Two Roads(9)

But that ten percent of maybe it could be Dornan’s chews at me, gnaws and snaps until I’m a mess of tears again.

I explain these details to Jase, through my tears, feeling like the biggest whore in the entire world for even having to explain in the first place. God, what have I become in the name of vengeance? I am so utterly, utterly ashamed.

I vowed at the beginning I’d do whatever it took to bring Dornan and his sons down, but to what end? Is it worth this, here, right now? I don’t think so.

“It sounds solid,” Jase says dubiously, as he cradles me in the darkness. “No mater what happens, Julz, you’re out. You’re here. Everything is going to be okay.”

I clear my throat and ask the question I’ve been dreading.

“What do I do?” I ask, wiping the tears from my cheeks. “What if it turns out, by some shitty stroke of fate, that it came from him?”

Jase would leave me. He’d leave me, and I’d be all alone carrying the baby of the devil himself.

“Hey,” Jase soothes. “I came from him, remember? And I’m okay. I’m on your side. It doesn’t matter.”

But it does matter, I can see it on his face, even in the dim light thrown from the half-moon outside. He’s being amazing, telling me all the things I need to hear, but I know that deep down, it does matter to him.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whisper in the dark. Panic rises again inside me, threatening to strangle me.

“You have other options. Even where we’re going. If you don’t want to keep going with this, I would understand.”

Abortion. That’s what he meant. A vision of Elliot materialized in my mind, of a dented tin bowl that I held in front of me as I puked my guts up, while he held my hair back. What do you want to do? he’d asked me, and I had asked him to just make it all go away. How naive I had been, thinking it would make a difference. Because nothing ever really went away. I just traded one nightmare for another, one shitty set of circumstances for the next. I aborted the baby that had somehow, tragically, been created as I was held down and systematically raped, but I was still trapped in hell even after I stopped bleeding weeks later. And I mean, I’m glad I did it, I don’t regret the termination I had six years ago after what Dornan and his sons did to me—but I can’t go there again. Not again.

“I can’t go through that again,” I blurted out.

“You mean, a termination?” Jase asks gently.

I nod. “You think—you think it’s going to make everything better, that it’s going to take the pain away, but it doesn’t. It didn’t change what they did. Nothing does.”

Well, one thing does. Where is Luis? I want him to tap into my vein and blow all the pain and sorrow away with one press of the plunger. I can’t believe I’m thinking like this! Like my fucking mother. I suddenly have the violent urge to smash something.

“Let’s just wait until we get to see someone,” he says, and he’s trying to be reassuring, but to me, riddled with insecurity and need, it sounds more like, let’s see if I leave you or not.

I turn away from him for the last time, and I close my eyes.

“Julz?” he asks again. I don’t answer. I have nothing left to say.

I lie there awake for the entire night. Jase eventually gets the hint and leaves the room, closing the door softly. And after he goes, I sit up in bed, watching the water buffet the small round window to my side, waiting for morning, and for Luis.

I promise myself I’ll tell Jase about the heroin. Soon.





I don’t get a morning visit from Luis, and I’m starting to itch again. It sucks, this dependency Dornan has created in me. The lazy method he had used to sedate me, to force me into obedience, because he couldn’t be bothered tying me up or locking the door? And now, I am a heroin addict. I am addicted to the same drug that ruined my mother and destroyed our chance at being a real family. The drug that made my father virtually a single parent. The drug my mother traded me for, a bag of smack for her fifteen-year-old daughter. I would take Elliot’s gun and hold it to somebody’s head right now if it meant I’d get some more of what I need. Luis knows, he must. He nods silently at me when I come above deck, finally showered and kitted out in the jeans and loose black T-shirt he brought me last night, the flip flops on my feet two sizes too big, bright red, and feeling very, very strange since I haven’t worn anything on my feet in three months.

The tiny jetty that we dock at has obviously been chosen for a reason. It’s in the middle of absolutely nowhere by the looks of things, flanked by a tiny strip of sand, some rocks, and densely packed jungle beyond. The guys grab the bags—I don’t have a single possession to my name, except the bloodstained dress I threw in the trash after my shower—so I linger on the back of the boat, watching and waiting without making a sound.