Chapter Twenty-Two

*Content warning–the following chapter may be triggering to some. Content includes: discussions of sexual child abuse, rape, and physical abuse.*

Brooklyn

I look at Jackson, terrified that what I’m fixing to tell him will change *everything* and not in a good way, and murmur, “I was going to ask for his help in getting out…”

“Out…” he says with a quirk of his brow, waiting for me to elaborate.

*Here goes nothing,* I think with a sigh, before finishing with, “Out of the game. Like you did with Chastity.” My entire body is trembling by the time that I finish, knowing what all asking for help is going to entail.

Jackson reaches out, grasping my hands, then, with his voice soft but encouraging, he says, “I’m going to need you to start from the beginning.”

I nod, having known that this was coming, but still finding it hard to start.

He gives my hand a squeeze, with reassurances of, “It’s okay. Take your time.”

I close my eyes, trying to gather my thoughts. After a moment, I begin speaking.

“What would you do if the person that you are, the person that you were raised to be, isn’t the person that you want to be? Because no matter what you grew up believing about yourself or what or who you were told you had to be, deep down you know that you want to be *something* more, *someone* more.” 

Jackson gives me a confused look, not quite understanding where I’m going, so I continue. “I’m sure you’ve heard similar before, since you helped Chastity, but what do you do when looking back at your short life, the only thing you really have as an accomplishment is the number of men you have had between your thighs and a list of the different kinds of drugs that you’ve had coursing through your veins, just so you can forget, if only just for a moment, that the nightmare that you have had the displeasure of calling a life?”

“Fuck,” he curses under his breath as he rubs a hand through his hair. He looks equally pissed off and broken as he clasps back hold of both of my hands and says, “I’m so fucking sorry.”

It only gets worse, so I continue, feeling numb as I recount the horrors of my childhood.

“I was eleven years old the first time that I was ever touched by a man. It started out small at first, just inappropriate touching. First, them touching me, then things escalated from there.”

Jackson's breathing has deepened, and I can see it in his eyes that he hates hearing every word that’s leaving my mouth, but now that I’ve started telling my truth, I can’t stop, not until it’s all out there.

“It was exactly three months, twelve days, seven hours, and forty-six minutes from that first touch that I graduated from a child into a woman,” I say, unable to look at him now, especially knowing that there’s worse still to come.

“I’m going to kill that fucking bastard, Teddy,” Jackson seethes, his words drawing my attention.

“It wasn’t him, at least not at first,” I shake my head, then explain. “Apparently, in the eyes of my stepdad, *blossoming* as he called it, at such an early age made me a prick tease, and meant that I was just asking to be treated like the whore that my body portrayed me to be.”

Jackson growls at my words, but I ignore him as I continue, “He decided that I no longer deserved my innocence, that I was his to do with as he pleased since *he* is the one who puts a roof over my head, food in my stomach, and clothes on my back.”

“I ended up pregnant seven times before I was sixteen, and it wouldn’t look suspicious to put me on birth control,” I murmur, my hand going to my stomach to caress the growing life there.

Jackson, looking totally shocked, says, “I don’t remember you ever—what happened to—” he can’t even finish his thoughts in order to form a complete sentence; he’s so taken off guard.

“I *lost* all of them from unfortunate *accidents*,” I tell him, using my fingers to make quotations when I say the words lost and accidents. “I’m honestly surprised that I was able to get pregnant this time. I especially since I’d been on birth control, but I’d just assumed that too much damage had been done.” 

I hadn’t realized how much it worried me until just this moment, but it makes sense, with the constant worry about losing the baby. As I think about it, the fear resurfaces once more, and my eyes flood with tears.

“We will get you in with a high-risk doctor and keep a close eye on the baby,” Jackson says, pulling me close. “We will do everything we can to make sure that you don’t lose this one, okay?” I nod into the crook of his neck in acknowledgement, but I know that there’s only so much that can be done medically, and I still feel touched by his thoughtfulness.

Straightening up, I take him in and see that he looks just as harried as I feel. Feeling guilty, I say, “I’m sorry. I know this is a lot.”

“No,” he’s quick to reassure, reaching out and twining our hands together once more. Then, with his other hand, he brushes a few strands of hair from my cheek and then cups it before looking me in the eyes and saying, “Nothing is ever too much when it comes to you.”

“It’s just,” I sigh, feeling I don’t even know how I feel. 

Caught. 

On the verge of something new.

Stuck.

On the verge of something big.

Maybe.

I don’t know.

“I don’t want this life anymore. I haven’t ever wanted it, if I’m truly being honest. I just didn’t think I had any other choice,” I finally say, just going with my gut instead of trying to figure out what all this means or how to feel about it.

“You always have a choice,” Jackson murmurs, his voice deep but raspy, making me feel things that I shouldn’t be feeling at a time like this.

“Says the man who didn’t have it taken away from him before he was even old enough to know better,” I snap, deflecting, knowing damn well that it’s not that simple. “But,” I say, deciding to try to be the bigger person, “that changes now.”

“What else?” he asks, sitting next to me, not taking notes as I had expected, but then again, I have a feeling that he’s not going to be forgetting this conversation anytime soon. 

“I didn’t grow up like normal kids,” I add with a shrug of my shoulders.

