Page 88 of Take Her
Thank fuck.
—Caleb, from One of a Thousand Wishes by A. R. McGeorge
Iwoke up the next morning achy, dehydrated, and feeling like everything that’d happened the prior night had been a dream—until I realized I’d fallen asleep naked, which meant that it hadn’t been.
Rhaim had been here with me.
And he wanted to own me.
I lay in bed for a long while just looking at the ceiling. I’d read some dark books before but I never once thought I’d be living them. I lifted my hands to my throat, where his had been. I wouldn’t ever need a collar, because I would always feel them pressing against me.
He was mine and I was his, and that meant...I had to get better.
Because we couldn’t take the world on together if I couldn’t stand by his side.
If I went running from my uncle, if I hid from my cousin.
If I couldn’t stand the dark.
As much as I wanted to lean into his strength...if I was going to become a little girl he was proud of, I needed to find some of my own.
Which meant figuring everything out, and getting to the bottom of everything that’d been done to me.
I reached for my phone and found out it was ten—and there was a text from my Monster telling me the camera installers would be here at three.
I knew exactly where I needed to go in the meantime.
I hadn’t seen Dolly in a decade—since I’d left town.
But I’d been better about keeping in touch with her than I had any other member of my family. Probably because, as my nanny, she’d been my de facto mom—and then after the death of my mother, she was the only one I had left.
So I’d always made sure to send her Christmas cards, postcards, and letters. Letting her know each time I changed address, making it sound like I was going off on an adventurous vacation, instead of a grand tour of the most exclusive boarding schools and calming mental hospitals of the Old World.
She’d always written back, God bless her. Her handwriting had deteriorated over the years into an almost illegible scrawl, but she tried to reach me when no one else did.
And that was how I knew where she was now, at a sprawling assisted living community outside of town. I had my driver take me to her and wait outside as I went to check myself in, writing my name down in the guest book of her complex as the front lady called her up and then gave me directions to her floor.
“Lia! Is it really you?” Dolly stood outside in the hallway, flagging me down like I was a plane on a runway with one hand, the other held above her eyes to block the light.
“It is!” I said, and practically ran for her. I held her tight and she hugged me back just as hard. She smelled sweet, like always, a combination of baby powder and whatever magical cold cream she put on her face at night.
“How are you?” she asked, peeling herself away from me first. “Did it need to take you so long to come home?”
“Yeah, it did,” I said apologetically, letting her squeeze me.
“Come on in,” she said, pulling me, unwilling to let go of my hand. “I’m going to make you tea.”
“I’d like that,” I said, as she released me, and I looked around her small but airy room. My postcards were up on her mantle, same as the photos of her grandkids, and I found myself wishing I’d sent her pictures of myself before. “How are you?” I called to her in her little kitchen.
“How are you?” she scoffed at me, then laughed. “I’m old, honey. You missed me in my prime!”
“I doubt that,” I said, sitting down on an overstuffed couch, as she angled toward me with a mug in both hands.
“I want to know all about you,” she said, sitting down herself beside me. “Are you good? Are you happy?”
Was I?
As of around 3 a.m. last night.