Page 125 of Truth or Dare

God, I loved him.

As I came, I couldn’t stop the words “I love you” from tumbling out. I said, “I love you, Dare,” and then I closed my eyes and drifted to sleep. He was against me, holding me. He didn’t reply. But that didn’t matter. I just needed him to know. He held me a while and then I felt him tuck me in and heard him tell me he’d be back later.

Does she love me? She’s so fucked up right now. She’s regressed so deep into her slave behavior and she’s so fucking fragile that I need to handle her with care. I don’t know what more I need to know from her in order to move forward, but she’s given me enough for me to go into this meeting.

After I was sure she was asleep, I moved carefully out of the bedroom and headed downstairs. I phoned Tommy and asked if he could have someone bring Tia to come hang for a few hours with her so that if I was a while, she’d have someone to talk to besides security. If Lisa hadn’t fallen apart it’d be better if it were her but Lisa wasn’t an option right now.

Soon after I got to the office, my brother arrived and then we headed to the board room to put on our game faces and talk to the Kruna scumbags. I had the phone call recorded.

I dreamt about Thailand, about the time before Kruna.

Jason was tall, dark, and handsome. He was rich and charming and obsessed with me. He was a devil in disguise. He liked the power of running the bar and his powerful uncle at his back. But I didn’t think he was a bad guy. It was like he’d snapped, been pushed when he got aggressive about me marrying him. Like he was stressed to the limit. And when he shot the cleaning lady? It threw me. For all this time, I hadn’t allowed myself to think deeper on it. I think he was a little bit of a spoiled rich kid caught up in things. And he tried to stop them from taking me in, but they thought I knew too much. And because of that they punished him by making him watch them work at breaking me that first day. Jason cried that day. I saw him crying. And then his uncle repeatedly brought him in to watch while I was abused.

I dreamt about the few dates we had, the laughs we had. And then I woke up. I stayed in bed.

I thought back to when he proposed to me and wondered if I’d just said yes if he could’ve protected me from what’d happened over the next two years. But if he’d done that and I’d somehow managed to stay in the dark about the existence of Kruna, my life would’ve been a lie. I’d have been married to a liar. And I’d never have met and fallen in love with Dario Ferrano.

I let my mind wander even farther backwards for the first time in a long time.

Two Years Ago

“Angie! There’s mail for you!”

My little sister Holly thrust the envelope at me, saying, “It’s thick. It’s gotta be a yes!”

My application to teach in Thailand had been accepted. I was stoked! I was leaving in two weeks. I’d arranged for Holly to move in with her grandmother in Anchorage a week later and I was getting the heck out of Alaska.

I met up with some of my friends at a bar that night and we toasted my journey. When I got home, I was a little tipsy, but I’d taken a cab. No harm; no foul. My mother, though, she was not impressed.

“So, you’re leavin’ now and you think you can break all the rules, huh?” she sneered at me, clearly way drunker than I was.

“I decided you can go now,” she mumbled, staggering to the sink to put her glass in. “I started packing for you.”

She wandered away, bouncing off walls all the way to the staircase in her threadbare cotton nightgown. I flipped her the double bird behind her back, took a deep breath, and walked into my bedroom, which was off the kitchen.

Everything from my closet and from my drawers was piled on my bed. Every drawer in my nine-drawer dresser was open and empty. Books, clothes, shoes, papers, all on the bed. Posters from the wall ripped off and thrown on top. Curtains from the window? One half hanging by one remaining hook, the other on top of my bed.

I texted my best friend Laurie. “Can I crash at your pad tonight? She is off the charts.”

She replied straight away. “Come! Slumber party. Yay!”

I snuck quietly upstairs to Holly’s room and shook her gently,” Holl, c’mon. We’re sleeping at Laurie’s.”

I had to get my sister to come with me. If Mom came back out, something she often did before finally passing out, and couldn’t find me, she’d start on Holly. The only reason I hadn’t moved out already was because of Holly. She was 15. She was from Mom’s second marriage and I hadn’t met her until I moved here when my dad died, but she was the reason I stayed.

I bought groceries, helped her with her homework, and she and I did our best to stay out of Mom’s way. Her grandmother promised that Holly could live there with her when I went to Thailand and said she could stay there until I finished my teaching contract. After that was up, we’d go and move to the farm my dad had left me down in Charleston. The farm was being looked after and it was all organized.

I suppressed the urge to go to Mom’s room and scream in her face. I suppressed the urge to scream at the top of my lungs at how awful of a mother she was. I just got an overnight bag together and me and Holly took off to walk to Laurie’s studio apartment about five blocks away where we could crash on her pullout sofa bed.

The next day, I went home first to see what was what, and Mom had trashed my room further as well as trashed Holly’s room. So I got my stuff packed and packed up my car with my sister’s things, having left Holly at Laurie’s so she wouldn’t have to deal with the arguments, and then I drove her to her Gran’s early. Mom didn’t care. She said, “Good riddance to bad rubbish!” as I left.

Holly’s gran put in an application with CPS to be on the safe side and I gave them a statement before I left for Thailand hoping it’d mean that Mom wouldn’t get her back. Holly and I promised to video chat every night.

I almost didn’t go before knowing if the CPS stuff was sorted, but she encouraged me to live out my dreams. She and her gran assured me all would be well.

Thailand was a blast at first. I had enough English-speaking people around, lots of spare time, and had loads of laughs. And Jason and I had fun.

Great sex, nothing deep or meaningful, but fun. He liked to party. He had a big dick and he knew how to use it just the way I liked it. Rough. He said he loved my spirit. We laughed a lot. It was great. But then it all went wrong. It all went horribly wrong when he shifted from fun, on a dime, to suddenly way too serious about commitments we were too young (and too new) to make.

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