I wake up, but I don’t wake up. When I open my eyes, maybe an hour later, maybe ten days, my entire world is sweating freezing searing broken pain rolling in waves along my skin.

He’s standing next to the bed. I think he’s wearing a suit, a bowtie hanging loose around his throat. He smiles at me, murderer, killer. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” I croak.

He’s wearing a hoodie, the same hoodie as Leo. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, whatever.” I try to sit up, but I’m chained to the bed. “Why can’t I move?”

He frowns. “You can move.” He’s wearing a black wetsuit like a surfer. “Try to sit up.”

I groan and manage to roll from my side to my back. “Leo? What’s going on?”

He crouches down next to me, his mouth near my ear. “Leo’s gone,” he whispers. “You’re with me now. You’re with Julian.”

I snap my head to the side, but he’s not there anymore. I roll over and get sick into a trashcan that’s on the floor. I hug it for a few minutes before rolling back over. Someone puts a wet rag on my forehead.

He frowns down at me. I recognize him now. Julian is handsome, way more handsome than I realized. “Taking care of me?” I croak. “How long’s it been?”

“Most of the day now,” he says. “You’ve been in and out.”

“Really?” I shudder as a wave of nausea washes over me. It passes and I’m not forced to get sick in that damn trash can. I get the sense this has happened before.

“You’re doing good.” His hand rests on my shoulder. “You’re doing really good. Just try and sleep.”

“Sleep,” I grumble. “Always telling me to sleep. I’ve slept enough.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” he whispers, and I meet his eyes. Leo’s staring back at me, his face twisted into that stupid, manic grin of his.

Take the shot and shut the fuck up, you stupid bitch.

“Quiet and high,” I whisper. “That’s how he liked me.”

I feel the nausea again before Julian can answer. I roll over and get sick again. Dizziness assaults me from all sides and I have to close my eyes to get myself together.

It’s dark when I open them up again a second later. I’m lost, tangled up in something. I struggle, writhing around, until there’s a voice nearby.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.” Another body in the bed, massive and looming over me. For a second, I can’t breathe.

And then he touches me, hands steadying me.

“It’s okay,” he says. I blink up at Julian’s face. I barely recognize him. I should hate him, despise him, but right now I feel like he’s the only thing keeping me sane.

I reach out and find his hand. It’s right there, big and warm. “Please,” I whisper. His face looms closer. “Please,” I say again.

“What do you need?”

“I need a shot.”

I meet his gaze, and the whole room spins, but his face remains steady, unchanging. “No,” he says.

“Please.” I reach for him, for his chest, his hair. I grab at him, my hands feeling his skin and his hard muscles. “I can’t do this, I’m going to die without the stuff. Please, I’m begging you, I need it.”

He pushes me back, gently but firmly. He pins me to the bed, holds me there, his body on top of mine. I’m breathing deep, sweating, panting, ready to get sick or cry or scream or both.

“No,” he says. “Go back to sleep.”

“Please,” I whisper. Tears roll down my eyes. “I hate this. I hate this. I want to die. Just let me have a little bit.”

“No.” His face is impassive, steady, in complete control.

I feel my world roll around me.

I’m five years old. My mom stares down her nose at me. “You can’t leave the house like that.”

I’m wearing my favorite shirt and my favorite tights and my favorite purple tutu. I feel like a ballerina and a princess, all rolled into one. “Why?”

“Because you look like a little bitch.” Her eyes narrow. “Do you want to grow up to be a whore, Kaylee?”

“No,” I say, even though I don’t understand.

“Good. Get changed.” As I’m walking back to my room, I hear her call out behind me.

“And if I see that tutu again, I’ll burn it.”

I’m ten when my dad first hits me. He says it’s for my own good, but I don’t believe him. I come home covered in mud after playing with a neighbor boy in a nearby stream. He gives me one look before he hits me, slaps me across the face.

It shocks me more than it hurts me.

“Why did I just do that?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” I choke back my tears. He yells when I cry.

“You got your clothes dirty, and your bitch of a mother is going to take it out on me. Do you get that? She’s going to fucking bitch and moan at me, and it’s your fault.”

“I’m sorry, daddy.”

He hits me again. “Sorry doesn’t help.”

I can’t stop crying when he sends me to my room.

