Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 149137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
A sanctuary. She was already getting emotional. “No one else. Josh, I’m not going to leave you. No matter what words come out of your mouth. You’re not in this alone. Not anymore.”
He lay back, taking a deep breath before he began.
“I had a fairly decent childhood in the beginning. Then my mom died and my dad dove deep into a bottle. He wasn’t the same after. He was so mad. He took it out on his girlfriends. When I was older, he took it out on me. After he went to prison, I went into the system. Some of those homes are quite nice and the people are good. Well, they have good intentions. Life screws things up. I got moved around a couple of times because I was angry and not an easy child even when I wasn’t angry.”
She reached up in the darkness and smoothed back his hair, hoping touch and affection would make it easier for him to talk. She remained silent because this was his story and he would tell as much or as little as he wanted.
“Then I found myself in the home of a family who lived in a rural part of the county. The social worker told me he thought fresh air would do me some good. They had me and three girls in the house. Except the girls claimed that there had been two more of them at one point and they didn’t know where the girls had gone. I didn’t think much of it. Kids came and went all the time. I was scrawny and they fed me. Good food. Anything I wanted. The mom always talked about my face and how my face was going to be worth millions one day.”
A shiver went through her and she cuddled closer to him. She wished he didn’t have to say it, but they needed the words between them. He needed to speak them and she needed to let him know they didn’t matter. His past didn’t matter.
He sighed as though he’d needed her to breach that small distance. His arm tightened around her. “Then one night a man came. They woke me up and I was told I was supposed to go with him. I remember how late it was, how dark the night was. They told me I had to be quiet because they didn’t want to wake the other kids. He was huge. It’s funny but I remember him as more of a shadow than an actual man. It wasn’t until I got to the car that I realized I wasn’t alone. He took me and Hannah Lovell, a girl with long blonde hair. She was quiet and shy. I think she was seven at the time. Maybe eight. They put us in a car and we thought we were going to another foster home. We didn’t know we’d been sold.”
She put her head on his chest. Every word that came out of his mouth was precise and measured, but his heart was thundering in his chest. “I would like to know the names of everyone involved.”
His breath hitched. “I bet you would, baby. I bet that would be a hell of a meeting.”
“So it was a human trafficking ring?” She needed to name it, to put that horrible label on what had happened to him.
“They specialized in children,” he explained. “They took us out of foster homes. I suspect they said we’d run away. They were careful about who they took. They wouldn’t have taken a temporary.”
“Temporary?”
“Uhm, like if Mom went to jail and no one else could watch the kid. That kid wouldn’t have been a candidate because Mom still gave a shit and could still cause trouble. They wanted true orphans, kids who had no one in the world who wanted them. My dad had signed away his right to me. I had no one. Neither did Hannah.”
How terrible it must have been to realize he was alone at such a young age. Not one moment of her life had she known that feeling. She’d been loved from the second she was born. Her mother had loved her so much she’d given her up so she could live. Her fathers had poured their love into her.
Even when she’d been in MSS, she’d known they were there, loving her, wishing she would come home. She’d had Bishop, who’d watched over her while he could, and then Ten. Josh had been a child with no one in the world to love him.
“I fought and got hurt pretty bad. That was when they decided there were people out there who liked a little fight and my life got worse. I learned to submit.”
How hard had that been? He was such a dominant male, quiet, but always in control. Had the seeds been planted in the crimes against his younger self, or had his own nature made it worse?