Page 53

RACHELLE

I don’t know what to think about my new husband. A part of me shivers when he calls me his, while another wants to pinch him in retaliation for making me feel things for him. I shouldn’t feel anything but loathing.

Mmmhmm, just that.

The room Jared deposited me in at the library is nice.

It’s quiet, the door is locked with a little placard that says it’s occupied, and I’m tits deep in work.

While paperwork was submitted to the online administrators and my teachers about my hospitalization, I still have a mountain of work to catch up on and firm deadlines.

Sighing, I type out my research paper, glad that I’m in the library with access to online journals and books. I’m enjoying my bubble of safety inside this room. While I can appreciate my new husband’s insistence that I get out into the world, my skin crawls at the idea.

Husband:

How are you doing?

Rolling my eyes, I glance at my new phone. The guys must have programmed their numbers in, and Jared is taking very large liberties with his name.

Me:

Just grand, thanks. I’m drowning in my history paper.

Husband:

I have one more class, and then I’m coming to pick you up for lunch. Tick tock. Get to work!

Me:

Then stop messaging me.

My lips curve into a smile, but I find that the time goes faster knowing that he’ll be coming to get me soon. I’m just finishing up the citing of my resources at the end of the paper when there’s a knock at the door before it opens.

I’m expecting Jared’s dark disheveled hair and dark eyes to appear, so my eyes widen in surprise when someone I don’t recognize strolls inside.

“Ah, can I help you?” I ask. “I think I still have the room for a while.”

“You’re in here all alone? Why shouldn’t you have to share?” the blonde guy asks, annoyed. “Fucking rich girls.”

“If you’d been nicer, I would have offered to share,” I say coldly. “Since you weren’t, you can turn yourself right around and see yourself out. Also, here is a parting gift: you get more with honey than whatever shit this is that you’re currently giving me.”

Before he can open his mouth, Jared is behind him tapping his shoulder. He’s a full head taller than this guy, and he has to look up to see him. It’s more difficult to be a shit when you’re clearly having Napoleon syndrome.

“Can I help you with something, or are you going to continue to insult my wife?” he asks.

“The librarian said there’s been a girl holding up the room all day,” the guy grumbles. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

“She has been in here alone, and it’s because people like you suck,” Jared says. “It doesn’t matter how many people are in a room when it’s reserved, because that’s what they’re meant for. Since she’s done now, you can have the room. Don’t insult people you don’t know, Carmichael.”

“I didn’t know you were married,” he mutters. “I honestly thought you were gay.”

I can’t help my giggle as I pack up my things, garnering his attention.

“Is this one of those lavender marriages?” he asks.

“You have a lot of questions, all of which are none of your business,” I remind him. “One of these days, you’re going to run on the wrong side of someone. Be smarter.”

“You are a rich girl, though. My thoughts were exactly right,” Carmichael says.

God, who has a name like that and isn’t a pretentious rich kid himself?

“Meh, I changed my mind. I’ll let the librarian know that we’re keeping the room for the rest of the day,” Jared says with a shrug. At the kid’s outraged look, he smirks. “Being a dick to my wife is a very bad life choice. I’ll take your key now.”

Jared plucks the key card away from Carmichael as I stand with my bag, while I smirk at the kid and his annoyed face. There’s nothing else he can do but follow us out as we go.

“Hey are you looking for a study room?” my husband asks a group of students looking around for a spot to sit at the library.

Carmichael curses under his breath as Jared drops the keys into one of their eager palms.

“Have at it,” he says, taking my hand. “We don’t need it anymore.

Ignoring Carmichael’s furious face, he escorts me out of the library.

“You’re terrible,” I say with a grin. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I did. No one is ever going to make you feel less than you are,” he says. “Not ever. Though, you were handling it pretty well for yourself, wife.”

Fuck, I really shouldn’t want to swoon for this man. I’ll just appreciate him for his efforts. I refuse to fall for his charm.

ELIJAH

I can’t stop staring at Rachelle. She’s laughing really hard at something that Theo said, her cheeks high with color. We can’t help but soften around her, though that doesn’t mean we won’t push her out of her comfort zone either.

She may have us wrapped around her pinky finger, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to allow her to languish and rot her life away in the shadows.

“Elijah, why don’t you take Rachel for a walk around campus?” Jared asks, his dark eyes calculating.

