Shadowboxer (Tapped Out 1)

Rocking, I stared sightlessly at the torch blazing above my head. Instead seeing my face as I’d been that day, the curls I’d put in my hair before school, the carefully applied forest green mascara. By that night, the curls had been tangles and the mascara had turned into glittery tears.

“She doesn’t know he wanted her too. I never told. I didn’t want her to be afraid, like I was.” I made another one of those wrenching sounds, half moan, half scream, helpless to stop it. “Like I am.”

“I’m here.” His liquid voice trembled beside my ear. More wet than my eyes. His arms came around me, banding so tight. “I’m here.”

“He didn’t look like a monster. He looked normal. Even…attractive. I didn’t fight when he touched me. I just…let him. I barely even cried. I wasn’t even there anymore. Like how you go into auto-pilot when you fight, reacting without thought. I did what he wanted, so he wouldn’t think about Carly.” I rubbed my nose with the inside of my wrist, scarcely aware tears trickled down my cheeks. “I always kept her safe. He couldn’t have my baby sister.”

Heat at my back, enveloping me. Strength without words. He gulped back his own tears, as if from a great distance away. I couldn’t comfort him. Nothing left inside me to give.

“He’d bring me the paper and show me the articles about my disappearance. At first there were a lot. Then time passed, and they got shorter. There was no news. I’d vanished without a trace. They started to forget me. I was just…gone. But I wasn’t. I was still alive, just barely, a prisoner in a gorgeous house with a…with a handsome man, who let me sleep in his bed and took me shopping like I was his wife. My child-bride, he’d joke to the saleswomen, and they’d laugh. He let me walk free, because he trusted me. He knew I wouldn’t run, I wouldn’t tell. Because if I did, even if I got away, he knew where to find my sister.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, felt tears force their way through. “I had orgasms with him, several times. I didn’t want to, but my body did things I couldn’t control. And he used that as proof he wasn’t a bad person. After a while, I realized I was just as bad. I’d wanted to leave home, to stop being responsible for Carly and my dad, and I’d willed him into taking me. He was twice my age, more than, and I’d sold myself for pretty dresses and a fancy house. He saved me.” I bowed my head, my shoulders shaking from the sobs trapped in my throat. “Just like you.”

He reared back. That warmth retreating, leaving me alone. Cold. So cold. But by then it didn’t matter, because the tape in my mind wouldn’t stop playing.

“I was in that house three months. After a while, the time didn’t matter anymore. They stopped printing stories. He told me they’d all moved on. That my family didn’t care about me. I almost believed him.” Bitterness filled my mouth and I swallowed, tasting blood. I’d bit my lip again. “I started keeping track of when he came and went. Then, one day he went to lunch with someone. A woman. Some sick part of me was jealous. He’d become my lifeline to the world. I tried to run, but he came back. It had all been a setup. He tested me and I failed.”

My name sounded in my ears, over and over. It tethered me to earth. To the sand digging into my knees, to the strong, solid body at my back. He was still here. I’d pushed him back, and he hadn’t left.

“I killed him,” I whispered, rocking so hard that I wasn’t completely aware of the arms coming around me again, tighter than before. The damp lips pressed to my neck, the soft, crooning words of comfort. “There was a trial, and I was acquitted. They called it self-defense.”

“You were fighting for your life,” Tray murmured.

“No.” I shook my head, over and over. “Amelia Anderson died that day with Darren. I killed him and I killed myself.”

He didn’t say anything. Any words between us eventually burned out like the fire. Flickering, dying to embers. Leaving only ash behind.

Lifetimes passed in our silence. It pressed against my skin, a cold, brittle reminder of how transient we were. We’d been a brief moment in time, already over.

Now I needed to walk away.

I pushed to my feet, my bones creaking like an old woman. I’d aged since I’d strolled into his apartment hours ago. My body hurt almost as much as my heart. What was left of it.

“Leave it.” His voice stopped me as I reached for my bra. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Something in his tone raked over my already raw nerve endings. I’d thought I’d gone numb, but obviously not. “Excuse me?”

“You promised me a whole night.”

I turned back, slowly. “Don’t go there.”

He stood and stared at me, his jaw harder than the log we’d sat on what felt like forever ago. “You owe me several more hours.”

“Owe you?” My temper flared, rage cracking through the ice. It wasn’t fair, goddammit. None of this was fair. “That was before—”

“This is now.” He gripped my chin, his eyes glittering. “We’re going to bed.” Barbed wires of heat wrapped around the vague threat in his statement.

Either come to bed with me on your own or I’ll make sure you do anyway.

“I’m going home.” I reached for my bra again, getting as far as holding it to my chest. Then he spun me back, his hand roughly curving around the back of my neck.

“My fucking bed. That’s where you’re going.” Before I could argue, he hauled me up and carted me down the hall, ignoring my demands and my fists. Impervious to both.

“How dare you? I don’t want this.” I spat the words. “Don’t want you.”

He tossed me on the mattress and crawled over me, pinning me down with his naked body. Trapping me in his iron-backed warmth. “Fight me, Mia.” He clamped his fingers around my wrists, holding them in place near my shoulders.

I struggled but I couldn’t get free. He was strong. So much stronger than I was.