Page 50 of He Followed Me First

She’s making this so damn hard to resist.

I’m trying—really trying—to give her the space she needs to heal, to find herself again without me crowding that process.

But she’s not making it easy.

Every time she reaches for me, every time her fingers curl around my shirt like I’m the only solid thing in a crumbling world, it nearly breaks me.

The way she looks at me—with want, yes, but something more jagged beneath it—makes restraint feel like punishment.

I’m supposed to go back in tonight.

There’s a meetup scheduled—a gathering of buyers, though it’s not an auction this time.

It’s worse in its own twisted way.

They call it a ‘celebration,’ a chance to revel in what they’ve acquired.

To laugh and trade stories, to normalise something unspeakable.

Like this is all just another hobby.

Another deal. Another round of sick satisfaction in a velvet-tied room.

I haven’t told Nell yet.

She hates it when I leave her—and lately, I hate leaving her too. She’s fragile in ways I didn’t expect. Not weak, never weak, but cracked open. And while we’re slowly weaning her off the Valium, she needs me close. Needs the anchor, even if she doesn’t ask for it out loud.

Earlier, I could’ve given in to her. So easily.

She was half lost to the haze, desperate for something—maybe for me, maybe for escape. Her touch wasn’t gentle, it was pleading. But what she asked… it wasn’t just about closeness.

It was about pain.

She wanted it. From me. Not in hesitation—she begged for it with the kind of hunger that made my skin crawl in the best and worst ways.

I’ve met women who tolerate my edge. Who explore the dark because it intrigues them, until they realise just how dark it gets. But I’ve never met someone who sought it out. Not like that.

Is she like me?

God, I don’t know. I can’t make that assumption. Not yet. Not when she was drugged and grieving and barely holding herself together. I need to hear it from her—clear, sober, present. Anything else would be me projecting what I want to see instead of facing what she actually feels.

So, I wait.

Because the last thing I’ll do is cross that line with her. And if she ever truly wants to walk that road with me—she’ll say it with her whole heart.

I’m neck-deep in fact files when she stirs—scrolling through buyer profiles, training my memory to lock onto names, faces, habits. The deeper I go, the more disgust takes root, but I’ve learned to wear it like armour.

“Hello, trouble,”

I murmur, glancing over as she stretches with that slow, full-body arch before curling back against me like she’s magnetised. No terrors this time. That’s something.

“Morning,”

she breathes.

“You mean afternoon,”

I correct with a smirk.

She blinks rapidly, groggy but present, turning her head toward the window where golden light spills across the sheets. “Oh.”

Her voice sounds lighter somehow, more lucid.

“You hungry?”

“No,”

she says, already cutting through the moment like she always does.

“I want to talk to you about something.”

Straight to the point, as always.

“About what happened to you…”

I start cautiously.

“—or the part where you asked me to cause you pain?”

“Pain?”

The confusion flickers instantly across her face, and my heart sinks. I forgot—amnesia doesn’t announce itself. It just steals pieces quietly.

So maybe she didn’t mean it. Maybe it wasn’t real. That itch I haven’t stopped thinking about? The possibility that she was wired like me? It unravels in my chest.

“I guess both,”

she says finally, and I snap back to attention, trying to leash my thoughts before they run wild again. Her voice is clearer now, her gaze steadier.

“But I need to tell you what happened first,”

she says softly.

“I’m ready.”

“I’m listening,”

I tell her, steady and low, bracing for impact. Because I know this is going to hurt to hear. But she needs to say it. Needs to let it out. And I need to carry it—for her. What she tells me won’t scare me off; it will fuel the fire that’s already burning in my chest. The fire that’s going to end this.

She starts slow, but the details come fast. Brutal, jagged, each one cutting deeper than the last. She tells me about the days after her capture—how the world blurred, how the drugs fogged her mind until time stopped making sense. How her memory became fractured and unreliable. But some things didn’t fade.

She remembers what they did to her body.

How they touched her like she wasn’t human. How they took what didn’t belong to them. Her voice shakes but she keeps going, clawing her way through the telling like each word costs her a bit of more of her soul. And I sit here, fists clenched at my sides, jaw grinding as I picture it all—what they did. What they thought they had the right to do.

My Nell.

My fucking girl.

They snuffed out a light that once blazed.

But they didn’t kill it completely.

She’s still here.

And I’m going to make every single one of them pay for thinking she was theirs to break.

Then she talks about Lea.

Her voice cracks in half and mine does too.

