I hesitantly told Carly about where I’d come from and with whom I’d traveled. Carly went through two glasses of wine, her eyes widening several times at my story. Although I confided in her, I still withheld some, keeping Ahmad, Bibi, Bertha, and even details of Haziq to myself. Even after all these years, I didn’t know how to analyze the complexity of my feelings for all of them, both good and bad.
Perhaps I’d figure that out one day, perhaps not.
“You’ve told Dawson all of this, of course?” Carly asked.
“Yes. Dawson told me not to tell anyone, but . . . I . . .” I’d needed to confide in someone, and Dawson changed the subject if I ever brought up anything relating to my past, brushing it off as though it embarrassed him. And I could see why it did. I didn’t blame him for that. To think of your future wife performing sexual acts in front of strangers because she’d been trafficked as a child had to be distasteful to say the least.
But Carly frowned. “Wait, why would he tell you that?”
“It upsets him, I’m sure.”
“But it’s your story. What does he have to do with it?”
I shrugged. “He’s going to be my husband.”
Carly was quiet for a moment. “This man . . . Zakai. You were . . . forced to be with him?”
“No, it wasn’t like that.” I drifted, allowing my mind to return to Sundara, to the room that we’d once shared. “We fell into a physical relationship very naturally, perhaps in the way young people not related and growing up in close proximity might.” I stared behind her, traveling back over that vast golden desert. “We had been sleeping in the same bed for most of our lives. As our bodies changed, we turned to each other, learning, exploring.” I heard myself speaking as though in a trance as my mind envisioned that time, the New York City sidewalk melting into sand. “It was all I could think about. Some days we barely left our bedroom to eat food, so caught up in the incredible pleasure we’d discovered. It was intoxicating. He was intoxicating, suddenly not just the boy who protected me and brought me comfort and security, but the one who made my body sing. We had no one to tell us what to do, but we took great joy in figuring it out.” I brought my gaze to Carly’s who was staring at me as though enraptured. “Of course, the man who had made us captives eventually noticed and so he told us it was time to perform. We looked very much alike, and he had already planned what our act would consist of. Brother and sister—twins—who engaged in unnatural acts. Taboo, depraved. Highly intoxicating for those who enjoyed the idea of twisted, filthy things.” A tornado of shame whirled through me as I again, looked past her. “Sex changed for me then, but I knew the others performed as well, and they seemed fine, so I did what I had to do, what was insisted on.”
“My God, Karys. You work in a publishing house so you must know it’s true when I say that truth is stranger than fiction and your story is quite an example of that.”
I smiled distantly. “Yes.” After a moment I went on. “Zakai and I agreed that we would never give the audience all of us. We would fake our completion, and only give to each other in that way. One night when we returned to our bed, Zakai accidentally pulled my hair. He could see by my reaction that it had intensified my pleasure. I loved it. That combination of bliss and pain. After a while, I craved it.” I furrowed my brow, trying to explain this part of myself I’d only recently explored in my mind.
“Do you know why?”
“Because I knew I was happily accepting the lies Zakai told and making him punish me for it,” I whispered brokenly as despair gripped me in its knife-edged talons.
Perhaps Zakai had blinded me. But I had been eager not to see.
I looked down, my face warming. “Recently, I’ve enjoyed it when Dawson hurts me too,” I said quietly.
When I dared look up at Carly, she was drumming her fingers on the table. There was no judgment in her expression, only a thoughtful sort of concentration. I released a breath of relief, and it gave me the confidence to continue. “I think I’ve been lying to myself again, Carly. I think that’s why the . . . violence for lack of a better word, feels right. Feels good. I’m still not over the hurt I feel inside about Zakai’s rejection and betrayal. And I think . . . well, I think I needed to admit that before I can marry Dawson.” I said the last sentence in a rush of words, grateful that she’d allowed me to do the one thing I believed I needed to do in order to walk down that aisle with a clear head and a willing heart. Confess.