"I'm not a hooker, you fuck."

I look back, "It's for mouthwash."

She flips me the bird and picks the money up.

Regular women are easy. In the bedroom, they want to be told what to do, manhandled, and treated like a cheap slut. In the kitchen, they want you to help with the cooking and tell them the things they make are perfect. In public, they want a gentleman.

The girl struggling in her too-high heels is no different than any other girl. She would make me happy when I needed to be.

That’s not the girl for me though. I don’t like regular girls. I like one girl. The one I can't have.

My phone rings as I round the wet corner.

"Hello."

"Plan B is being put into action."

I frown, "Jane… are you sure? She seems like she's over the guy you hired."

She laughs, "I never hired him. Sebastian is incredibly wealthy. He didn’t want money. He just wanted to meet her."

I sigh, "Anyway, her grades are perfect. She went to that bar, she goes to the gym—she seems good. She's been eating out a lot and in the cafeteria. I'm satisfied with her progress. I wish it was faster, but if we don’t have to go to Plan B, I don’t want to."

I hear her sigh, "She is heartbroken and destroyed. She isn’t over him. Eli, this isn’t negotiable. She told him to leave her alone and has holed up in that dorm. You can be part of it or I can hire someone to play your part."

I swallow, shaking my head, "I'm in."

Memories flood me. My steps become stumbles. I hang up the phone and feel it fill me up. The white noise. The constant white noise.

I stagger to the doorway of a building and sit on the steps. The cold, wet stair doesn’t even bring me back.

My own treatment is there. If I close my eyes, I can see the round cement with the drawings. I can see the way she looks when she brings the girl into the room. Through the little crack, I can see the way the girl looks scared.

I didn’t know she was an actress. I thought I'd been abducted a second time.

I clawed and screamed and tried to save her, but it wasn’t real. It was a movie they made for me. It broke me. I can feel the weight of the gun in my hand.

I can feel the electricity course through my veins when I close my eyes. The wood indents where my teeth bite down on it.

Doctor Bradley took the things that hurt me the most, she made them real and dangled them in front of my face. She made me see it, feel it and be it, over and over again. She took my safety and pushed me to the point of attempting to hang myself. Only when I gave up and tried to die, did she tell me the truth.

The seventeen-year-old I was, rapidly became the child I had been when I lost her—them. Only then, would I confess to shooting my sister and being the one holding the gun. Only after they broke me, did I believe I had made up the girl in the room. The girl always touching the corners. The girl with the gun.

I shudder, clutching the cement stair. I close my eyes, trying to get them to focus again and see the real world in front of me. Nothing is fake anymore. My world is real. It's all about the girl who needs me, my girl.

I wipe the sweat from my brow and look for something to move me past the stairs. I can't get up on my own.

The selfish bastards on the street don’t move me. They don’t do anything remarkable. They just walk and talk and float through their lives. They don’t do anything that makes me feel anything. I need something special to make me come back from this.

Stuart pulls up to the curb. He nods at me, "Am I carrying you in or are you walking?"

I swallow hard and nod, "I just needed a minute." Seeing him makes me warm inside, but the words I speak nearly kill me, "Plan B starts this month."

His eyes gloss over; I know his time in the cells is flashing in his mind. Selfishly, I relish in his pain. He makes it so I'm not alone. I find my strength in his weakness and stand up. He is pale and alone in his mind for a second. I walk around to the passenger side. When I get in we're silent. We go home and pretend to be tired.

The next day Stuart leaves to get my girl and take her to Jane's office. It's her last visit before we start. I have to mess with her a little bit first. I almost admit to myself I like this part. I like having this control over her.

I dial her number and wait, "Hi." She sounds impatient. She has a lot lately.

"You need to remind her that you're still not sleeping, okay?"

Her voice cracks a little bit, "How do you know that? Maybe I am?"

I laugh bitterly, "I know you're not."

"How?" she asks softly.

"Do as you're told." I harden my tone.

"K."

She is trying to kill me, I swear it. I sigh, "That is a letter. It’s not a word. Can't you just speak like you have something of an education?"

"I'm doing fine in school."

"I know that. Nice work on the grades, by the way. I have to admit the straight A's surprised me. Between the whatevers and the k's, I figured you were doomed." I accidentally talk like I'm speaking with a friend.

