Page 46 of Take Her

I was already at enough of a disadvantage here—he didn’t need to know that I was crazy.

Luckily for me, he stopped, not investigating a millimeter further.

“What’s this?” he asked again, while running his thumb over the moth, as if to see if he could rub it off.

If I hadn’t been so terrified of all my other scars being exposed it would’ve been extremely hot—oh, fuck, it was anyways, especially when he kept stroking the pad of his thumb over it in a small, determined circle. It was a small, gray photorealistic picture of a moth, just a little larger than a quarter, and it had bright orange eye-spots.

“Haven’t you ever seen a tattoo?” I tried to joke, and wondered if I shouldn’t pull my arm away from him, like a normal girl who wasn’t completely mesmerized by his touch.

“Why yes, I have,” he said dryly, a strange lightness pulling up the corners of his mouth. Was I rating a smirk, instead of a frown? “Why a moth?” he said more slowly, like my tiny brain might need a moment to catch up.

“I—” I said, and then I choked like I always did any time I tried to speak my truth.

In fact, starting that sentence off, giving him a single solitary letter, might have been the closest I had ever come to telling another soul.

The first time Freddie Senior trapped me was in a storage room down at the boat house. I thought it was such an excellent hiding place—it never occurred to me how all the distance between it and the main house would muffle any shouting.

And there’d been a moth we’d disturbed trapped with me there, fluttering against a high screen, trying to get out.

But neither of us could.

The moth because it didn’t understand how rooms worked—and me because I was young, I was stupid, and I believed. All sorts of things, really, and everything he told me, that I was special, that I was smart, and that I was the only one who could help him, and didn’t I want to be good, more than anything?

Of course I did.

So I did.

And once he’d left I threw up the salt of him in my mother’s roses.

I think by then I knew it was too late for me. But I crept back down there after dinner, before the sun went down, and made sure the moth got out.

One of us had to escape.

I blinked back to the present and found Rhaim still watching me intently. He wouldn’t know any of that—he would just think I was a slightly weird pretty girl, standing there, mute.

I waited, my mouth open, trying to get my body to behave. Not that I wanted to blurt out my history with my uncle on my third real day at work, but anything would’ve been better than how I was sure I looked right now.

“I like moths,” I managed to get out.

He didn’t appear to believe me, but he did release my hand—I took it back and quickly yanked my sleeve down. “It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me,” he said, turning to his desk and going through the bag of things I’d ordered, apportioning our dinners, until his was on his desk for him, and the rest was in what I now realized was a to-go bag for me.

I had wanted to stay here and eat with him, dammit.

Why’d I have to go and ruin things?

Could you charge being normal to a black Amex card?

Was there a fucking store somewhere that I could buy that?

“And don’t worry, I won’t tell your father,” he went on. “As long as you don’t rat me out for knowing when he eventually catches you.” He handed my dinner over. I took it with great reluctance, but I couldn’t think of another reason to stay. He tugged the plastic loops back though, at the same time I tugged forward. “Promise me you’ll be on time for work tomorrow?” he asked, and when I nodded, he said “Good girl,” letting go—right as he reached for the drink in my hand.

“Hey!” I protested as he swiped it.

“It’s way too late for you to be drinking this much caffeine, trust me,” he said, definitely smirking as he brought my drink to his lips and drank from my straw—and I had never wanted to be a cheap piece of plastic so badly.

Some dwindling shred of self-preservation told me I needed to leave the room, now, before I did anything else embarrassing.

So while I pouted at him, I managed to keep my mouth shut as I walked back for my office, only slamming his door a little bit behind me—so I could melt into it, sinking against it with my back. I only barely stopped myself from audibly clunking it with my head.