Jennie POV
I stared at the ceiling, at the peeling paint above me, and wondered how I had ended up here once more.
I lifted my head from the lumpy pillow and looked around, brow furrowed. I hadn't gone anywhere. I was still trapped here, cruelly ripped away from the life I had only caught a single glimpse of.
That small beautiful life with Lisa was the hardest part. If Kai had just taken me straight from that awful place to this awful place, I might have been more amenable. Maybe, just maybe, I would have gone along with it, have had convinced myself that it was so much better than what I had been forced to endure before so it must be romantic. But I had seen what life could have been like if I had just stayed with Lisa, if I had found the nerve in myself to accept that I was worthy of her affections and the life She brought with her. And that just made this so much harder to handle
I wasn't sure how long it had been since Kai had taken me. A week, maybe more? The days seemed to blur into one another, as I spent most of my time sleeping to avoid him, pulling the covers up over my head and squeezing my eyes shut until I slipped into unconsciousness. Not that my sleep had stopped him before, but for some reason, he was approaching me a little differently now - as though he was willing to give me some space, some time. Not that much space, of course, as he still had me stuck in this dingy apartment, but he was treating me like I was an errant lover more than the exploited teenager he had dragged into his awful place and beaten and raped for years.
I couldn't have felt less for him - well, any thing less than the utter disdain that filled my system every time I looked at him - but he seemed to adore me, carefully lying next to me while I pretended to sleep and stroking my hair, growing furious every time I would suggest leaving. For Kai, this was love or the closest thing he had known to it. And I had no idea why I was the focus of his attention.
No, that wasn't true. I was beginning to understand why I was here. When he had lost the brothel, his entire life had been torn away from him, everything that had given him power and control vanishing in a second with out a moment's notice. When he had fled that place, he had told, he had been helpless:
"I've never felt that way in my life, Jennie," he spoke, reaching out to touch my face gently. His fingers were clammy on my skin, and I fought the urge to jerk away, knowing that his tenderness could morph to hard edges if I made the wrong move. I sat there, not saying a word, looking at him and waiting for him to continue.
"So powerless," he shook his head, finally letting his hand drop from my face. "And I thought... I tried to remember the last time I'd felt powerful without the old home, you know?"
He called it the old home', as though it had been anything other than a brothel that he had used to exploit innocent women like me. Kai refused to see the evil in what he had done, and sometimes I wanted to catch him by the shoulders and scream it into his face. Did he really believe he had done nothing wrong? Was he that sick? How much did a man have to move from his morals to sit there and talk as though years of violently exploiting women had been home for them? I swallowed my words, as I had done a dozen times over the course of the last few days, and waited for him to continue.
"And I thought of you," he reached out to take my hand, and I looked down at his fingers touching mine. I could physically see that our skin was in contact, but it was like I had floated from my body and couldn't feel it at all. I looked him in the eyes, pleading for some distant human part of him to see how much I craved my freedom, but I came up a dead blank. He really thought this was romance. That his feelings of power had come from love, not from the literal dominion he had held over me. "You always made me feel so strong, Jennie," he continued. "And I'm so glad we're finally back together...”
I had tuned out of the conversation then, as I often did when he began to profess his love for me. Usually, I just kept quiet and let him speak, and found that that seemed to satisfy him well enough. He didn't actually seem to want me to love him back, just to hear that he loved me, endlessly and without fail, as though that love would parlay itself into his redemption. As though anything he felt for me was close to love...
At least he had refrained from raping me for the time being. I supposed that it would rather break his fantasies of love and mutual adoration if he had to pin me to the bed like he had done before to have his way. He seemed set on seducing me, no matter how many times I bluntly turned down his advances. Every time he laid a hand on me, I felt as though I wanted to crawl out of my own skin, leave my body behind for him to do with what he wanted while my brain floated somewhere else, somewhere blissful, somewhere far from this.
Back with Lisa and the safety of her arms. That was where I wanted to go. As I stared at the ceiling above me, I willed myself back into that bed with her, before I had made the choice to leave her behind. I had been so convinced I didn't deserve that life, the one that She was offering me. I was so sure She deserved a better girl, someone like the one who had texted her. Maybe this was where I belonged, and everything that had happened with Lisa had been a break from reality, not the start of it. She hadn't come looking for me, or if she had, hadn't done a very good job finding me.