"Thanks."

I sigh again, "Call me when she's done. I want to talk to you about something important." I get in the car and drive over to Jane's office. She wants to see me after she sees my girl. She wants to plot and toy with me, knowing she still has a little power over me. She was the one who stopped them from hurting me. She will always have that.

I stare up at the window to the office I know she's in. She's there, talking about her feelings and wondering when, or if, she'll ever feel normal again. She's crying and telling Jane how she can't sleep and she can't live because she doesn’t know how. She is stuck in the dirty house; in her mind, I never saved her.

I get lost, I don’t know how long it is or what day it is. I just know that she comes out of the building looking upset. She walks away from the truck and Stuart. I can see him and Michelle laughing and smiling. I sigh and dial her number.

"Why did you leave the car?" I ask when she answers. She walks faster.

"Why did you hire Stuart for a hundred thousand a year to drive me around?" I smile bitterly, it has started. Stuart has told her that to scare her. Jane must have given him his part.

I sigh and act impatient, "He has a big mouth and my business with him is private. That just cost him his pay for a month. Why did you leave the car?"

She ignores me and screams into the phone, "HOW DO YOU KNOW I LEFT THE CAR? WHERE ARE YOU? YOU FUCKING FREAK! STOP SPYING ON ME!"

I hate what we're doing to her but we need this anger to surface. If she can get mad enough we don’t need Plan B. "Are you finished?" I ask calmly.

"Yes."

"Why did you leave the car?"

She laughs, "Why did you hire a boxing UFC champ as my driver?"

I laugh by accident and hold my breath until she starts talking again. "I wanted to be alone. She made me feel dirty. I didn’t want to be with them.”

I nod and give her the answer we have discussed, "Because I am a rich man and if anyone ever knew that you were my ward, they would hurt you to get to me. I need to know you're alright. At all times. Stuart can protect you. I cannot. I am busy."

She is silent for a second, "What? Wait…who wants to hurt you and me?"

"My business." I snap.

She takes a breath and mutters, "Can you find Sebastian for me?"

"Why?" She isn’t over him like I thought she was. Jane was right.

Her voice sounds broken, "I need to tell him that I'm sorry. It's killing me inside that I made him feel so awful."

My guts burn. I almost whisper my words, "Do you love him?" Is it worse than I let myself see? Was I so busy watching her and loving her, that I failed to notice her falling in love with someone else? Not just a regular someone else either, Jane's perfect choice.

She answers me the way I would answer her, "I don’t think I'm capable of that." I hang up the phone and know Jane is right. She is me, but a girl. The two of us together would probably cause the apocalypse, but I want her more than I ever have. I want to be incapable with her and make her capable because we are stronger than anything else.

I want her to know that she isn’t alone and the lonely isn’t the only thing that can touch her.

I swallow hard, acknowledging the process is the only way to crack the shell.

Chapter Nine

December 19th

Stuart swings wide, clipping my chin. My head flies back, but I manage to come back with a strong upper cut when I catch my balance.

He staggers slightly, winking at me, "Easy, boss. Don’t want to mark my face before we even start. I need to look pretty in the beginning."

I roll my eyes, trying not to let the acid in my stomach eat me up completely.

The crazy is in his eyes. He's helped on a couple and each time he gets a crazed look in his eyes. The adrenaline and anxiety are like heroin for Stuart. He lived, his brother didn’t, he likes to suffer to make sure every cell in his body remembers it's alive. He likes to fuck hard, fight savagely, drive crazily, and gamble with his own flesh and my money.

His gaze narrows, "I see you doing it."

I shake my head, raising my hands again, "I wasn’t doing it."

His stare gets dark from the furrow in his brow, "I can fucking see it, Eli." He points a glove at me, "We're done. I hate that fucking face. Feel sorry for someone else. We lived asshole, remember that. I'm better, I don’t need your pity." He climbs over the ropes, stalking off to change, and maybe trash the dressing room.

Lance glances at me from the corner post, "You boys alright?"

I shake my head. I'm tense and scared and forget to be cool for just a second. My lips break into a grin, "We're better than alright." As long as he doesn’t look too hard into my eyes, he won't see the truth. He nods, "Shower up then, Eli."

I nod back, "Yes, sir."