“The father.”
“I didn’t know I was pregnant…” She paused, looking to the distance. “Until I lost it.”
“Fuck. Life really sucks, doesn’t it?”
“I’ve never seen it do anything else. You don’t have to say anything.” Summer ate a spoonful of food, then stared at the table while I gawked at the trickling fountain. The sound and smell of the water were almost soothing, but I was trying to find my name, my past.
I couldn’t remember anything else before this place. I forced my mind.There had been a fire and then… I killed him, right?The guy who’d taken me.At least I still remembered the name I prayed to every night. Killian…
How could this be? When I tried searching the past, there was just a blank space. Although, I could feel the love. I had been loved once. That’s all I knew. I guessed that’s all that mattered.
Another girl passed by us and greeted, “Oh, hey, Little One. They let you out of your bunker?”
“Oh, hi. What’s—” She’d walked away before I could finish my question, and again, there was a group giggling.
With my eyes, I asked Summer what was going on.
“They are just trying to get to you. Your trainer is the nicest here, so they’re jealous and making fun of the nickname. He calls all his slaves that nickname.”
“Jealous? Seriously? What is this, high school?”
“You gotta admit high school wasn’t that much different,” she joked.
My heart fell. The nickname that had pushed me into orgasms time and time again was just something he called all his slaves? The realization made me feel sick. Of course he’d called all of them that. He’d told me himself I wasn’t special.
“I watched you.” Her words brought me back to this world.
“You mean on the stage?”
“No. The other night.”
“Wh-what are you talking about?”
“All the rooms have a two-way mirror so that they can watch.” The heat drained from my face. I diverted my gaze. “It’s okay. They do it to all of us right before letting us out. Don’t feel embarrassed. If you wouldn’t have obeyed and orgasmed, they wouldn’t have allowed you out here.” She shrugged. “What choice do we have?”
I couldn’t really think. She’d said the “other night,” but my body hurt as if it had been yesterday. Once again, he’d managed to make me feel like an idiot. I thought I’d done this for him, to please him, but once again, I’d been used for his show, for his buddies to jack off to. Why didn’t he tell me this was how it would be when we had that stupid apartment?
“Hey”—I snapped back into the present— “don’t let it get to you. I just… I didn’t want you walking around without knowing and having everyone whispering about it like they did to me.”
“Did your trainer make you do the same thing?”
“Not exactly. It’s their job to figure out our weakest point, what we can’t handle, and that’s what they target. So yours must’ve known you had a thing against anal sex.”
My cheeks heated as I remembered him inside me, how much pain I’d endured, and how it’d somehow transformed into an equal amount of pleasure beyond anything I’d felt before. It was repulsive to think there had been a whole audience watching me go from ugly crying because of the excruciating agony to begging for him to come inside me and feeling rewarded whenhe had. The emptiness gathered in my chest and stabbed me. I felt worthless, used, and duped. I wanted to vomit the food I had scarfed down.
“Hey.” Her warm palm covered mine, waking me from my trance and faraway thoughts. “What’s wrong? You’re pale as hell. Do you want to go outside?”
No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t find my breaths or speak, so I just nodded, then followed her out of the food court in a daze, with the yogurt and brownies in my pocket. I was not about to starve the rest of the day because of him.
At the door, the guards patted us for utensils, but I hardly noticed. All I cared about was that he’d promised to allow me to step outside the room on my own but only after showing everyone how much I was willing to do for it, how I submitted to him in the most-disgusting, -degrading way. I’d allowed him to come inside my ass in exchange for a little bit of sunlight.
He’d known how repulsed I’d be because he’d been there when…When what, Little One?Every time I gave him another chance, gaslighted myself about how manipulative and evil he was, he’d flip and show me what a fool I was.
Why did I keep doing this to myself? When we finally stepped out of the rat maze, I didn’t know if it was the sunlight heating me or my rage. Not even the crisp smell of wet grass calmed it. I wanted to stab him, gouge his eyes out, cut his dick off and make him suck it. Summer kept peeking back at me without saying a word as if she could hear my violent thoughts and how mad I was.
Maybe she’d been put through the same.
Outside, the gray building was a gigantic concrete box with windows starting way above ground level. Some thin towers stuck out of it way up high at the top, letting out thick white smoke. It was a fortress that looked like a drawing some messed-up kid had drawn.
