Fallen Rose (Beauty and the Beast Trilogy #3) - Amelia Wilde Page 0,2

you to think so. He did so many terrible things, but they’re over now. He probably had sex with you against your will. But he—what? He gave you an orgasm, perhaps. So you think you’re not a victim, but you are. You were his victim, and now you’re safe.”

Except I’m not. Her touch lingers. A rush of goose bumps moves from my shoulders to my wrists.

I can still feel the five individual points where her fingertips rested against my cheek and her thumb turned my chin. Handprint-sized patches where she held my face. I have the horrified sense that I won’t be able to scrub them away no matter how many times I drag a washcloth over my skin. I could cut all my hair off and still feel her brushing it back like she had any right to do it. I could wash my hands a hundred times and still feel her fingers on mine.

All of this is nothing, nothing, compared to what she did to Leo. I’ve lived with this for thirty seconds. He’s had to live with so much worse.

Every day.

For so many years.

“I’m going to be sick.”

I don’t hear what Caroline says next because I’m heaving into a mint-green wastebasket next to the desk. She rubs my back the whole time, in calm, slow circles.

Chapter Two

Haley

I survive the rest of the day by counting heartbeats. Counting breaths. Anything that means time is going by. I try to keep it simple in my thoughts. If Leo has enough time, he’ll be able to get to me, and take me out of here.

Caroline comes in and out of the room. She makes a point of showing me to the en suite bathroom. A new toothbrush waits for me on the countertop along with a little clutch of products. Soon after she brings stacks of clothes. “They’re brand new, but I’ve had them washed.” I stare at the back of her head while she tucks them into the dresser. She would have had them washed and dried by someone else. Someone she pays. We washed our own clothes growing up, in a rickety washer and dryer that my dad kept around like a family pet. He chuckled while he fixed them over and over.

Leo has his clothes washed and dried, too. Mrs. Page is in charge of all that. Caroline wants me to believe that his house isn’t my home, but it is. It could be. I’ll always be a little bit torn between his castle and my dad’s house, but I can fix all that if I get back to Leo. If Leo comes for me. And he will. I know he will.

More expensive perfume wafts to the bed, followed closely by Caroline. “Are you feeling any better? I brought you a book. Sit up, darling. It’s not good to lie in bed all day.”

I sit up before she can touch me, and she puts the book into my lap.

It’s a nonfiction book about the power of forgiveness. A watercolor leaf decorates the front cover. “Is this a joke?”

For a split second, her mask of concern slips and Caroline’s eyes narrow. The blue there turns cold enough to freeze my spine. This is the woman who whipped Leo so badly he could have died from it. There’s nothing to stop her from doing the same to me. She might do it anyway.

I was foolish to talk to her like that.

Caroline blinks and the mask is back up. The corners of her mouth turn into that sad smile. “Of course not. Just something that’s helped me change my way of thinking.”

I don’t read the book, but I pretend to read it. I put on the best show of my life, guessing how long it will take to read each page and then turning them at what I hope are accurate intervals.

It might as well be a book full of Leo’s name, over and over again.

Caroline brings soup in a bowl and sits on the end of the bed while I eat it. It’s a tasteless chicken noodle. She asks me if it’s all right, and I tell her it’s good.

When I tell her I’m tired in the early afternoon, it’s not really a lie. Whatever her bulldog used to knock me out clings to my veins. My eyelids are heavy with missing Leo. With hoping he’ll be here soon.

“Okay, sweetheart,” Caroline says. “I’ll check on you before dinner.”

I count a hundred heartbeats after she leaves, then swing my legs