Eventually I’ll allow myself to feel again, and this will all be over.
Nikolai
I text Chelle the next afternoon. Are you okay?
She doesn’t reply.
I start to text Can we talk? but I delete the message before I hit send. I already know where this is going. Chelle is done. Pretending otherwise would only delay the pain. And yeah, maybe I could talk her into prolonging what we have—or had—but at the end of it all, she’s not going to stay with me.
She only agreed to be with me because of a bargain we made.
Fuck. It feels like my heart just shriveled up and died inside my chest. Just when I found what felt like my new purpose in life, I fucked it up.
I close my eyes, trying to push away the torrent of fresh memories we made the last few weeks. Chelle, drunk, tugging me into her apartment and begging me to spank her. Showing up at my game full of piss and vinegar. The way she looked tied to my chair. The smiles she tossed over her shoulder when we rode bikes along the lake. The way she filled my kitchen. My apartment.
Goddammit. I wanted the real deal, and I’d found it.
I fucking love Chelle.
But that means I have to let her go. I care too much about her to push when she wants out, even though walking away feels like it will kill me.
I ache right down to my soul, so I drink a bottle of vodka on an empty stomach and when that’s gone, I order one of our soldiers to bring me more and crash on the couch.
I intend to drink until I forget she was ever here.
Chelle
I need to get my stuff from Nikolai’s, but I’m not ready to see him. I’m still pretending to myself that nothing’s wrong. That every day is normal, just like all the days I had before I met Nikolai.
I do double workouts at my spin gym and make an excuse to skip Wednesday at the Red Room, and I send Shanna vague texts about being busy. I don’t want to—I can’t—be with anyone who will talk about feelings. I’m working very hard not to have any.
On Sunday afternoon, Shanna shows up at my door with two grocery bags of brunch food.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, stepping back.
“You need me. I can tell.” She gives me a critical look, taking in the faded bruise on my face, then pushes past me and into my kitchen to start unloading. I follow her but can’t make myself move to help or to speak.
She pops a champagne bottle, pours us mimosas and puts coffee cake and fruit salad on plates for us. “Come on,” she says, picking up her mimosa and plate. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“How do you know I need you?” I ask, mechanically picking up my plate and glass and following.
“You’re doing robot-Chelle. This is how you were after your dad died. What happened?” She eyes the bruise again. When I don’t answer, she asks very quietly, “Did Nikolai do that?”
I shake my head miserably. “It’s a really long story.”
“That’s why we have champagne. I’ve got you, sister. Spill.”
I set my plate and fork down on the coffee table and straighten my back. “Maybe it’s not that long. Here’s that short version. Zane couldn’t stand me having sex with Nikolai to pay off his debt, so he somehow got into bed with a motorcycle club—I think selling drugs, but I’m not sure. I don’t even want to know. Then things went bad—again, I don’t know how, and they came and trashed my apartment and kidnapped me.” My voice breaks on the word kidnapped.
Dang it. I was trying to keep it together.
Shanna sets her champagne down and pulls me into a hug. “Jesus, Chelle. That’s terrifying. Then what happened?”
“Zane was there, and he was all beat up. They let him go. He was going to get money from Nikolai to buy me back.”
The trauma of that night blows through me full force.
This was what I was resisting all week. The fear. The helplessness. The violation.
I choke on a sob.
Shanna squeezes my hand.
“They were going to rape me,” I sob, touching the bruise on my face I got while fighting with them.
Shanna wraps me in the tightest hug imaginable. I bawl into her shoulder, wetting her Beatles t-shirt. “But they didn’t?” she asks softly.
“No.” I pull back and wipe my nose. “Because Nikolai came in with Zane and they, um, killed everyone.”
I know Shanna was trying to play it cool, not screeching about my bruise, waiting for me to tell the story, but her eyes widen now. “Wow. Okay. Shit.”
“Yeah.” I cry some more, but it feels better now that I’ve told someone.
Like holding in that terrible secret was burning my insides like battery acid.