that happened tonight, I had finally become numb.
I finally started to just float through these events as if everything was happening to someone else. As if someone else’s lungs were burning, someone else had finger length bruises across their neck, someone else had bloodied fingernails and black and blue marks painting their skin.
As if my entire life was happening to someone else.
I hated that Ryder was separated from me. Hated it. But in the same moment I also knew I would get to see him again because of what he’d done for me. And if he wouldn’t have stepped in, I could very likely be back in that sick f-ing hotel room, with that sick f-ing bastard.
The cops approached me eventually, after everyone in the lobby and some from upstairs, pointed me out. They took my statement, in which the only thing I lied about was that I had been set up on this date by my pimp. I told them instead that I was here with some girlfriends and that we happened to meet them in the lobby.
And the only reason I lied about that was because nobody would believe me if I told the truth. Nobody would believe I was this stupid, watered down version of Greek mythology and fate had decided that I spend my endless existence whoring it up for the god of the sea.
Ugh. It sounded so crazy, even to me!
Finally Nix and my mom showed up. The police released me into their care and they loaded me into the back of Nix’s tiny sports car. My feet were propped up on the seat so I had enough room to breathe and my mom and Nix sat in tense silence all the way home.
They had spoken briefly to the cops, but all they came away with was a stern lecture on keeping better tabs of their daughter.
Their daughter. Like they were this happily married couple and I was a wayward teenager.
Finally once we were on Farnam and five blocks away from the apartment complex, Nix spoke to me, “Ivy, I had no idea Taylor was so God damned crazy. I never would have sent you in there, had I known what could have happened to you.” His hands were white as they gripped the steering wheel so impossibly tight and his jaw muscle popped in and out while his teeth ground together in fury.
I was shaking, I couldn’t stop. I wondered if I would ever stop.
I snorted, it was an ugly, accusing sound, but I was beyond caring. “Save it.”
“What did you say?” my mother turned on me, her eyes glittering with anger and some unidentifiable emotion that I didn’t even want to try to name.
“Taylor told me this was my punishment!” I screeched. “The minute he had me alone, he told me Nix set this up to punish me! Look at me! Look at me!” My voice was getting louder and louder, but it was still raspy from being choked and screaming so much.
And my mother did. She really looked at me. For maybe the first time in my life. Her eyes narrowed and then widened with horror. “Did you really ask him to do that to her, Nix? This was your way of setting her straight?”
“I didn’t know he would go this far. I asked him to scare her, I did not ask him to physically harm her.” When I snorted the second time, he grew impatient, “Listen, you’re more valuable to me flawless, so don’t think for a moment that I wanted him to touch your skin or your hair. He was obviously a loose cannon and I take that responsibility on myself.”
“Obviously,” I agreed with dry humor.
“How could you?” my mother hissed, turning to face Nix.
“Therapy didn’t work,” he answered simply and then shrugged his shoulder. And that was the only explanation we were going to get. That was the only explanation he had to give. He was in charge of us. He owned us. He could do that to me every night if he wanted to.
My mother faced forward again, arms crossed tightly across her chest. Nix dropped us off at the front door of our complex without so much as another apology. That was it, what he said in the car was as good as I was going to get and even after all the trauma of the night I was still going to have to see him on almost a daily basis. I was still going to have