I’m thirteen when a teacher asks me about the bruises. She brings me in to see the guidance counselor, and together they ask me to lift up my shirt. I do it, even though I don’t want to. I show them the bruises on my stomach, my sides, my back.

They exchange looks. “How did you get those?” my teacher asks, a nice, older woman named Mrs. Bouvier.

“I don’t know,” I lie.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” the guidance counselor says. He’s younger than Mrs. Bouvier, and I don’t remember his name anymore. “We won’t tell anyone.”

“I fell. In the creek.”

“Kay, that isn’t true. How did you get the bruises?” Mrs. Bouvier moves closer to me.

“I fell,” I say, “I’m not lying. I really, honestly fell!”

Mrs. Bouvier and the guidance counselor exchange looks.

“We can’t force you to tell us the truth,” Mrs. Bouvier says slowly. “But please, Kay, if someone is… if someone is hurting you, at home or somewhere else, you can tell us. We can help.”

“I fell,” I say, feeling a panic set in. I can feel my father hitting me with his special sock. It’s just a white gym sock full of batteries, but it’s special because that’s his favorite thing to beat me with. He never hit me anywhere the bruises would easily show, and I don’t know how Mrs. Bouvier caught me. But Daddy said that if I ever told, they’d take me away and put me in a home, and I’d never see my friends ever again.

I keep my mouth shut. I go back to class, and I never talk about the bruises again.

I blink at the light. It’s early, or maybe it’s late. I can’t really tell. I shift and for a second, I think I’m going to get sick, but the room stabilizes and I’m okay. I manage to sit up and take a few deep breaths.

I don’t feel like death anymore. Well, I feel awful and I’m still sweating, but I’m not on the verge of literal death at this exact moment. My stomach even rumbles a little bit, which I think is a good sign.

I look around the room. It’s a mess. There are damp rags on the bed next to me, a trashcan on the floor a few feet away from my face, and trash piled up in a far corner. As far as I can tell, the place is empty.

Slowly, I get out of bed. It hurts like hell and I think I’m going to pass out, but I manage to make it to the bathroom. I look in the mirror, at my hollow and sunken eyes, at my sweat-drenched hair and brow, and I wonder how I got here. How I let it get so far.

But I know the answer to that. I look away from my reflection, unable to face it any more than a few seconds at a time.

I jump when I hear the main door open and shut. I manage to move stiffly toward the bed, but only make it as far as the bathroom doorframe.

Julian stands there with a white takeout container in his right hand, and a coffee in his left.

“Holy shit,” he says. “You’re alive.”

I give him a weak little smile. “Yeah, I’m alive.”

He laughs, his handsome face lighting up. I don’t think I’ve seen him laugh before. He actually looks relieved, like he genuinely thought I was going to die in that bed.

“Holy shit,” he says again, putting his stuff down and hurrying to my side. “Come on, let’s sit.”

He moves me over to the table and lowers me into a chair. I sigh and stretch my legs out. I don’t feel good, exactly, but I feel less like death than the last time I remember being conscious.

“I really was worried there for a second.” He turns the takeout container toward me and opens it. Eggs, toast, and bacon. It’s almost revolting how delicious it smells. I take the toast and nibble it. “You must be starving.”

“Starving?” I ask, and shrug. “Yeah, I’m hungry, I guess.”

“You’ve had fuck-all to eat for the past three days.”

He says it so casually, so nonchalantly, like it doesn’t mean anything. He sips his coffee and sits in the chair across from me.

“Three days?” I ask, trying to keep the panic from my voice.

He nods. “Been in and out of it for three days,” he confirms. “The worst was the second day.”

“Three days,” I whisper. “It feels like… it feels like hours to me.”

“I’m not surprised. You weren’t exactly… with it for most of the time.” His face betrays something, and I’m not sure what.

It takes me a second to recognize pity. I haven’t seen pity on someone’s face while looking at me in a long time.

I don’t like it.

I glare at him and take another bite of toast. It’s taking everything I have not to scarf down this entire meal, but I know I’ll regret it if I do. I’m still borderline right now, although obviously I’m improving.

We sit in silence for a minute or two. I chew on the toast, eating it slowly, deliberately, making sure I’m not going to get sick again. He sips his coffee and watches me the whole time.

