Three Years(22)

As I catch my breath, staring down into my regurgitated eggs and toast, a million thoughts run through my mind. If he’s right, it makes sense. Why I’ve been so fucking sick. The mysterious lack of a period the entire time I’ve been down here, which I’d figured was my body in shock. Everything fits together so well, I can practically hear the last puzzle piece slam home as the last of our dirty secrets is exposed to the air.

Gasping on my knees, I don’t even react when I feel a sharp prick at my arm. Warmth and numbness spreads through my limbs and I grab at the floor, trying to stop myself from crashing into the bucket of sick in front of me. Warm hands hop under my arms and pull me up, and the image of a marionette doll on strings slams into my drug-fuelled brain.

He turns me effortlessly, crushing me to his chest in a chokingly tight embrace. I feel my head loll forward and hit my chest as tears leak from my eyes.

So this is what it feels like to be broken. He broke me. He wins.

“Congratulations, mama bear.” He says, kissing salt water from my cheeks. He tucks a stray hair behind my ear and leans in close. “Looks like we’re in this for the long haul.”

“Together.”

He snickers, and the last bit of hope that dared to live inside me flickers like a candle against the wind, wavers, and finally dies.





There are things worse than death.

But there is nothing worse than sinking into death, of allowing that numb bliss to sink into heavy bones, inviting that nothingness to take the place of sadness and pain.

Only to be brought back, dragged from hell, resurrected.

There are things worse than death.

And now, I know all of them.





When I wake up, my limbs feel like they’re encased in wet concrete. The rapid-set stuff, that starts to dry the minute it’s poured, and I have to fight to move.

Things feel different. My mouth is incredibly dry, probably from the heroin, and beneath me feels soft and warm and completely foreign.

I smell those same pungent flowers again, the death lilies Dornan served to me only days ago, and the sharp scent finally rouses me from my half-sleep. I open my eyes, and the light is blinding. I cringe, closing them again, my heavy arms flung over my eyes to stop the piercing brightness from burning me.

The sunlight.

My little dungeon of horrors doesn’t have windows. Doesn’t have sunlight.

Where am I?

I force my eyes open again and wait patiently as they leak water and adjust as best they can to the foreign light source. I’ve been in that dank little pisshole for so long, I don’t even know the last time I saw the sun. However long it’s been, it feels like forever.

I sit up slowly, realizing I’m in Dornan’s room, second floor in Emilio’s Tijuana mansion. But why? How?

My stomach roils, and everything comes slamming back into me like a fucking freight train.

Aren’t I lucky then, that I already got inside you a long time ago?

No.

It can’t be real.

But it is real. He never lied to me. He didn’t have to. I’m pregnant. I can barely think the words in my head, they sound so devastating.

I already got inside you.

I clamber off the side of the bed, squinting my eyes open just enough to make my way to the bathroom, the same bathroom where I stood and detonated those bombs months ago. I haven’t eaten since the last time I threw up, and when I lean over the toilet bowl, burning yellow bile leaves my body, hitting the water in the bowl with an inelegant splash.

Jesus Christ. If I really am pregnant – and I think I must be – there’s no way a baby could possibly survive everything Dornan has done to me. The beatings, the starvation, the rape, the drugs. It’s too much for anyone to bear.

But I’m still alive, despite it all. So I don’t know. Could a baby survive this hell?

When I’m done, I tear off a piece of toilet paper and wipe my mouth, then blow my nose. All I can smell and taste is fucking vomit. I toss the toilet paper and flush the lot, then focus my attention on the toothpaste that sits on top of the vanity. Yes. I can’t bear to think about how long it’s been since I actually brushed my teeth. I think it was at Jase’s house. How disgusting.

I can’t find a toothbrush anywhere, so I squeeze a bead of the white paste onto my fingertip and rub it along my teeth and gums. I rinse my mouth, but it still doesn’t feel right, so I repeat this action several times until my tongue starts to burn with minty freshness. I get a quick glimpse of myself in the mirror that hangs above the sink. Circles as black as night underneath my bloodshot green eyes. Three months of blonde regrowth that cuts through the middle of my brown hair like a strip of lightning. Dull flesh that clings to jutting cheekbones, and that’s when I look away. I look like a fucking prisoner of war; I’m so thin. And I’m supposed to be pregnant? It can’t be real. Nothing could survive what’s happening to me right now.