Takeout.
God.
I had nearly forgotten about takeout.
Chinese.
Pizza.
Fried stuff.
Oh, fuck yes, fried stuff.
"I can..."
"No," he cut me off. "You can't," he added.
It had been a long, long time since someone told me I couldn't do something.
Maybe Holden had done it in the early years to piss me off, to try to get me to fight harder, but after a while, we had become almost equals in life. We trained together. We ran together. Sometimes we hit the town together. But we lived wholly independent lives outside of that. Really, even after almost nine years, I had no idea what the hell he did all day in his house.
Suddenly, I felt like I should have maybe tried a little to know him better, to connect with him more.
Everything between us had always been about the mission. About molding me to be able to do it on my own.
We didn't sit and have long conversations about our paths or our hopes and dreams for the future.
It never even occurred to me to try before.
Just like it had never occurred to him to tell me I could—or could not—do something.
Inwardly, I bristled, feeling a telltale tingling on my nerve endings. The start of anger, before it went deep, infected everything inside me.
"I'm not sixteen anymore, Vance. You can't tell me what to do."
"Ferryn, I don't think you ever let me tell you what to do," he told me, shaking his head. "And I'm not trying to tell you what to do now. I'm trying to remind you that you need to be here in this shithole for a few days. If someone drove down the street and saw you picking up food somewhere, it would be all over this town in ten minutes flat, and you know that. There is no anonymity here."
"That's true," I agreed, feeling the anger fizzle out as suddenly as it had started.
"I know it has never been in your nature, but you're just going to have to let me take care of you for a bit."
Take care of me.
Once upon a time, those words would have given me shivers, would have made my heart full to bursting.
Now, though, there was mostly a void where that heart used to be. But, much to my surprise, I did feel a bit of a warmth spread across my entire upper chest, a flush that was both comforting and alarming at the same time.
My tongue felt fat and clumsy in my mouth as my lips formed around words. "I, ah, I guess that will work. I could probably order in, too. The delivery kids have to have changed by now—What?" I asked when his smile spread a bit as he moved across the room to stoop to retrieve the other bags, making me suddenly realize that I probably should have been helping out.
"Kids. Last time you were here, those kids were all older than you. I remember you saying you wanted to get a job delivering for the pizza place but your dad said absolutely not."
"He said 'absolutely-fucking-not,'" I clarified, smirking at the memory.
"You were so hot about that."
"It was sexist of him to say that I couldn't be a delivery person."
"Maybe."
"Definitely. I bet Fallon and Finn were allowed to do deliveries. Such a double standard."
"Sometimes those double standards exist to protect you, not to take away your freedoms. What?" he asked, making me realize I was small-eyeing him pretty hard.
"Nothing. You just never used to be that backward."
"Backward," he scoffed, shaking his head, deliberately turning away, moving so he could have his back to me as he shuffled through the bags.
"Yes, backward. Weren't you the guy who once told Iggy that she better not save herself for marriage? Weren't you the guy who told us both that we would learn a lot more about the world by being exposed to it than we would reading about it?"
"Yeah, babe, but that was before the world threw you into a basement then ripped you away from everyone who cared about you, okay? Shit changes."
"I don't see why my shit would change your shit."
"You're fucking kidding me, right?" he snapped. Snapped. Vance, the Vance I had always known, was someone incredibly slow to anger. He was always the sort to let things roll off his back, to shrug it all away. And the girl I had been—so easily riled, so reactive to everything—had always appreciated his inner calm, his easy self-assurance.
There was no mistaking, though, that Vance was most definitely the riled one right in that moment. His blue eyes blazed. His jaw tightened so hard that a muscle ticked there, something I found almost alarmingly fascinating.
"I'm not kidding you," I told him, arching a brow just because I wanted him to keep going, I wanted to get a rise out of him, I wanted to see more of his rage. I didn't stop to wonder why it was so important to me that he even had any. Had I maybe considered it in the moment, I likely would have concluded that a small part of the girl I used to be was thinking that if he had a little of his own rage, he might be able to accept mine.
"You fucking left, Ferryn. We worried ourselves fucking sick about you for days after you were taken. And the minute we know you are safe again, you tear out of town and we never see you again. We are going to skip right over the bit about how selfish that shit was because I'm sure one of your aunts or uncles will unleash into you about that since your parents will be too relieved to do it themselves. Putting that aside, your shit, whatever that shit was, it affected every fucking person you left behind. Just because you needed to start a new life didn't mean you got erased from all of ours. We couldn't just move on like there wasn't something always missing. Your shit was our shit too. Thought in about nine years, you would have grown up enough to see that."
The anger this time rose up out of embarrassment, out of shame, out of the bone-deep recognition of the truth in his words.
Yes, my mission mattered.
Yes, I was making a difference in the world.
Yes, my life was mine to do whatever I wanted with.
And, yes, it was okay to be selfish sometimes.
