I never heard from Elliott again.

I never again kissed the lips of the boy who loved me. I never again saw those hazel eyes. I never again received an email from him, telling me he missed me.

As time went on, life became harder…tougher…darker.

Darker than I’d ever thought possible. The only drops of light were when Ray would call and email me over the years. Two times each week we’d FaceTime each other, and he’d ask me the same thing at the beginning and end of our conversations.

“You have a good day, Snow White?”

Some days those words were enough to bring me to tears, but I never let him hear me sniffling. “Yes,” I’d always tell him. “Everything’s fine.”

I’d lie every time, and he knew it was a lie every time, too, but he never pushed it. He knew how hard I was trying to make it work for Mama.

He knew how important it was for me to make her proud. He didn’t understand my need to make her proud, but he respected it.

While my music career was coming together, everything else around me was falling apart. I hated waking up knowing I was going to go into the studio and lose myself to an industry that wasn’t shaped to love me for me.

Trevor didn’t make it easier, either.

He loved to remind me of my flaws, and then he’d order Mama to have me fix them.

Ray was right about him—he was a snake. Everything about him made my skin crawl, from his wicked smirk to the way he sometimes touched my lower back when he introduced me to people.

When I told Mama how uncomfortable he made me, she scolded me.

“Everything he’s doing is for you, Jasmine. How dare you speak about him in that way?”

It was different with Trevor than with Ray for her. I noticed it every day. She always backed him up, no matter how wrong he’d been. She looked at Trevor with admiration. To her, he was everything she’d ever wished for. He was the opposite of Ray—which was why I hated him, and Mama loved him. She loved him so much, even though his love for her was mediocre at best.

All I wanted to do was get that same kind of attention from her.

That’s all I ever wanted.

Each day that passed, it grew easier to forget the good things, to forget the love, to forget warmth, to forget Elliott. When I was young, I thought I’d endured the hardest parts of my life. As I grew older, I would’ve given anything to return to my youth, to the days when a young, broken boy loved a young, damaged girl.

But life didn’t work like that. The world was determined to shatter every piece of me until my body became a monument of the scars life left behind.

* * *

I stayed in London for six years, and it was six years too long.

I’d given myself to pop music, even though my spirit yearned for soul. Every choice I’d ever made was for my mother. I allowed demeaning comments because she told me they were just words. I let grown men lay their hands on my shoulders, on my back, on my curves, because she said that was just part of the industry.

“Know your place, Jasmine,” she told me one night after I cried myself to sleep because one of the producers had squeezed my ass. “You knew what you were getting into.”

That was a lie, but she believed it.

I wasn’t a person anymore, at least not in her mind.

Sometimes I’d catch Mama smiling at me when I performed, but I knew it wasn’t really me she saw. It was the brand.

Mama loved the brand, yet she never really loved me.

I often wondered if she saw the men around us and the way they looked at me. I wondered if she noticed their long embraces, their wandering hands, their low whistles. I wondered if she ignored them because she had her eyes on the prize…because she wanted success more than anything in the world…because she didn’t want to bite the hands that were feeding her.

She’d known her place.

She’d known what she was getting into.

I wondered if she cared that my skin crawled and how my throat burned, that I took long showers to wash away the day and cried myself to sleep each night. I wondered if she cared about me at all.

She was a business woman who ignored the shadows behind closed doors. Her focus was on my talents and increasing them each day. More talents meant more opportunities, more opportunities meant more fame, and more fame meant Mama might be proud of me.

Each day that passed, I stopped caring a little more about her pride. Each day that passed, I kept saying my new favorite word.

No.

It never got easier, saying that word. It never became numb or meaningless when I said it to someone who gave himself permission to place his hands on me. The way eyes looked me up and down when I walked into a room…the way they’d judge me on everything I was and everything I wasn’t…the way they’d whisper as I stood still in the room.

She’s sexy. She’s hot. I bet singing ain’t all her mouth can do.

I’d just turned twenty-two, and I knew mortification more than the average person. I knew what it felt like to stand in a room, fully clothed, and still be told that I called the attention to myself. To be called a tease when I did absolutely nothing at all. I knew what it felt like to be told I’d find more success if I showed more tits and ass during shows.

I always showed up and did my job—nothing more, nothing less. I kept my clothes on, I kept my voice low, and I kept saying it.

No.

No.

Stop it.

Don’t.

But that didn’t stop them from belittling me. That didn’t stop them from taking me from show to show, meeting to meeting, and presenting me as if my body was a bargaining chip. As if I were a prized possession, not a human being. Mama allowed it all, too. I was her star, her shining light. I was going to do everything she’d been unable to ever accomplish, because that’s what kids are supposed to do, as she’d told me numerous times.

We’re supposed to be better than our parents.

I am already better than my parent.

If I had children, I’d never treat them that way. I’d love them. I’d protect them. No matter what.

I hadn’t signed up for this.

I hadn’t known what I was getting myself into when I entered the music industry.

I signed up for Mama, for her love. Her respect. Her heart. Over time, I’d realized it was never going to come my way. No matter how hard I tried.

In every story ever told, a person reached a limit. Everyone had a breaking point, and I reached mine July 30^th.

On July 30^th, the voices in my head became too loud. On July 30^th, I packed my bags in the middle of the night. On July 30^th, my heart screamed at me to run, so I ran.

I ran as fast as my legs allowed.

I ran as far as I could go.

Then I ran some more.

I bought a one-way ticket.

I sat on an airplane.

On July 31^st, 2017, with pain in my chest and scars on my soul, I finally went home.