Knocking back my daily dose of methadone, I watch as the doctor scribbles notes on a pad. It doesn’t provide the instant numbness the heroin did, wearing off before the next fix and leaving me strung out.

This morning I woke up alone suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Waking up alone with no one to reach for you is something most people dread. It’s the sting of rejection, the fear of being lonely that makes people think they need to have someone in their bed. I was never one of those people. Maybe if my life had been different I would’ve been. For me, waking up alone was a blessing. Though they didn’t happen often, those mornings were when I felt most safe and at peace.

No one bothered me.

No one hurt me.

No one owned me.

It was those mornings when I belonged to no one other than myself.

Yet, today when I woke up by myself, I didn’t feel any of the things I once craved.

Expecting to find Deuce on the couch beside me, I opened my eyes only to learn he had left me. Lonely and out of place, I glanced around the living room and found Skylar staring at me. Shaken to my core, I momentarily forgot where I was and thought we were still in that cabin. I immediately bolted up from the couch and reached for her. The instinct to protect her was as natural as it was the moment I first laid eyes on her, but this time I knew she was my niece.

My brother’s daughter.

She and I weren’t Rush’s prisoners anymore.

We were saved and back where we belonged.

Well, at least she was. I wasn’t so sure where I belonged. That realization caused bits and pieces of the last week to flash before my eyes, reminding me how we got here. The memory reel ended with a movie about outlaw lovers and Deuce stretched out beside me.

Last night, my nightmare got the best of me and sent me running, but it was him who comforted me. It’s strange to trust a man without knowing much about him and even stranger not to feel threatened by him. For the first time in a long time I felt safe, safe enough to confess some of my truths to a man who has every reason in the world to hate me. After all, if I hadn’t told Rush about the drugs, he and Skylar never would have wound up in that cabin with me.

Those thoughts left me reeling and my body started to betray me as yesterday’s dose of methadone wore. I escaped to the bathroom, took a shower and dressed in more borrowed clothes. When I was finished, Lacey was waiting for me and brought me here, to the outpatient facility across from the hospital. Now here I am, waiting for the medicine to hit me, hoping it’s enough to get me through until tomorrow. Since I am new to the program, they’re being cautious. People overdose on methadone just the same way they do on street drugs. Once the doctor can regulate my dose, I should be able to function normally—whatever that means.  By the time I find out, they’ll start weening me off and I’ll be back to square one. Deuce was wrong, there was no light at the end of this tunnel and the match I lit would likely burn to ash before I ever found my way.

Like yesterday, the doctor logs my vitals and warns me of the possible side effects of the methadone. He proceeds to schedule me in for the same time tomorrow before he tells me I’m free to go. Lacey is outside, ready to take me across the street to an appointment she scheduled for me—an appointment I didn’t ask for and one I was dreading more than anything.

“How do you feel?” she asks, breaking the silence.

“Peachey,” I bite back, not really in the mood to converse.

“Give it a chance, Ally. I promise you’ll start to feel better soon,” she says as we cross the street. Feeling the intensity of her stare, I snap my head in her direction and peer back at her.

“What?”

“I know you’re nervous about going to therapy,” she starts.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I snap. “Not a thing. I’m not like you, Lacey. I don’t have an illness you can fix with a pill or a session on some strangers couch.”

“You’re right, but ignoring what happened to you, keeping it bottled up inside isn’t going to make it better. It’s not going to erase all the years you lost and the longer you hold onto those demons, the harder it will be for you to free them,” she insists.

As much as I wanted to argue, I didn’t have it in me. The truth was I didn’t know if therapy would help but the thought of opening my chamber of secrets scared me more than anything. Isn’t that funny? I survived a life of torment, lived through the darkest of nightmares and reliving them scares me more than living through them did.

I didn’t understand how urging me to acknowledge the destruction I came from would help me lay the foundation of a new life. Everyone thinks talking about traumatic experiences and confessing what plagues you will somehow heal you. How was a complete stranger supposed to fix me?

Once inside the hospital, I reluctantly follow Lacey to the therapist’s office. She checks me in with the receptionist as I take a seat in the waiting room. Seconds later she turns to me and tells me either her or her father will be waiting for me in an hour when my session is over.

I watch her leave and glance around the empty room noticing the rich leather chairs and fancy paintings that line the walls. It makes me wonder who is flipping the bill for this and what it will cost me in return. Everything has a price. Something I learned far younger than most.

