“What aren’t you saying?” he asks.
I shrug. Try to breathe. “The girls. The sex thing. There’s more to it. Caleb . . . trains them. Sexually. So when they become long-term companions and Brides, they know how to please. How to be good at the kind of sex men like.”
Logan blinks at me. “Jesus. By ‘train,’ I assume you mean he fucks them all and calls it training?”
“There are actual lessons. Weekly reports and assessments. Techniques.”
“So the clients aren’t allowed to fuck the girls, because they belong to Caleb.” This is phrased as a question, but spoken as the bitterest of statements.
“I hid under Rachel’s bed during an assessment,” I whisper.
“Meaning . . . you discovered all this by accident? Overheard Caleb having sex with some other girl?” he asks.
I nod. “Right.” I swallow hard. “Then one time I was visiting Rachel, because we were kind of friends, and I needed someone who wasn’t Caleb to talk to. He showed up, and caught me watching. Listening. So he . . . he forced me to watch while he—finished. With Rachel.”
“Isabel. God.” Logan wipes his face with both hands. “This is fucked up on so many levels.”
“I admitted to him later that I was confused by the difference in the way he treated Rachel versus the way he treated me. He did things both to and with Rachel that he never did with me. And I wasn’t—I wasn’t saying I wanted those things, just that I was confused. He’d say things to her, do things with her sexually that—” I cut myself off, start over. “So then the next time I saw him, he did . . . what I told you. Which was the kind of thing I heard and saw him do with Rachel.”
I cannot put into words the confusion. The anger. The fact that part of me liked what was done to me. That part of me craves those moments of helpless weakness, those moments of belonging, of being owned, dominated, subjugated. I hate that part of me, and cannot speak it into truth.
But Logan, oh . . . he sees. His eyes, crystalline and indigo and piercing me like scalpels slicing through tissue. Cutting me open and baring my secrets for his perusal.
“Isabel.” His voice has that note of warmth. That layer of understanding. “There is nothing you could say, nothing you could do, no truth that could change my feelings for you. Do you know that?”
I cannot move, breathe, or feel, much less speak. I try to nod, try to seem like I am giving him an affirmation. But it ends up a sniffle and a wobble of my head. My eyes are squeezed shut and my head is ducked, and I am clutching myself, arms wrapped around my middle.
“You watched, and you were curious.” His voice is a murmur in my ear. “You saw him do things to that other girl that he didn’t do with you, and you were curious.”
I nod. I owe him truth, even embarrassing, disgusting, mortifying truth.
Logan continues baring the secrets I cannot say. “You didn’t . . . want those things. But you were curious. And Caleb is a perceptive motherfucker. He can read people as easily as you read books. So he saw that. Saw your curiosity. And he’s a manipulative bastard, so he used it against you. Used your curiosity as an excuse to force those things on you and make you feel like maybe you asked for it. That maybe you did want it, and just didn’t know how to say it. Like maybe it was you all along, and not him.”
I am choking. Oxygen is not reaching my brain. Thoughts are like moths fluttering in kamikaze circles around a burning-hot lightbulb. How does he know? How do these men see so clearly into me? Do my thoughts and desires and emotions appear on my forehead in visible form?
I roll away. Logan is at my back, hand on my shoulder, mouth at my ear. “Hey. Talk to me, Is.”
“And say what?” I speak to empty air in front of me rather than facing Logan. “That you’re right? Fine. You’re right. And so was he. I . . . was curious. And part of me did want it. Just . . . not the way he did it. I didn’t want the humiliation. With her, it seemed like it was mutual. Maybe he was teaching her, but there was a two-directionality to the way they interacted, sexually. And . . . god, this is so hard to say out loud, especially to you. But with Caleb and me, it has always seemed . . . one way. Him doing what he wanted to me, and me allowing it. I wanted that—I don’t know how to put it. I wanted that feeling of being an active participant and not just a . . . a receptacle for his needs. And all I got for my curiosity was to be used yet another way.”
“What did you feel with us? You and me, just now?”
“There is an us. There always has been. I’ve always felt like with you, that you see me. You . . . you both see me, and see me. The emphasis on both words is important. You care about what I want. You care about who I am.”
“Caleb doesn’t.”