The crew raped us every night, all night, as payment for our passage. I wanted to die. My days and nights were one long nightmare. Because they kept us drugged, I was confused and hazy and sick all the time.
“Fuck.”
“Somehow we ended up here in Chicago, in the basement of a sofa factory.”
“What?” Flynn sounds shocked.
“Yeah. Chained to cots again. With choke collars and leashes. Customers came in and used us there.” One customer came for me every night. The same horrible man. The one with the cigars.
Gospodi. I can’t tell him. The image of the fat man’s sneer flits before my eyes, and I hear the clang of metal in my ears.
To keep the panic at bay, I keep talking. “We never left. Never saw daylight. Didn’t know where we were, other than guessing America because the customers spoke English.”
Flynn says nothing. He just leaves a big space of silence for me to go on if I choose.
Faintly, in the distance, I still hear the clink of metal. The tightness in my chest that precedes a panic attack.
I push on, wanting to get to the end of the story without freaking out. Keep it short and get through the worst of it. “I lost all hope. I thought we’d never get free. Me and the others. But Adrian found us.”
“Thank fuck.”
“Da. He freed us all and burned the place down.”
When Flynn still leaves the space open, I give him the last shocking tidbit. “Kat’s father was the leader of the sex traffickers, and Adrian kidnapped her as bait, so he could kill her dad.”
“Jesus,” Flynn mutters.
“But he fell in love and brought her home instead.”
I hear Flynn’s soft breath on the other side. He’s here with me. Listening.
“Her dad is awaiting trial in Europe, but Adrian got him to pay five million dollars for her before he went to jail, and the three of us split the money.”
“Wow.”
The story sounds unbelievable, even though I lived through it. I know it’s all true.
“So…That’s why I am sort of broken.”
“You’re not broken,” he says immediately as if it’s fact. “You’re definitely not broken. Far from it. Nadia, you’re brave and bright and full of life. You’re just coming out of your chrysalis. I already see your wings.”
“What is chrysalis? I don’t know this word.”
“The cocoon a butterfly comes from.”
I smile against the phone. “Thank you. I like that. You make me forget what I am. Or maybe you make me remember who I used to be. Except we can never go back, can we? So it’s not who I used to be, but who I will be.”
I’m rambling, but Flynn seems there for it.
“See? You’re a chrysalis about to become a butterfly.” I hear the smile in Flynn’s voice.
“Can we try again?”
When Flynn hesitates, my heart jumps into my throat and clogs my breath. I bunch the blankets in my fist and pull them up to my chin.
I did ruin things. Why would he want to try again with me? I made a total fool out of myself and got him punched in the face for his efforts.
“Everyone thinks I’m going to hurt you,” Flynn says after a few beats.
I still can’t breathe. I force out a little shaky exhale, remembering how it works. “What do you think?”
“I want to do this with you.”
My heart resumes its beating.
“And I would never hurt you. At least not purposely.”
“But?” I ask because I still hear the hesitation in his voice.
“But I don’t do relationships.”
I try to ignore the heat rushing to my face, the tears that want to fall again.
Is he saying no? Is this our breakup? Of course, we can’t have a breakup because we never were an item to begin with. I latch on to that fact and offer it back to him. “I’m not asking for a boyfriend. I told you that. I’m in no shape for a relationship, anyway.”
“Yeah, same,” Flynn says.
“Why don’t you have relationships?” I ask.
“It’s just too much pressure, and I can barely be responsible for my own life.”
I sense a cop-out there, and I want to call him on it, but not while we’re dancing around the topic of us.
“Have you ever had a girlfriend?” It’s none of my business, but I just shared my ugliest secret with him, so it seems only fair to ask him to share something back.
“I had a girlfriend in middle school,” he says. “She was my first.”
“First girlfriend?”
He gives a rough laugh. “Yes, but I meant the first girl I had sex with.”
“And what happened?”
“It got really intense.” Flynn’s voice is low and gravelly like this secret is just for me. “She was super possessive and freaked out on me if I didn’t call her every day after school or if I did anything with anyone else. Things got pretty bad before I finally broke it off.”
“I guess you’re the kind of guy a girl wants to hang on to,” I say. I certainly understand the urge. To be in Flynn’s field of attention is to bask in the sunlight. He’s definitely a guy worth keeping.
But I don’t ever want to be that clingy girl to Flynn. I won’t be.
And then I wonder what it would take for Flynn to feel that way about a girl. What kind of woman would make him get possessive the way Adrian is possessive of Kat? What female could make Flynn want to be with her all hours of the day? To want to know where she is and what she’s doing at all times. To want to be her everything.