SEVENTEEN

BELLA

When I woke up, for the briefest of moments, I thought everything was okay. I was snuggled into someone, blanket over us both. His chest was rising and lowering under my arm and I sighed with happiness. Then that moment was over. My mind laughed at my attempt to feel good, sending a reminder of everything that had happened coursing through me in under a second. I’d been kidnapped. I’d been trapped in a cellar. The man who’d done it to me, he was there next to me. Last night, he’d…we’d…I blushed furiously, all breath leaving my lungs, my heart seeming to stop entirely.

How had that happened? How had I let it happen? I could lie and say he forced me to do it, gave me no choice, threatened me into submitting to him. But the truth was that I wanted to. When he told me to strip, I did so gladly, the shackles of repression and modesty falling away from me. He was a caveman and I was his cavewoman, his to use, to protect, to…to…to fuck. The thought of it made me cringe. That’s what he’d done. He’d fucked me. There was no other way of putting it.

The hardest thing to cope with was the fact that it had felt so damn good. His cock inside me had felt like the greatest thing in the world, so different to the fumblings I’d gone through with my two previous boys. For that’s all they were in comparison to him. They were boys and he was a man, a real man, a man who knew what he wanted and took it and to hell with the consequences.

He groaned and I turned to find him putting a hand to his forehead as he sat up. “I’m a dead man,” he muttered, blinking and coughing as he looked across at me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, worried on his behalf. “You keep saying that.”

“I was told to keep my hands off you,” he said. “I think I fucked up.”

“Who told you that? Who told you not to touch me?”

“Your father.”

He carried on talking but I’d stopped listening. The word father rattled around my head, echoing louder and louder. My father had told him not to touch me. But that meant…

“Is my father alive?” I asked, sitting bolt upright.

He nodded. “Shit, I’m dead already. I might as well tell you. What does it matter now?” He fell silent for a moment before continuing, as if deciding how to word it. “I know you thought he was dead. I did too. But a week ago he got in touch, out of nowhere. Told me he wanted to hire me to keep you safe.”

“He hired you to keep me safe?” There was something he wasn’t telling me but I couldn’t work out what it was.

“Told me you were in danger, gave me your address, told me he’d bought the house next door for me. All I had to do was move in, get you in the cellar and keep you there until he could arrange to get you out of the country. He was going to come and get you but things have changed.” He looked down at my body before saying it again. “Things have changed.”

“But why does it matter if you touch me? I don’t understand.”

“He knows what I am.”

“What? What does that mean? What are you?”

“I’m a bad person. He knows that. I’ve done things in the past. Bad things. He wouldn’t want me corrupting you.”

“But kidnapping me is fine? What the fuck?”

“It was only temporary, just to keep you safe until he could get you out of the country.”

“But why couldn’t you tell me it was him? I don’t get why you had to keep it secret.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know but I can take a guess.”

“Go on.”

“Whoever is after you is after him. If you knew he was alive and they got to you first, you might tell them. They’d know he was alive and then all hell would break loose. He’s been dead for a long time. People might get a bit pissed to find out he’s pretty lively for a corpse.”

His watch suddenly started beeping. “What’s that for?” I asked.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m late for work.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

He shook his head. “First rule of this work. Keep up appearances.” He stood up, scooping up his clothes. “I’ll be back tonight. I promise I’ll answer all your questions then.”

“You’re just going to leave me here?”

“It won’t be for much longer. He said he’d be in touch sometime today.”

“It’s not that.”

“What then? Come on, Bella, I need to go.”

“I…I’ll miss you.”

His face changed, as if that was the last thing he’d expected to hear me say. Until the words came out of my mouth, I wasn’t expecting to say it either. But I did. And it was true. I would miss him.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said, running naked up the stairs. I watched him go, taking in the sight of that magnificent body of his. After the door closed, I slumped back on the bed, torn between two thoughts. One was that my father was alive. The very idea should have consumed me. But it was having to compete with the fact that I’d been fucked by Jack. My father was alive. It was aggressive, violent sex, yet he’d kissed me so gently afterwards. It was incredible. My father was alive. My body was still aching from what he’d done to me. My father was alive. Jack wasn’t supposed to have touched me. My father was alive. What the hell was going to happen when he found out what Jack had done?

I leaned down the side of the bed, picking up the books he’d brought me. Proust, Milton, Hugo. Not what I’d have expected him to own. I’d managed Les Miserables when I was in school though it was a slog. I decided to give it another go.

Whenever something is overwhelming me, I have one skill. A skill that is more useful than it sounds. I can lose myself in a book. No matter what thoughts are churning around in my head, once I’m immersed in a story, I stay there, forgetting the real world so completely, it’s a wrench to ever return to it. I devoured the book, managing to forget about Jack, forget about my father, forget about everything but Jean Valjean and the injustices he underwent in search of salvation.

I lost track of time while I read, I forgot about feeling hungry, I forgot everything but Cosette and Gavroche and Eponine and I understood for the first time why she was willing to sacrifice herself for Gavroche. She loved him enough to do it. Even with no hope of reciprocation, she sacrificed herself for him. That thought stuck with me, the things people do for the ones they love. I was still mulling on the idea when Jack returned, heading down the cellar steps with a box in his arms and a strange look on his face.