Page 42 of He Followed Me First

I come round with a sharp gasp, lungs dragging in air like I’ve been drowning.

My entire body flinches, instinct screaming to run—but there’s nowhere to go.

Just the same four walls.

The same stale air.

The same ache in my bones.

The girl from my room is beside me, silently wiping me down with a damp cloth.

Her movements are gentle, but mechanical—like she’s done this before.

Too many times.

She doesn’t meet my eyes.

She’s cleaning the residue from my skin.

The sticky, cold cum that acts as a stiff reminder that last night was real.

Proof that it wasn’t a dream, no matter how much I want it to be.

I don’t know how long it’s been.

Hours? A day? More? Time doesn’t exist here—just pain and fog and the hollow space where memory should be.

I try to piece it together, but everything’s fractured.

“What… happened?”

The words scrape out of me, dry and broken.

My insides ache in a deep, bruised kind of way that makes me feel hollow.

Like something was taken from me, but I can’t name what.

I remember the man with the tablet.

The way he forced it down… after that—it’s blurry, there’s only fragments of warped images that remain.

“You need to eat. And drink,”

the girl says softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

“There’s more coming tonight.”

It’s the first time she’s spoken to me properly. Her tone is flat, but not unkind. Just… resigned. Like she’s said these words before. Like she’s learned the script by heart.

She keeps glancing at the door, scrubbing at my skin with a damp cloth like she’s trying to erase something. Or maybe like she’s being watched.

“Who’s coming?”

I ask, though I already know.

“More of them.”

Her hand pauses for a second, then resumes in deliberate circles.

“You need to stop fighting. It doesn’t help. It only makes it worse. Please… just do what they say.”

She’s terrified.

More than me, maybe.

And that’s saying something.

“What’s your name?”

I ask, my voice gentler now. I meet her eyes, silently begging her to give me something—anything—to hold onto.

She hesitates. Then her gaze locks with mine—piercing blue, irises too old for her face. Her lips are cracked and pressed into a tight line.

“Lea,”

she says.

“What’s yours?”

“Nell.”

A beat passes between us.

“How old are you, Lea?”

She doesn’t answer right away. Just keeps wiping, slower now. When she finally speaks, her voice is barely there.

“Seventeen.”

I swallow hard. She’s just a child.

Having a conversation—an actual, human conversation—feels surreal. Like we’re pretending we’re anywhere else. Like if we talk long enough, we might forget where we are.

But we both know better.

I nod slowly, even though the motion makes my head throb.

“You look younger.”

She shrugs, still wiping at my skin, though there’s nothing left to clean.

“They like that.”

The words hang between us, heavy and sharp. I don’t ask who they are. I already know.

“I’m twenty-seven,”

I offer, though it feels meaningless here. We’re not girls with birthdays or futures. We’re just… here.

Lea finally stops scrubbing. Her hands fall to her lap, and for the first time, she looks at me without flinching.

“You shouldn’t talk so much. They don’t like it.”

“I don’t care what they like,”

I whisper.

She gives me a look—half warning, half admiration.

“You will.”

We sit in silence for a moment. The air is thick with the smell of bleach and sweat and something sour that never quite fades. Somewhere down the hall, a door slams. We both flinch.

“I tried to run,”

she says suddenly, her voice flat.

“First night. Got as far as the stairwell before they caught me.”

“What did they do?”

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. The silence says enough.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur.

She shrugs again, but this time it’s more like a shiver.

“Don’t be. You’ll try too. Everyone does.”

I want to tell her she’s wrong. That I’ll get out. That someone’s coming for me. That Cameron is out there, tearing the world apart to find me.

But I don’t.

Because hope is dangerous here.

And I can’t afford to feed her any more lies than she’s probably already heard.

Instead, I reach out carefully and place my fingers over the back of her hand. Just for a second. Just enough to remind us both that we’re still human.

But something’s shifted inside me now. A quiet understanding.

This girl—this child—needs protecting.

She hasn’t lived yet. Not really. She’s barely more than a whisper of who she’s meant to become, and already her body is being punished like mine. Treated like currency. Like property.

I don’t remember everything that happened while I was under, but my body tells the story. Every time I try to squeeze my thighs together, I feel it—deep, aching bruises that weren’t there before. Proof etched into my skin.

And if they’ve done that to me, I can only imagine what they’ve done to her.

She’s younger than me. Smaller. Quieter.

And if no one else will protect her—I will.

Even if I can’t save myself, or Darcy, maybe I can save her.

“I’m going to get you out of here, Lea,”

I whisper, the words barely audible in the thick, stale air.

She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even look at me. She just rises from my bed without a word and climbs back onto her own, curling into herself—folding back into the mattress like it’s the only place she belongs.

