"I didn't ask if your girlfriend was beautiful to fish for compliments. I just know how easy it is to fall for a pretty face. I fell for Gabriel, and he was a stranger whom I had just met. I should have known better."
"Who's Gabriel?"
"He was the scumbag who drugged and kidnapped me and sold me to traffickers." She picked at the edge of a cracker, crumbling it between her fingers. "I met him at a club in Sydney while celebrating my friend's birthday. He asked me to dance, and I said yes, and then he offered to buy me a drink, and I said yes again. I was stupid. I should have said no."
Dimitri's expression darkened. "He slipped something into your drink?"
"I didn't even see him do it. One minute I was talking to him, and then when I tried to get up, the world tilted. I remember him saying that I needed fresh air, then I blacked out, and the next thing I knew, I was in a room with five other women with my wrists zip-tied." She brushed the cracker crumbs off her fingers."The others were also zip-tied and terrified, but while I was spared and sent to work in the hotel, the other women ended up in the brothel."
"Why were you spared?" he asked. "I mean, I'm glad you were, but how?"
There it was. The question she'd been steering toward. The revelation that she needed to get out of the way to find out how Dimitri would respond. She had brought the conversation around to this moment because she needed to know that before she let herself fall any deeper.
Mattie closed her eyes for a moment to gather her courage. "I'm not as perfect and whole as the men who come here expect their sex providers to be. My legs got damaged in a fire when I was fifteen, but Gabriel and those he sold me to didn't realize that."
His eyes dropped involuntarily to her legs, which were hidden under the pants of her uniform.
"What's wrong with your legs?" he asked.
"From mid-thigh to ankles, they are covered in scars." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Burns, skin grafts, years of physical therapy. Some of the grafts took. Some didn't. It doesn't look good."
He was quiet for a long moment, and Mattie grew more nervous with every passing second.
"Is that what causes your limp?" he asked.
She nodded. "When I've been on my feet too long, or when I haven't done my stretching exercises, the scar tissue gets tight."
He nodded as if this made perfect sense. "It must be painful."
"It's not as bad as it used to be, but it never goes away completely."
She waited for the pity. The disgust. The careful retreat behind a wall of politeness.
Instead, he said, "Thank you for telling me."
"Do you want to see?" she challenged him for some inexplicable reason.
She didn't want to show him her scars, her twisted flesh. She didn't want to see the pity in his eyes. So, why was she pushing?
"I want to see everything about you, Mattie." His voice was soft. "But only when you are ready. And just so you know, nothing you will show me can make me think less of you. You are beautiful, inside and out."
She stifled a snort. It was a nice thing to say, but it wouldn't pass the test of reality.
"I can show you now," she said.
He looked surprised. "You don't have to."
"Better now than later." She pushed her chair back from the table. "Before we, you know…"
"I don't know. Before what?"
Before I fall for you.
"Before we go any further," she said instead. "I just want to get it out of the way."
She stood, and as she bent down, her hands were trembling as she reached for the hem of her pants. She had done this before,and the reactions were always the same. The sharp intake of breath, the poorly concealed recoil, and later, after what was considered a polite interval, the mumbled excuses about needing to leave early.
The worst ones were the men who stayed. The ones who said it didn't matter and then proved with every flinch, every averted gaze, that it did.
