by Sybil Bartel
I nodded once because I understood. I did not serve in the military, but I had lived through another war. One I was still living until a gas station angel had smiled at me.
An angel who had just come out of the restroom with wet hair, a bruised face and exhaustion in her eyes.
I stood and took the bag from her hand, then I pulled her into my arms.
My eyes closed, and I allowed myself the indulgence of emotions. Not knowing if I would ever hold her in my arms again was a feeling I never wanted to repeat. Relishing in the comfort of her soft curves against my body, I simply held her.
“Hi,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around my waist.
I kissed the top of her head. “I am grateful you are safe.”
“I’m grateful for you.”
Ignoring the sentiment that made me uncomfortable, I took her chin in my hand and inspected her face. She had obviously been hit. “Are you okay?”
No walls hiding her feelings, she looked up at me with warm eyes. “I’m fine.”
“Your back, your ribs?” I had seen the bruising behind the cargo container.
“I’ll be fine, thanks to you.”
Inhaling, I forced my tone to be even. “You are done thanking me.”
She smiled shyly. “I will never be done doing that.”
I gave her the hard truth. “I will not be with a woman who is only with me because she feels indebted.”
Her smile faded to a grave seriousness. “I would never be with a man I felt indebted to.”
Seeing the truth in her eyes, hearing it in her voice, I took her at her word and let the thank-you comment go. “Come, sit.” I released her chin only to hold her arm. I had never had the need to hold on to a woman before, but this woman, I never wanted to release my hold on her.
She saw the soda and a smile lit up her face. “You remembered.”
“I would not forget.”
She sat and took the drink, sipping it at first. “No, I don’t suppose you would.”
I took the seat next to her, sparing a glance in Luna’s direction to see if he was watching us, but he had turned toward the window and had his phone to his ear. “I do not know what you mean by that.”
Stalling, she drank the rest of the soda in the glass then poured the remains from the can into the glass. “It simply means that you strike me as someone who pays attention to things that are important to him.”
I paid attention to more than just things that were important. Like how the shirt she wore, slightly oversized with a low neckline and decorations sewn into the cut, or the tight, stretchy black pants I had observed women off the compound wear, did not look like her usual attire of the more casual clothes she wore the first two times I met her. But observation was safer than words, so I did not comment on her reflection. Instead, I pushed the nuts toward her. “Eat.”
“You should eat.”
I had had food since she’d been taken. I was presuming she had not. “I am fine.” I could wait.
Her nose wrinkled. “To be honest, I’m not a fan of nuts.” She pushed the package back toward me. “But thank you.” She sipped her drink.
Wordlessly, I got up and looked in the small refrigerator. On the shelf under the sodas and juices were sandwiches wrapped in clear plastic like at the gas station, but fresher looking. I took two, sat back down next to her and held one out. “Better?”
She glanced hungrily at the food, but then looked up at me with something close to need. “Are you going to eat with me?”
Having eaten alone for the past six months, I understood instantly. “Yes.” I vowed then and there to never let her eat alone. Not while she was with me.
We both tore open the plastic wrappers and took hearty bites.
CALLAN TURNED THE LIGHT on.
I looked around my shitty apartment, and it hit me like a freight train. Anger, fear, acute fear, resentment, panic, rage—all of it—all at once. The momentary peace I had felt on the plane, the safety, the contentment, it all vanished with a single illumination of one light. I was no longer curled up next to a god of a man on a luxurious private jet. I was a poor, failing student without a job who had been kidnapped by sex traffickers because I was naïve and stupid.
I wanted to rip the cupboard doors off and shatter every dish. I wanted to smash the TV and yank the curtains from the wall. I wanted to kick over every piece of furniture, and I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs.
Then I wanted to never, ever, come back here.
I was never going to be the girl who put on makeup to go to a club again. I was never going to spend hours on my hair and stare at my ass in the mirror in fifty outfits until I found just the right one. I was never going to dress myself up again for a rapist and a sex trafficker.
“Too much?” he asked.
His deep quiet voice wasn’t the soothing balm I needed, it was an anchor. An anchor for the lies I’d been feeding myself since I’d answered an ad for a babysitter out of desperation two years ago. I’d been drowning in schoolwork I hated, studying to become a nurse when I hated the sight of blood, but telling myself a nursing job would be one that was always in demand. I’d told myself a nursing job would support me my whole life. I’d convinced myself I’d never need a man or anyone else who could desert me or abandon me.
But I’d been lying to myself.
Everything in my life had been a fucking lie.
There wasn’t one thing I’d loved about it.
Except a little four-year-old boy.
I’d loved taking care of Ethan. I’d loved him like he was my own. I didn’t want to be single my whole life, taking care of other people. I wanted a husband and I wanted my own children. I wanted to love them and nurture them and never, ever, abandon them. I wanted to be everything to my own kids that I never had.
This apartment wasn’t too much.
It wasn’t enough.
“I hate it here.” I uttered the words I’d never allowed myself to say out loud.
