Reclaim: A Recovered Innocence Novel (16 page)

The discovery about Billits and Carla seems to have stripped something from Lila. There’s a shadow in her eyes that wasn’t there before. Just thinking about everything Carla went through at the hands of Billits makes my stomach grind. Predators like Billits prey on the vulnerable, and a fourteen-year-old undocumented immigrant would definitely be defenseless against someone with the kind of power he has. Billits is in a unique position as DA to decide who gets prosecuted or not. It’s genius really.

If any of his sex workers got arrested he would be in on the decision about things like taking a case to trial and plea deals. I’d bet money that a lot of his victims got off easier than his competition’s. Going to the FBI with what we know will shake up the entire San Diego legal system. I’m overwhelmed with what’s in front of us. By Lila’s frantic back-and-forth pacing and twisting fingers, she’s just as worried as I am. Maybe more. She was invested in Carla’s story in a way I never was.

Finding out Carla is using us has to hurt. I want to go to her and tell her everything will be okay, but the words would be useless platitudes. She knows it won’t. We’re in so deep here. Too deep. And we’re all alone in this with no backup at all. If what we think happened did in fact happen and Billits gets wind that we’re piecing things together we could be in some real trouble, the kind you don’t come back from.

Focusing on the things I can do, I turn back to my computer. I’ve taken the precaution of running my searches through a network that doesn’t write my work onto the main drive of my computer, making it untraceable. The operating system on the thumb drive came with encryption tools and secure erase tools for maximum privacy. If anyone were to log in to my computers normally, they would think that I never used it. There’s no way to trace my work back to me. Even though I know it’s secure, I can’t help but worry that someone’s been watching us and knows what we know.

I pull the thumb drive with the self-contained operating system out of my computer and run checks just to be sure. Browser history, cookies, the whole lot. Just as I expected, it’s secure. Even if somebody knows what we’ve been doing there is no way they could trace it back to us. We’re safe at least in that regard. As for Lila’s friend who interned at the DA’s office, Carla, The Freedom Project, Nash Security and Investigation, and everyone else we’ve talked to about the case…not so much. There are a lot of loose threads dangling.

“Is it too late to call Mr. Nash?” Lila asks.

“Probably. I’ll put a call into him first thing in the morning. Are you available to meet with him right away?”

“I’ll have to clear a couple of things, but yes, I can do that.” She rubs her arms as though she’s chilled. “How safe are we? Be honest.”

“Right now? As safe as we were before we figured out what all of this is about. We’ve done everything we can to keep it as quiet as possible. If Billits knows about us and what we’re doing he hasn’t made any move to tip us off.” I let out a breath. She’s not going to like what I have to say next. “That said, I don’t think you should be alone tonight. I have security here that you don’t have at your place. Stay. Stay with me tonight.”

She’s already shaking her head before I finish. “I can’t do that. I
told
you.”

“I know you did and I’m struggling to understand exactly why. I really am.”

“I…I don’t expect you to understand. Especially when I don’t quite understand it myself.”

“We could hang out in the living room, on the couch…”

“I don’t have any of my things here.”

“We could stop by your place and pick up a few things.”

“No.”

“I could stay at your pla—”

“No.”
She puts her hands up and takes a step back. Her rejection is not just emphatic, it’s panicked.

I take slow, measured breaths, trying to tamp down my anger. I’m not struggling to understand her—I’m
battling.
This is a fight with a faceless, nameless foe. Whatever she’s hiding terrifies her and she won’t let me near it.

“Okaaayyy. Then we’ll go to the store and buy you what you need. You can sleep anywhere you want
here,
wherever you’re comfortable.
But you will not be alone tonight.
”

“I don’t want to be alone.”

The way she says it I know she’s not just talking about tonight, that maybe she’s talking about whatever it is she’s fighting against, because she looks like a solitary woman at war. She hugs herself, swaying back and forth a little, her body turning in on itself. Her gaze doesn’t meet mine the way it normally does. I hate the way she looks right now—small and defeated. And alone. So alone.

I hold a hand out to her, half expecting her to reject the gesture the way she normally does. My hand hangs out there open to her for so long that my arm turns leaden and I have a hard time keeping it up, but I refuse to put it down. This feels like a moment, and if I give up I may never get back here to try again with her. We’ll never move beyond what we are to each other right now—and eventually, we won’t be anything at all. I won’t give up on her, on us. I’m starting to see that I might be the only one in her life who never has and never will.

