Something so small can define how a situation goes.

I will probably never again wear a skirt.

Something small. Insignificant.

But it matters to me.

I can feel myself shutting down. I close my eyes tight.

Warmth. Music. Flying free in the blue sky…

Safe. I’m safe.

“I’m going to fuck some sense into you,” he hisses in my ear. “You need teaching a lesson.”

“Come to my office, Mia. It’s time for a lesson.”

Forbes’ fingers roughly and painfully pull out of me, dragging me back to the now.

For a spilt stupid second, I think he’s changed his mind—that maybe he isn’t going to do this.

Then he reaches for the zipper on his jeans.

In this moment, it’s difficult to say what I feel. Realization, mainly. This is really going to happen to me. He’s going to take from me the last shred of dignity I have.

Only if I let it happen.

Stop this, Mia! Stop being weak and fight back! You stop this, and there will be no more pain. No more hurt. Ever.

Forbes is struggling with his zipper. He moves off me, just a fraction, but I take full advantage of that fraction. Using courage I didn’t know I had until now, I bring my knee up as hard as I can and slam it into his balls.

A sound like garbled agony emits from him.

His hand drops from my throat, releasing me as both his hands go to his crotch, holding the pain I just created.

Now you know how it feels you bastard.

I slide down the wall, gasping for the air I so desperately need.

Forbes staggers a little to the side, face lined with pain, then he drops to his knees.

Now, Mia, go!

I’m moving. Running through my apartment. I grab my keys off the table, and I’m out the door, flying down the stairs.

I don’t stop to look behind.

The street is quiet. No one around. I unlock my car in the race toward it. Slamming the door shut, my hand shakes as I try to get the key in the ignition.

Shit! I can’t get it in.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Forbes come stumbling out of the building, hand still holding his crotch, and I don’t know if it’s sheer luck driving this moment, but the key suddenly punches in.

I turn the ignition, shift into gear, and slam my foot down, getting me out of there.

Reaching the end of the street in a matter of seconds, I turn left and race off down the street. I feel wet on my hand as I push my hair off my face. Pulling it back, I find it smeared with blood.

I take a quick glance in the rear-view mirror.

My eyebrow is split open and the blood from the wound is running down my face, dripping onto my clothes.

“Shit,” I wince, instantly feeling the pain from the knowledge.

I need to clean it up, but I can’t stop. Not now. I can’t risk Forbes catching up with me.

Because he will, undoubtedly, be coming after me.

I press my sleeve against the cut to soak up the blood and press down harder on the gas, firing me onward.

Before I know it, I’m on the I-90 with absolutely no idea where I’m going.

I have nowhere to go.

No friends to turn to. No family.

There’s only me.

I drive down the I-90 for an undetermined amount of time. I’m just staring ahead, foot on the gas pedal, putting as much distance between me and Forbes as I can.

It starts to rain, so visibility becomes poor, and my eye is starting to shut. It isn’t easy driving as I am, but with the rain pouring down, I’m going to have to pull off.

The thought of stopping terrifies me, but at the moment, I don’t have a choice.

A few minutes later, I see a sign for a service station coming up in a mile.

When the turn comes up, I pull off and follow the road round.

I park my car into the lot just outside the service motel. Shutting the engine off, I check my doors are still locked, then I examine my eye in the rear-view mirror. It’s looking bad.

I reach into the glove compartment and get out the hand wipes I keep in there. That’s when I spot my handbag sitting in the foot well where I’d dropped it earlier. Relief fills me.

I’ve got money.

There’s no way I can go back to my apartment. When Forbes gets bored of looking for me, that’s the first place he’ll go to wait. Looks like this motel is going to be my bed for the night.

I lift my bag onto the passenger seat. The papers about my mother are still there. I gently touch them with my fingertips.

My cell starts to ring, making me jump.

Forbes.

With trembling fingers, I cancel the call and switch my cell off.

I clean my face using the hand wipes. On closer examination, I see the cut is really deep. I’ll need to tape it. What it really needs is stitches, but I’m not up for stitching myself at the moment, and going to the ER is out of the question.

I can live with the scar. It’s not my first.

There should be some tape in the first-aid kit in the trunk of the car. Always prepared. That’s me. I could do with an icepack. I’ll see what the motel has.

I grab my overly large sunglasses from my bag and put them on to cover my eye. I don’t care that it’s raining. I hang my bag on my shoulder, open the door and step into the bouncing rain.

Popping the trunk, I get the first-aid kit and shove it in my bag before I head to the reception of the motel.

The female, a middle-aged clerk barely looks at me as she checks me in, which is good because I must look a complete state wearing sunglasses, soaked through to my panties and blood on my clothes.

She hands me over a key card with barely a word, so I thank her and head straight to the room. Stopping on the way, I grab a can of soda from the machine. It’ll work as a makeshift icepack.