But that didn't mean I hadn't been rash and maybe even cruel with my decisions, with the way I cut everyone out.
I wrote my mom.
Every week.
I didn't miss a letter. Not even when I was trapped in a hospital bed recovering from surgery.
I tried to convince myself that was enough.
Even if a part of me knew better.
"I don't know who the hell you think you're talking to like that," I started, feeling my lips quivering in an old—and up until right that moment, seemingly overcome—reaction to strong emotions. "I understand I have things to explain and apologies to make. To my family. To people who love me. I get that. But you don't get to act all holier than fucking thou with me. I mean who the hell were you? The big brother to my friend? I didn't mean anything to you. If you took my shit on, that was a choice. You can't blame me because you wanted to be a martyr in a situation that had nothing to do with you."
"Nothing to do with me," he repeated, voice chillingly cold. An actual shiver moved up my spine. "You know what, fuck this," he said, tossing down the bag he had been rifling through, long legs making short progress from where he had been standing to the door. "Believe whatever the fuck you want, Ferryn. You always have. Guess some shit never changes."
The door slammed hard enough to shake the panes of glass in the windows, a sound that made me jerk a bit, not because I was even prone to startling, but because violence was not something I could have ever anticipated coming from Vance.
Apparently, I didn't know him as well as I always thought.
Or maybe he had changed.
It wouldn't be too surprising.
I sure as hell changed too.
Sitting there in utter silence, I could feel something foreign. A burning at the backs of my eyes. A hint of something impossible.
Tears.
Blinking hard, I fought them away, standing up, making my way to the bags he had abandoned, needing something to do to distract myself.
Th
ere was a loud banging on the wall to my side before a newly familiar voice carried through the apparently very thin insulation.
"That was a great prelude to an upcoming hatefuck if I ever heard one," Finch called to me, making a snort burst out of me as my hand moved upward, running my fingers through my newly longish hair on top.
"Mind your business, Finch," I called back, but couldn't even muster a little firmness to back the demand.
Not more than five seconds later, the door to Vance's apartment was opening, Finch taking up the whole doorway, leaning against the jamb, smoking, a beer in his hand.
"But your business sounds a lot more interesting, sweets."
"There's nothing sweet about me."
"All that sour, gorgeous, there is always sweet underneath it."
"Oh, a chainsmoker and troublemaker and philosopher to boot," I mumbled, folding the yoga pants Vance had picked up in simple neutrals—gray, black, deep brown, green—into a pile on top of the tees and tanks he had picked up as well.
"So, you've been gone a while, huh?" he asked, taking a long swig of his beer, still not moving from his position on the doorjamb. Intrusive, but with boundaries. I found I didn't hate the combination. And it was maybe nice to talk to someone who didn't used to know me, who didn't have all these expectations of how I was supposed to behave.
It didn't seem to matter how old you were, when you went home, you were an unsure teenager once again, apparently.
"You could say that," I agreed. Time was subjective. It had gone by in a blink for me. For those I left behind, maybe not so much.
"Homecomings can be rough."
"You have no fucking idea," I promised him. This was just the very tip of the iceberg for me. Vance was right, one or two or a half a dozen of my family members were going to ream me out. And I would have no real defense against it. But that was a problem for another day.
"Shit will shake out. It usually does."
"That is very naive coming from someone with a prison tat on his hand," I told him, rolling my eyes. I'd missed it before outside, the light casting everything but his face in shadow. But there was no mistaking the cobweb covering the whole top of his hand, a sign of doing a long stretch. And with the shitty, inconsistent lines, it had to have been done with a pen and lighter. Maybe that was how he knew a thing or two about homecomings.
"Yeah, maybe," he agreed. "So, you been gone for a while, what have you been up to?"
Five
- Journal Entry - 18th Birthday -
I caught Holden staring at me.
It was something he had done a lot the first year. Not in a creepy, predatory way. But in a way like he couldn't figure me out. Like I was a clock that refused to tick like he wanted. Like it bothered him.
After a while, though, we seemed to sort of come to an understanding about each other. He was there watching me evolve from the hurt, unsure girl who had shown up at his door.
He stopped looking at me like I didn't tick right.
So it was weird to catch him staring at me with that intensity again.
"What?" I asked, brow furrowing.
"Fresh as fallen fucking snow."
Now, this was a man prone to not saying much. But when he did speak, he usually spoke plainly and bluntly. He was not a flowery person. But those were oddly flowery words.
"What? Like I'm pale?" I asked, scrunching up my nose.
"Like you're a virgin, kid."
I was officially not a kid anymore. As of four a.m., I was—in the eyes of the law—a full-fledged adult. But I knew that compared to him, I was a kid. And he would likely always see me that way.
There was no denying the fact that those words directed right at me—along with the truth behind them—made a flush move across my chest, up my throat, over my cheeks.
Clearly, we'd never discussed sex.
He'd been a grown man and I a child, after all.
It was all kinds of inappropriate. It was the kind of gross stuff we were both in agreement was wrong with the world.