Finally her gaze tracks slowly from my hand up my arm to my face. Her fingers are cold against my palm. I clasp her hand and something settles inside me. She takes a step forward then another until she steps between my legs and lowers into my lap. I wrap my arms around her. The tension in her is strung tight, but she gradually relaxes and even puts her head on my shoulder.

“I’ll stay here,” she whispers almost too quietly to be heard. “On the couch, but you have to sleep in your room.”

“I can do that.”

She traces a pattern I can’t make out in my palm. I wonder if she knows what she does to me when she’s quiet and vulnerable like this. Puffing my chest out and making me want to slay dragons for her. I don’t remember ever having this sensation with anyone else. What is it about her that does this to me? Do I matter to her? Or am I just what’s happening right now? Will she always keep a part of herself walled off from me or will I eventually break through to the other side?

“Thank you,” she says in that same small voice. “I know this isn’t normal, I’m not normal.”

“Normal’s boring.”

“You’re just being nice.”

“We all have our things. Yours might be too big to see around right now, but eventually it won’t be.”

“I want to believe that.”

“Then believe it. You come from fighters, Lila. Anyone who went through what your parents did to get here is tough. It’s in you to do more, be more.”

“I think you have too much faith in me. I’m not like my parents. I never would’ve done what they did.”

“Because you didn’t have to. They did it for you.”

“They got their green cards because of me.”

“Yeah? Because of your work with The Freedom Project?”

“No. Because they cooperated with the police when I was raped.”

I try not to tense or have any reaction at all at the thought of someone hurting her. It makes me want to punch something. Preferably the son of a bitch who violated her. But she doesn’t need that from me right now. She’s opening up and I have to listen to what she’s saying because it’s important. She’s important.

“That’s how I got my green card too.” She lifts her head and plays with a button on my shirt. “Because of a loophole in the system that gives legal status to undocumented immigrants if they’re victims of a crime. So you see, I’m not tough.” Her laugh has a brittle, resentful edge to it. “I didn’t do anything to make that happen for my family. I just lay there and waited for it to be over, hoping he wouldn’t kill my family and me.”

No words. I have no words.

Swallowing back the golf ball that’s suddenly lodged in my throat, I search for something to say, something that might take away her pain and her shame. It’s the shame that guts me. She survived because she’s strong. She’s a fighter. That she thinks less of herself because her protective instincts toward her family ended up having a side benefit for her
and
her family tears me up. I have a newfound respect and admiration for her. I tell her, but she pushes it away like she’s done with every other compliment I’ve given her.

“Anyone can lie there and take it,” she says. “There’s nothing noble about being frozen with fear.
Why didn’t you scream? Why didn’t you make him stop?
I got asked that over and over. Yeah,
why didn’t I?
Why couldn’t I move? Why didn’t I scream or try to push him away? Why did I just
let
him?”

“You did what you had to do in order to survive.” I can’t help the anger that seeps into my words. It pisses me off that anyone would say that to her, let alone think it. “You don’t owe anybody anything.”

“I wish I had fought back or screamed or something.”

“Whatever you did or didn’t do was the right thing. You survived.”

“He died, you know. In prison. Right after the trial. Had a heart attack and died instantly. Didn’t feel a thing. Sometimes I think about doing to him what he did to me. And sometimes I wish it were me who died instead of him. Mostly I want to cut up my green card and reapply based on my accomplishments as a person and not what happened to me.” She looks up at me, her dark eyes calmer than the storm roaring through me. “Isn’t that dumb?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I said that to my mom once. She told me I should be grateful something good came out of something so bad. I don’t know how to be that kind of grateful.”

Again she’s got me searching for the right words to say. And once again none come. I ease her a little closer, needing the contact more than she seems to. She rests her head on my shoulder, her sigh heavy with the burden she’s carried around for her family. She saved them twice. Once from the man who terrorized her and a second time by changing their legal status. That’s a lot for someone who barely tops out at five feet tall.

“Well. It’s late.” She pops up and off me. “We should get to bed if we’re going to get an early start tomorrow. Lots to do, like bring down a DA and his prostitution ring.”

“You’re amazing.”

She looks at me sharply. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“Do you have an extra toothbrush I could borrow?”

