by Sam Mariano
Even if he didn’t want to do it.
That was the real kicker. The pain was real, the anxiety was real, the memories were real, his was the face she had to pin it on, but… he hadn’t wanted to do it. There had been no malicious intent. He wasn’t trying to take away her control, her ability to say no, he was merely the tool that Lane used to do it. Physically he had forced himself on her, but he didn’t really have a choice, and that made it so much more confusing.
Also, if he wouldn’t have been there, she would be forcibly whored out to all manner of disgusting men. Instead of one man forcing himself on her, how many would there have been at that point? Four? Ten? More than that? Her dream from the night before wouldn’t just be a nightmare, it would be her life.
If he wouldn’t have been there, she didn’t know if she would have ever made it home.
Not to mention, he had almost been shot himself while saving her.
And yet, she still wasn’t sure she could stand to look at him across the dinner table without betraying her discomfort.
Why had her stupid mother invited him to dinner?
---
When Ethan pulled into the Kensington driveway, he just sat there for a moment, gripping the steering wheel so hard that his hands hurt.
He had tried all day to prepare himself. He was doing exactly what he’d been determined not to do—giving himself more evidence of the gray-eyed girl’s humanity.
When her mother called his office to talk to him, he’d felt a deep sense of foreboding. Maybe Willow hadn’t gone to the police, but she had probably come clean with her own mom. He had been braced for an audible bomb when he picked up the phone.
Instead he got a dinner invite.
Despite the several excuses he gave her in quick succession, she insisted that what he did meant so much to her family and she was more grateful than she could ever express, and she practically begged him to come over for a thank-you dinner.
He wasn’t sure how much dinner he would be able to eat, as sick as he felt.
Since he really, really did not want to go, he made one last attempt, telling her that he wasn’t sure it would be good for her daughter, seeing as he had been posing as one of the bad guys during her captivity, so just seeing him might make her relive what had happened to her.
That was a very real concern for him, but the woman on the other end of the line did not seem to be capable of processing that possibility. She called that suggestion “absurd” and added that Willow was so grateful for what he had done, and she was sure that Willow would want him to come.
He was 100% sure that she was wrong, but she sounded so sure of herself, even he almost believed it for a second.
So there he stood, waiting outside their house for the ground to open up and swallow him so he didn’t have to walk through those doors and lay eyes on the one person in the world he never wanted to see again.
He could already feel his face heating up, and he suspected it was not because of the weather. He had no idea how he was going to get through dinner.
The perky one, Lauren, greeted him at the door, actually pulling him into a hug that made him feel immensely uncomfortable. He made the mistake of looking past her, and immediately noticed a pair of gray eyes boring into him, like little daggers. He awkwardly pulled back from the hug and attempted some semblance of a smile for her mother’s benefit, but smiling in front of the girl, trying to pretend everything was okay seemed so wrong. She should know that he didn’t take her feelings lightly, that he had done her a terrible wrong and that he didn’t deserve thankful hugs from her mother. And she deserved to know that he knew that.
How he could possibly express that to her, he had no idea, but he knew it wasn’t through fake smiles and bullshitting with her parents as if he deserved their admiration.
The whole situation was extremely unfair to her, and he had no idea how to change that short of coming clean, which he was not about to do.
Taking care of his family had to come before relieving his own conscience.
Before dinner, Lauren brought out the reward check and tried to give it to him. She hadn’t said anything on the phone about the check, and since he hadn’t formally been hired, he hadn’t been expecting one. Honestly, finding Willow had happened purely by accident; he hadn’t been looking for her.
“Oh, no,” he said, not taking the check. “No, no. You can keep that.”
Since he looked at the check like it was on fire, the more reasonable mother was reasonably flummoxed.
“Why? This is what you get paid for, isn’t it?”
The girl was sitting as far away from him as she could, staring down at her hands, refusing to be mentally present. Couldn’t blame her there.
“It is, but I didn’t actually take your case. I wasn’t there to get your daughter. Obviously I’m glad that she was brought back home to you, but I was working someone else’s case; honestly, even if you wouldn’t have contacted me, she would’ve been returned to you. I wouldn’t feel right taking your money.”
The woman nodded as if she accepted his answer, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was suspicious of him. Maybe it was just his own guilty conscience, but he was already counting down the seconds until he could leave.
Throughout dinner, Ethan awkwardly made conversation with her parents, and the girl was silent unless someone forced her to talk.
It was a painfully uncomfortable situation, and he felt like the longer he sat there, the more damage he was doing. So he ate as quickly as he could, and Lauren did most of the talking while he uttered suitably polite responses. When he finally shoveled the last bite into his mouth, he intended to get the hell out of there, but he noticed that no one else had finished.
Waiting for everyone else to finish was excruciating.
Especially Willow, who had barely touched her food.
Everybody but Willow had finished and she showed no signs of finishing soon, so he finally said fuck manners and he took the customary breath of someone who regretted what they were about to say.