A part of me was more than a little worried that he was saying it now because I was legal, because he had those sorts of feelings about me. And, well, Holden had sort of become a stand-in uncle-figure for me, reminding me a lot of the uncles I had left behind, finding a sort of comfort in that type of relationship.
I never had anything even remotely resembling feelings for him.
The idea of him having them for me made my stomach churn.
"For fuck's sake," he growled, slamming a hand down on the table, making our bottles of water teeter and topple. "Don't look at me like that. I didn't mean it like that."
"How did you mean it then?" I demanded, crossing my arms over my nothing-there chest, feeling my pride sting just the tiniest bit. No, I didn't want him to be attracted to me, but he'd made it sound like such a thing was absolutely revolting. I'd worked hard to shake off any need for external validation, but I was pretty sure it was encoded into our DNA not to want to be thought of as disgusting.
"I mean it as... have you really given this shit thought?"
"What shit? The mission shit?" I asked, still feeling a little jolt in my stomach when I cursed, only ever having done so with friends in the past, never around my elders.
"Yeah."
"That's all I have been thinking about for two years. You know that. I wouldn't still be here if I wasn't."
"Clearly, you haven't given it as much thought as I have."
"How do you figure?"
"I walk in there one day, try to make some waves, save some girls, take out some shitheads. I get outnumbered. I get my ass kicked. That's what happens to me. You ever really stop to think how what might happen to me and what might happen to you are very different fucking things?"
The stomach dropping to my feet sensation was proof in and of itself that, no, I had not given that particular thing enough—or any—thought.
Why, I wasn't sure.
It should have been something at the forefront of my mind.
Human traffickers and the men who paid to use the women being trafficked were rapists. They raped. That was what they did. That was what they were capable of.
And if they got the better of me, that would be my fate too.
Of course it would.
A swirling sick feeling moved up my belly and throat, bile catching at the back of my tongue before I forced myself to swallow it back down, refusing to get sick.
I had to be harder than that.
I read a book once about a female field agent doing covert ops who used to always wear a pearl necklace. Except one pearl wasn't a pearl at all but a fatal dose of poison should she bite into the hardened shell it was safely encased in.
The book had claimed she had the precaution in case of capture, in case she was worried she might spill state secrets.
Suddenly, I knew better.
She wore it because she understood the kind of torture that could be inflicted on her was very different than the types typically inflicted upon men who were captured.
Rape was a weapon used against women in so many different ways.
It was one that could be used against me.
Sure, that was why I had to train harder, be better, but that didn't guarantee anything. Something could always go wrong.
Short of wearing a chastity belt, there seemed to be no way of ensuring it would never happen.
A bit uncomfortably, I cleared my throat, willing my voice to come out stronger than it felt as it built inside me. "What does... why does my virginity have anything to do with it?"
"Christ," he growled, raking a hand down his face. "Didn't you have some sex education or some shit back home?"
My mother had called in two ladies from our town—Fiona who owned a local phone sex operating business, and Autumn who owned the local adult toy store—and let the experts and some of my aunts give me all the details. I knew more about sex than I cared to know at thirteen. But no one could say I wasn't well informed. My mom had been sure
that knowledge about sex was power, it enabled me to make smart decisions about it, instead of jumping into it too young because of pure curiosity.
If a fact existed about sex, I knew it.
They'd even given me a little gift bag of toys so I could learn to pleasure myself so I didn't think guys were the only ones who could do it.
It was all a bit over the top and incredibly embarrassing at the time. But good. I ended up giving Iggy the talk because her parents refused to have any kind of frank and honest conversations about sex with her, believing it was still reasonable to expect everyone to wait until marriage.
"Yes, I had sex talks. I am fully aware of all the mechanics. And everything else," I admitted, chin lifting a little, daring him to question me.
"Then you know what a first time is often like."
That was the one place where my aunts all had differing experiences. Some had excruciating pain, others just a little discomfort, some no pain at all. But the general consensus was it wasn't super pleasant the first time or two.
"Yes," I agreed.
"Look. Just fucking look," he said, turning back to me, planting his giant fists on the table across from me, completely drawing me, pinning me with his dark eyes. "Your first time should be given, not taken. Okay? That is all I am going to say about it.I am going to be there for your first mission. I am going to make sure shit doesn't happen to you. No matter the cost. But when you are on your own, kid..." he trailed off, shrugging his shoulders, making his way to the door. "Just something to think about," he added. "Be ready at dusk," he finished, moving outside, door grumbling closed as he hit the button.
He was right.
It was something I needed to think about.
But not right then.
Right then, I needed to focus.
Because it was my eighteenth birthday.
And Holden's way to celebrate was to take me on our first mission.
I had a little hand in the researching. He'd brought a laptop into the garage one day, firing it up, opening up a dark web browser, and showing me how to find the scumbags.
And find them, I did.
So, so, so many scumbags.
The Rise of Ferryn Page 7