“Come back here.” I pat my lap.

“It’s late.”

“I’m not coming on to you.”

“Maybe you should be.”

“Why? So you can distract me from giving you compliments?”

“Because this is only supposed to be about sex.”

“Except that it’s not.”

There’s a war in her eyes. She wants to deny it, but there’s too much evidence to the contrary. Instead she does what she does best, her expression morphing from challenging to seductive. Her hips have an extra sway as she walks back to me. She straddles my lap and tangles her fingers in my hair. I’m going to give in to her because I can’t stop myself from doing anything else. My want for her is a constant thing, buzzing through my veins and clouding my head.

She grinds her pussy against the zipper of my jeans and that buzz becomes a roar. She’s going to make this, like everything else, about sex, but she’s not fooling either of us. I play along, kissing her deep and long like I’ve fallen for her trap when in reality I willingly tipped headfirst into it. She exposes herself to me in inches. This ploy is her not being able to say what she’s feeling so she shows me. I watch and learn and give her what she wants, while getting what I want—more of her.

I undo my pants, lifting her as I rise to shove them down my legs. She makes a move to drop to the floor like she’s going to suck me off, but I catch her.

“Ride me,” I command, handing her a condom from the stash I now keep in the office. “Backward.”

She smiles at me like she’s won. I let her think that as she climbs off me and strips. Her body is a wonder to me, all roundness and curves. I could stare at her forever. She pulls my pants the rest of the way off and then bends forward. Her tits brush my thighs as she licks me, swirling her tongue around the head of my dick. I make an approving sound that comes out as more of a growl. She laughs and places a chaste kiss on the tip before rolling the condom on. There’s no shyness in the way she turns around and presents her ass to me. I guide her down onto me, watching the way my cock disappears and then reappears with each movement.

Gripping her hips, I glide in and out of her, keeping the pace slow and steady. I fight the urge to thrust high and hard into her. This is about us and what I need to show her. We’re not just screwing. You don’t share the things she’s shared with a fuck buddy. It doesn’t matter how she thinks she’s cataloged me. I’m more.
We’re
more.

Her fingers dig into my thighs. She’s close. Very close and so am I. I give her what she wants. Her first orgasm nearly strangles me with its intensity. I can’t hold on. Thrusting deep, I empty myself inside her. For a flash of a second all I am is where I’m connected to her. Everything else blacks out, then refires like the staccato of gunfire. I’m hyperconscious of everything about her. The way her hair drapes across my chest, her heavy breaths, how hot and alive she feels around me, and how necessary she’s become to me.

I have to make her want me the way I want her, show her we can be more than this animalistic rutting. Pulling her back against me, I use my fingers on her clit and tit to make her come again. Her head falls back onto my shoulder as she cries out.

In her ear I urgently whisper,
“You’re mine.”

He’s not playing fair. Doesn’t he understand that this can’t be what he wants? It’s already more than it should be. I went too far sharing those things with him. Instead of pushing him away it had the opposite effect. He sees my confession as proof that we can be a real couple in a real relationship, that there’s hope for a future. There is no hope. There is no future.

Even as I tell myself these things his insistent words pulse through me with the last waves of my orgasm.
You’re mine.

This round was supposed to be me showing him what we are. Instead he showed me what we could be and I
want
it. I want it more than I want to fight against it. But he doesn’t know everything about me. The truth looms large over everything else—I’m deeply,
deeply
flawed. He only sees the scars on the surface, only has a hint of the shame. The secret is too big. It’s just too big.

He’s going to keep pushing, keep trying to get me to see what I already know. I’ll have to show him. Vomit crawls up the back of my throat at the thought of it. I imagine myself opening the door, revealing everything to him a little at a time. As we go through it I picture his disbelief, then revulsion, and finally his rejection. It’s too overwhelming. He won’t be able to handle it.

Suddenly feeling claustrophobic, I push against his arms tightly banded around me. His hold is too tight. It’s too much. He makes me
feel
too much.

“Let me go.”

“Why? So you can seduce me again?” The bitterness in his laugh makes me flinch. “That’s going to take a while. I can rebound pretty fast for you, but not fast enough for you to be able to distract me from getting the answers I want
right now.
”

“You don’t understand.”

“Make me.”

I shake my head.