I don’t know how to act around her anymore, now that she’s out of the hospital.

I know that’s not her anymore, she’s stronger, but after so many weeks of seeing her in such a deteriorated state, it’s messed with my mind.

I want to be as nonchalant with Rachelle as Theo and Jared are, I just don’t know how to be.

“It’ll help her decide if she wants to attend UCSB,” Theo adds.

“Are you done eating?” I ask her, standing when she nods. Theo and Jared grab our garbage to throw out, while I walk her away from the courtyard.

We chose to eat outside since it’s nice out and not as loud. Now that she’s outside, Rachelle seems to be doing fine. I think her anxiety is sneaky.

“Are you my babysitter today?” Rachelle asks teasingly as we walk.

“Oh no,” I reply, smiling. “I have a feeling your husband and Theo are matchmaking.”

“This isn’t Pokémon,” she says. “I cannot collect men.”

“And women,” I add, enjoying the glance of an eavesdropping professor next to us. Maybe she shouldn’t be overhearing other people’s conversations. I hope we scandalize her. “I think that you have enough on your dance card.”

“I think my dance card is confused,” Rachelle sighs.

Grabbing her hand just so I can touch her, I begin walking toward the tower. I remember a similar tower where she’d hide away with Liliana, and it reminds me of that. I know the guys want me to talk to her more, but I have a lot of baggage and guilt that I unfortunately have earned.

“Let’s bring some clarity to it then, baby,” I murmur. “Why do you think that it’s confused?”

Instead of cursing me out, she takes a deep breath. I swear, sometimes I think she has the patience of a saint. A screaming, crying, lost Rachelle would break me. I have no doubt that it’s going to happen at some point with everything she’s endured.

I don’t want to stir up too many emotions without being able to give her a place to scream it out. It’s not fair to her to unload on her without a safety net, and so we walk slowly together on the path toward the tower.

“You’re being very nice to me and it’s weird,” Rachelle murmurs, looking around the campus.

The sun is shining and there are people underneath trees chatting to each other or reading. It’s a very active campus, and the weather is in that in-between state where it can be eighty degrees one moment and chilly the next.

“This is exactly the way I always should have been with you,” I sigh.

“The bet is a way to control kids to do shitty things in the hope they’ll be able to break away from their obligations.

Instead, they find themselves indebted to a secret society that’ll find ways to bleed you dry, as soon as they find the right time to do it. ”

“What were you running from?” Rachelle asks. “I still don’t know.”

“Sex trafficking humans under the guise of being a shipping container company,” I grunt, my tone so low no one else can hear me. This isn’t a conversation for anyone else but her.

“Excuse me?” she asks, surprised.

“My parents, especially my grandfather, have never presented themselves as good people,” I sigh.

“My grandfather and the men in my family have tastes that tend to trend toward the very young, and I’ve always struggled with it.

I’ve had to pretend it’s what I like or have conversations with them about how they enjoy fucking underage girls and boys.

My parents kidnapped me at the end of sophomore year of high school and forced me to fully immerse myself in the business. I couldn’t look away, and I snapped.”

“Snapped like when you threw me into a river on my birthday?” Rachelle asks mildly.

“Yeah, kind of like that,” I breathe. “The guys have always known about my fucked up home life, which is why I used to spend the night with one of them whenever possible. Hearing that the men in my family liked to fuck minors is very different from seeing them do it. I was wrecked when I came back, and it helped to be able to focus on anything else. You were our plaything.”

“I still hate water,” she mutters, pulling her hand away from me to cross her arms over her chest. I feel the absence of her immediately and my chest is getting really tight at the loss. “I don’t like being unable to see my feet at the bottom of a body of it.”

“You still get into our pool,” I remind her.

“Theo is a pushy asshole. He also tends to get in the pool with me so that if I panic, he can help me,” Rachelle explains. “Outside of that, I’ll avoid all bodies of water, thank you very much.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, staring at my feet as I walk.

“Just saying I was in a fucked up place isn’t enough.

I was drowning in the weight of my responsibilities, and I was a coward.

There was no other way out for me where I could escape being a sex trafficker.

I held onto you with both hands as my life preserver, but managed to drag you under. ”

“That’s not fucking fair,” she says, anger flooding into her voice. “That’s an impossible choice, and I’m not going to let you pull me into it.”