I can’t let the demons lie, because if I do, they might return. I can’t forget them for a moment.
Because I can’t risk them taking me over once more.
My life was never difficult.
I was born to privilege. Too much privilege, really.
Now? Life is difficult. It’s a constant challenge that I welcome. I finally see how the other half lives, and there’s a certain beauty in it. A certain constancy.
And there’s Katelyn.
Women are my other weakness. Booze and women. Man, they controlled my life. Sure, I thought I was in control. Even the women thought I was in control.
But that was always an illusion.
I hurt so many people, and I can never make it up to them. But I can at least live a clean and sober life. A clean and sober life without dragging Katelyn into it.
Even now, her beauty haunts me.
I must fight it. I can’t be dragged back into my old habits.
I shouldn’t have asked her to dinner tonight. I know it. On some level, I think she knows it as well.
My phone sits on my dresser, pulsing with an invisible heartbeat. So simple. I can just pull up her number, hit call, and tell her I changed my mind. That our dinner is off.
Yes, I should do that.
I pick up the phone. It’s like a block of ice against my fingers.
I drop it, and it clatters onto the hardwood floor of my studio.
I leave it there and look around my sparse place.
I live in Manhattan. I shouldn’t, but I do. I shouldn’t work here, either. There’s always a chance of running into people who may remember things I prefer them not to remember.
But living life anonymously in a small town… I couldn’t do it. I tried. Okay, I didn’t try that hard. But I did look into it.
You can take the boy out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the boy.
So I ultimately chose to stay in the city—New York, even though I hate it. At least no one who knows me will think to look for me here.
I could live in a bigger place, but this is fine. I don’t want a lot of things cluttering up my life. I’m so over things.
My phone still sits on the floor, and the invisible heartbeat has died down. Time to call Katelyn.
Time to call off the date.
I pick up the phone. It’s no longer icy. I’m back in my right mind. I was always in my right mind. Everything else was imagined because, as much as I know I need to call it off, I absolutely do not want to.
But I will.
I pull up Katelyn’s number and hit call.
One ring. Two. Three. Then,
“Hello.”
Her voice. Soft and sweet and innocent. No way was the woman ever an escort.
I clear my throat. “Good morning…Katelyn. This is Luke Johnson. From last night.”
A minor pause. “Hi, Luke. How are you?”
“I’m…fine. Getting ready to hit the gym.” Like she cares. Why did I say that? It’s not even true. Hitting the gym for me is putting on a Yankees hat and jogging in the park. I can’t actually go to a real gym. It’s too risky.
“Oh. That’s nice.”
Yeah, this is going well. “Hey, Katelyn, it turns out that…”
“Yes?”
“It turns out that…” I inhale. Do it. Just do it. “It turns out that I couldn’t get a reservation for the restaurant I wanted for our dinner tonight.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So…you know. I was thinking…”
“Yeah?”
I made a mistake. I can’t keep our date. It’s not the right time for me.
My God, I’m being ridiculous. The words are right on the tip of my tongue, hovering there, ready to flow, but…
“I was thinking we’d try a different place.”
I hit myself on the side of the head. I couldn’t do it. Just couldn’t. I want to see this woman again, whether or not it’s a good idea.
“Sure. Okay. I’m new here so it doesn’t matter to me where we go. Everything’s new to me.”
My heart is gunning rapid-fire.
“Okay. So I’ll text you with the details. Unless you want me to come get you.”
“No. No. I’ll just meet you, like we decided last night.”
“Okay. That’s all I wanted to say.”
“All right, Luke. Thanks.”
Thanks? For what? For making a complete idiot out of myself?
I’m acting like I’ve never spoken to a woman before, when in fact…
Except all of that was then.
All of this is now.
“Bye, Katelyn.”
“Bye.”
I cover my head with the Yankees cap. I don’t even follow baseball.
My shirt is long-sleeved. It’s fall, of course, and I haven’t yet begun the tattoo laser removal process. What if someone recognizes the ink? Until I can find someone I trust to do the job, I need to cover my left arm. Even in warm weather, I wear long sleeves.
It sucks.
But it is what it is.
I drop to the floor and rattle off a hundred pushups.
Then I shove my phone and my wallet into the pocket of my sweatpants, and I’m off.
13
Katelyn
I spend the rest of the day on my laptop, searching for and applying for work. I’m not qualified to do anything. The escort lie that I told Luke came off the top of my head. I was hardly an escort on the island. I was property.
Growing up in LA, I learned all about escort services. My mother even worked as an escort for a few years. That’s how she met my father.
She claims she never had sex with her clients. For a long time, I believed her.
Now? I’m not so sure.
My phone buzzes.
So strange. It’s my mother. She always seems to call me when I’m thinking about her. Kismet? Or just bad-ass luck?
“Hi, Mom,” I say into the phone.
“Hi, honey. I’m just checking in.”
“You checked in two days ago,” I say dryly.
I don’t mean to be rude to her. I don’t. But I was gone for nearly a decade. They stopped looking for me. They assumed I was dead.
I shouldn’t blame them. They never could have found me anyway. The only reason the island was exposed was because the owner, Derek Wolfe, was murdered and all of his kids were implicated. They fought hard to prove their innocence, leaving no stones unturned. One of those stones turned out to be Treasure Island.
Derek Wolfe was an interesting man. He helped train the women before they came to the island, but he never hunted us or violated us at the actual island. Yet he facilitated others to do so.
He had two soft spots. Diamond, our “housemother,” and his daughter, Riley Wolfe.
Riley came to the island sometimes. Every once in a while I or one of the other women would catch sight of her.
All that time, Derek Wolfe never touched any of us…but he was doing unspeakable things to his own daughter.
Acid pools in my mouth.
“Baby, Dad and I really want you to come home.”
“We’ve been through this, Mom.”
“But we missed so much of your life. And you need to be with people who love you.”
“I need to be alone for now. We’ve been through this,” I say again.