I’m trying—really trying—to give her the space she needs to heal, to find herself again without me crowding that process. But she’s not making it easy. Every time she reaches for me, every time her fingers curl around my shirt like I’m the only solid thing in a crumbling world, it nearly breaks me. The way she looks at me—with want, yes, but something more jagged beneath it—makes restraint feel like punishment.
I’m supposed to go back in tonight.
There’s a meetup scheduled—a gathering of buyers, though it’s not an auction this time. It’s worse in its own twisted way. They call it a ‘celebration,’ a chance to revel in what they’ve acquired. To laugh and trade stories, to normalise something unspeakable. Like this is all just another hobby. Another deal. Another round of sick satisfaction in a velvet-tied room.
I haven’t told Nell yet.
She hates it when I leave her—and lately, I hate leaving her too. She’s fragile in ways I didn’t expect. Not weak, never weak, but cracked open. And while we’re slowly weaning her off the Valium, she needs me close. Needs the anchor, even if she doesn’t ask for it out loud.
Earlier, I could’ve given in to her. So easily.
She was half lost to the haze, desperate for something—maybe for me, maybe for escape. Her touch wasn’t gentle, it was pleading. But what she asked… it wasn’t just about closeness.
It was about pain.
She wanted it. From me. Not in hesitation—she begged for it with the kind of hunger that made my skin crawl in the best and worst ways.
I’ve met women who tolerate my edge. Who explore the dark because it intrigues them, until they realise just how dark it gets. But I’ve never met someone who sought it out. Not like that.
Is she like me?
God, I don’t know. I can’t make that assumption. Not yet. Not when she was drugged and grieving and barely holding herself together. I need to hear it from her—clear, sober, present. Anything else would be me projecting what I want to see instead of facing what she actually feels.
So, I wait.
Because the last thing I’ll do is cross that line with her. And if she ever truly wants to walk that road with me—she’ll say it with her whole heart.
I’m neck-deep in fact files when she stirs—scrolling through buyer profiles, training my memory to lock onto names, faces, habits. The deeper I go, the more disgust takes root, but I’ve learned to wear it like armour.
“Hello, trouble,” I murmur, glancing over as she stretches with that slow, full-body arch before curling back against me like she’s magnetised. No terrors this time. That’s something.
“Morning,” she breathes.
“You mean afternoon,” I correct with a smirk.
She blinks rapidly, groggy but present, turning her head toward the window where golden light spills across the sheets. “Oh.” Her voice sounds lighter somehow, more lucid.
“You hungry?”
“No,” she says, already cutting through the moment like she always does. “I want to talk to you about something.”
Straight to the point, as always.
“About what happened to you…” I start cautiously, “—or the part where you asked me to cause you pain?”
“Pain?” The confusion flickers instantly across her face, and my heart sinks. I forgot—amnesia doesn’t announce itself. It just steals pieces quietly.
So maybe she didn’t mean it. Maybe it wasn’t real. That itch I haven’t stopped thinking about? The possibility that she was wired like me? It unravels in my chest.
“I guess both,” she says finally, and I snap back to attention, trying to leash my thoughts before they run wildagain. Her voice is clearer now, her gaze steadier. “But I need to tell you what happened first,” she says softly. “I’m ready.”
“I’m listening,” I tell her, steady and low, bracing for impact. Because I know this is going to hurt to hear. But she needs to say it. Needs to let it out. And I need to carry it—for her. What she tells me won’t scare me off; it will fuel the fire that’s already burning in my chest. The fire that’s going to end this.
She starts slow, but the details come fast. Brutal, jagged, each one cutting deeper than the last. She tells me about the days after her capture—how the world blurred, how the drugs fogged her mind until time stopped making sense. How her memory became fractured and unreliable. But some things didn’t fade.
She remembers what they did to her body.
How they touched her like she wasn’t human. How they took what didn’t belong to them. Her voice shakes but she keeps going, clawing her way through the telling like each word costs her a bit of more of her soul. And I sit here, fists clenched at my sides, jaw grinding as I picture it all—what they did. What they thought they had the right to do.
