Page 84 of Severed Rivalry
“Angel, do youtrust me?”
“With our lives.”
“With your secrets?” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“Then tell me. Tell me why I lost you all those years ago.”
“They mutilate us. Our… private parts.” Shit. She’s back to present tense. “On a full moon between our fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays.”
It happens. I vomit.
Meds be damned. Jaw wired shut. Liquid diet long since gone. I’m left with bile shooting through the gaps where my teeth once stood.
“Ci, are you okay?”
“When is Renée’s fourteenth birthday?”
“Five and a half weeks away.”
I vomit again.
And again.
I finally push the nurse call button and mute the phone long enough to ask for another anti-nausea patch and some water.
“I won’t let them touch her. They’ll never get near her,” she seethes.
I wait for beats as I drink my water and swish the vomit from my mouth. I wait as she gets her breathing under control.
“But they didn’t do that to you?”
“I ran away before I turned fourteen, remember?”
My stomach churns but I ask anyway, “But after?”
She pauses, the covers rustle, and somehow, I know she’s burrowing in. “I’d beendefiled, so there was no point.” The smallness in her voice is new.
“Defiled?” Meaning me. “Meaning us?”
“Yeah.” Her admission is quiet and is swallowed up in the space between us.
“Do you believe that, Sariah?” My heart and my stomach are in my throat when I ask.
“No.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“I have no regrets about our time together, Ci. I regret that itended so abruptly and on a lie, but I do not regret giving myself to you.”
I’ll pretend it’s the meds that make me emotional. I’ll pretend it’s the vomit when my eyes well. But there’s no pretense in my words when I say, “You were the single greatest gift I’ve ever been given. I’ve never forgotten the moment you gave yourself to me, or the times that followed. I hope you know you had all of me.”
Her soft cries meet my ears.
“I don’t want to hang up.”
“Me neither. I love you, Ci.”
