“Trust me, we’ll be okay.”
“Fine.” I turn to CJ and sign to him that he will be spending some time with his daddy, and that mommy is staying behind to rest. He looks uncertain for a minute, but then I reassure him that he’s going to have fun.
Chaos calls CJ’s name and signs “Let’s go.”
CJ hops off the bed with his tablet in hand and runs to the door. As soon as he gets to the door, he turns back and runs to me. He throws his arms around my neck and squeezes tight.
I rub my hand over the back of his soft curls and kiss his temple and then his cheek. I sign, “I love you, sweet boy.”
He signs back, “I love you, Mommy.”
I watch as the two of them leave the room, and when I hear the lock click, my heart almost breaks. I refuse to sit idly by and do nothing. Instead, I head to the bathroom and immediately search for anything that I can use to pick the lock.
If I figure out how to pick it, I’ll keep that knowledge to myself. I have no plans on leaving CJ behind, but I do plan to be prepared when the opportunity arises.
I don’t believe that Chaos will knowingly harm CJ, but I am worried that his activities might come back and bite him in the ass and impact CJ.
My search of the bathroom and bedroom aren’t very fruitful in helping me gain my freedom. It only yields a safety pin, an old debit card, and a bobby pin, but none of them work.
I briefly wonder whose bobby pin it is, and I think back to my activities last night. I cannot believe I allowed myself to succumb to his sexual demands, and I’m upset with myself for giving in so easily and enjoying everything that I did to him and what he did to my body too. It’s clear that I was desperate.
Being left alone reminds me of being a child and being left alone for hours at a time while my mom ran after a man. From the age of nine, my mom started leaving me home alone while she spent the night with a man. I was often terrified, but the older I became, the more accustomed to it that I became, until I preferred being alone.
Doing what I did to Chaos last night brought back painful memories of my mother using her body to get what she wanted from men. She repeatedly tried to set me up to do the same until things almost got out of hand with one of her male friends. Thank God the neighbor had a key, and she had come over to check on me after hearing shouts coming from our apartment.
If it weren’t for that incident, I wouldn’t have been a virgin when I became involved with Chaos. All the other men before that abided by my no when I said it, until that man. They may not have liked it, but they respected it.
I’m frustrated for putting myself in that situation and for using my body to try and get what I thought I wanted.
“Damn it, Charisma! Why didn’t you stop him? Why didn’t you say enough was enough?” I shout uselessly at my reflection in the mirror.
I stare at myself in the mirror with disgust. I’ve worked hard to give my baby boy the life he deserves, and here I am whoring myself out to his daddy, the man who should be taking care of him.
It feels like life isn’t fair. Every time I turn around, I’m caught in a catch twenty-two, and I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
I refuse to continue having a pity party. It’s not getting me anywhere anyway. I will find a way out of this building. I know there isn’t anything close to us, and this brick building is four stories, and he told me there isn’t anyone else in the building. The doors are made of steel.
I glance up at the window, and I realize the locks on the floor-to-ceiling window are too high for me to reach even with a chair. It doesn’t matter anyway, because they don’t appear to open.
I’m so stupid. What if I caught a disease? He was always so careful in the past, but I have no idea what he’s been up to in his absence. I can’t help but wonder about the last five years of his life. Tears flow from my eyes as I realize how much I missed him. I want to know more about his life in the last five years.
Chaos was not only my lover, but he and his twin were my best friends. Since he’s been gone, it’s just been Chrishanna and me. No longer the three musketeers. I miss that. I miss us.
“Who is this guy to her?” Priest asks, pulling his fingers through his beard.
“From my understanding, he’s just someone she was interviewing on her podcast,” I answer.
“Do you know what the subject was about?”
I scrub my hand across my beard, trying to recall if we had any conversations about it. Turning my lips down, I reply, “I don’t. We didn’t discuss it in depth.”
“I got a feeling it might be tied to that. It’s the only thing that makes sense if the two of them were placed together, and he was beaten, but she wasn’t. Did you guys check her studio to see if anything was missing?”
A knock sounds at Priest’s office door before I can respond, and I jerk my head in that direction.
“Open up,” he hollers out.
The door opens to reveal Sunny’s long, lanky frame and Digger’s short, rotund one.