“There’s no getting out,”

she says flatly, her voice stripped of hope. It’s not defiance. It’s surrender. She’s not clinging to anything anymore, not even the idea of escape.

But I am.

I have to.

A loud bang rattles the door, and Lea is on her feet in an instant.

No hesitation.

No fear—just muscle memory.

She cracks the door open, peeks through, then retrieves two plates from the floor.

The food is a grey, lumpy mess that smells faintly of metal.

It looks more like punishment than nourishment.

A promise of food poisoning if there ever was one.

“We need to eat,”

she says, setting one plate in front of me.

“If we don’t, they’ll punish us.”

Her voice is calm. Practiced. She knows the rules here too well. I don’t ask how long she’s been trapped in this place. I don’t want to know how many nights she’s endured. How many men have stolen pieces of her.

I stare at the plate. My stomach turns just looking at it, let alone actually taking a bite. But I force it down. Then another bite. My body tries to reject it, but I keep going.

Because if I don’t eat, I won’t have the strength. And if I don’t have the strength, I’ll never get us out of here.

It’s strange—comforting, even—getting to know Lea. When she’s sure no one’s listening, she opens up in quiet fragments. She tells me about her parents, about the boy she thought she loved. The one who promised her everything, only to hand her over like she was nothing. A lie wrapped in a smile—something I know all too well.

But when she speaks about her parents, her voice softens. There’s love there. Real love. The kind that leaves a hole when it’s gone.

They must be looking for her.

They have to be.

I think she’s starting to trust me. Just a little. And that’s dangerous—for both of us. Because now that I know her, even just a little, the protectiveness is growing. Quietly. Steadily. Inch by inch.

She deserves to make it out of here in one piece.

She deserves a life beyond this place.

I don’t know what escape looks like yet. I don’t have a plan. But if I can keep the men away from her—if I can take the worst of it—maybe that’s a start.

The problem is the drugs.

They’re still in my system, whispering promises of numbness and forgetting. And I can already feel the craving creeping in—the urge to disappear back into that depth where nothing hurts and nothing matters.

Night falls too fast.

The shadows stretch long across the floor, and the sound of footsteps outside the door has become a rhythm I know too well. My body tenses before the handle even turns.

It’s him again—the man in the balaclava, the one with eyes like polished stone. Soulless. Unreadable. He steps inside with the same routine, the same little white tablet in his gloved hand like it’s a gift instead of a weapon.

I shake my head, backing up against the wall, hand flying to my mouth.

“You don’t have to do this,”

I plead, voice trembling.

“I won’t fight them. I swear. Just—don’t.”

But my words vanish into the stale air, swallowed by the silence he wears like armour.

His eyes crinkle at the corners. A smile I can’t see, but feel.

“Nice try,”

he mutters, and then he’s on me—ripping my hand away, prying my mouth open with that same force. The tablet hits the back of my throat, followed by a splash of water that chokes more than it helps.

Across the room, Lea doesn’t move. She’s curled toward the wall, her back to us, her silence a shield. I’m grateful he doesn’t touch her. That, at least, is something.

But as the door clicks shut behind him, the world begins to tilt.

My legs buckle. I sink to the floor, the mattress catching me like a trap I’ve fallen into a hundred times. The numbness spreads fast—first my limbs, then my thoughts. It’s like ink in water, blooming through me, blotting everything out.

And the worst part?

It feels good.

Warm.

Safe.

Like nothing can touch me here.

It’s not fear I feel anymore. It’s relief. And that terrifies me more than anything else.

The edges of the room begin to blur, softening like a painting left out in the rain. The ceiling pulses gently above me, the light flickering in slow, syrupy waves. My limbs are heavy now—too heavy to lift, too distant to feel. I’m sinking again, deeper this time.

And I let it happen.

Because here, in this place between waking and gone, nothing hurts.

There’s no fear.

No shame.

No memory.

Just quiet.

I know I should fight it. I should claw my way back to the surface, hold onto the pain if that’s what it takes to keep me here. But the numbness is kind. It wraps around me like a blanket, whispering that I don’t have to feel anything if I don’t want to.

So, I close my eyes.

Somewhere, far away, I think I hear Lea’s voice. Barely more than a whisper. But I can’t make out the words. I can’t even be sure it’s real.

My thoughts drift again, curling around fragments of memory—Cameron’s laugh, the warmth of sunlight on my skin, the sound of waves crashing on a distant shore. I try to hold onto them, but they slip through my fingers like sand.

I’m disappearing.

And part of me wants to.

But somewhere, buried deep beneath the settling layer of amnesia, a voice—my voice—flickers like a dying flame.