And what were the chances that I would get saved twice? I had had my chance to get out of this awful business, out of Kai's grasp, and I had been so scared by it that I'd ended up running away from my chance. It wasn't like they had a whole brothel to track now. It was just me and Kai in this dingy little apartment. Why would they think of looking for me this time? They had probably assumed that I had just decided to flee to somewhere on my own accord, to strike out in the world alone. And they were good people, so they would let me.
Rosé was so nice to me. On that first night, when she had taken me out of that place and bundled me into the back of her car and promised me that she would do everything she could do to take care of me in the face of what I had been through. I had felt numb against the cold evening air, unable to believe the truth. I was so certain that it was a trick and I would end back in the brothel sooner rather than later. And, well, I had managed to make that happen. Fleeing out on to the street in the middle of the night, it was like I had been running back into the arms of my old life, letting it hook its dark fingers around me and draw me back in once more.
I heard Kai at the door, pacing back and forth, probably trying to listen to see if I was awake. God knows what he wanted from me this time.
This time as he pushed the door open slowly to check if I was awake, I felt a swell of resolve. Lisa was fresh in my mind, her hands caressing my hair, her mouth covering mine, our bodies meeting and wrapping around each other like roots winding in the earth. Every time Kai touched me, it pushed those memories a little further back, making it a lit tle harder for me to find them again.
I lifted my head to look at him as he entered. I had barely moved all day - maybe if I stayed so indolent, I would gain weight, and he would be disgusted by me. I would have done any thing if it meant guaranteeing his rejection. I had managed to keep him at bay with excuses till now, but at that moment, I felt a swell of anger at the thought of the life he was keeping me from. I wanted to put up a fight. I wanted to make it hard for him.
"Jennie?" He asked quietly, moving towards me and perching on the end of the bed. I whipped my knees up to my chest, pulling away from him, putting as much space between us as I could manage.
"Leave me alone," I told him, voice hard. I didn't look at him, but I could feel his body stiffen as I spoke.
"Jennie, I just want to talk to you," he reached out to take my hand, and I pulled it away. Glaring off into space, I dared him to say another word to me. I wanted to reject him. I wanted to prove to him and to myself that there was nothing here and that I was bold enough to admit it.
"I don't want to talk," I replied.
"Are you tired?" He offered, clearly hoping that there was some reasoning behind my harshness. I shook my head.
"I just want to be left alone," I shot back, speaking each word as clearly and calmly as I could. My body was trembling - this kind of bluntness could only end badly for me, and yet, I felt as though the worst had already happened. There was nothing he could take from me that he hadn't already taken. I had nothing left to lose.
He let out a long sigh, and I could tell that he was frustrated by my lack of willingness. He was set on convincing me that he was a changed man, that things were different now and that I could trust him. And I could use that to my advantage. Every time I pressed him, pushed him, I could feel that hot flash of anger running through his body, the over heated blood in his veins yearning to do me harm, but he held back. I had no idea how long that would last for, but I planned to exploit it as long as I could.
"Fine," he got to his feet slowly, as though giving me the chance to concede and speak with him. "Get some sleep, if that's what you need so badly."
And with that, he turned and walked out of the room, leaving me there alone once more. A pulse of victory at what I had just done faded into a grey ball of grief as I realized that no matter how many times I turned him down, how many times I pushed him away, I would still be trapped here. I tucked my hand be neath my head and stared at the wall, imagin ing a window appearing in it, a window that looked out onto the street below, where Lisa was waiting for me. And for a moment it was so real I could almost feel it, and I found a smile curling up my lips, my mind soothed for an instant - until I heard a loud metallic crash from next door, and came jolting back to reality.
"Fuck!"
I heard Shekhar shout from the next room, and squeezed my eyes shut once more. He was angry. It was the first time I had really seen that familiar fury in him since I had been brought to this place, and I recognized it at once, the harshness in his tone, and the indis criminate rage in his actions. I heard another crash, what sounded like a pan being hurled to the floor, and I did everything I could to pre tend that it wasn't happening. As I lay there in bed, I focused on picturing a life far removed from this one, a life that was so close I could almost taste it. I hoped that one day it would be real again.
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