“For fuck’s sake, Chloe, why do you care so much? It means nothing to you.”
“Because I care about you!” I shout.
He curls his lip as he looks at me. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re just some whore, spreading your legs, and ready to suck any cock you can get your hands on to protect yourself. You don’t know what it means to truly care about a person.”
His words hurt more than anything I’ve been told before. Because ultimately, he’s right. I didn’t start out having sex because I wanted it, but I learned how to utilize it to protect myself.
Before, I would shut my mind off and endure, but with Zack, I left my mind open because I wanted to experience it not just with him, but through him.
I thought he felt the same. That connection we felt barely an hour ago meant something. Whatever pain he’s holding onto is forcing his hand, making him shut me out.
“You don’t know anything about me. What I’ve had to do to get here,” I snap back just as harshly as he’s choosing to speak to me.
“Then indulge me. Tell me your twisted little story and see if you can thaw my icy heart. Remember, it might save your life. There are only a few hours left until dawn.”
He’s just being an asshole and hanging that deadline over me to mess with my head. I don’t believe for a second he’ll really kill me.
If I let him in, then perhaps he’ll return the favor.
“I told you my mom left me at the convent when I was sixteen.”
“Kids get abandoned all the time. That’s not going to sway me.”
I take a breath and end up inhaling his scent. How can someone so full of disdain toward me make me feel so secure?
“It was fine there for the first few months. Imissed Mom, but knew it wasn’t her fault. She got really sick and couldn’t look after me by herself anymore. Rather than put me in the system, she thought me being safe within a convent until I turned eighteen would be best.”
She wasn’t to know what the place was really like. To her, religion was a good thing. It kept her going on the bad days when her body was working against her and she spent days in bed, moaning quietly from the pain. All she ever did was try to protect me.
“I never got to see her again after I arrived there. Whenever I asked if I could visit her, the Fathers would tell me to have faith and that I’d see her someday, but nothing ever came of it. I never stopped asking. I’d been there just under a year when I was sent to one of their chambers.”
“Wait,Fathers?As in priests?”
“Yes, Zack. Not my real Father, obviously?—”
“You’re positive you lived at a convent?”
I nod, unsure of what he’s getting at.
“Chloe…If it was, there shouldn’t have been any priests living with you.”
He clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I was the one who lived there, not him.
I find myself getting annoyed with him for thinking he knows more about my own life than me.
When I don’t continue my story, Zack says in a surprisingly gentle tone, “Tell me what happened when you went to his chambers.” He chews on the last word like it’s filth in his mouth.
I’m reluctant to tell him, but this is my chance to finally get through to him.
“His name was Father Stone. I was hopeful that this was finally the moment he’d say I could see my mom again. But when he sat me down next to him on his bed, I knewmy world was about to shatter. He told me that my mom had passed away. She had a severe autoimmune disorder that weakened her heart. An infection had rapidly spread, and there was nothing that could have been done to save her. I was heartbroken, and he held me as I cried.” Hot tears burn the backs of my eyes as I get stuck in the memory. I can still vividly recall the way he held me too tightly and for far too long. The stale smell of him was something I had to get used to, and quickly.
Zack stays silent as he listens. His knuckles are white on the wheel.
“He told me that my mom had gone to heaven, and that I could see her there one day. If I was good. His hands…His hands never went anywhere inappropriate. Not at that point. But the way he touched me…” I shake the memory away. “It was a few days later that they came for me the first time. For the start of my initiation to become a Sister. They made it sound so special.”
Before then, my naive young mind thought the other girls were being taken for extra prayer sessions or confessionals with the Fathers.
It was only once they started regularly choosing me that I realized it was at the same time each week that the selection would happen. Every Friday night, they’d pick the girl who needed the most saving. Who needed her faith restored. It makes me sick to think about it now, but also so fucking angry.
