“When you’re catching feelings?” Mia grimaces. “I can only imagine, Athena. But remember how they’ve treated you. Just because they’re being nicenow—it took you being kidnapped and raped and left for dead in a ditch for them to realize how shitty they’d been. I know the sex is good, but—” she trails off. “You gotta be careful, Athena. They could still change their minds. They could go back to how it was before—”
“I know,” I repeat. We grab our order and retreat to our usual spot in the corner of the coffee shop. I set my tea down, tucking my feet underneath me in the chair as I break a piece off of my gingerbread. “Look, I know better than to trust them completely—not now, anyway. Not yet. But things have been different in the last few days. Weirdly different.”
“How so?” Mia takes a sip of her coffee. “No more punishments?”
I turn bright red, and she stares at me. “Athena.”
“I can’t help it if I like it,” I say defensively. “Look, I didn’t know I had these kinks before, but now that I do—”
“Okay, okay.” She holds up a hand. “So, how is it different?”
“So like, Cayde did stuff with me in the gym the other day. And he asked if I was okay with it. He was careful with me, and he and Dean were careful with me afterward when they punished me later that night. It didn’t even really feel like a punishment. It felt like a game we were all playing together. One that I could stop at any time, one that they made clear to me that Icouldstop. It’s never been like that before.”
Mia rolls her eyes. “So the guys finally learned the meaning of consent. It only took the worst possible opposite of that happening to you for them to figure it out.”
“They’re not all bad.” I hesitate. “I spent the night in Cayde’s bed. He wanted me to stay. And we had sex again in the middle of the night, and it was—normal. Still incredibly good, but like…normal sex. Not super romantic, but what I imagine an ordinary boyfriend and girlfriend would have. They’ve been trying—and I think Dean and Cayde are fed up with their fathers and the rules and rituals. I think they’re considering trying to put an end to all of this, for real. We might have the same goals, and—”
“Athena, that’s all well and good, but do you not see how low your bar is? Literally, they’re doing the most basic things, and you’re acting like they’re heroes. I’m not saying that it’s not a massive change forthem, but I’m—” Mia hesitates. “I’m just scared that you’re going to get caught up in your feelings and lose sight of the mission, so to speak.”
“I’m not losing sight of it,” I insist. “Why is everyone so upset that I don’t hate having sex with them? That I’m actually learning something about my sexuality in all of this instead of it just being miserable and violating? Is that what you’d rather it be?”
“Of course not,” Mia says, looking a tiny bit wounded. “You know better than that. And anyway, who else is upset?”
I shift in my chair, looking away as I take a sip of my tea. “Jaxon and I got into a fight yesterday. A picture fell out of his wallet—his ex, I think. The one who mysteriously disappeared, I guess? Or broke up with him? No one will ever talk about it; Dean and Cayde act like she never existed. But it was weird because—”
“Because he still has a picture of a girl who left or broke up with him in his wallet?” Mia suggests.
“No, I mean—yes, but because she—” I hesitate, knowing that it’s only going to make Jaxon seem just as shitty as Mia thinks Dean and Cayde are. “She looked a lot like me.”
“So, you think he’s just into you because he can pretend you’re her?” Mia winces. “That’s pretty fucked up.”
“That’s why I didn’t want to say anything,” I mutter. I take another drink of my tea, wincing at how hot it still is. “You didn’t use to be so upset about the guys, Mia. Or at least you seemed like you weren’t. So what changed?”
Mia looks at me for a minute, her expression almost ashamed. “I know,” she says quietly. “And I should have been more upset about it all along. But I figured you didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to make you feel worse when you were already in such a horrible position. I thought the best thing I could do was try to make you feel as normal as possible. You already knew it was bad, so what good would it have done for me to be horrified for you? But now—” she bites her lower lip. “After what happened to you—I came to see you the next morning, you know. You were so out of it that you didn’t realize it; you didn’t even know I was there until like a week later when I came to visit. But I was there every day before that. I saw what they did to you, the visible injuries, and I know the invisible ones were just as bad if not worse.” Her jaw tenses, and I can see that she’s fighting back the tears.
“Athena, they’re trying to be different now because they don’t want to believe that they’re the same as those awful men who hurt you. They want to think they’re better than that, that their punishments and orders and making you go down on your knees and bend over for your punishments and do whatever they ordered, no matter how humiliating or unwanted, isn’t the same. They want to feel like because you got the choice of who to give your virginity to, because it all happened in a mansion instead of a filthy cabin, that it was better.” Mia’s eyes are glistening now, and I feel horrible, just seeing how upset she is.
“But they’re not that much different. And maybe they didn’t hurt you physically that much, and maybe they’re trying to make up for it now, but it’s not enough. And if there’s even a tiny part of you that has feelings for them or wants more than just whatever this is, you need to make them work for it. Make them earn your forgiveness because they don’t just deserve it for being decent fucking human beings for a month while you recovered from the worst thing that can happen to a woman and near death.”
I hardly ever hear Mia curse. I stare at her, shocked. “I know,” I say finally, quietly. “I just—it’s hard. I don’t know how I feel, exactly. Maybe I have some kind of fucking Stockholm Syndrome or something, I just—”
“I’m not saying that,” Mia says gently. “Just be careful, Athena. Keep your eye on the goal. We need to find out what the fuck is going on in this town, for real. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy exploring your sexuality or whatever with them. Just—remember what they’ve done. Don’t let them fuck you into actual submission.”
She changes topics then, asking me if I know anything at all about the founding of Blackmoor. I tell her absently that I don’t, still focused on what she was saying before, the words rattling around in my head.
“There’s a lot of really weird shit,” Mia is saying, picking at her muffin. “We should look into it. Go to the library, poke around. It’s really fucking weird.”
I nod. “Yeah, sure. We’ll do that.” The idea of going to the library in town, in the old Gothic-style building that it’s in to look up information about the founding of our centuries-old town, sounds like a pretty interesting project at any time, even if so much wasn’t riding on it. But I can’t stop thinking about what she’d said about the guys.
Have I been too easy on them? Have I let them get into my head, let them do the bare fucking minimum, and then rewarded them for it as if they should win a prize for not bullying and tormenting me?
I thought I’d been tough, but maybe I hadn’t been tough enough on them.
The problem is that Dean and Cayde don’t feel like my torturers anymore or even my captors. They feel—I don’t even know anymore. Not like boyfriends, not even friends, but allies maybe. Allies that I’m far too sexually attracted to for my own good.
I don’t want to be a pushover. But everything right now feels like a struggle. It’s all I can do not to succumb to the fear that lingers from my kidnapping, not to just want to stay in bed all day and pull the covers over my head, hiding from the world, from them, from school and anything else that I need to do.
So if there’s some pleasure to be found in this, I can’t convince myself not to take it. Not to enjoy it before it’s time to leave this all behind forever.