He’s not your friend, or anything else, other than your enemy.
He clenches the sheets so hard that his knuckles turn white. I have the urge to cover his hand with mine, but I fight the feeling, keeping my hands to myself.
“I’m okay, I just feel… dirty.” I don’t know what possesses me to keep talking but when Vito opens his mouth to say something, I speak over him. “I’ve been touched without my permission so much in the past, assaulted, my body traded for the benefit of other people.”
His eyes meet mine and the irony isn’t lost on me.
I’m in my current situation, here with him now, because my brother decided to trade me.
And I let him.
“But this… it feels different, I can’t shake the feeling.”
It sends me back to the first time my father had traded my body to one of his friends for drugs. I hadn’t completely understood what was going on until it was too late.
I’d gotten home from school and found my father sitting at the kitchen table. He’d watched me the entire time as I’d skidded past him and I hadn’t slowed down. I’d already learned at that point to stay as far away from my father as possible.
I’d seen the way he treated my mother and my brother for years. He’d hit me before but never quite as hard or often as he did with them. I never forgot how he not only yelled at them but also hit on them until their bodies were dark with bruises, until Richard started sneaking alcohol to numb the pain, until mom slit her own wrists to get away.
At the thought, my eyes flicker to my own scars. They’re not noticeable unless you know to look for them. I hadn’t known how to cut myself properly the first time I’d tried to leave this earth the same way as my mom. I hadn’t cut deep enough or even the right way.
The scars could easily be mistaken as long healed scratches.
It had only happened a few days after I’d walked into the hell that was waiting in my room. When I’d thrown my backpack down by my door to my room, I hadn’t noticed him. It wasn’t until I’d gone to take my jacket off that I’d noticed him sitting on my bed.
I never forgot him.
“Winter.”
I don’t know how long Vito has been calling my name but when I finally look at him, there’s a crease between his brows and his hand is outstretched as if he’d gone to touch me before thinking better of it.
“I used to shower and pretend like it hadn’t happened,” I confess to him. “I did the same thing when I got here, when Maximo…” The words don’t want to come out. It feels like an eternity ago that Maximo cornered me in that alleyway, and the feelings that I’d felt at that time come back to me, yet they feel disassociated, as if they hadn’t really happened to me.
I bury my head in my arms, taking deep breaths.
“It’s okay, Winter,” Vito says softly. “I promise, I won’t let anything like that happen to you again.”
His words are spoken with conviction but we both know that there’s nothing he can do to stop Maximo. And frankly, he doesn’t need to. Things have… changed since that day.
“I’m not worried about Maximo,” I tell him, sighing.
“What are you worried about?” he asks.
The truth.
The fact that one day soon I’m going to have to face up to the conversation I had with Diamond.
My conflicting feelings.
Maximo hugging me.
The concern on Giovanni’s face.
The way Vito is looking at me now, as if I hold the world in my hands and he’ll be there to catch it if I ever drop it.
“Everything.”