?
As the vehicle slowly ate up the miles toward Peru and the next border crossing, she remained silent, surreptitiously watching him process his thoughts and emotions.
She imagined this was what he looked like when he worked his computers for the NSA.
Consumed by the data, compartmentalizing it once, twice, however many times it took until he was satisfied there were no other groupings.
Then he’d loop back to the beginning and try to see it from other angles, weaseling out information hidden among the details and sifting out the necessary from the unnecessary.
His voice returned. “After she was rescued, it was like she’d swapped places with someone else.
The submissive we knew as Tilly figuratively continued on to wherever her kidnapper had planned to send her, and Matilda came back in her place.
A shell of the vibrant, bratty, golden girl we once knew.
No more flirting. No more sassy comebacks.
All the boldness and fire vanished, leaving behind a pretty porcelain doll who never spoke a word out of line and rarely looked anyone in the eye. ”
“Not surprising, given what you said she went through. Hard way to grow up fast.”
“That’s the thing though,” he objected. “Looking back on it now, she hadn’t grown up.
If anything, she regressed. I mean, she still functioned as an adult.
She held a job, paid bills, kept her living space tidy, and hung out with us at the club—she did all of that.
But who she became… Part of why we brought her to San Antonio—the therapist specialized in the kink community.
He’s a Daddy Dom, and we wondered if he could…
I dunno, assess her? See if that kind of relationship would help her move forward.
Not with him, necessarily, but with someone in the community. ”
“I take it that didn’t work.”
He shook his head. “No. Even the therapist was stumped. Still, we thought she was getting better. We missed all the signs.”
Without thinking, she replied, “She was frozen in that nightmare. Probably lived every day caught between the reality of her captivity and the reality we know, never able to reconcile the two. This might sound cruel…” She hesitated.
“I’ve always believed that some victims aren’t meant to come back.
Their fate lay among the statistics, yet somehow, they became an anomaly and returned when they shouldn’t have. ”
She felt his chin rub against the top of her head. His words floated in the air, like thought bubbles. “What about the idea that all things happen for a reason?”
“A lot of things in life don’t have reasons. Whatever will be, will be. Wrong place, wrong time. Right place, right time. Law of averages. Call it whatever you want. Things just happen.”
“Why do I get the sense you’re applying this to yourself? That you’re a statistical anomaly? I find that very difficult to believe. If you were, you would have let everything happen to you instead of fighting your way out.”
Heat flamed inside her. Sorrow. Fear. Embarrassment.
Guilt. Anger. He wanted to make her a survivor?
Hell no. That wasn’t what she was. People didn’t do the things she’d done and get to be thought of in a positive light.
“You don’t know me. Don’t make me into some paragon of virtue, Triumph,” she warned.
“I’ve done a lot of shit that people should never forgive. ”
“Glennon, you had a job to do.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I’m sure I don’t. I didn’t live through what you did, so I doubt I ever can understand it.
When I felt the NSA starting to suck out my soul, I stayed for a while, but eventually, I couldn’t do it anymore.
I questioned every task they gave me, punched holes in every argument they delivered.
I became a liability instead of an asset.
My final act got me fired. I walked away and didn’t look back.
It needed to be that way, but now, I feel awful about that because if I’d stayed just a little longer, maybe you would have had someone in your corner to help you. ”
He tucked her closer to him, his lips resting against the top of her head. “I don’t want to upset you. You’re healing, and you need to rest. I don’t want you to be in pain any more than necessary, and talking about all of this isn’t going to help you recover.”
He was correct in that their situations didn’t compare, but it wasn’t a contest. His concern for her went much further than whether or not he could empathize with her.
His touch, his presence, helped the rage subside, leaving exhaustion pulling her from the edge.
It would return, in time, and its height would depend on the stress of the moment.
Right now, she didn’t have the energy to argue with him.
She allowed him to help slide her down into the nest of blankets in the truck bed.
“I’m not avoiding talking about this,” he told her as he tucked her in.
“What?” What the hell was he talking about?
“The look on your face. You think I’m dismissing you.
What you went through. I assure you, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Honestly, right now I want to put hands on anyone who ever thought it was okay to fuck with your life like this.
But I need to get you home. Get you safe.
Then I can worry about fucking up somebody’s day. ”
Who was this man? He wanted to go head-to-head with the CIA for her? She was beginning to think she knew him even less than she thought she did.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she murmured. Suddenly, her body felt heavy everywhere. “It’s too late to fix anything.”
“I call bullshit.”
“It’s not your fight, Triumph,” she said with a sigh. Her eyelids fluttered shut, becoming too heavy to lift. What little energy reserves she’d built up from sleeping through their initial escape now dissipated. Some tough guy she was.
“You are a tough guy,” he murmured.
Oops. She was so tired that she lost control of her inner monologue.
He added, “A badass bitch I’m in awe of, and I hope I get to know so much more about you.”
Her extreme exhaustion weakened the barriers she maintained.
“I’m so tired. Tired of being someone else.
Tired of hiding, afraid that any moment the house of cards will all come crashing down.
Well, I guess it’s too late for that, but I'm also tired of depending on someone else to help me. Especially now that it’s clear the CIA doesn’t give a shit about all I’ve sacrificed.
” Her voice sounded small, even to her, when she confessed, “I just want to be myself. Is that so much to ask?”
“No, it’s not,” he assured her. “You deserve it as much as the next person. Probably more so, given what you’ve gone through.
” He kissed the top of her head again. “I’ll do what I can to help you make that happen.
Once we get you over the border, I have friends who can help.
Get you a new identity, a place to live, whatever you want, wherever you want.
You’ll never have to answer to anyone ever again if you don’t want to. ”
Wouldn’t that be nice? But then she wondered what it would be like to answer to him.