Paper Trails 2 | Draft

23.

Not edited. & ⚠️⚠️⚠️

"She would make herself a reckoning. She would rise."

*****

"What do you already know about me?" He once told me he looked into me, and I didn't want to have to repeat what he already knew.

"Start wherever you want, bella. It's your story."

"Okay." I nodded, more to myself. My story. Except I didn't know exactly where to start. I could do what he did, and start with my parents. But that wasn't an interesting story. I could start after my mom died, since he knew that, but would that help him understand me?

"You're overthinking," he murmured.

I'm trying not to.

I sigh and try to relax. "I never knew my dad. I never cared to. A lot of people in my situation grow up and start to wonder, you know, who was he? Why'd he leave? But not me. I figured if he didn't want my mom and he didn't want me, I didn't miss out on anything special. Of course, that's not how my mom saw it. You'd think he was the best thing she'd ever had based off how she was after he left. Maybe he was, because I certainly wasn't enough for her."

I licked my lips. I didn't like talking about my family, and I was never quite sure if it was because it hurt to talk about or because it was pointless. Maybe both. All I knew was that they sucked.

"She started drinking heavy. At any hour of the day. There's really not much else to her than that. She tried to kill herself one night. She got drunk and then took some pills..." I shook my head. "I found her choking on her vomit. I thought she hated me. She never said it, and she told me she loved me all the time but...you don't ruin the people you love. You don't abandon them. One night when I was asleep, she packed her back, got in her car, and left. She didn't make it far. Her car was found wrapped around a pole."

He stayed silent the whole time, just listening.

"My grandmother told me that morning she was dead. I stayed with her until we got sick of each other, and then I left. I stayed with a friend who was stripping for cash. She introduced me to Milan."

His tensed for a minute at the sound of her name, but them relaxed.

"I needed money. Prostitution seemed like the easy option, and I just wanted something easy. Milan knew people, and eventually we moved from corners to events. As you know, she and the man she'd been sleeping with were the ones who introduced me to Chris. For a while, it was nice and normal. I wasn't prostituting anymore because he was quote on quote taking care of me." I closed my eyes and inhaled. "Something happened. I don't know what. But I could see he was getting stressed and desperate for money. I was dependent on him by now. He used that."

"If I wanted to stay, I'd have to earn the right. He wanted me to do what I'd been doing before. Sleep with men for money. It was then I learned he'd been trafficking women. I don't really want to..." I swallowed. "To get into it. I was fucked up, Nic. When I wouldn't cooperate, he'd beat me. It wasn't long before I was requesting drugs. It was the only way I could go through with it without...without hating myself completely. At least I was numb. At least I wasn't really there. But I got hooked. And I got depressed. I started saving the pills he gave me. Hiding them until I had enough. And then I took them all at once. When I woke up, I was in the hospital. He was so angry. He told me that was it. No more drugs."