Page 26 of Pretty Broken Promises

“Keep going,” I rasp. I'm still going to fight to keep her, but I need to know how big of a fight I've got ahead of me.

“One day I got a call from Tracy, she was begging me to come back to Playa to get you to bring your new friends to Jesse’s. She knew at that point that my influence over you was less than nothing. She stood a better chance than I did. I didn't understand it at first, but she told me that Lydia had gotten into some trouble. The guy she had been seeing had basically been holding her captive, and once Tracy got involved, she was being held hostage too. She just kept begging me to do what I could to help get them free. Basically, she was desperate and hoped if you wouldn’t do it for me, you’d at least come to her rescue.”

She told Jen and I most of this, just not in as much detail. Still, I need all of it. “You could have called me. I would have known something was wrong. I would have?—”

“Trusted me? When have you ever done that? But to answer your question, how about I try it right now?” She pulls her phone out of the kangaroo pocket of my old sweatshirt, shows the screen as she pulls up my phone number, and hits send. It doesn't even ring once before it goes straight to voicemail.

“For the record, I did try and get help. Hell it was those plans that eventually saved my ass, because you still left me there.”

My hands start to shake, and not because of the chilly night air. I haven’t let my mind travel down this path. She’s right, I joined the guys in rescuing Raven and didn’t give Tessa a second thought.

She holds up her arms again, showing me both wrists, and the very obvious scars that go around each one. “I tried to call Shane after you, but he wouldn’t let me get a word out and hung up on me. I didn't have anyone else's number, so it was on to plan B. Benji was working on getting mercenaries to go and free Tracy and Lydia, and while he did that I went to work. I never had any intention of stepping foot in Playa myself at all.”

“And what you perceived as me trying to separate Sin from Raven, I was trying to get to you, dumbass. That bitch Poppy was assigned to watch me. If I stepped one foot out of line one of the drugged-up goons upstairs would hurt Tracy.”

She exhales, and seems to get distracted. “Do you know if she’s dead yet? I would very much like her to be dead.”

I shake my head. “I haven’t actually kept track of her. I thought she was just a drugged-out whore that Jesse used. I can ask Sin.”

“Nah, I think maybe I’ll ask Raven,” she muses.

“Great, I’m sure Mrs. Psycho will be just as much of a help,” I grumble. I really don’t want her to get mixed up anywhere near their world anymore. She’s suffered enough because of it. We all have. Not that I blame our friends, they were in a fight for their lives, but I am fighting to save the woman I love from losing her sanity and her soul.

“Anyway, I was trying to signal somebody that they needed to go upstairs. But I hadn't slept in three days and I wasn't doing a good job of getting anyone's attention. I just wanted someone to go find Tracy and Lydia so I could get the fuck out of that house. As far as Raven is concerned, I knew she had knives, Shane had mentioned it in one of our talks. He told me about her skills and habit of carrying weapons. I heard she knew how to use them and I hoped she could at least give me a window of time so I could get the two people who did not have knives some help. I’ll admit, I didn’t exactly like her at that time, but I would never have wished on her the hell I’d been trapped in.”

She clears her throat and continues. “They kept Lydia drugged. She was allowed to wake up every few days but otherwise, she was kept in a medically induced coma. Tracy had been there for a month. She did not have the luxury of being knocked unconscious.”

“And you?” I force myself to ask.

She looks away, her eyes fixed at some distant point over the city. With her arms wrapped protectively around herself, she says, “I lived through three days of hell. I don't think you really want to know the extent of it.”

“No, I don'twantto know, but just like you feel you have to tell me, I feel like Ihaveto know,” I say copying what she told me before we came out here. My stomach rolls knowing that I wasn’t the one who saved her. That is supposed to be my job. I am starting to understand why Bennett feels like she’s his.

It’s bad enough she got taken, but I fucking failed her twice. Even if she could forgive me for not knowing she was taken, I don’t see how she can ever overlook me leaving her there.

When she speaks again, her voice is very quiet. “They stripped me, beat me, raped me in every way you can imagine and in ways that I didn't know were possible and filmed it. It was a never-ending hell that repeated over and over and over for three days. When I say they, I don't mean just Jesse and Kyle. I mean dozens of guys. Anyone they wanted to impress or entertain. I lost track, just like I lost track of time. I know it was three days now, but it seemed like the equivalent of falling down a bottomless hole. There was nothing ahead of me except more agony. I couldn’t fight back, and by the time I was sent down to the party, I had to force each step, reminding myself I had to save Tracy and Lydia because all I wanted to do was find a way to end it. In a lot of ways, it feels like I'm still there. I don't know that I'll ever fully leave that place. It doesn't matter that Kyle and Jesse are dead. Lydia walks around like a ghost, Tracy has half the bravado she used to, and I'm just broken.”

With that final statement, she lowers her arms and absentmindedly strokes some of the scars on her wrists. That answers the question of when that started.

I clear my throat and jerk my chin toward her hands. She realizes what she’s doing and drops them like they’re burning. “That’s when you started cutting yourself, isn’t it?”

She nods. “There’s just so much pain and noise inside of me. It feels like I’m filling up with poison, and if I don’t release it I’ll die. I know you must think that I’m doing it because I want to die, and I won’t lie to you and say that there haven’t been times that I looked in the mirror and wished I never made it out of that house, but that’s not why I cut. It’s my way to keep living.”

“You say that in the present tense,” I remark, letting her know it didn’t escape my notice.

Tessa pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. “I struggle every day not to. It’s been a while, but I have done it since you and Jen caught me. Benji had me in therapy, but?—”

My hands shake in the need to kill someone who is already dead and it makes me feel a rage that I can't do anything about. One thing I know they died too quickly. I can’t do anything about my other opponent, Bennett, whom I seem to owe a larger debt to than I can ever repay. Even if I know he didn’t do it for me. I still hate the fucker though.

“You were in therapy until my dumb ass got blown up, and you had to come back, am I right?” I ask.

She looks at the ground, and I can see the battle inside of her. The love and hate she has for me. The fear of losing me, and of taking me back. Most of all, I see the confusion. My poor Vixen is so lost in her own pain she can’t sort out what she’s feeling, so she has resorted to pushing me just far enough away that I’m as stuck in this limbo as she is.

Finally, she speaks. “I was really scared. As much as we’ve done to each other, I guess I never thought we were really done. Death is pretty final.”

Slowly, she turns her head to look at me. “So now you know. It's a lot to deal with and I know that I come with baggage now that I didn't before. Like I said, I'm broken. I can't even stand for you to touch me. And I don't know when that will change. I scream in my sleep. And let’s face it, I'm used and filthy.”

She scratches at her arms, at the dozens of scars. She is far from healed. That is very clear. It's also apparent that she needs to resume that therapy very soon. “You are not used or filthy. Let's get that cleared up right away. What you are is a survivor. And as far as your baggage, honey, we both have baggage, we always have. That's not going to scare me away. I believe this is part of why you have been holding me at arm’s length, but it is not the only reason. It's not even the main reason.”

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