Chapter 28
Arizona
With Levi staring at me with unblinking eyes, the silence stretched on for what felt like days.
That last part just kinda slipped out. I’d fully intended to take it with me to the grave. But the burden of that secret had been chipping away at me for more than a decade, and having confessed, already, I felt lighter.
If only it wasn’t going to cost me everything—Austin, my marriage, this beautiful life I was finally letting myself fall in love with.
Shaking out of his stupor, Levi said, “I’m sorry. Did you say you killed him? As in, you took action that resulted in his death? What the fuck, Arizona?”
Already, he was looking at me differently, like I was someone he hardly knew.
“Look, I know how it sounds,” I began. “But I can explain.”
His disbelieving exhale sounded. “Can you? Really?” A hand ran through his hair. “I knew you were keeping something from me, but I never could have imagined . . .”
There was a long pause as he seemingly collected his thoughts.
“I don’t understand. How could you have killed Austin’s father when you said you never met the guy?”
“No, what I said was that he’d never been in the picture. Which is true. He never once laid eyes on Austin.”
“Don’t pretend like you didn’t know what your word choice would imply,” Levi accused.
I dropped my eyes to the floor. “You’re right. It was purposely misleading.”
His heavy exhale was audible. “How did your mom get involved with someone like that?”
My biggest secret was already out in the open; might as well spill all the rest.
“She didn’t. I did.”
When I dared to look at him, his brow was wrinkled in confusion. “What?”
“I’m the one who gave birth to Austin, Levi.”
His eyes darted to my midsection, where that ugly, raised scar was hidden beneath my clothing. “But I thought—You said—”
Pretty sure I’d broken his brain with that piece of information.
Levi shook his head. “I’m gonna need you to go back to the beginning.”
I hauled in a deep breath, mentally preparing to lay myself bare.
“Did you know I was a gymnast?”
His brows drew down. “How does that have anything to do with—”
“I was good.” I cut him off, needing to get this out before I lost my nerve.
“Really good. By the time I was fourteen, there were already whispers that they expected me to make the national team and compete in the International Games. Then—” I sucked in a sharp breath, the pain cutting sharper than a knife, even though it had been seventeen years. “Then, my dad died.”
“Arizona, I—” Levi rose from the mattress, reaching for me, but I stepped out of range.
“I know what you’re thinking. Girl loses her daddy and goes off the rails, but that’s not what happened.
It did, however, fuck me up enough in the head that I wasn’t focused when I returned to competing shortly after the funeral.
Vault was my specialty; you’d have thought it was automatic with how flawlessly I executed even the most complicated of twists.
But I under-rotated, came down wrong on my right foot, and an entire arena’s worth of spectators was there to watch as my leg snapped like a twig.
“I’d never felt anything so excruciating in my entire life. By the time paramedics loaded me into the back of the ambulance, my throat was raw from screaming. They pushed morphine during the ride to the hospital, and the pain relief was pure bliss.
“After the repair surgery, I had opioids prescribed to me. They acted like magic, erasing the pain not just from my leg, but from everything in my life.”
Compassion swam in Levi’s eyes; he likely knew where this story was headed.
“When I ran out, the agony was indescribable.” I shuddered, that feeling so fresh in my mind. “I could barely function, shaking and sweating, my nerve endings on fire.
“A classmate recognized the signs of withdrawal and passed me a note, saying she knew a guy who could help and listing an address where I could find him. I didn’t think twice about it. I was that desperate to make the pain stop.”
I paused, musing, “Sometimes I think about, if I hadn’t gone there that day, how different my life would have turned out. But the truth is, I would have probably hooked up with another drug dealer, and the outcome could have been worse. I could have wound up dead from an overdose.
“Anyway, that was how I met Bodhi. He had the painkillers, but I didn’t have the cash. I believe the asshole’s exact words were ‘Too bad, so sad.’” I scoffed in disgust. “So I went home, and with trembling fingers, reached into my mom’s purse and stole money out of her wallet so I could buy drugs.
“I thought I was so slick, taking only enough to secure my fix, but it wasn’t more than a month before she caught me.
We had this huge argument where I screamed at her for not understanding how much I needed the meds.