I open the door, and I’m greeted with the stench of stale air freshener. Walking into the room, I shut the door behind me, locking it. I remove my sunglasses and put them in my bag, which I drop on the bed as I sit down. The mattress is hard and uncomfortable. I rest the cold can of soda against my eye using one hand. With the other, I curl my fingers around the edge of the bed and grip the comforter.

Then I just let go. I cry the tears I’ve needed to cry all night.

I’ve no clue how long I sit here for, crying, but when I’m finally dried eyed, I go to the bathroom and strip my clothes off.

The urge to eat and purge is overwhelming right now, but fear of going back outside keeps me in the room.

Fear is driving my every decision right now.

I wash my blood stained shirt in the sink and hang it to drip dry over the towel rail. I turn the shower on hot and climb underneath. I just need to get the stench and feel of Forbes off me, then I’ll be okay.

I’ll be okay.

Tears sting my eyes at the reminder of what just happened to me. A lump lodges in my throat, sticking there like dry wood. I suck in a deep breath to stop the tears from starting again as I pick up the hotel soap to wash myself with. When I feel as near to clean as I’m going to, I grab a towel and wrap my hair up. Then my body. I hate that I can’t brush my teeth. I’ll have to buy a toothbrush and paste in the morning.

I go back into the room and get the first-aid kit from my bag.

I clean the cut using an antiseptic wipe, then tape it up. I take a couple of Advil from the kit and swallow them down.

I really don’t want to put the clothes I was wearing back on, but they’re all I have to wear. I leave my panties off and just put my bra back on, wrapping the towel around my waist.

Climbing back onto the bed, I tuck my legs underneath me as I stare down at my bag.

The ‘Giveaway Mia’ contract and my mother’s address are still in there.

I can’t believe that she’s alive. More so, that she signed me away. Just like that. With the press of a pen to paper, she was no longer my mother.

How does that even work?

The mix of emotions I feel is confusing. I’m angry. No, I’m raging. She has been out there all this time while I had to endure growing up with Oliver.

She abandoned me.

She left me with him.

Did she know the kind of man he really was? The person she was actually leaving her child with? Did she willingly just walk away leaving me there with that monster of a man?

I have to believe she didn’t know because the thought that she did is just too painful to consider.

I can’t think about it now. I don’t want to think about it.

Too much has happened to me today. I can barely process it.

I need to sleep.

Pressing all thoughts from my mind, I straighten a leg out, and using my toes, I push my bag off the edge of the bed. I switch the light off and climb under the covers.

Closing my eyes, I listen to the sound of the distant traffic on the interstate, trying to focus on that.

I wonder if Forbes is looking for me. What if he finds me here?

On that thought, I get out of bed, grab the heavy chair from the desk, and drag it over to the door, propping it up underneath the door handle. I should have hidden my car behind the motel instead of leaving it upfront, but I’m not going out there now to move it.

Then again, I’m too far out of Boston. Forbes won’t think I’ll have gone this far. I never leave Boston.

The thought makes me sad.

I’ve never left Boston. Not once.

The life I had existed within the city limits. While my mother lived a whole other life, without me.

Climbing back into bed, I turn the TV on using the remote control and focus on the screen instead of focusing on what is going on in my own mind.

Inside my head is not a place I want to be right now.

Chapter Three

Mia

I wake feeling disorientated. My head is throbbing, and I can hear a television on.

I realize I’m in the motel room I slept in last night.

Yesterday’s events come flooding back. Forbes tried to rape me. He sexually assaulted me. My mother – she’s alive. She signed me away. She left me with Oliver.

My heart and stomach start to ache, painfully.

Then I make the mistake of rubbing my eyes. “Shit!”

I press my head back into the pillow and ride out the wave of pain, and grief until it all settles into a dull ache in my chest.

I don’t move again until my bursting bladder forces me out of bed. When I’m done using the bathroom, I check my eye in the mirror.

Jesus, it’s bad. Swollen and black and my eye is bloodshot to hell. No amount of cover-up will conceal this.

Guess I’ll be wearing my sunglasses for the next week.

I drop a couple of Advil to take the edge off the pain, and go back to bed. Resting my back against the headboard, I start channel hopping. I’m trying to focus on the television, and ignore the noise and questions in my mind, but it’s not working.

I know I need to decide what the hell I’m going to do. I can’t just stay here in a motel room, off the I-90, in god knows where. But I can’t go back to my apartment either. Or Boston for that matter. Forbes will be waiting for me.

So what do I do?

I could go to Colorado and find my mother.

No way. She abandoned me. She left me with Oliver.

But you don’t know her reasons. You know what Oliver was like. How terrifying he was. What if she had no choice but to leave?

I bang my head back against the headboard. “Goddammit! No!” I mutter into the silence.