I made myself keep reading. The location of my hands revealed the progress I made with the article. At first they gripped the top of my laptop, holding it in place so I didn’t rear up from the sofa and send it smashing into the wall. As I scrolled through the story that retold the circumstances of Mia’s life in dry, subtly judgmental catchphrases, my hands fisted by my hips. By the end they were holding on to the computer again, knuckles white with tension.
When I finished that article, I immediately sought another, despite the bile coating my throat. I didn’t understand why her name had been in the paper at all. She’d been a minor and usually the names of underage trauma victims—I couldn’t bring myself to use the term rape—were protected. But she’d been missing for months and the story had broken so hugely that perhaps they hadn’t been able to keep a lid on it.
A memory teased the back of my mind. Watching the nightly news with my arm wrapped around the shoulders of the latest girl I’d brought home. I’d already been counting down the hours until my parents went to bed. Even now I remembered her name. Sami…Something-Or-Other, the purest girl in our class. Hooking up with virgins usually meant the act played out in stages, but I enjoyed the challenge.
Rich boy thrills came in safe, perfectly-groomed packages. And Magnum condoms.
I’d been so hyped on that night’s imminent deflowering that I recalled too many details about the evening. How I’d skipped out on lamb for dinner, and the bottle of wine secreted in my trunk for our pre-bed toast. Oh yeah, I was a sophisticated bastard. Nothing but the best for Sami.
And when I’d glimpsed the picture of the missing girl too close to my own age on the newscast, she’d stuck in my head because I’d felt a momentary pity that she died so young. Because she had to be dead. She’d been gone for weeks.
Such a pretty smile. Just like Sami. Wide-eyed, innocent.
So fucking innocent.
The girl’s disappearance was a big story, similar to so many others that filled the news reels before fading into obscurity. My mom had commented on it, since a branch of our family lived in a neighboring Georgia town. Isn’t that a shame, blah, blah.
Then I returned to flirting with Sami, the missing girl forgotten.
Until now.
She’d lodged herself in my consciousness, buried so deep that I hadn’t been able to excavate the recollection until now. Her face, and her name. Amelia. Old-fashioned, lovely. But it didn’t matter, because I knew she had to be dead. Even by sixteen I’d been jaded as hell.
Seven years ago, I’d been hoping Sami would give me a blowjob and/or her virginity. Mia had been hoping to survive the night.
Three months. Almost ninety days she’d been in captivity, imprisoned by a disturbingly normal-looking guy in his mid-thirties. He could’ve been a teacher or a doctor. His eyes weren’t filled with madness, unlike how mine probably looked like right then. He’d given her a ride home after cheerleading practice one day—or so the cops had surmised. She hadn’t been seen since.
Eventually she’d gotten free from that lunatic, taking advantage of him being away from home to sneak out a basement window. He’d returned early and caught her on the way out and she’
d stabbed him with a piece of glass from the window she’d broken. He died later at the hospital.
I gripped my throbbing head. That’s what that stupid paper considered a rescue? Mia hadn’t been rescued. She’d fought her way clear. She was still fighting. Still using her smarts to survive.
Fourteen years old and she’d killed a man to save her own life. And I thought I had problems because I didn’t want to be compared to my daddy? Jesus Christ.
Sick to my stomach, I pushed the computer off my lap and ground the heels of my hands into my eyes. They weren’t wet. They’d burned dry, all of the moisture in my body evaporating and leaving only hard, brittle resolve in its place.
I’d thought I brought all I had into the ring every night. That I’d tested the limits of my determination and will. I was wrong.
This was the biggest test I’d ever faced. I didn’t know how to comfort someone. I broke bodies. I didn’t stitch them back together. But every part of me ached to go to her side. To protect her. No one would touch her again. Not while I had anything to say about it.
She’d become so much more to me than just a woman I’d had sex with. Somehow she’d changed me in a few days, and the man I was now couldn’t turn away. For the first time ever, I had a real reason to fight.
Maybe she didn’t trust me to be a good guy—maybe I hadn’t been one before—but I could keep her safe. If only she’d let me.
Instinct told me to spell out how I felt. If she didn’t like it, too bad. She needed me, and by fuck, I needed her. No, I didn’t know why. Yes, it had happened fast. So what? I’d lived by my wits for so long that I wasn’t about to start questioning my gut feelings. She had to feel what I did, didn’t she? Had to feel something. We could have even more than this. But not if I tried to strong-arm her into understanding that I wasn’t like the other men she’d known.
Which meant I had to learn how to not be like those men.
Groaning in frustration, I laced my fingers behind my neck and stared up at the ceiling. I liked the idea of romancing Mia, even if I wasn’t entirely sure how. It just didn’t seem like the right approach. What if I spent my time sending her flowers and candy or whatever guys did to show they were interested, and she kept fighting until she got seriously hurt? Or worse?
And God, I’d talked so dirty to her. Hell, I’d been so dirty. She seemed onboard with all of it, but maybe I’d taken the wrong path. I was no longer the wine-and-woo type, but if she craved that, I’d do my best to give her what she wanted.
No matter what, I wouldn’t treat her like a victim. She was a survivor. If a little of my dirty talk sneaked out, I’d have to trust that she could deal. I wouldn’t dishonor her by putting on kid gloves. Not when she’d asked for fists.
God, in under a month, I was due to face her in the cage unless I could change her mind. I didn’t have time to seduce her slowly. This required a different plan. What, I had no clue.
While I was figuring it out, I had to see her and make sure she was okay. Not only from tonight’s fight, but in general. She wouldn’t ever truly heal from the hell she’d lived through—one I hadn’t been able to fully stomach reading about, and that was the sanitized version—but she was so incredibly strong. I needed another dose of that strength to feed my own. Maybe then I could do this. I had to become more than I’d ever been to help her.