With a single nod, Callan was moving. Graceful like a panther, he took two strides and picked up my empty backpack hanging from the stools I’d found on the side of the road. “Pack what you need.” He lifted a pile of schoolbooks and started to place them in the backpack.
“I don’t need those.” I was already struggling to keep up with schoolwork but the exam I’d missed wasn’t one I’d ever pass now. And I didn’t care. “I’m done with school.”
No judgment, he tipped his chin toward the bedroom. “You will need clothes.”
I didn’t want any of my clothes. I didn’t want this stupid shirt Phoebe had insisted I buy, knowing I hated it, but she claimed it showed off my boobs. And I didn’t want the other crap she’d stuffed in my bag. I didn’t want to fit in. I didn’t want to try so hard. I didn’t want any of it. I couldn’t be who I was anymore, I just couldn’t.
A rough, calloused hand grasped the back of my neck. “I cannot help if you do not tell me what is going on.”
I looked up into the bluest, most intense eyes I’d ever seen. “I can’t do this.” I fought tears. I wasn’t going to be that girl anymore. “I can’t be me. I can’t be the me who lived here. I don’t want to be a nurse. I don’t want to go to school, and I never want to sit in this shitty apartment again and think about the night I let you go so I could get dressed up like a Christmas present for a sex trafficker.”
He increased the pressure on my nape. “I will never let anything happen to you again.”
How could he promise me that? He couldn’t. I was the one who’d chosen clubbing over him. “I let you go,” I whispered, guilt and shame eating at me almost as much as regret.
“I am right here.”
Solid and safe and beautiful and forgiving, he was right here, and I wasn’t deserving of any of it. Not as the girl I was. “I can’t be her anymore. I can’t be the person who lived here.”
“Who do you want to be?”
I wanted to be his, just his. I wanted to belong to him so bad, it
hurt to think about an alternative. A man I’d kissed once, a man I’d never slept with, a man I didn’t even know if I was compatible with—I just wanted to be his. More than anything I’d ever wanted in my whole life. More than even wanting to meet the sorry excuse of a man who’d never claimed his own daughter or bothered to meet her. But the old me wouldn’t let myself tell a man I wanted to be his. It wouldn’t let me utter traitorous words that stood against everything I’d fought for my whole life.
“I don’t know.” I muttered a partial truth. I didn’t know how to belong to this man. I didn’t know if he would even want a woman with no desire to be anything else than the woman by his side.
His lips gently touched my forehead. “I know what I want you to be.”
My aching muscles stiffened. In fear of what he’d say, fear of what he wouldn’t, fear that he would want me to be so much more than what I was capable of. But I didn’t want to live in fear anymore, and I never wanted to be a victim again. So I asked the question I didn’t know if I wanted the answer to because that’s what a strong person would do. “What?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Mine.”
Four letters. One word.
Nothing could have been more perfect.
And it hit me.
I loved him.
The thought, the feeling, it should’ve been a shock, but it wasn’t. It was already in the very fiber of my being, just like I was meant to be right here, in this very moment. Without reservation, without fear, my mind caught up to my heart, and I swelled with love for this incredibly strong, honorable, and resilient man standing in front of me. More, I understood his yearning, his need to have someone to belong to as much as I understood this force between us wasn’t something I could’ve ever controlled.
But I didn’t fall in love with him because he rescued me. This wasn’t about the past he’d come from, or the integrity he possessed. I wasn’t head over heels simply because he was the most alpha male I’d ever met. I was in love with him because of a single word.
Mine.
He chose me. He wanted me. He yearned for me.
And he gave me all of those emotions, and more, in a single-word response, capturing the brutal, majestic honesty that was all him.
It was the single most beautiful, humbling moment of my life, and I loved him for it.
I loved Callan Anders.
“I want to be yours,” I whispered. “More than anything.”
“I WANT TO BE yours,” she whispered, staring up at me with her golden brown eyes. “More than anything.”
The tightening in my chest was not one I had ever experienced. This was not the way my body reacted a year ago when I laid eyes on the beautiful, pure smile of an innocent girl. This was not the breath filling my lungs when I saw her alive and coming off the ship. This was not the desire to take her when our lips met. This was all of those things and more.
I stroked her bottom lip with my thumb, but I did not kiss her. If I started, I would not stop, and I wanted to get her out of this apartment as much as she wanted to be out of it.
“Let’s get you some clothes, then I will take you home.” We could deal with the rest of her belongings another time.
“To the compound?”
I had grown to hate that word. “To my land.”
“Do you have a home?” Heat colored her cheeks. “I mean, like a roof overhead? You don’t live in a tent or anything, do you?”
The corner of my mouth tipped up. “No, I do not live in a tent.” My quarters were not much better, but I was building a proper house. My incentive to finish was now greater than ever.
Inhaling, she nodded as if she were making a grave decision. “Okay. Clothes.” She looked around one more time, then frowned. “No one is here.”
“I told your sister and Theodore to go home. I said I would contact them when you were safe.”
“Oh.” She looked up at me. “Did you? Contact them?”
“I texted your sister from the plane.” After we had eaten, she had fallen asleep against my shoulder.
