Page 95 of Release Me

“I’m surprised he thought to mention my mom at all,” Vince says, his voice thick with disdain. Everyone turns to look at him, and between his mother and aunt’s disapproving stares, he’s forced to make the comment sound like it wasn’t a sad beginning to a cheap shot. He scrubs a hand down his face, and when his hand moves over his mouth, it’s pulled into a disturbing smile. “I would have thought he’d be too caught up in charming you to tell you anything about us.”

My stomach turns, and I feel bile creeping up my throat but fight it back. “Not at all. Sebastian talks about his family all the time. I was really sorry to hear about you losing your job at Cerros.”

Vince’s smile turns into a scowl, and his lips part like he wants to say something. I don’t give him the chance. “If you two would excuse me, I think I’m going to run to the restroom before dinner starts.”

“Don’t be long!” Madeline says, her tone sweet as sugar as it follows me down the hallway to the bathroom near the entry way. Maybe that’s why I don’t hear Vince’s footsteps, why I don’t realize that he’s followed me until his hand stops the bathroom door from closing and he forces his way inside.

I open my mouth to scream, but he’s on me before I can do anything. One hand over my mouth while he pins me to the wall with his body and kicks the door closed with one foot. This close I can smell the alcohol seeping out of his pores and see the remnants of fine white powder in his nose hair. I can feel his breath on my face, see the hate in his eyes and trace every inch of the scar that must be a result of the fight he had with Sebastian months ago.

“See what your boyfriend did to me?” he sneers, finally removing his hand from my face. I should scream, but I can’t. It’s frozen in my throat. I nod, and for some reason, maybe because I’ve faced much scarier men than him, I smile, which makes him angrier. He grips my jaw with outraged fingers that squeeze until it hurts. “You think it’s funny?”

“I think you deserved worse.”

“You know what you deserve, Nyla?”

My heart stutters to a stop, and I blink, shocked to hear my given name coming off his lips. Vince’s face transforms into a mask of sick satisfaction. “That’s right, bitch. I know exactly who you are.”

“You don’t know me.”

That feels like such a ridiculous thing to say when he’s literally just proven that he does know me. I just don’t know how. I mean, I think I know how, but I’m too afraid to explore that reality.

“Yes, I do. I know you used to live in LA. I know you used to spread your legs for every man that was willing to throw a dollar and some dick your way. I know you have a scar on the inside of your right thigh.”

Bile is no longer rising in my throat. It’s filling my mouth, gathering on my tongue. I swallow it back down, which just makes my stomach roil more, but it doesn’t matter because there’s only one way Vince could know about the scar on the inside of my thigh, and that possibility has the world falling away from me in chunks of devastation and fear.

Vince is watching me closely, so he sees when it hits me. “That’s right. I meant what I said when I told you that you looked familiar. Maybe I would have recognized you sooner if you were sitting on the bar with your legs spread wide for me again.”

I’m going to be sick and not just because I’ve swallowed this morning’s breakfast down for the second time today. But also because my senses are being invaded by Vince’s putrid scent and my mind is spinning, flipping through the vast library of mental snapshots my brain has unwillingly stored of the men I’ve been forced to sleep with. I wish I could say for sure that Vince isn’t among them, but the truth is I don’t know. The truth is the moment Sebastian said Vince lived in LA before he came to New Haven, I knew it was possible, but LA is such a big place with no shortage of low lives, I thought that possibility would be small. Minuscule. Non-existent.

Now, I’m literally starting that possibility in the face, being held hostage by it and the past I’ve tried to let go of but refuses to let go of me.

Tears gather in the corners of my eyes, and I blink them away, refusing to give Vince the satisfaction of seeing me cry. “I’ve never spread my legs for you.”

“Oh, but you have, Nyla,” he says my name like an insult, like a slur, and I hate Beau for refusing to let me use another name when I was working because he thought it was funny to deny me the layer of protection the other girls had, to let perverts and predators call me by the name my parents gave me, to strip away the last bit of my dignity.

I didn’t tell Sebastian, but that’s why I chose to keep using Nadia even after he learned my real name. That name doesn’t belong to me anymore. It’s no longer mine. It belongs to the woman who was brutalized and exploited, to the woman who might have slept with his cousin and can’t even remember.

“I’m not surprised you don’t remember,” Vince says, continuing his diatribe despite my devastation. “It was a Christmas party at a mansion up in the hills, and things got pretty wild. You were on more shit than I was, but we had a good time. I’d forgotten all about it, but the other week I met up with my boy Elliot—he’s the one that took me to the party—and we got to talking. He reminded me about all the things I did to you.”

I wish I could call him a liar, but I can’t because I just don’t remember. Waves of self-loathing and nausea roll through me, and I shove Vince away, narrowly missing his shoes as I aim for the toilet. The force of the retching makes my ribs hurt and my throat burn, but I’m thankful because the sound and smell send Vince running for the hills. Between the vomiting and the crying that follows, I don’t know how long I spend in the bathroom, but when I emerge, Sebastian is coming down the hall, clearly looking for me.

He takes one look at my face, which has to be tear stained and puffy, and rushes to my side, pulling me into his arms for a quick hug before leaning back and taking my face in his hands.

“What’s wrong, precious?”

“Dinner’s ready,” someone calls from behind us. Sebastian turns, revealing Vince standing at the end of the hallway.

“We’ll be there in a second,” he says, turning back to me and effectively dismissing his cousin. “Tell me what’s going on. Is it Vince? Did he say something to you?”

For a moment, for the briefest of seconds, I consider telling him the truth, but then I decide against it because I know how this will play out. Sebastian won’t hear anything but the fact that Vince followed me into the bathroom and put his hands on me, and he’ll lose it. They’ll fight, and Vince will happily tell everyone what he knows about me. Not just my name, but every shame I carry deep in my bones, including the ones I don’t remember.

I can’t let that happen, so I shake my head. “No, Vince hasn’t said a word to me since he got here.”

Relief causes Sebastian’s shoulders to sag, and I know that I made the right choice. He caresses my cheek with gentle fingers I’m not sure I deserve. “Then what’s going on, baby? Are you feeling sick again?”

The tenderness laced in his tone makes me want to cry. There’s no question. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve him. A man who looks at me with reverence and handles me with care. A man who won’t rest until he knows what’s wrong and has done everything in his power to fix it.

Only there is no fixing this. There is no fixing me. There is no changing my past or reversing the damage it will cause to our future.

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