I glance around the room. He’s been taking care of me for three days. Clearly he hasn’t left very much, based on the number of takeout boxes stacked up near the door. The maid service hasn’t been here, either, otherwise it would probably be a little bit neater and cleaner. That means he’s been doing everything, taking me to the bathroom, cleaning out that bucket, wiping wet rags on my face, probably getting me to drink water.

I can’t even imagine what it was like for him, taking care of a total stranger like that. I’m just some random junkie girl, and yet he did all this for me, even if I didn’t want him to. I remember begging him for drugs, pleading with him, crying until the world went black again. I can recall flashes of other things, some of them probably not real, most of them dreams. Most of them not the sort of things I want to remember.

I finish the toast and take a cautious bite of egg before turning the container halfway toward him. He arches an eyebrow as I offer him the fork. “Go ahead, this was supposed to be yours.”

“I can get more. You need to eat.”

I shrug and have another bite. “Can’t promise I’ll keep it down.”

“That’s okay,” he says softly. “I can handle it.”

I meet his gaze for a second, concerned and intense and handsome. I have to look away.

“You talk a lot in your sleep,” he says suddenly.

“Oh, yeah?” This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. “What did I say?”

“Shit about…” He hesitates. “Shit about your family. About your old man.”

I can feel my cheeks turning red. “What did I say?”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Really fucked you up, didn’t he?”

We stare at each other for half a minute. If anyone else asked me a question like that, I think I’d try and punch them in the eye. Instead, coming from him, it just feels… honest. Weirdly honest.

“Yeah, he did,” I say finally. “Really fucked me up.”

He nods, like he understands. “Eat up.”

I watch as he stands up, coffee in hand. He walks over to the bathroom.

“Where are you going?” I ask him.

“Shower,” he says. “You’re next, if you’re up for it.”

“And then what?”

“Then you tell me your story.” He stares me down, daring me to challenge him. “Long version or short version, doesn’t matter. But I want to know how it all turns out.”

I smile at him, almost sickeningly sweet. “You know how it turns out. The princess becomes a junkie.”

He laughs softly, but it’s not funny. “Guess so. Anyway, there are gaps. I want to hear it.”

“How do you know I won’t run?” I ask him as he goes to shut the door.

“You’re not through this yet,” he says. “Run and there won’t be anyone to take care of you.”

“I could find the stuff,” I say slowly. “I’m good at that.”

He shrugs. “Go ahead. Get back on it. Throw away all this suffering you just went through for nothing. If that’s who you are, you weren’t worth it anyway.” He shuts the door behind him and I hear the lock click shut.

I sit at the table, staring at the door. The shower starts and I hear him get in.

I could run. It’d be easy to run. I could sneak out and he wouldn’t even know I was gone until he finished his shower. I could hide for a while, wait for him to move on, and then get my life back. I don’t have to be this psycho’s captive. He killed Leo. He carried me like I was luggage.

I stand up as a fresh wave of nausea hits me. I stumble over to the bed and climb back in. I curl up on my side, legs almost entirely up to my chest. I shut my eyes.

I’ll stick around for a little bit longer, but not because he wants me to.

I wake up a few hours later. Julian’s sitting at the table again, watching some baseball game on TV. He notices me stirring and looks over.

“You alive?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I croak, sitting up.

“Fell back asleep.” He stretches a little.

“How long?”

“Most of the day.”

I sigh. “Shit.”

“It’s fine. You’re healing. Better to sleep through it than suffer through it.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

He grins and stands. “Bathroom?”

“Please.”

He helps me up and gets me moving. Once in there, I make him leave and shut the door behind him. I take care of myself, wash my hands, and stare into the mirror again. I hate the gaunt-looking shell that stares back.

He’s waiting for me in the main room. “Come on, sit,” he says, leading me to the table again. “It’s story time.”

“Story?”

He nods as I get comfortable and sits across from me. “Earlier, I told you that you had to fill in some gaps for me.” He hesitates. “What happened?”

I frown and look away. I don’t know why I’d tell this guy my story, why he even deserves to hear any of it, and yet… I want to. For some reason I want to open up to someone in a way I haven’t in a very, very long time.

“I ran away from home at sixteen,” I say softly, and he watches me carefully, listening with rapt attention. “I didn’t have any money, any plans, nothing. My dad got done beating me again, and I was finished, fed up with it all. I ran away from home and I never looked back.”