"Well, I appreciate the meal, but I should really be getting home now."
"Oh, but we haven't had dessert yet," Lauren said, her eyes darting into the kitchen. "You have to stay for dessert, it's one of Willow's recipes. She's quite the cook, you know, always trying out some new recipe."
Of course he hadn't known, and he wished he didn't. He didn’t want to know what her hobbies were, or anything else that would make him feel worse than he already did.
It was bad enough seeing her in her home with her family, looking every bit the teenage girl she was. It made him feel lower than he had before. He was 32 years old, for fuck's sake. She had just turned 18. He was almost old enough to be her father, and he suddenly couldn't look at her across the table without seeing her on her knees in front of him, her mouth slightly swollen, her eyes red from crying...
He felt disgusting. He felt like a monster. He couldn't have felt worse if he had hurt her because he wanted to.
He was fighting images of Willow with a gun to her temple, bending to take his cock in her mouth, and her mother was sitting there trying to feed him dessert while Willow had to sit there silently and take it.
Clearing his throat, he abruptly pushed his chair back. "No, thank you, I really have to go."
After offering one more time to wrap him up some to take home, Lauren smiled graciously and said, "Well, okay. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping my daughter return home safely. I can't tell you how grateful we all are."
Barely managing not to flinch, he nodded and thanked her again for dinner.
"Willow will walk you out," Lauren volunteered.
"Lauren," Ashlynn snapped, obviously the only one of the two to notice how uncomfortable Willow was.
Willow pushed back her chair, standing. "It's fine."
Avoiding looking at her more suspicious mother, Ethan nodded once politely and kept his head down, falling into step behind Willow.
With
his head down like that, he couldn't help looking at her ass as she walked in front of him.
Self-disgust washed over him as he quickly averted his gaze.
Willow opened the door, and when he looked up at her hesitantly, as if he wanted to speak, she stepped outside with him, closing the door behind her. Then she crossed her arms across her chest and looked up at him expectantly.
"Thank you," he said simply.
She merely shrugged, looking out at the lawn instead of at him. "No point ruining your life. One of the other goons would have done it anyway."
He looked down, at a loss for what to say. "I'm so, so sorry. I know that I hurt you in a way that…that no one can ever fix, and I can’t imagine that keeping it all inside is making this any easier on you. If there's anything I can ever do..."
She shook her head, but he noticed she still wouldn't look at him. "I'm fine," she said simply.
"I'm not," he said honestly, "so I don't see how you could be."
That time she met his gaze, and in that short-lived moment, he saw a glimpse of her anguish, but she quickly looked away. "You didn't really have a choice."
“That doesn’t change what happened to you.”
The girl swallowed, still looking away, then she swallowed again, and he wondered if she was having a hard time keeping her composure. Finally, she met his eyes, and he saw that hers were shining. “Thank you for saying that.”
He nodded, since he wasn’t sure what to say.
The girl cleared her throat, blinking a little more rapidly than was normal. “You could’ve taken the money.”
“Wouldn’t have been right,” he said simply.
She nodded, understanding better than anyone else could why he felt that way. “Well, I should go back inside.”
He nodded in rhythm with her bobbing head, both of them clearly uncomfortable. He was glad she was the one to initiate his exit, because he didn’t know how to walk away from her. “Yeah, I should go, too.”
“Right. Wife and three kids.”
It felt like an accusation, even though he knew it wasn’t one. He didn’t say anything, merely nodded again.
Absently hooking her fingers in the back pockets of her jeans, she said, “Well, I’ll let you get back to that.”
He still didn’t feel comfortable leaving, but he felt just as uncomfortable standing there, so he finally bit the bullet and turned around, making his way down the front porch steps.
Before he made it off the last step, he found himself turning to see if she was still there.
She had turned and had her hand on the doorknob when he called out.
She stopped, hesitantly turning in his direction.
“I meant… what I said. If you ever think of anything I can do for you…”
She probably knew as well as he did there wasn’t much he could do for her—unless she wanted dirt on her boyfriend or something—but she nodded anyway. “My mom has your number.”
He couldn’t say why, but he found himself reaching into his pocket and pulling out a card. Then he found himself jotting his cell number on the back. He went back up the stairs and offered it to her.
“Just in case.”
She merely stared at the card, not moving to take it. “I don’t have a lot of use for private investigators, believe it or not.”
“Right,” he said, feeling stupid.
He just wished there was something he could do to take away even a fraction of the pain she had to be feeling.
Even though he knew it was probably even dumber, he added, “If you ever need to talk to someone who knows what happened…I’m the last person who would try to defend myself or anyone else involved.”
For a few seconds, she just stared at him, but then she reached for the card. “I highly doubt I’ll ever use it, but… just in case.”
He nodded once, his mouth curving up grimly, then he made his way back down the steps without turning back.