She bit her lip. “I should call my mom, but I don’t have a phone anymore.”
“You can use my phone whenever you want, but it is late. I said you would be in touch tomorrow.” I pushed her hair behind her shoulder so I could see her face. The bruising was beginning to yellow. “Pack some clothes.” I thought of her feet and the unsubstantial sandals she wore her sister had packed for her. “My land is not paved. You will need shoes. Boots would be better.”
She glanced at my footwear, then slowly nodded and turned toward her bedroom.
A few minutes later, when I heard no movement from the back room, I followed.
I found her standing in front her closet, staring.
Stepping up behind her, I kissed the top of her head. “What is the matter?”
“What clothes do you take to go somewhere you’ve never been?”
I knew she was not talking about my land. I brushed a hand over her shoulder and down her arm. Chill bumps raced across her neck. Taking her hand in mine, I brought her back to my chest. “We will go slow,” I reassured.
“Okay.” She did not move.
I squeezed her hand. “What else?”
“I hate these clothes,” she whispered.
“We will get you new ones.” I did not tell her that I hated the black dress she had been taken in. The tight material had shown every curve, exposing her body to anyone who wanted to look. I also did not tell her that I remembered every inch of her tanned legs in the denim shorts she had been wearing at the gas station. Her hair had hung loose that day, covering her bronzed, proud shoulders, and her sleeveless blouse had been like nothing I had ever seen. Bright, patterned, it had been fitted around her breasts but then like a full skirt around her midsection. Every time the breeze blew, the shirt moved around her body. I had been transfixed.
I had never seen women dress in anything other than shift dresses meant to both cover and be easily pulled up to accommodate a man’s needs whenever he chose. There was no secret in the movement of the clothes on a woman’s body in the compound. Nothing was meant to tantalize, the women did not even wear undergarments, yet everything was carefully regulated by River to be accessible to him.
Seeing the brassieres carefully folded over hangers in my angel’s closet, I realized I had never considered what may or may not be comfortable for a woman to wear.
I stroked her arm. “For now, what are you most comfortable in?”
“Sweats.”
An unpleasant image struck. “I do not know what that is.”
She looked up at me. “You’ve never worn sweatpants? Or a sweatshirt? Like a hoodie?”
I shook my head once. “No.”
She pointed at a zip-up sweater with a hood hanging on a hook at the end of the closet. “That’s a hoodie. What do you wear when it gets cold out?”
It was rarely cold in southern Florida. Heat was usually the problem. “I wear fatigues.” I had always worn them. As a hunter, I had been one of the few men on compound allowed to wear something other than the shapeless clothes made by the women. I needed my clothing to be sturdy, practical and give me full range of motion. The long shifts River and the elders had worn would not have served that purpose.
She gave a slight shake of her head. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
I reached around her and pulled some blouses off hangers that were similar to what she had been wearing the first day I met her. “What conversation would you prefer to have?” I saw the exact shirt she had been wearing and took it off the hanger.
“This conversation is fine. It’s just that I can’t believe I’m here… with you.” She looked at the clothes in my hand. “Hey, that’s the shirt I was wearing that day at the gas station.”
“I know.” I kissed her temple. “I like it.”
She leaned back into me. “I like your voice.”
“Ditto.” Soft, feminine, but not high-pitched, I wanted to hear her v
oice when she was under me.
She grabbed the hooded sweater off the hook and her voice turned quiet. “So, did you pick out clothes for Decima?”
I momentarily stilled, then I spun her around and tipped her chin. “Do not do that. There is nothing to be insecure about.”
Heat touched her cheeks. “I’m not, I wasn’t, I mean, I’m just….” She trailed off, looking away. “Never mind.”
“I will not never mind. Look at me.” I waited until she brought her gaze back to mine. “I am many things, but I am not a comparative man. You will learn my faults as you get to know me, but you will never question my honesty.” I paused, studying her. “We are from different worlds. I do not know all of the nuances of your dialect, and I prefer a straightforward manner of speech, so understand this. I did not ever choose clothes for a woman. I was not a fan of what the women wore on the compound simply because of what it represented. I did not like you in the black dress. I liked the clothes you wore the day we first met.” I held up the shirts in my hand. “I like these. But that does not mean I will ever tell you what you can or cannot wear. I will never strip you of your choice to choose to be who you are.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. She nodded once before she spoke quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“There is no reason to apologize. I would rather you tell me when you have feelings of insecurity, jealousy or doubt. Then I can address them. I do not intend to ever make you feel insignificant.”
“Me either,” she whispered.
“Good.” I touched my lips to her forehead. “You will need some pants and shoes.”
She smiled as she blushed. “Did you want to pick those out as well?”
Despite her attempt at a joke, I was man enough to know when to quit. “No.”
A small laugh escaped. It was the first laugh since I’d taken her from her abductor, and it was a sound sent from heaven. I stroked her bottom lip with my thumb. “I like to hear you laugh.”
She smiled, but there was still sorrow in her eyes. “I’ll try to do it more.”