Page 77 of Kept

I turn my head on the pillow, watching the way her brows draw together as she watches the empty ceiling above us. Her face looks… shadowed. Like she’s not in the room. “What do you mean?”

“When you have a lifetime without touch… you learn to live without it. But I never knew what I was missing.”

Her fingers squeeze mine. “I don’t know how I lived without it,” she whispers. “I don’t know how I existed in that apartment, Ryder. I think I’d lose my mind if I went back.”

She huffs a short laugh, but it’s tinged with pain. “Not that I can. But I couldn’t live like that again. Not now that I know.”

I absorb her words quietly. “He never touched you? Ever?”

She shakes her head. “I asked him once… before I met you. He told me I had a nursemaid when I was a baby, but I don’t remember her. And then when I was old enough… never. Not as far as I remember.”

It’s a blessing, considering the sick shit I watched at Club X. I contemplate telling her, for a moment. But she doesn’t need those nightmares in her head.

“He never tucked me in,” she whispers. “He never changed my bed when I was sick or brought me the painkiller buttons. I think he might have once, when I had a bad fever. But he didn’t like doing it. He said it wasn’t a good thing to have inside my body.”

I stiffen. “So what did you do? When you were sick? Or when you had your period?”

“I managed. Not always well, though. I had to bag everything up, and Ethan would burn it and bring me fresh things. He’s obsessed with things being clean, fresh, bright. He wouldn’t even talk about it, just collected the bags and brought new ones.”

For twenty years, she lived alone. Images of a younger Zella, sick or worried and trying to make the best of a shitty situation fill my mind. I squeeze her hand back, clearing my throat.

It feels only fair to offer up a little part of me, in exchange for a little part of her.

“My mother was a junkie,” I murmur.

She turns her head to mine with a frown. “What’s that?”

“An addict,” I try to clarify. “She was addicted to drugs. They’d make her act strange. Sometimes slow and sleepy, but sometimes she’d be wide awake and full of energy, but not the good kind.”

The kind that would blow all of our rent money on an impromptu shopping spree, or make her decide to decorate our shitty trailer, buying expensive paint and throwing it everywhere. The kind that scratched at her skin until it bled, scabs on top of needle tracks until she was unrecognizable.

“We never had any money,” I say quietly. “And when I got a bit older, I wanted to help. So I lied about my age, got a job working for cash at this little bar in the city.”

Zella smiles a little. “You wanted to help your mom. That’s sweet.”

I swallow. “Yeah. But it wasn’t enough.”

My voice sounds rough, and Zella picks up on it, squeezing my hand. “What happened?”

“I came home one night,” I start slowly. “And her dealer – the person who she bought the drugs from – he was there. She owed him a lot of money, and he was hitting her.”

Her hand tightens in mine.

“He kept hurting her,” I whisper, “and I couldn’t get him off. But then he stopped, and he turned to me. He told me if I went and worked for him, he’d leave her alone. Her debts would be paid off.”

“Ryder,” she whispers. “What did your mom say?”

“She asked me to do it.” My throat feels thick. “She begged me. And she was all bruised, and she was so thin. So I told him that I would, if he stopped her supply. And he agreed.”

Zella inhales sharply. “I’m so sorry. Did he stop?”

“Yeah.” I turn her hand over in mine, drawing patterns in her palm. “But she found someone else pretty quick. Died a few weeks later of an overdose. But he told me I’d signed a deal, and it wasn’t his fault she didn’t know how to stop. Didn’t have much of a choice, then.”

I can feel her looking at me, feel the sorrow in her gaze, the sympathy.

“How long?” she asks softly. “How long did you do that?”

“Years,” I confess, the words feeling like jagged, broken glass in my throat. Years of unfamiliar hands, rough touches, harsh laughter. Being passed from person to person like I was nothing more than a thing.

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