Loving Ashlynn (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 10 - One Step Forward (Faith POV)

"You place your trust in someone, and you hope that they don't betray it, but if that happens, and it doesn't always happen, but if it does, you stop hoping and you keep your trust close to yourself, because you think, the only person that won't hurt me, is me." My teeth grit, grinding against each other as the muscles in my jaw clenches.

"I'm going to say two more things about your Dmitri, after that, nothing more until you are ready to speak about him with me," I don't object, I'm never going to talk about Dmitri with her, a silent promise. "Dmitri lied to you about the war, the type of war he mentioned was a lie. There have been wars but none on American soil, none where you were found." Thankfully the pen in my hand was sturdy because I was ready to break it in half.

"I'm not going to lie to you, and some of the things I tell you, are going to be hard to hear, but I don't want to be another Dmitri in your life. So I'm going to tell you right off the bat Faith, that he lied to you, and he hurt you, and he did all of that with his words. You said he wasn't bad and he didn't mean to hurt you, but those are opinions. I didn't know your Dmitri, so I can't judge him or anything, but I want to concentrate on you. On Faith."

"The second thing is you are suffering from Stockholm syndrome, and that means that you've emotionally bonded with Dmitri, for various reasons which I will not touch upon, at this moment when in reality he was your captor Faith. I'm not going to just throw words and terms at you, but I will go for feelings and thoughts instead. I can't read your mind but I want you to think about this, you felt grateful to Dmitri because when he left he always came back? So you would do what you could to please him... right? Because inside, he hadn't forgotten you... and he was the only person that was coming to you, bringing you food... gifts... spending time with you." I couldn't blink, my mouth closed, my tongue darted out between my teeth and I bit down.

"But Faith, the only person that would come for you, where you were, was Dmitri. He made sure no one else had access to you. No one knew where you were, so no one else would come. When one other person was told to go to your location, given permission by Dmitri, Walsh came. If you were meant to live in that safe house, Walsh would have left you there. Patricia would have left you there. You wouldn't be seeing me right now. The Conrads, they wouldn't be opening their home to you, but most importantly, their hearts," whatever else was going on, I couldn't think about it, her words were like little pricks to my side, each one going deeper and deeper until I knew that if she continued, I wouldn't be able to hide my reaction.

I licked my lips, dry and cracked, "So we aren't going to speak about what Dmitri said or did, we are going to talk about you. What you've seen, what you've read, your questions, your experience... and my first question for you, is Walsh noted that there were many movies in your old home," I nodded woodenly, my guard dropping just a bit when she said no more talking about Dmitri.

"Which one was your favorite?" I blinked. This was really what we were going to talk about? My favorite movie? Still I couldn't help but want to answer her, "I liked Sixteen Candles," I whispered sure that my face flamed.

"What's your favorite part?"

"I have two... well lots of them actually," I replied, an impish grin on my face, "I liked the ending the most when they're sitting on the table, and the pink blush dress is really pretty too." Sonya smiled back, "okay what else?"