Page 33 of Wanted
Two outfits, she told herself, her nervous hands alternately rubbing and crinkling the envelope with the money he’d given her. Because this was her test. Not only did she have to pick out her own clothes, but she was going to have to go shopping for dinner and show that she could buy food for herself without having a meltdown in the grocery store.
She was ready to have a meltdown here.
Clothes.
“Break it down,” Marcus told her softly. “Break it down if it’s overwhelming, and just focus on one thing at a time. What do you put on first when you get dressed?”
She looked at the pants in front of her. It was all jeans. Nothing but jeans, a veritable rainbow of denim in every color from white to black. Skinny jeans. Low riding jeans. Ripped jeans. Jeans with fancy stitches and rhinestone butterflies on the pockets.
She could practically feel Ethen’s slap to the back of her head for even looking at them.
She squared her shoulders. Turning on her heel, legs shaking, she walked the entire length of that and the next aisle over. She found the skirts, but they didn’t have a lot in her size.
“You prefer dresses?” Marcus asked, trailing along behind her.
Ethen had preferred dresses. It was a requirement that he be allowed access to his property whenever and wherever, and pants restricted that. So did underwear. Toward the end, he hadn’t even allowed them clothes at home. There were days he took them out into public completely naked except for their harnesses and knee-length coats.
She pretended to sort through the sparse selection, but all she could think about was walks in the park in nothing but a coat, in the kind of weather that made coats really obvious, knowing people were watching them, hearing again Ethen’s whisper telling her who to approach and when to flash.
“That one... that man’s been watching you since we got here. Go. Ask him if he’d like to fuck you in the bushes.”
Her knees ready to buckle, she turned from the skirts and walked on, her hands shaking, her stomach knotting. The selection of dresses was slightly better than the skirts, but most were ten years out of date or completely inappropriate to everyday living. Matronly and maiden styles were all mixed together. The submissive in her wept and could cheerfully have convinced her to get lost in sorting them out into their own sections, but it was a stalling technique and she knew it. She didn’t want to touch these clothes, much less sort them. She just wanted to quiet that seductive voice in the back of her head that kept bringing up memories she wished she could forget.
This was ridiculous. She had to pick something.
Blowing out a shaky breath, she grabbed a hanger, pulling it off the rack and looked at the yellow summer dress. It had flowers on it. Flowers, for God’s sake.
She hung it back up. Black. That’s what she needed, just plain black with a white top. Something professional. Something that wouldn’t make her look ten years older or worse, younger than she was. Something that wouldn’t look like she was trying to pick anybody up.
Five minutes, that was what Ethen would say if he was standing here. You’ve got five minutes to take someone back into one of those dressing rooms. Don’t make me punish you.
She hung the dress back up, but her hand was shaking so badly it fell off the hanger into a puddle on the floor.
Pick that shit up, Ethen hissed.
She dropped, grabbed it, shoved it back on its hanger.
“Anna, why are you shaking?”
She snapped around, fighting herself to keep her face blank and her breathing slow and steady.
That guy in the corner is watching you... he wants you...
The only man she saw in here beside Marcus had to be seventy if he was a day. He had a cane and an oxygen tank, and he was standing by an equally elderly woman in the furniture section, looking at lamps.
You’ve got five minutes... I want you to blow him in the dressing room...
“Anna?”
Her skin was crawling. She took off walking again, her back straight, her knees threatening to give out at every step, but she got out of reach before Marcus could do something like put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t want to feel him touching her, not right now. Not with Ethen’s voice hissing in the back of her head as if he were standing right here with her. He’d never set foot in a thrift shop, not in all the years she’d known him. He always took her to the mall when he wanted to humiliate her like this. She couldn’t count the number of men she’d blown in those dressing rooms.
Fingers grazed her elbow, but as she reached the end of the aisle, she broke into a run. She tore past the jeans and was out the front door so fast that the store clerks probably thought she’d stolen something. She hadn’t. She buckled over on the sidewalk almost as fast as she reached it. Grabbing her shaky knees, she sucked for air that was coming too fast and yet wasn’t enough. Her ribs ached, her heart pounded so hard. If everyone wasn’t staring at her before, they were now. The sidewalk of the thrift shop strip mall was not empty of passengers and when she straightened, grabbing her head and then her heart, everywhere she looked, people were all she could see.
One guy who had been heading the other way when she’d come bursting out onto the sidewalk turned around, like he intended to come back to her, and Pony panicked. She bolted for Marcus’s car.
She fumbled with the locked door, her panicking fingers unable to figure out why it wouldn’t open before the car chirped and suddenly it did. She dove into the front seat and quickly slammed and locked the door. Her back was straight, her head was high, her badly shaking hands were palms flat upon her thighs, and she couldn’t breathe. No matter how fast her chest was rising and falling, she couldn’t get any air inside her.
Marcus was coming out of the store now. There was no judgment on his face. Only quiet acceptance, as if he’d expected her to meltdown and be unable to do it.
