Unworthy Of Love (BXB)

37. Not Giving Up

I sit on the makeshift mattress bed I have made for myself on the floor, flipping through the TV channels when Raven finally appears from the bathroom. He has a towel wrapped around his head like a turban and is wearing my pants and sweatshirt that look ridiculously baggy on him. He stops in the middle of the room and looks at me.

"Really?" he says. "You intend to sleep on the floor?"

"Yep," I say. "You're sick, so you have the bed for tonight."

"I'm not sick." He shuffles to the bed and plops onto it. "Just...tired."

I switch the TV off. "You should eat something."

"Later." He lifts his feet onto the bed and stretches out on his back. "Tomorrow."

He unwraps the towel and drops it to the floor, then runs his fingers through his damp hair, spreading it on the pillow around his head. The room is mostly dark now that the sunset is over outside, and quiet, with only some muffled music from somewhere in the building and the distant honking of cars disturbing the silence.

"We can share a bed," he says, not looking at me. "My high moral standards won't be compromised."

I shake my head. Wherever I sleep, I prefer to shower first, but after a week of keeping an eye on him I'm reluctant to leave him alone while he's awake.

"You just sleep," I say, getting up.

I walk over to the bed, stepping quietly on the washed-out rug. His eyes are closed, and I'm not sure if he's not asleep already.

"She wasn't a monster, you know," he says, his eyes still closed. "Just needed money."

I pause, unsure if raising such sensitive topics is a good idea right now.

"She could have earned it," I say at last.

"She was alone. With a child."

"So what? Catherine is a single mother, too."

"She tried," he says. "She was an exotic dancer. Did all kinds of stuff. Brought some of her clients home, and some of them saw me, and some of them had pretty diverse tastes, it turned out." He turns to his side, away from me. "So they had a chat with her and explained that she could make a whole different kind of money using me, and she was like, what the hell, we're paying those bills together, like a family should, right?"

Wrong, I want to say, but a lump in my throat prevents me from speaking.

"So they spread the word through their channels, and she started taking me to motels and it was a blast in terms of how much they paid. What they did to me was less of a blast, but you get used to stuff. She would always buy me a present afterwards, a toy or a computer game."

I blink, my eyes suddenly burning. I don't know what to say. What can one possibly say to this?

"It went on like that for a couple of years," he says. "Started when I was eight. Would have been longer but she just got greedier and less cautious so she searched for new clients on the dark net. Eventually, she stumbled on that guy who turned out to be a cop, and that was it. You've read the article."

I put a hand on his ankle and squeeze it through the fabric.

"It's awful," I say.

He shrugs. "Don't exaggerate. Some of them guys were okay. One of them always brought candy and told me jokes and said he'd take me away from my crazy mom and we'd travel the world together. I hoped he would do that. He always paid for the whole night and would fall asleep hugging me and apologized for hurting me. He showed more affection than my mother ever did. I didn't even mind what he did so much because the afterwards felt so nice. He was okay."

"The most fucked up thing," I whisper, "is that you're still saying he was okay."

He shrugs again. "Life's about give and take. You give something, you get something."

"You don't need to get hurt to get hugged."

I crawl over and lay down next to him, his back to my chest. As I wrap my arms around his waist, pulling him closer, I can sense him tense.

"You get this for free," I whisper to his ear. "Just accept it."

'Just accept me' is what I really want to say, but it feels too much too soon, too intimidating in a way.

He relaxes a little and then his cool fingers run over mine, exploring.

"You've started like a sex toy," I say. "But later, you could choose. You can still choose."

"No."

"You're more than that."

He laughs quietly, but his fingers squeeze mine with surprising force.

"No." Small, irregular shudders run through his shoulders and back.

"You are. You just need to go back to the point where you were okay and move on from there."

The shivers spread all over his body, and I can hear his ragged breaths.

"You'll be okay," I say, hugging him closer. "I'm not letting go. I'm not giving up on you."

* If you enjoy the story, please vote or comment! It will really make my day! *