Page 34 of Moose

Moose chuckled on the other end. “Alright, good. So which ex is bothering you? Anything you need help with?”

I sat the glass down. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Which ex is bothering you?”

“I’ve never told you about any of my exes, Moose..”

I could hear him shuffling the phone.

“Come on, Lily. I told you I was digging. You had to know. This could have all been avoided if you just told me. We don’t judge here.”

“No! That was mine to keep close to me. You’re an asshole, Moose. We are not fucking friends. You are my goddamn client!”

Before he could even answer, I hung up and threw my phone across the room. How dare he search for me and find out about my personal life.

That was private! I quickly got undressed and headed into the shower. I turned the water as hot as it could go and stepped in.

I was beyond upset with Moose’s breach of privacy. I had planned to tell Bambi some of it, but the rest was for me to keep hidden. I wasn’t ashamed of my past and made it a point to let other women know where I came from. But all of this was on my own damn time.

I finished in the shower and wrapped the towels around me as I headed back out into my room. I slipped on my pajamas and climbed into bed.

It wasn’t long before sleep took me away, but was disrupted by nightmares.

Flashes of my kidnapping flew through my head. My life was being disrupted again, causing me to lose focus.

This had happened when I broke off the engagement with Dexter and moved to Montana. I had worked so hard to keep those memories down and now they were back.

Twice I had been kidnapped because of the people I had associated with, which is exactly why I needed to stay away from Moose.

My father wasn’t able to protect me from his enemies and Javier couldn’t stop them, either. Both times, they tortured me beyond belief because of the men in my life.

Flashbacks played in my head of being held down while they beat me, screaming at me to tell them any information I could.

I tore the blankets off and ran into the bathroom, turning the shower on. It felt like I was back there, scrubbing to get their semen off of me, washing myself to get the blood off.

As I looked around, I was back in my home in California as a child, sitting in the shower numb from what they had done to me as my father screamed at his people to find the kidnappers.

The doctor sat on the other side of the shower curtain, begging me to come out and let him examine me. No police were called because my father would hunt down the men who hurt his princess.

I closed my eyes, then opened them again, and this time I was back in the shower. But it was after my father’s death and after my second kidnapping. Crying where nobody could hear me. Crying in the safety of the shower.

I let the tears fall down my face as I sobbed; naked, wet, and cold. The hot water had turned cold, and I reached for a towel, still not strong enough to get up.

I sat on the bathroom floor, staring at my red skin where I had scrubbed so hard to get the invisible fluids off of me.

Searching through the drawers, I looked for anything I could take to numb the pain. But sober me had stopped that nonsense years ago and made sure there was nothing ever available to addict me.

I tore through the hotel room trying to find anything, but came up empty-handed. Collapsing on the bed, I chugged the bottle of wine by the bed, hoping that would do anything to me.

When that didn’t work, I found another bottle and emptied that as well. I needed to feel numb, to pass out and not feel the pain anymore.

As I chugged my fourth bottle of wine, I could feel my eyelids getting heavy. Naked and drunk, I slowly fell asleep with a bitter heart and nothing left in me.

Thesunshinedthroughthe curtains, making me groan and pull the blankets over my head. The alarm on my phone rang, the loud, shrill beep made my head pound, and I turned it off.

Rolling over, I groaned as I blindly looked for headache medicine in the drawer next to me. Slowly getting out of bed, I grabbed four of the pills and headed to the kitchenette for a glass of water.

I started the coffee machine as I swallowed the medicine. It was time to get up and move, despite my horrendous hangover.

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