She blamed herself for not noticing the signs sooner—she’d had to take on a second job after Dad died and was hardly ever around—and begged to take me somewhere I could get help.
But I didn’t want help; I wanted to get high.
“That night, I left her house and didn’t come back. I was now fifteen and homeless, and Bodhi took me in. When I started going through withdrawal again, he offered me an alternative payment method. My body.” Shame curled through my insides. “I let him take my virginity for a handful of pills.”
Levi’s eyes bulged. “How old was this fucker?”
I lifted a shoulder. “If I had to guess, maybe early thirties?”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw.
Buckle up, dear husband, because if you think that’s bad, it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
“After that, he knew he could get me to do whatever he wanted if he dangled those painkillers just out of reach. It started slowly, with him bringing home ‘friends’ every once in a while, making me suck their cocks in front of him. I didn’t dare refuse because I knew he controlled when I got my next fix.
Blowjobs turned into sex, and before I knew it, I was being moved out of his apartment and into an abandoned warehouse. That’s when I met the others.”
“There were others?” Levi’s shock was audible.
“Yeah. Bodhi wasn’t just a drug dealer; he was a bona fide human trafficker. Most of the girls weren’t local. They’d been brought to San Diego by his ‘associates.’ It didn’t matter how we’d gotten there because, one way or another, we’d all become his prisoners.”
“Prisoners,” he repeated.
“We weren’t exactly allowed to leave. And if we refused to put out for men who were brought to us, we suffered.
The worst punishment was days of withdrawal, but other times we were denied access to food and water.
Hell, once they placed a padlock on the door to the makeshift bathroom, and we were made to sit in our own filth until they were convinced we’d learned our lesson.
After a while, we stopped fighting back, accepting our role as teenage prostitutes. ”
“Oh my God.” A horrified expression stole over Levi’s face as his hands flew to his head. “I’ve called you a whore. So many times.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Fuck not knowing.” He scoffed. “I feel like a total ass.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, and you kept doing it because you saw how much I liked it.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
It was clear that nothing I said would stop him from beating himself up over what I deemed consensual degradation, so I moved past it, continuing to tell the tale of my past.
“Bodhi viewed all of us as his property. But me? I was special. He loved to brag to his clients about how he’d personally broken in my cunt, that it was the best he had on offer.
And even though I was thoroughly used by multiple men daily, he still made sure to come calling at my cell/bedroom at night.
While condoms were mandatory for everyone else, he never bothered to use one. ”
“Motherfucker,” Levi gritted out, his fists clenching.
“Drugged out all the time, I grew so thin that I stopped getting periods. I didn’t even realize I was pregnant until one of the girls happened to catch me coming out of the shower and noticed my stomach was poking out.
By then, it was too late to terminate, and while Bodhi had no interest in a baby, he sure as shit cashed in on the situation, pimping me out to every sick fuck with a pregnancy fetish. ”
I swallowed down the bile that rose up the back of my throat as memories assaulted me—hands roving over skin pulled taut over my belly, aggressive fingers tugging at my nipples in hopes of getting milk to appear, and every guy role-playing as though he was the one who’d put me in that condition.
“I never got any prenatal care, and I was so high that I barely registered the baby kicking inside me. But it sure caught my attention when I started bleeding heavily.”
My husband stared at me with wide brown eyes, his Adam’s apple bobbing along his throat.
“The guards had no interest in dealing with me, so they dropped me off at the entrance to an emergency room. They peeled out, tires squealing, before the medical staff reached where I lay collapsed on the sidewalk.
“After that, I don’t remember much. From what my mom explained years later, I had placenta previa.
Basically, the placenta was blocking my cervix, and when it began to dilate prematurely—they estimated I was around thirty-three weeks—I started hemorrhaging.
They knocked me out before performing an emergency C-section. ”
“The scar,” Levi remarked, gesturing to my stomach.
“Yeah. The ‘well-meaning’ doctor performing the surgery took one look at the junkie teenager whose baby was born addicted and decided to remove my uterus. He felt like he was doing the world a public service by removing my ability to further procreate.”
His mouth dropped open. “He can’t—he can’t just do that. It’s illegal!”