Chapter Eight - Good Boys Don't Bite

Rowdy,

I was so stupid to think that it would end because camp did.

I just got home from another terrible trip to Paris with Ettie and I wish I could peel all of my skin off. It was all of the things he’s done to me before and more. My shoulder is still bleeding if you can even believe it. A fifteen-hour flight and everything still hurts like it just happened. Madame Broussard remains none the wiser.

She thinks he takes me to introduce me to his relatives and the French Elders, as if that isn’t still weird and suspicious. Still, she isn’t questioning me at least, which feels good and bad.

Good because I don’t know how I’d explain to her that a du Bois of all vamps spent a three day weekend dragging me all over Paris every night and then kept me locked in a hotel suite with his fangs and cock in me every day, calling me his good boy when I didn’t try to fight him off. BOY, Rowdy. He still called me his boy. Gag.

Bad because I guess I wish she wasn’t so wrapped up in her own things to notice that I’m different now. That I’m not even hunting anymore. I swear it’s like she doesn’t even see me when I come down to haunt the kitchen for bags. Yet, they keep replenishing themselves in there for me. But nobody’s saying anything to me about it.

I’m invisible here. Which isn’t to say that I don’t understand Madame Broussard’s position. The coven is still the coven, you know? Everyone still has their ranks and whatever and being at the bottom seemed good until now. I don’t want to keep getting away with this, Rowdy.

Back when everything first started with Ettie, I thought maybe it was because I was special, you know? Like I was more mature or beautiful or worthy of his affection and validation. It made me feel good, at first. Confident. I felt like it made me more of a woman. Made me more whole, you know?

The longer it went on, though, the worse I felt about it. Moving into Locke from Curie was step four, or something, I think. Carefully preceded by different ways of isolating myself from everyone else. It wasn’t shame, though, not at first. It was because I thought I was better than the rest of them, Rowdy. I thought him touching me and making me touch him made me better.

Of course now I understand how stupid that was, and I have more shame than any one person ever should.

It’s eating me alive every single day that I’m not with you and BB. Being here alone in my room for nights at a time is suffocating me. There’s no distraction here from it and the only thing that even marks times passing for me anymore is watching the bruises and bites heal over and fade. What kind of life is this for me? For anyone?

I’m really sorry, Rowdy. I tried really hard to get it together and find help here but it’s not like I can talk to anyone about it. The night before I left, I tried to talk to Marie but you know how she is. The slightest hint of emotional vulnerability and she ran. Kind of reminded me of you, actually.

Do you remember that night in the lake when I finally told BB what was going on? I think that was the beginning of the end for me. That was the first night I really accepted what was happening to me and realized that I can’t do anything about it alone. She got me thinking too, about being brave and being stupid.

I think I’m in too deep to be smart anymore, and I don’t think any of the girls will ever come around to talking about it, and I can’t talk to any of the boys. And could you imagine if I started trying to confide in somebody who went through the same thing as me and I didn’t know beforehand? I’d feel fucking horrible.

I’m stuck, Rowdy. You and BB understand, but I only see you once a year and I don’t think it’s fair to make you two clean me up every night after he hurts me.

So, even though I feel like I’m okay when I’m with you two, I can’t keep being a burden to you. That’s only part of this, though, because I know you two don’t even see me that way. You’re both too good, too pure. The best things that ever happened to me. You’re the ones who made me whole. I’m glad that I at least got to know what that felt like for a little while, even if it wasn’t enough in the end. I wasn’t enough, I mean. Brave or stupid, because I think being more of either would have been better in the long run for me.

Before the change, my mom trained dogs. Sometimes they’d come to her and they’d resource guard. That’s when they get really mad if another dog or a person tries to take their favorite toy or their food when they’re in the middle of playing with it or eating. She always told me the only way to break a dog of that habit was to take away the thing it liked the most. I guess that’s really stayed with me all these years. Don’t worry about me, though, okay? I’m just taking the toy away from the dog.

P.s. Please don’t do anything stupid. I love you.