While most kids my age were working at saving their money for a car, I was standing in line; naked and praying my body would be enough to keep me alive. Survival wasn’t free, it came at the price of my own shame.

My body involuntary shudders at the memory and panic begins to set in. If one memory can entice so much anxiety how will I feel when the therapist probes me with questions, forcing the horrible truth to spill from my mouth. Things aren’t real until they’re spoken aloud and once you say it, well, you can’t take it back. Those words won’t be my dirty little secret. They will be the words that define me.

Too weak to relive what I’ve tried so hard to forget my lungs constrict and I gasp for air. In a flash, I’m on my feet running toward the door. I don’t think twice, I just run.

I run like I should have ran the day I was abducted. 

Fast.

Furious.

Terrified.

Desperate.

I run until I slam into a hard wall of muscle. My first instinct is to scream, to do all the things I didn’t do all those years ago. The things I never had a chance to do because I was too young, too naïve and too fucking slow.

“Get off me!”

“Whoa, Ally. It’s me, it’s Stryker.”

Another piece of me crumbles at the familiarity of both his voice and his tenderness. I used to believe in that voice, in that tender tone. I used to think Stryker was different, that he cared. At one point, I even hoped he’d see past the filth and notice I was more than just a body. There were nights when I dreamed he’d be the guy who made it all go away, and not because he was holding a needle, but because he had the ability to see what no one else could.

Me.

I prayed he’d see me.

“Let go, please,” I plead hoarsely.

Hesitantly he stares at me for a moment before he releases his hold on me and takes a step back.

“Are you okay?”

The concern in his eyes is too much. It strips me down to nothing, exposing the pieces of me only he knows.

“I’m fine,” I reply as I move to walk around him but his moves are sharper than mine and he blocks me.

“Can we talk?”

A humorless laugh escapes my lips as I lift my eyes to his.

“Please don’t pretend to care now,” I sneer.

“Ally, come on—”

“Come on what? Are we really going to stand here pretending you gave a damn about me? That you were any different than any of the guys back in Albany?”

Anger filters through his dark eyes, eyes that were always so cold and empty. Eyes that used to make me wonder if he was as broken as I was.

“I guess I deserve that,” he grits.

“They’re your words,” I retort.

“I didn’t know, Ally. I had no fucking idea what kind of torture you were the victim of. All I knew was what Rush told us. For fuck’s sake, he told us your father owed the club money.”

My nostrils flare at the mention of my father and I lose it. The idea of my father ever being compared to the monster who took me and who made me call him Papa for years robs the little bit of self-control I have left and I unleash my fury.

“That man wasn’t my father! It’s a lie Rush told everyone so you wouldn’t know the truth. He couldn’t tell you that he bought me off a man who raped and kept me a prisoner for years.”

The weight of my words slams into both of us and a gasp escapes me while shock spreads across Stryker’s face and he stumbles back. Unwilling to see the remorse in his eyes, or worse the pity, I close my eyes.

It’s true.

Once the words are said you can’t take them back.

“Why didn’t you say something?” he rasps. “Why did you let everyone treat you that way?”

I open my eyes just in time to see him remove his baseball cap and run his hands over his bald head.

“Why did you let me do that to you?” he whispers.

Shame.

Once you feel it, you can never escape it and when you don’t have drugs to numb you, you feel everything tenfold.

You wear the humiliation like a brand.

“What good would that have done? I had already given up on myself by then,” I confess.

“If you had of told me the truth, I would’ve got you out of there. I would have saved you, Ally.”

“Always looking to be someone’s hero,” I say sadly as I stare at him.

Silence stretches long and wide between us and I’m thankful when he opens his mouth to break it, the words get lost on his tongue. I don’t think I can handle anymore truth and I sure as hell can’t handle anymore pity.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally.

“It’s not your fault,” I murmur as Stryker’s attention drifts over my shoulder.

“Jack,” he mutters as I turn around.

“What’re you doing here?” Jack questions, gripping Skylar’s hand. Narrowing his eyes toward Stryker, he pauses before pinning me with a stare. Unable to bare the weight of his skeptical eyes, I look at Reina who is standing beside him, pushing her son in the stroller.

“I was just leaving,” Stryker says. “I’ll catch you later,” he adds quickly before giving me another glance.

One last tender glance.

A glance filled with sorrow.