“Define *normal*,” he challenges with a slight smirk pulling at his lips.

“Well, I doubt other people's normal is the same as my normal. *Normal* kids don’t lose their mother before they even reach middle school. *Normal* kids have at least one loving parent in their lives, not a sick man that their mother married after the sperm donor bolted as soon as the stick turned positive. *Normal* kids don’t have sex for the very first time with one of their creepy stepfathers, even creepier friends, at the tender age of eleven. But then, who am I to decide what *normal* is,” I spit, feeling beyond disgusting.

“My *normal* is walking into a dirty house, cluttered with soiled clothes, pill bottles, needles, crack pipes, and meth heads. My *normal* is finding Billy in the corner, stoned out of his mind with his dick buried inside of Genevieve, one of my stepfather Gary’s whores, who typically has her tits hanging out of her shirt, if that’s what you can call the scrap of material barely hanging across her front. Her skirt hiked up past her belly button.”

“Jesus fucking H Christ,” he mutters, looking completely floored.

“But even though that is what my *normal* is like,” I grasp hold of his hand and then finish. “I dream of one day redefining my normal, of overcoming the filth, cruelty, and abuse of my upbringing and becoming better *because* of the life that I have lived, the demons that I have faced, and the hell that I have had to endure.”

Jackson squeezes my hand back and, without an ounce of doubt written on his handsome face, he promises, “And you will. That step, that change starts today. You have no idea how proud I am of you. I know that you telling me all of that wasn’t easy, hearing it was fucking hard if I’m being honest, but my team and I will fight like hell to get you through this and onto the other side.”

“You mentioned Teddy…” I hedge, curious about why.

He nods, the supplies, “We’re building a case against him for sex trafficking minors, just like what happened to you.”

“But, I wasn’t,” I defend. My heart pounding overtime in my chest. *There’s no way, right?* “I stayed in my home, my school. I was abused, yes, but I wasn’t trafficked.”

Jackson slips out of the chair to kneel before me once more, and grasping both of my hands, he has so much regretful certainty written all over him as he says, “Sex trafficking isn’t as black and white as they make it seem in movies and on TV.” Then, without saying anything more, he just says, “None of what happened to you is your fault, I hope you know that.”

*Maybe when I was younger, but once I was older…*

Who am I kidding? This kind of life isn’t one that you can run from. Once you’re in it, you’re pretty much in it for life. I hate this life.

Unless you have help.

The sound of Jackson’s cell pulls me from my thoughts.

He glances at the screen, then says, “I’m sorry, but I have to take this,” as he stands up and walks over to the door, opening it and then quietly closing it behind him after walking through.

As I wait for him to return, doubts begin to creep in. 

Doubts about how this is never going to work. Teddy will hunt me down, and once he finds me, and if he doesn’t kill me for trying to leave, I will be severely punished. Beaten to within an inch of my life. Raped, over and over again. Used by men, high-ranking men, low-ranking men, it doesn’t matter as long as I’m a hole to slide their dicks in.

It isn’t the first time he’s done that shit to me, and for lesser offenses than this.

Fuck! It’s no wonder that I find myself wallowing in the darkness, suffocating in it, barely able to breathe, led alone, function. Or that time, after time, after time, I find myself reaching for some kind of numbing agent, drowning myself, my past, my present, my hurt, my fears, my loss, everything, all of it, in whatever type of drug, sedative, stimulant, *anything* that I can get my hands on. 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why I’m so fucked up.

Next, the walls begin closing in on me, and everything starts to go dark.

Before Jackson makes it back to the room from his call, I’m up on my feet, stumbling towards the door as my vision begins to go in and out on me. I finally manage to make it to the door and, finding the handle, I turn it, pulling the door open.

The need to go, to get out of here, is increasing with each breath that becomes increasingly harder to take. 

“Hey, you okay?” a voice shouts as I crash into the wall outside of the office I’d just been in. I wave them off, not even looking, as I continue to move forward with only one goal in mind.

I have to get outside.

I have to get away.

This was a mistake.

Someone comes up next to me, “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

I shake my head *No,* and mutter, “Panic attack. Need outside. Can’t breathe.”

The person, I couldn’t even tell you if they’re a man or a woman, guides me outside and over to a bench a little ways away from the door, and then says that they're going to go get me some water.

I wait until they're gone and then get back to my feet, stumbling away as quickly as I can.

I know that I can’t keep doing this anymore. Pretending that I’m something that I’m not. Pretending to be happy when I in no way am. Pretending that I give two shits, when all that I really want to say is *fuck it all! I’m done!* But I can’t, but you can bet your ass that if I could, I would.

I hate this life. I hate the stuff that I have to do in order to get by. I hate the person that I am, or that I’ve become. I’m tired of pretending. I’m nothing more than a shell of the person that I want to be.

I want to be better. More. I want so badly to be out of this life and into someone else’s. *Anyone* else’s. It has to be better than selling my body for a warm place to sleep or for a fix just so I can forget this shitty hand that I’ve been dealt. That will never happen, though, my dreams, what I want for my future, it’s a pipedream that will never transpire. A fact that I can’t force myself to face. I have to believe; otherwise, what am I living for? It sure as hell isn’t *this*.

But just as I think there’s hope, reality crashes down on me.

Reminding me that there is no hope for someone like me.

There is nothing better