“Do you have any daughters?” she called out.
He stopped, flinching a little. “Yeah.”
She didn’t say anything else, and a moment later he heard the door close, so he suspected she only asked in case he hadn’t thought about it.
As if he could ever stop thinking about it.
Making his way back to his car, he figured that if the little dig made her feel even fractionally better, it was worth it. He would stand there and let her fling pure venom at him if it would make her feel even a little bit better.
Perhaps the flagellation would make him feel better. Knowing that she had to lie to her family and remain silent about what happened to her really ate away at him. He knew that was unhealthy. Having grown up with a physically abusive father of his own and a mother who was more concerned with keeping the family secrets than her own child’s well-being, he knew just how much her silence was costing her.
And she shouldn’t be the one paying.
Before Ethan’s car made it out of the driveway, Ashlynn was staring Willow down with a look of determination all over her face.
Intending to evade the coming onslaught, Willow said she was going upstairs.
When she made it to her bedroom alone, she thought she was safe—until she heard footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, Ashlynn stood in her doorway.
“You seemed incredibly uncomfortable the whole time he was here.”
“Yeah, well… it’s not like we share great memories.”
That was true. It wasn’t the truth, but it was true.
Ashlynn stepped inside, closing the door behind her. Slowly approaching Willow, she glanced at the bed—unmade—and asked, “May I sit?”
Sighing audibly, Willow said, “I can’t stop you.”
Ashlynn glanced down, but took a seat on the edge of the bed anyway. “Did your mother ever tell you about my childhood?”
“No.”
“It wasn’t a good one. A close friend of the family… well, let’s just say he wasn’t as trustworthy as my family thought he was.”
Willow squirmed, but said nothing.
“When he would come over, I behaved the way you just did. Silent, angry, repressed, resentful… It wasn’t fair that I had to pretend everything was all right when it wasn’t. It wasn’t fair that my parents were nice to him, that they even spoke to him after what he had done to me. It made me feel terrible.”
“That sucks,” Willow muttered, feeling she should acknowledge what Ashlynn had experienced, but not wanting to feed her imagination either.
“Yes, it did suck.” Ashlynn paused. “That man, the PI, he was living as one of them, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Willow ground out, not wanting to think about it.
More hesitantly, Ashlynn asked, “Did he hurt you?”
Willow shook her head, not able to get the word out. “He wasn’t one of the bad guys, he was just pretending to be.”
“That’s not what I asked,” she replied gingerly.
“He almost died,” Willow stated, finally looking over at the other woman. “Do you know that? He almost died because I wouldn’t listen when he told me to do something, so he blew his cover to convince me, and one of the girls in the room was a spy. She had a gun. She almost shot him in the face. You have no idea what we went through, either one of us. I’m sorry that I’m not as gregarious as I was before, but I spent days locked up in a dark room with no idea what was going to happen to me, and I don’t feel great about it. I’m back now, it’s over for you guys, but it isn’t over for me. I’m not ready to be around people yet, I’m pissed off at everyone who so much as looks at me, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why I feel this way, I can’t just turn it off, but seeing him—it just makes me think about what I went through, okay? Maybe he’s used to doing stuff like that so he could recover faster, be polite, but I don’t have it in me. I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of me right now. I don’t give a fuck if people think I’m being rude or antisocial, to be perfectly honest.”
Ashlynn nodded, averting
her gaze. “I just… don’t know how to help you.”
Laughing joylessly, Willow said, “Join the club.”
Appearing to be at a loss for words, Ashlynn just sat there, sadly gazing at the carpet.
For a second, Willow felt bad for snapping at her, but then she told herself to stop. It was not her job to babysit anyone else. She was going through something, and if she needed space, they needed to give it to her.
After a minute, Ashlynn slowly rose, simply asking that Willow come talk to her if she needed to, even if she wanted Ashlynn to just listen and not speak. Willow told her she would, succinctly thanked her, and then closed the door behind her.
---
It had been three weeks since Willow’s homecoming.
Despite the wishes of her family, she did not magically recover once she had some time to “digest” everything that had happened.
Although she wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, Willow attempted to track the case to find out what would happen to the people who had kidnapped her.
Honestly, she was just trying to figure out why it had happened. Why her? Just because of who her father was? She knew so little of his world that she wasn’t even sure how important he was, and she definitely didn’t know why it had happened, why they thought she would be a good way to get to him, if that was the case.
A little over a week after she was home safe, her father had sent over a vase full of flowers with an iTunes gift card where most people put a little note card.
The articles online weren’t very helpful. It seemed like nothing had changed, and she didn’t see how that could be true. They were obviously very dangerous men who stole people and sold them like old clothes. She may not know a lot about the law but she did know that was not okay, and there must be extremely harsh punishments coming their way.
The one they called Tito was never mentioned in the articles, at least not by that name. There were a couple of names she didn’t recognize though, so she thought Tito might be a nickname.