Page 31 of The Freedom in Captivity

Shouldn’t make me want him, despite all the hell around us. Despite that a decade has passed and somehow, though we’ve found our way back to one another, we couldn’t be more different. Existing on two different sides, enemies, each with our own goals.

He returns to my neck, pressing into the injury, only to bring his hand toward my left breast. He traces my nipple with his thumb, shifting the blood from my neck to my breast.

It’s not the blood, or even his actions. It’s his fucking touch because it returns me to another time. A better time.

It’s pretty fucked up to be feelinganyenjoyment in this moment, but I am. I’m losing myself to his touch, but maybe this is just my exhaustion emerging again. My brain isn’t well enough to be making sense the way it should.

His head tilts and he steps toward me. I don’t move. That makes his eyes narrow, as though he was seeking an argument from me. His finger leaves my breast and trails a single line down my stomach, and then lower.

“No fight?” he murmurs. “That’s sad.”

I find my voice to ask, “Is it?”

“You’re supposed to fight back, Rozelyn. You’re not supposed to make this easy. Make me want to hurt you. I need you out of my head.”

He wants a fight, except I’m completely frozen after his latest words:Make me want to hurt you. Wantto hurt me.

“You’re enjoying this?” His eyes lift to mine, and for a moment, the hardness is gone. A flash of his old self seeps in, but as quick as I see it, it’s gone.

If I say yes, I might entice his wrath. He’ll believe I’m lying and will unleash more anger. But is denial what he wants to hear?

His hand drops away and he removes the final inch of space between us. He takes my neck again, angling me in a way convenient for him. “My nightmare,” he starts in a low tone, “was about the final day I saw you. When I waited for you out in the hallway between classes and yanked you into the girls’ changing room. It’s not the first time we did something like that, and usually, you enjoyed making it a struggle, but that day you didn’t.” Devastation flashes in his eyes, making my stomach tighten, aware of what he’s about to say even before he does. “I didn’t get it then. Something was off, but I didn’t question you. It made sense by the end of the day.”

Amidst his speech, he touches me again. His free hand finds mine, his fingers pressing into the old, white scar in the centre of my palm. Our promise to one another.

“Living that again, seeing you now, looking like you’resorryabout the past—” His fingers push into my hand harder, until it hurts, and I flinch away from him, as much as the chains allow. “This is all you’ve ever done, Rozelyn. From day fucking one, you’ve played me for your convenience. You’re doing it now. For fucking once, show me your real emotions.”

They are real.

They’re as real now as they were back then, even if he doesn’t believe it.

Ihatedthat day, and eventually, had to tuck it away in my mind. Stopped reliving it, aware that it was a few months of my life, and the pain would fade. Even when, in the following months, it didn’t feel as such. Months turned into years, and I was able to stick memories of Flynn right into the same compartment as the ones I keep about Mom—away from the surface. Away fromfeelingthem.

He blames me for pretending the day I told him goodbye, but I faked most of that week. Mom was admitted into the hospital and doctors were throwing around words relating to death and final days, but still, I used school as an escape. Not school, but Flynn. Ineededthe distraction he provided. Even Mom told me to go, somehow just knowing.

Without the school being aware of my real name, they had no clue of the drama surrounding me and I kept it all inside. Went to classes in a daze, nothing the teachers saying even registering.

The day the doctors said would be Mom’s final was the same one Dad yanked me from school. Yasmine was already on leave from her private school—my old one. And my time was up.

All morning, I feigned happiness. At least, I plastered a smile on my face to pretend, knowing that every minute ticking away on the clock was one closer to breaking up with Flynn. At eighteen, being forced to end a relationship that had given me life felt like literal death. I didn’t eat that day, barely spoke. Felt like throwing up every hour on the hour, the constant and mounting stress becoming more unbearable, especially when Flynn would look at me with that scorching gaze of his.

Guilt. Love. Grief. It all mingled, and I wasn’t managing any of it.

IneededFlynn more than air, and when he pulled me into the changing room, yeah, I didn’t fight it. That would be our last time having sex, as it was between classes and the final period of the day was approaching. My final one there ever.

Once Flynn and I came down from our high, I almost admitted everything right then. The truth of who I was, to see if he could see past my lie, of Mom’s illness, so I could finally release the grief I’d been clinging to and what it meant for us that day.

Scared of rejection, fearing his hatred, I didn’t go through with it. I’d be breaking his heart one way or the other that day, but not telling him the truth meant protecting him. Flynn would march his way right up to the De Falco mansion and Dad would lose his shit. Flynn’s life wasn’t worth the price of my peace.

So I didn’t.

Instead, we cleaned up from sex, returned to our lockers to get materials for our last class, which we shared. Once second semester came, we shared most classes. Sitting through History, constantly peeking between Flynn and the clock until the end-of-day bell rang and I stopped breathing.

Stopped feeling.

I allowed him to walk me to the front doors where Dad’s driver was waiting outside with the car, our normal routine. Flynn wouldn’t see it coming—and didn’t.

Then I broke his heart.

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