I take a deep breath and let it out, remembering those first few hours. The terror, the confusion, and the pure joy. I’d never see my father or my mother again. The abusive bastard and the manipulative bitch. I was through with them, free and clear.

“I hitchhiked out to the next town over, which was no small feat. We were in the middle of nowhere, right smack dab in the center of Kansas with nothing but rolling plains and hicks for miles. I made it though, and I panhandled for three days until I got enough money for a bus ticket to New York.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I imagined kind people ready to lend a helping hand to a girl in need. Instead, I found a bunch of nothing. Nobody cared about just another random street girl showing up out of nowhere. I panhandled, but it wasn’t the same. It was harder, people didn’t care, and there were… other problems.”

Julian raises an eyebrow at that. “Other problems?”

“Other groups,” I say, thinking back. “Groups of panhandlers, homeless guys, addicts, hookers, all that. Eventually I fell in with this anarchist collective that lived in an old abandoned church. They used to break into houses and rob people blind. They taught me how to be self-sufficient, how to survive. I knew they were bad people, fucked-up people even, but that didn’t stop me. I couldn’t go home.

“I took my first shot at seventeen. That got me hooked, and I never looked back. I’ve been addicted for five years now. Anyway, the leader of that group tried to rape me one night with a pogo stick, so I scratched his eye out and moved boroughs. I bounced around for a while, staying in shelters when I could, and I even had a job for like a few months.”

I smile, remembering that time. It was only about a year, but it was a good year. I owned nothing and I was doing heroin every single day just to keep my head above water, but I was happy. I was free.

“I met Leo a few days after my eighteenth birthday. We met in a club, and he offered to buy me a drink. It was so cheesy, but I was bored and broke and he had a nice smile, so I let him. Turned out, he was an even bigger junkie than me, and we just sort of… fell in together.” I stop for a second and take a deep breath. “I never loved him,” I say finally. “He was a controlling piece of garbage but he had drugs and money and an apartment, and I needed all that stuff.”

“How’d you end up out here?” Julian asks.

“Leo’s family owns a house nearby,” I say. “Or at least he said they did. We came up here to stay in it, because we got evicted from his old place. He said they were never home. Turns out, he can’t remember which house, if the house ever existed. Instead, we started robbing people, found a new heroin connection, and never looked back.”

I stop my story there, since there’s not much more to say. We got a place, he got into the dealing business, and now here we are, with Leo dead and me kicking the habit. I never would’ve guessed that this is how it would end up, not in a million years.

I don’t miss Leo. He beat the shit out of me almost as bad as my daddy used to, but not so often. He got me drugs and sometimes made me laugh, and that was enough for a long time. Now though, I wouldn’t go back to that, not for anything. I was trapped with Leo just like I’m trapped here with Julian, except that was a prison that I built for myself.

“So you’ve done some fucked-up shit,” Julian says finally after a short silence. “So the fuck what?”

I blink, a little surprised. “I hurt people. Stole from them.”

“You ever kill anyone? You ever beat someone into a pulp with your own fists?”

“No,” I say softly.

“No,” he echoes. “You haven’t. You were selfish and a junkie but you were also surviving. You get that, right? You did bad things, but you had to do bad things just to make it through the day.” He leans across the table, eyes fierce. “You’re not guilty, Kay. You don’t know what guilty is.”

I stare back at him, blinking. Emotions war inside of me. Anger and disbelief and shock and sadness. “You don’t know me,” I say softly. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” He shrugs and slowly stands up. “But I know you’re hurting and you’re beating yourself up inside. You probably think you deserve all this.”

I don’t respond. I just glare at him, pissed that he’s saying this, pissed that he’s right.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. You’re here and we have some work to do.”

“Work?” I ask as he heads to the door.

“That’s right.” He stops with his hand on the knob. “I’m gonna go grab you something to eat. If you leave, I will hunt you down and break you.” He stares for a second, letting that linger. “Understood?”

I laugh softly, shaking my head. “What happened to me not deserving all this?”

“Whether you deserve it or not doesn’t change the fact that we’re still up shit creek. Do you understand?”

“I understand, asshole.”

He cracks a genuine smile. “Good. Be back soon.”

He leaves me alone in the room. I stare at the door, wondering where he goes to get this stuff, but I’ll find out eventually. I briefly consider running away, but I stagger to my feet and climb back into bed instead, waiting for my latest captor to come back and save me.