The memory of him drawing me close, pulling me on his lap, feeling the hard bulge in his pants as he ran his hands up my shirt—assessing my development. My vision swims, chest jerking with shallow, ineffectual gulps of air. It’s just all too close now. The memories. The smell of the bourbon on his breath. Old cigar tobacco. Leather. The cadence of his voice as he husked into my ear about chastity and how nice my nipples were getting, and god.
He’d wanted to sell me.
And in the end, he did.
“Story.”
I don’t turn when Killian says my name, but I hear the door click shut behind him. I feel his presence behind me. I always feel it. When I’m asleep. When he’s pacing the halls. When he watches me. “What would you have done?” I wonder, clutching my sides. “If he’d…given me to you. Like you wanted. Like you thought he would.”
There’s a shifting sound, two footsteps behind me, and then he speaks, voice quiet and dark. “I would have taken care of you.”
“You would have fucked me.”
There’s no shifting sounds now. Just utter stillness. “Yeah.”
“You would have owned me.”
Tighter, he repeats. “Yeah.”
“You would have—”
“Stop,” he interrupts, the word emerging with more weariness than I’m expecting. “Stop making it sound that way. I would have fucked you. Of course I would have fucked you. I was sixteen, and you were—” There’s a bitten off sigh, and then, “I would have wanted you to want it, Story. Jesus Christ. I would have wanted you to come to my bed. Stop making me sound like I’m—”
“You?” I ask, turning to glance at him over my shoulder.
His teeth gnash. “Him.”
I turn back to the desk. To the chair. I told him what happened in this room—he fucking saw it for himself. “I thought I was safe here. Really, truly safe. After all those years of my mom dragging us from seedy hotel to shitty apartment, of sketchy men coming in and out at all hours, I thought this clean, beautiful house and the knight in shining armor who lived here would take care of me.”
“You’re right,” he says. “I should have protected you.”
I don’t ask why he assumes he’d be the knight in that scenario. It was supposed to be Daniel, only now that I really think about it, that’s not right. Maybe it was always supposed to be Killian. “You were so mean.” I speak like I’m lost in a memory, and I suppose I am. Running through all those awful barbs and callous stares. Shivering, I remember, “You were so mean to me.”
“I know.” There’s some more movement, fabric shifting. I don’t need to turn to see his discomfort. The vision of his pinched brow and shuffling feet burns in my imagination. “I’m sorry.”
It should make me angry. Apologies are useless now, almost as if they’re something to be checked off a long list of tasks I’ve handed to him. It shouldn’t even mean anything.
But I find myself unable to muster anything but some deep, internal sense of sadness. “It doesn’t matter now. You might not be your father, but he raised you. He taught you. Aren’t we all shaped by our parents? Didn’t I turn to selling a part of myself, because it’s what I’ve seen my mother do?” Turning to him, I wonder aloud, “Do we ever break the cycle, Killian?”
Eyebrows pushed together, he asks, “Haven’t we already?”
It’s not a question I can answer. He let me go, and I’m here because I want to be, not because I need to be. In those ways, perhaps we have. Maybe it’s enough, or maybe we’re doomed in some unavoidable, intrinsic way.
It’s only when his eyes descend that I realize I’m rubbing that spot on my thigh. I can still feel his father’s fingers there, pressing into the flesh and muscle, holding me down, but I hastily cover it with my skirt.
Something dark and still passes over Killian’s face. “What is that?”
Even though I know it’s not meant for me, the quiet, dangerous timbre of his voice makes my lungs clench in alarm. “Nothing.” When he steps forward, I step back, like we’re two opposing magnetic poles. “Killian, wait.”
He stalks forward slowly at first, and then he’s storming toward me, uncaring of the way I’m shrinking back, eventually hitting the desk. I round it clumsily, trying to put something between us, but Killian follows so quickly that it’s barely the span between two blinks before he’s bearing down on me, ripping the fabric of my dress from my fist.