The door opened, and Ricky let the man inside. He was old and gray, and I couldn’t meet his eyes even when he told me to.
“Gypsy,” Ricky warned.
“It’s okay,” the man told him. “We’ll be okay.”
The door shut, and Ricky disappeared, leaving me alone with the man. He looked over the dress he’d bought me, and his face looked happy.
“You look very pretty,” he murmured. “So very pretty.”
I watched him set up the video camera, and my stomach cramped up. I put my arm across it, so I could try to hold back the sick feeling, but it never went away. The man suggested that we play more dress up games, and I did. But I knew it wasn’t what he really wanted. The dress up always made me feel sick in the end.
When he took off my clothes and touched me, I squeezed my eyes shut again and tried to imagine a different place in my mind. But he made me touch him, and I couldn’t stop the sick feeling. My stomach cramped and cramped, and I threw up on him.
He got angry and shoved me to the floor, wiping himself off in disgust. “You’re going to pay for that, you little bitch.”
It wasn’t a lie.
They always made me pay.
THE HOUSE WAS DARK WHEN I walked in the door, and something odd pinched at my gut when I set my briefcase down. The aching silence I’d known for fifteen years stretched between the walls, and though it was once familiar, it had quickly become a foreign concept.
In a short amount of time, Gypsy had managed to breathe life back into this house. But that life ceased to exist in her sudden absence. With the open floor plan, almost every part of the lower level could be seen from where I stood, and my immediate instinct was to check the master suite. I doubted she’d gone to bed early, but as I stalked toward our room, I found myself wishing that were the case.
A quick glance confirmed the bed was still made, and my stomach sank. For two long minutes, I stood in the middle of the room, debating my next course of action. I considered myself an excellent poker player, and I never expected Gypsy to call my bluff. But it seems that was exactly what she’d done.
She’d left me.
The thought was sobering, and it came out of nowhere. The airway in my chest felt like it was in a vise when my eyes moved to her side of the bed. The bed where she’d slept with me for long enough that I knew it wouldn’t be the same without her.
But she didn’t mean anything to me. That was what I kept telling myself. I was only doing this to help her, and that was it. I never intended to send her to prison if she ran away. Everything I’d told her from the beginning was an empty threat. A way of manipulating her to stay and see it through.
My intentions were good, but now all I could see was the blackness dimming my vision as my hands curled at my sides. We had a contract. She couldn’t just walk away from me. We weren’t done. Not by a long shot. She signed the papers and took my name. She recited the vows that made her mine. And if she thought I was going to let her walk out halfway through the game, she was wrong.
I pulled my phone from the pocket of my trousers and swiped at the screen. But before I could do what I’d intended, something across the room caught my eye. The closet door was wide open, and inside, her belongings remained untouched.
A wave of relief expanded in my chest, only to be replaced by an irrepressible fear a moment later.
If she didn’t leave me, then what happened to her?
MY EYES OPENED AS I rolled over and stared up at the sky, and I prayed that the worst of it was over. But it wasn’t. The visions came and went, dormant memories brought to life as I puked my guts out and questioned if I was going to die.
There was so much pain inside me, it felt like I’d swallowed acid. I just wanted to escape, to run away from my past and lock the door forever, but it wouldn’t let me go. I was deep in its grasp, and soon, I realized I was all alone too.
I’d been crawling into the desert without even comprehending it, and I couldn’t see my way back. I couldn’t see anything but empty spaces on all sides of me, and at that moment, I was certain I would die. Sobs wracked my body as another vision held me hostage.
“Come here, sweet thing,” Ricky purred.
He was high again, and he had the keys to the door in his pocket. I’d already secured Birdie in our room, hiding her under the bed, but I couldn’t say the same for myself.