Page 38 of Captive

That time, I was totally talking about the sex.

Later that day, Ezra and I talk to Hawthorne about our plan to try to get her to open up. He takes a little bit of convincing, but in the end, he agrees that it’s a good idea to speak with her about her past. If there’s someone out there who shouldn’t be walking the streets, it’s our duty to take out the trash. Our trash was taken out a long time ago; it’s only fair that Abby’s trash is taken out, too.

That said, Hawthorne declines on being a part of said talk. He thinks he’ll be too awkward and ruin it, or something. Whatever. Ezra and I don’t need him to hold our hands through it. It’s just a talk. It isn’t anything crazy.

We decide to order some pizza for dinner and talk to her after. You know, after her belly is full and she’s content. Everybody’s happier after some pizza.

The three of us are in the living room, with something mindless on the TV—something about a group of strangers who are in some villa together, dating each other for weeks on end. Not my kind of show, but Abby seems to love it.

It’s only when the three of us are no longer eating that Ezra and I exchange glances from across the couch. We sit on either side of Abby, boxing her in a bit thanks to the coffee table in front of us. There’s no easy path to retreat and exit the conversation. Not that we’re trying to force her to do something she doesn’t want to do, but sometimes the hardest thing a person can do is face the one thing they don’t want to.

Abby groans as she watches the TV. “Oh, no, girl, you should’ve stayed with your original guy! Leo is just saying what you want to hear so you’ll keep him around. He’s gonna drop you the moment some new bombshell strolls in—” It’s like she’s speaking another language, completely unaware that both Ezra and I are now staring at her.

Ezra tries to take the lead on the conversation he wants to have with her, “Uh, I was hoping we could talk, Abby, about this morning.”

Those words make her posture snap rigidly straight, and she’s measured in turning her head toward him. I can’t see her expression, but I’d bet a million bucks it ain’t a happy one. “I’d rather not,” she mutters. “Can we please just drop it already?”

“No.” This time I say it, and she whips her head in my direction. Yep, she’s frowning, and her silver gaze is squinted to the extreme. “We need to talk about it.” Ezra nods, and I take that as a cue to keep going. “Whatever it is, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all have things we’d rather not think about.”

“Or dream about,” Ezra says quietly.

Abby realizes right then she’s boxed in between us, and the only way to escape this conversation is to hop over the coffee table, and given her short legs, I don’t think doing so would be too easy for her. She’s stuck, and she knows it. “Fuck. This is why you guys got pizza, isn’t it? Why you let me turn on Soulmate Island?”

I would’ve said, not so long ago, that the idea of throwing a bunch of strangers into a villa and keeping them there for a month and half would never result in real relationships at the end. You couldn’t find your soulmate in a few weeks.

But now… well, after meeting Abby, I think I have a different view on it, as silly as it might be. Maybe it is possible to spend some time with someone else and just know, instinctively, deep down, they’re your person.

Fuck. I really am cheesing over here. I’m down bad. I’m simping hard—and you know what? I. Don’t. Fucking. Care.

“Listen,” Abby says, “I get it. You guys are curious, just like I’m curious about you. I figured you have some trauma llamas following you around, and I already learned what Hawthorne’s is. I get the picture, and because I get the picture, you guys should also get that same picture. We don’t need to talk about it.”

“Trauma llamas,” Ezra mutters. “That’s not what I’d call it.”

“Plain trauma doesn’t sound nearly as fun,” she says softly, shrugging her shoulders once.

“You said Brock didn’t hurt you,” I reference the man Ezra and I took out the night she fell out of the closet. “Did someone else? Is that why you were doing what you were doing?” Honestly, the thought of anyone hurting her fills me with a righteous, ungodly type of anger, the kind of fury I’ve only felt once in my life before, when my sister was taken from me.

Don’t get me wrong, I get pissed on behalf of all women and girls out there, all those vulnerable in society who can’t lift a hand and defend themselves, but what I’m feeling right now is ten times more intense.

I don’t want anyone to hurt Abby, not in the past, and certainly not in the fucking future. I’d do anything to stop something like that from happening, and I think Ezra would, too, even if he won’t admit it.

Abby folds her arms over her chest, and for a moment, it appears as if she’s not going to say a word, like she’s just going to sit there and stew in opposition to this intervention. But, after a good thirty seconds, she sighs and mutters, “No, no one hurt me like that. It’s not… it’s not like that for me, just as I’m assuming it isn’t like that for you guys.”

A vengeful vendetta. Revenge. A kind of cold, hard justice the law could not possibly dole out. Who wants to wait for a trial, pray that everything goes right, and then wait while whoever it is sits in prison for a few years?

You don’t get executed if you forced yourself on a woman. Hell, most murderers out there don’t ever get what they deserve. Those who raped and then killed? The old, crusty judges can still feel bad for them. It’s a losing game, and that’s why there are people like us out there, ready to rig it.

When Ezra, Hawthorne, and I are in the picture? People like that can only lose.

Sensing she doesn’t want to talk about it, I decide it’s time to share my own truth, the one that got me here to begin with. “I had a younger sister. Her name was Reign.”

Abby gives a sad, sorrowful smile. “Royal and Reign. I like that.”

“Yeah,” I say. “She was… I always tried to protect her growing up. She’d always get into trouble. She was only twelve when I had to go off to college. I told her to be good, to be smart.” I breathe in slowly, filling my lungs with an achingly large amount of air. “It was the last thing I ever said to her. Two weeks after I moved into the dorm, she went missing.”

Even though I’m not finished with the story, she must sense where it’s going, because she whispers, “I’m sorry.”

“There was some evidence she got tangled up with the wrong people. She went to meet someone she met online—turned out he was a thirty-five-year-old man who had connections to previous crimes. Kidnapping, sex trafficking. That sort of thing. There was a video of him meeting with her, but… she was never seen again. I don’t know if the bastard had a cop on his payroll or what, but it never went to trial.”