Page 12 of Mama Si's Paradise

Maybe that’s why I’d decided to come with him to Roven two years ago. He’d been in his room listening to music like this when he first asked me to join him.

Iobserved,just like this stranger with the colorful eyes asked me to. I observed the women around the heart-shaped pool, how fancy and sophisticated and beautiful they were as they sipped their colorful drinks and laughed and spoke toeach other, completely at ease in their skins. Of course, they were—look at them! Each more beautiful than the last.

I observed, and I had this incredible urge tobe themso badly. It would give me a break from my own life if I was like them. It would take me away from everything I knew, everything I thought I stood for, if I was like them.

But eventually, I had to get back to reality. Eventually, I found Mama Si had stopped a couple feet behind me, watching me with a small smile on her face that reminded me of thorns hidden underneath the velvety leaves of the most beautiful roses.

“Oh, do carry on, doll,” she said with a short laugh. “Keep watching. I’m watching, too.” And she made a point of looking down my body.

Suddenly, I felt naked, and my arms wrapped around my torso all on their own. She threw a quick look at the woman standing behind her, holding up the umbrella, making sure to catch every single sun ray before it had the chance to touch Mama Si’s face.

“What do you think?” she asked her friend, who was looking at me just as intently, and I hadn’t even noticed.

The woman shrugged. “I’d fuck her.”

Blood rushed to my cheeks instantly.What the fuck?!

“Me, too!” said Mama Si, a huge smile on her face that said she was both in awe and surprised of her friend’s answer. “She’s got that look about her…” Her index finger, now covered with the glove, spun around as she pointed at my body. “So…sodesperate.So fragile. So vulnerable.”

Her whisper seemed to slip under my clothes and touch my bare skin slowly. My cheeks felt so hot I feared they’d melt off my face any second now. I had nothing to say, nothing to think, just watched the two women watching me, slowly nodding in approval.

Then Mama Si stepped forward. “I’m going to give youthe opportunity to change your life today, Fall Doll,” she told me. “An opportunity that will change the whole world to your eyes.” And she waved her hand forward, toward the pools, toward the people secluded from the rest of the world in this dreamy palace, having the time of their lives.

My eyes found the women dancing on the men’s laps. The women hanging on the men’s backs. The women pouring drinks in men’s mouths, and others rubbing that pink foam on their naked chests.

Bile rose up my throat. “No. No, that’s not?—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, Fall Doll,” she cut me off, and her hand came around my chin from behind. She pushed my head slightly to the side, toward the heart-shaped pool where the girls were having fun on their own. “Thatis what I’m offering.”

I fisted my hands so tightly my fingernails cut into my skin. “I amnota prostitute,” I said through gritted teeth, pushing down this insane, absurd urge to sayyes.Shoving away this insane, absurd desire to be right there by that pool, sipping a pink drink and wearing a sequin bikini, talking and laughing like nothing in the world could get to me. Like I was safe—as safe and as beautiful as those women were.

Then Mama Si laughed, throwing her head back.

“Oh, Fall Doll,” she said, stepping to my side, looking down at me like she actually pitied me. Her friend was behind her already, the shade of the umbrella falling over me, too.

“You arenothing at allright now,” Mama Si told me. “This is me giving you the opportunity tobe something.Someone. Brave, beautiful, independent—such a dangerous combination.” She leaned closer and closer to me, those eyes on my parted lips while my heart beat like my body believed I was being hunted by the most vicious predator alive. “I am giving you what every woman in the world truly needs: the chance to be free.”

Free.

Free of Missy. Free of Brandon. Free of Autumn Hayes.

Impossible to keep my eyes off those women once Mama Si moved away from my side.

“Think about it. You know where to find me when you make up your mind,” she said after a minute, and I heard their footsteps.

I knew they were walking away, but I still couldn’t fucking move. I still couldn’t look away from those women at all.

“And Fall Doll?” Mama Si called when she was a good distance away, by the trees through which we’d come. “If you do decide to walk through my gates again, you will be coming to stay. Do not take anything of your old life with you. And I meananything.”

With that, she walked away, leaving me all alone in her Paradise.

Four

The nightmares werebad at first, but it was dreams of pink castles and flamingos swimming with me in heart-shaped pools and sparkly pink drinks with swirly straws that woke me up at three in the morning.

I could hear Annabelle’s light snore from her bedroom, and I did my best to focus on that when I was aware of my surroundings, aware of where I was and what had happened the day before.

For a moment there, just one moment, everything suspended right over me, as if waiting to fall on my chest and suffocate me, take my life away once and for all.

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