I know the stats.

I’ve seen the damage firsthand.

Girls die in these rings—too many to count.

But Lea wasn’t a number to Nell.

She was real.

Young and completely terrified.

And Nell watched her go; she was forced to watch it happen.

That’s the part that guts me.

That’s the part that reaches into the hollow places I didn’t think I had left and rips them open.

She sobs through it, barely holding herself together—but she doesn’t stop.

She fights the tears, fights for the words, and keeps going.

Because she needs me to hear every inch of it.

And then, quieter than anything, she says.

“But I also need to tell you about my uncle. He umm…”

Her voice catches, twists. The words won’t come out clean.

I slide closer, grip her shoulders tighter—not hard, but firm. Grounding her to me.

“Take your time,”

I whisper.

“There’s no rush.”

“My mum and dad used to take me round to their place when I was younger,”

she begins, her voice quiet but steady.

“They’d let me stay over, and I’d play with my cousins. It felt normal back then.”

She hesitates, fingers curling into the blanket between us.

“But my uncle would always find a way to get me alone. At first, it was innocent, I think. He’d sit me on his lap and ask me to cuddle him. I didn’t mind it. It didn’t feel wrong… not then. But he never did it in front of my cousins. That part always felt off.”

Her breath shudders.

“Until one day he started touching me. And making me touch him.”

She buries her face into my chest, voice muffled and trembling.

“God, it’s so humiliating just saying it out loud.”

I hold her tighter, my hand steady on her back.

“Nell, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You can tell me. I’m here.”

She lifts her head slightly, just enough for her voice to break through.

“He used to make me touch myself… while he watched. And he’d say if I ever told anyone, he’d deny it. That no one would believe me anyway, because I was just a kid. That I’d get in trouble for lying.”

Her whole body folds inward, like she’s trying to vanish.

But I don’t let her.

She’s not alone anymore.

“He only fully raped me once,”

she says quietly, eyes flickering away.

“But he… um… said it wasn’t right to take my virginity. So he told me he’d ‘claim’ my body another way. He said my ass was his.”

Her cheeks flush deep red—shame pouring through her even as she speaks with impossible courage. I hear every word, but I can’t let myself react. Not yet. Not externally. Inside, though, I’m burning. Rage simmering beneath my skin, tight across my chest like a steel band threatening to snap.

She swallows hard, her voice cracking.

“After that, I told my mum. But she didn’t believe me. Just like he said. She said I must have misunderstood. Or that I was exaggerating and he would never do something like that.”

I see her shrink in on herself, like the memory still takes up too much space.

“So, I started drinking. Partying. Whatever I could do to make it stop hurting. And when I was old enough, I got out.”

I don’t speak for a moment. I can’t. Not yet. I just watch her—the way her hands tremble, the way her voice holds steady even as her past rattles between us.

“So your parents never did anything about him?”

I ask, voice low, measured.

She shakes her head. No hesitation. Just heartbreak.

This girl—reliant on the people who should have protected her—was abandoned for what? Loyalty to a monster? Convenience? Image?

I clench my jaw so tight it aches. Sick fucks. If they turned their backs on her out of comfort and ignorance, or worse—if they let her bleed so someone else could stay untarnished—they’ll pay, too.

Every last one.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Nell.”

The words feel too small, too clean for the filth she endured. But it’s not the time to crack open comparisons to my own past—I know that urge well. She doesn’t need my trauma tangled in hers right now. She just needs to know she’s not alone.

“You didn’t deserve any of it. And I swear to you—I’m going to make this right. You’ll never have to see any of them again. I’ll make sure they’re gone. All of them.”

She blinks, wary, her voice a thread of hesitation.

“What, you mean… as in?”

She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t need to. She knows exactly what I mean. And she’s not afraid of it. Not anymore.

It helped me heal when I made my father disappear—for the things he did to me. That particular brand of justice, messy and permanent, pulled something rotten out of my chest.

And maybe it’ll do the same for her.

“I think I love you, stalker boy,”

she says, like it’s nothing. Like she hasn’t just tossed a live wire between us.

It’s casual and careless, almost as chaotic as she once was.

But it’s the kind of truth that’s been hanging between us ever since she came home—thick, silent, impossible to ignore.

I don’t just love her.

I’m consumed by her.

Every fractured glance, every graze of skin, every breath that reminds me she survived—it’s all mine now. And I’m never letting go.

She’s fire in the wreckage. And I’m done pretending I could ever walk away from her again.