Bass:Three days. Don’t disappoint me.
I threw the phone onto my bed and walked to my closet. I pulled out a cream colored sundress, something pretty and completely at odds with the darkness churning inside me. Because that was the game, wasn’t it? Look beautiful. Smile bright. Let everyone see the wealth and the perfect nails and the polished exterior.
Never let them see the storm underneath.
Never let them know that Barbara Davis—daughter of wealth, princess of privilege—was nothing but a puppet dancing on strings held by a man who’d made his power out of her shame.
I caught my reflection in the mirror. Honey-brown eyes stared back at me, haunted and hollow. My mother’s eyes. The woman in my dreams who kept trying to tell me something I couldn’t understand.
“You know what happened to me.”
What happened to you, Mom? Did someone trap you too? Did someone own you the way Sebastian owns me? Is that why you left—because you couldn’t bear to stay caged?
Or did you really just abandon me because I wasn’t worth staying for?
I didn’t know which answer scared me more.
I got dressed slowly, my mind already calculating. Three days to get cash. I had some jewelry I could pawn, nothing Dad would notice missing right away. Maybe the pearl earrings from last Christmas. The sapphire bracelet I’d gotten for my twentieth birthday and never wore. If I was careful, if I was smart, I could get enough to satisfy Sebastian for another few weeks.
And then he’d call again.
And again.
And again.
Forever, because that’s what this was. This was my life now, had been my life for five years, would be my life until one of us died or the secret finally exploded and took everything down with it.
I looked at myself in the mirror one more time—pretty dress, perfect hair, the mask firmly in place—and felt nothing but exhausted contempt for the girl staring back at me.
Beautiful face. Ugly soul.
That’s what someone would say if they knew the truth. That’s what I already said to myself in the quiet moments when the lies got too heavy to carry.
My phone buzzed again. This time, it was Hailey in our group chat with Cassandra.
Hailey:Brunch? I need mimosas and I need them NOW
Cassandra:I’m in. Babs?
I stared at the messages, at the casual normalcy of friends making plans, and felt the distance between their world and mine like a physical gap.
They knew about Sebastian. Knew he took money from me. But they didn’t know why. Didn’t know about the video, about the kiss, about the fact that I’d crossed a line I hadn’t known existed and now lived in the shadow of that moment forever.
I couldn’t tell them. Couldn’t tell anyone.
Because the shame of what Sebastian had done to me was somehow less than the shame of what it would look like if anyone found out.
Me:Can’t today. Maybe tomorrow?
I sent the text and turned my phone face down, shutting out their concerned responses before they could arrive.
Three days to find money I didn’t have to give to a man who’d never stop taking.
Three days until Sebastian called again with new demands, new ways to remind me that I wasn’t really Andrew Davis’s daughter or Hailey’s friend or anyone with autonomy and choice.
I was just Barbara. Trapped in a cage built from one kiss and five years of silence.
And somewhere in my dreams, my mother kept trying to warn me about something I still couldn’t understand.