“Lila.” He shifts so we’re a little more reclined in the chair. “You don’t get it, do you? I’m not going anywhere. We can keep playing these games, hell, a sick part of me actually
likes
them. I can’t stop myself from coming back for more and more. But we’ll just keep coming right back to this point.”

He’s right. I know he’s right. I can see us months from now. Every time he gets an inch too close I’ll rip my clothes off or drop to my knees in front of him and then we’ll be right back where we started. The thought of it makes my breath catch. I can’t keep doing this to him, to us, but I’m not brave enough to make it stop. Selfishly I don’t want this to be over. I’m not any happier than he is with the situation, but when faced with the choice I’d keep things exactly the way they are. The only other alternative is to lose him.

“I know,” I tell him. “I know.”

“What is it? Are you not who you say you are? Did you kill someone? What? What could be so bad that you can’t share it with me?”

“You’re not going to understand.”

“Try me.”

My heart speeds up. The panic crawls over me like a million tiny pinching ants. Sweat pops out all over my body and I shiver, suddenly cold despite his warmth at my back. If I show him I have to face it, really face it. The enormity of it all is too much. I’m overwhelmed. It’s too big. I try to lick my lips to talk, but my mouth is dry and the words stick.

“I…I have to show you.” My mouth suddenly fills with saliva. I can’t believe I’m doing this.

“Okay. Show me.”

I push at his arms. This time he releases me and I bolt for the bathroom. I barely make it in time to throw up. He gathers my hair and holds it while I shake over the bowl. Rubbing my back, he murmurs words that don’t soothe me. I close the lid and lay my head on my arms, trying to catch my breath. The plastic is cold and a new shiver runs through me.

“I’m sorry.” He presses his face against my back and holds me. “Forget everything I said. You don’t have to do this.”

“No.” My voice comes out as a rough rasp. “I need to. I need to show you.”

He helps me stand and waits while I rinse out my mouth, then hands me a new toothbrush and the toothpaste. I wish I knew what he was thinking. I’m a freak. I know I am. I must look like a crazy lady to him. He has no idea just how insane my life is. I try to steal myself against his reaction while we dress and get in the car. I tell him to take me to my place.

He doesn’t say a word on the drive over. He doesn’t extend a second offer to give me a way out. He doesn’t want to let me off the hook. He wants to know what I’m hiding more than he wants to hold on to what little we have now. I childishly cling to that, turning it into resentment against him that morphs into anger. He’s doing this to us. He’s the one pushing, looking for a way out. Well, I’m going to give it to him. He’ll realize I was right all along. He can’t handle it. He can’t handle me. We should’ve just kept it about sex and nothing else.

I’m out of the car before it comes to a complete stop. He catches up to me just as I unlock my front door.

“You want to know what my big secret is, well, here you go.” I push the door open as far as it will go and flip on the light.

There’s enough room for me to slip past him and inside. I don’t turn back to see if he’s following. I know he is. I stop a few feet away and turn to look at him. He maneuvers through the entrance and then halts. His gaze roams the room, taking everything in. There’s a lot to see. The stacks of things are nearly as tall as he is. I stand at the end of the narrow path that branches out to the bathroom and kitchen. He says nothing, but his expression says everything. Just as I’d feared—shock, disbelief, revulsion. All of it flashes across his face. He doesn’t even try to hide it. I’m not sure he could.

His hands fist in his pockets and his jaw hardens. He doesn’t look at me. I’m not going to cry, I tell myself even as the first tear falls. Despite the way it looks I feel safe here. This is my cocoon, my place to hide from the world. It might look like piles and piles of junk, but these things—my things—mean more to me than anyone or anything in the world.

I know what he’s thinking. I know what I am. There are shows about my condition that people watch for entertainment. They laugh and make fun of it. They think the people they see living in houses packed to the rafters with stuff are crazy. They don’t understand.
This
I control. Everything outside of here is completely out of my control. I’ve built walls both mental and physical, barricading myself against the world. I
know
all this about myself. I
know
what all this looks like to other people. But to me, it’s a haven. It’s safe. It’s the one thing that makes me feel like I have some sense of power.

Nolan’s really making an effort. I’ll give him that. He hasn’t blurted out the first thing that came to mind. He hasn’t asked me
Why
or
How could you?
He didn’t even gasp. He just stands there, taking it all in. When his gaze finally lands on me what I see in his dark gaze is pity. It makes me take a step back. That’s the last thing I want from him. His anger and frustration I can handle. His quiet disappointment and sympathy is more than I can deal with.

