Page 21 of Scar Tissue

“It didn’t take long for them to take what was left of my innocence. After all, it’s easy to bargain with a starving child who doesn’t understand the weight of what she’s giving up. My parents had never bothered to have those conversations with me and they used that knowledge to their advantage. Over and over again, they tried to break me down until I had nothing more to give, and then they tried a little more. For years, I was passed around, just another nameless girl in a cycle that never seemed to end. Sometimes I would wonder if the people who took me even remembered my face, or if I was just another number to them, another body to abuse and discard. It reached a point where I thought that I would stop being useful to them, but thenhecame into the picture.” Malice crosses her features as she mentions who I assume is Harrison.

“Take your time,” I mutter.

Her gaze darkens and her fingers twitch before she folds her arms tightly across her chest. “He saw potential in me, where others thought I was…past my expiration date. They didn’t look at me as more than a means to get their rocks off. But Harrison, he liked that I never stopped fighting. I thought most of the men who used me knew cruelty, that they controlled it. But he liked to break me down in different ways. When I said it was easy to bargain with a starving child, the others would offer me things like food and toys, things a child my age would do anything for. But he used my biggest weakness against me. Affection.” The laugh she lets out is quiet, humorless. “He wouldn’t just use my body. In fact, that was one of the last things he did.

He paid attention. He spoke to me like I had a mind of my own and acted like I was worth more than I had been told. He was patient.”

A muscle in my jaw tightens, all too aware of what a master game of manipulation he is capable of.

“The first time he told me I was special, that I was different fromthe others—that was the real trap. You spend long enough being nothing and feeling invisible, that the smallest notion of someone looking at you like you are everything but those two things, leaves you holding on like it’s a lifeline. It didn’t matter what he was, how I ended up in his possession, because in that moment, he immediately became different to me. He used my need for connection against me. And I let him. Of course I realized too late that it was all calculated, but eventually I realized that I became good at playing the game, too. I listened. I learned. I played the perfect pet. Because people like Harrison Clark don’t expect their victims to be smart. They expect fear and obedience. And when you give them what they want to see, they let their guard down.

“Eventually he started to become relaxed with letting me in on information that was protected. Whether it be through dealings with the trafficking network or in his role as a politician. It helped that I was able to come and go more easily, moving freely about the house. By that point he thought I’d be too afraid to leave. He thought so highly of himself that he managed to create something respectable out of me. After all, I’d been missing for almost five years at this point. He had convinced himself that there was nothing better out there for me besides him. Would go on and on about how he gave me purpose. Had even started talking about how he wanted to bring me in on his businesses. So I continued to learn. And that’s when I befriended one of his guards. Because of course I could never access his personal chambers or office without him, and he always had them secured when he wasn’t present. Likely does, now more than ever.”

“What happened, then?” I ask, hesitant.

A slow and dangerous smirk crosses her lips. “That’s the thing about making someone feel like they belong, like they matter. Eventually, they’ll believe it, and it makes them want more. I stopped being afraid of him a long time ago. And knowing that I had bided my time, taking little by little, in small enough increments he would never know, made it all too easy to leave.”

Thea tilts her head in question. “They just let you…walk out?”

Claire quickly shakes her head in a silentno. “I ran for my life, but not before I left him a note.”

I quirk my eyebrow. “What was that?”

“Just a reminder that the best tools are the ones who don’t realize they’re being used.”

Claire had decidedthat story time was over not long after she bared a piece of her soul to Thea and I. We’ll get information from her the more she feels comfortable around us. While it isn’t feasible because we want to move in on Harrison sooner than later, it isn’t our place to push. She left Thea and I alone in the living room, each mulling over her story in silence.

“I understand now.” Her voice startles me from my train of thought and I look at her from where I’m leaning against the wall. “Why you brought her here, I mean.”

I study her face, searching for any trace of hesitation, but find none. However, I don’t miss the tension that’s settled in her shoulders, a telltale sign that lets me know she’s lost in that mind of hers. I’m not sure how to respond to that, out of fear of saying the wrong thing since I can’t seem to do anything else. “Because she needed a place. Because we need to know what she knows. Because I thought…” I’m not going to go back down that road. Thea made her stance on her healing crystal-clear.

“That’s only part of it.”

I rub the back of my neck, releasing an exhale. “Does it matter?”

She shrugs. “It does if you’re lying to yourself about why she’s really here.”

I wish she couldn’t read me so well. You’d think after the years we’ve been apart that she would have to relearn me and my badhabits, but no—it’s like nothing has changed between us even wheneverythinghas. “Because she’s proof.”

Her lips pull down. “Of what?”

“Between her and Dylan, that there is a way out of this.” I gesture vaguely, not specifying whatthisis. “That despite being encompassed in the very worst of circumstances, survival is possible. Not just that, but learning to live again. I don’t know if I’ve been doing that. I…react, sure. I make plans. But none of it ever feels like enough.” I shake my head, averting my gaze while she remains silent, as though she is waiting for me to elaborate. “What I mean is that it still feels like I’m treading water, like I’ll eventually find land despite the water being all that surrounds me. I’ve spent so much time trying to save other people—patients, strangers, anyone that needed help. After Miles, there was no way for me to ever stand by and watch people suffer without doing something for them. It doesn’t matter how many people I help rescue from human traffickers or how many wounds I’ve stitched, broken bones I’ve put back together—not when I’m broken on the inside and incapable of healing myself. It doesn’t matter how many lives I save, when I’m incapable of saving myself.”

She still remains silent, her head tilting, still deep inside her own brain as she watches me.

“She’s just a really good reminder that what happens to you doesn’t have to define you,

and I’ve been living with unnecessary guilt for so long that I didn’t know it was possible to be anything other than how our past shapes us.” I swallow hard, then continue, “Especially when that guilt has told me daily it should’ve been me. That the only way I continue to matter is by taking care of everyone else because I couldn’t do it when it counted.”

Her eyes soften before she speaks. “Don’t say that. Don’t do that.”

Inhaling a deep breath, I shake my head. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

She stands up then, approaching me slowly until she’s standing chest to chest with me, our breaths mingling. She reaches out, but hesitates for a moment before resting a hand against my chest. “Claire’s been through hell, and maybe that’s why she’s an example to you. I don’t necessarily think she’s started to live again, but nobody escapes something like that if they don’t want to. Maybe she’s the reminder thatwecan find a way out of the dark, but it starts withwantingto. I don’t know how to move on from everything that’s happened, but you’re still here. So am I. We’re alive and we’re breathing. We’re living the hard part every day. So maybe…maybe together is how we get through this.”

Chapter

Fifteen