“Now do you see?” I lash out. “Now do you see why we can’t be together?”

He shakes his head. I’m not sure if he doesn’t know what to say or if he doesn’t quite trust himself to say the right thing.

“This is what you wanted,” I taunt. “Now you know my secret. Happy now?”

More head shaking.

“Get out.” I point at the open door. “Just get out.”

His head still moves back and forth, but he doesn’t say anything. He just keeps staring at me like I let him down. He feels sorry for me. I can’t take that. It makes my skin itchy and too tight.

“Get out!”

“No,” he finally says.

“Stop looking at me like that!”

My face and neck are wet from the tears I don’t hold back. He may as well see all of it, all of me. I don’t have anything else left to hide. I open my arms as wide as I can, accidentally hitting a stack of stuff and ironically knocking a box of trash bags into the cleared path.

“This is it,” I yell. “This is what you wanted to see. You made me do this. Don’t stand there and say nothing. Not now. Where are all of your
You can tell me anything
’s and
There’s nothing you could do or say to drive me away
’s? The
It won’t change the way I feel about you
’s? I
told
you that you couldn’t handle it, but you kept insisting. Well,
here it is.
Here it
all
is.”

“Just give me a goddamn minute, okay?”

“No. Tell me we’re possible now, Nolan. Tell me how none of this matters. Go on, do it.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I laugh. “Who are you trying to convince, me or you? Because I’m not convinced, Nolan. I never was. I told you from the beginning this would never work, but you had to push it, didn’t you?”

He runs a hand through his hair and looks around the room again like he’s searching for an answer. “It
doesn’t
matter.”

“You were more believable the first time you said it.”

“What do you want from me?” He makes an angry, all-encompassing gesture. “Would you just give me a fucking minute here? This is a lot to take in.”

“Take your time. Nothing’s going to change.”

I swipe at my face, angry with myself for holding out the smallest, barest hint of hope that we can somehow work through this. I hug myself and glare at him, watching him, waiting for the questions I know will come. Questions I don’t have any answers for.

“How long?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Forever.”

“Does your family know about this?”

“No. No one knows. Except you.”

“You’re so on top of everything else…”

Like I can stop this at any time, like I would
want
to stop it.

“Maybe if you saw a counselor or talked to someone…” He’s trying to fix this, fix me.

I don’t give him any hope or make promises I can’t keep.

He picks up a stack of junk mail. “Aren’t there
specialists…organizers…something
that could help?”

I give a shrug. There probably are, but I don’t know that I want anyone in here telling me what to do. He sets the mail back down and I let out the breath I was holding. I don’t like people touching my things.

He turns in a tight circle, still trying to take everything in. “Is the whole place like this?”

When he faces me again I give him a curt nod.

“Show me.”

I carefully step into the path to the bedroom and motion for him to go ahead of me toward the kitchen. He picks his way forward. I try to see it through his eyes. There’s a small spot cleared on the counter that’s big enough to put a bowl or plate down. The rest of the kitchen is cluttered and dirty and basically unusable. The stove broke and I never had it fixed. The sink is unusable hence the reason I have to get water for the coffeepot from the bathroom.

He pulls in a breath through his nose and takes the same slow perusal of the space that he did in the living room. His gaze snags on the dining area where I created a small niche for myself.

He points to it. “What’s that?”

“Where I sleep.”

His jaw moves like he’s grinding his back teeth.

“You want to see the rest?”

He gives a jerky nod and moves out of the kitchen. I follow him down the path to the bedroom and bathroom. The doors to both are open, too crammed with stuff to close. The bathroom is somewhat serviceable, but the bedroom is packed. This is where I keep things like old clothes and broken things I can’t throw away, things I found and things I bought. I’m suddenly fiercely possessive of them and how he might be judging them, judging me.

“Have you seen enough?” I ask, defensive. “Are you done yet?”

He inclines his head and goes back the way he came, straight for the front door. He doesn’t look back at me. He just bolts like he’s suddenly been sprung free and he can’t wait to get out. The door slams behind him. I give it a glance and then head to my bed and lie down. Curling up in a ball, I let the tears come. My body shakes and my throat is raw.

I told him we’d never work out. Looks like he finally believes me.