Taking Turns (Turning #1)(105)
“Chella,” I say, taking her in my arms. “What’s going on? What happened to you?”
“They were gonna cut me, Bric. Cut me here,” she sobs, pointing between her legs. “We were in Sudan for a mission with the church and I got a boyfriend when I was seventeen. But I had already lived through hell. My mother used to tie my hands to my bed when I was a kid so I couldn’t touch myself. She called me a whore when I was nine. When I was ten she started taking me on missions. All over the world. To try to control me. She told me I was dirty. And if she caught me doing anything even remotely sexual—like climbing a f*cking tree!” She screams this at her father—“she’d tie me up.”
“Jesus f*cking Christ,” Smith says, rubbing her arm. Even Quin is back, holding onto Chella’s shoulder.
“When I was just a little girl she used to put splints on my arms so I couldn’t reach between my legs. And that day… that day in Sudan… she gathered up all the old women and they came for me. She begged them, Bric! She told them I needed to be saved and only they could do it. They held me down, Bric! They were going to mutilate me!”
She whirls around to face her father again. “And do you want to know how I escaped that fate?” She spits on him. Right in his face. “That boyfriend went and got his father and uncles and they had to threaten them. They told those old women I was the president’s daughter and if they touched me the whole village would be bombed in retaliation.”
She turns back to me, sobbing so hard I can barely understand her words. “They took me to the US Embassy and I got sent home. And then I ran away—”
But she can’t take it anymore. She crumples, Smith catching her in his arms as she buckles over.
I swallow hard and look at her father. “You need to leave. Right now.”
“I hope you die,” Chella mumbles. She pushes Smith off her and stand to look at her father. “I want you to feel the way I feel. I want you to be held down and—”
A horn honks as a silver BMW pulls up alongside us.
“Get in, Chella,” a woman says. The passenger side window is down. Chella looks at the car, then starts crying again as she runs for the curb, throws the door open, and gets in.
We watch in silence as she is driven away.
And then we turn back to deal with the senator, but he’s already making for his car. Maybe to follow her? Maybe to escape the truth he was just handed by his very broken daughter?
No one cares.
“Why the f*ck,” Smith says, “did Lucinda Chatwell just drive up and take Chella away?”
“Because Lucinda is Chella’s sex therapist.” I sigh, just now putting all the pieces together. “She and Rochelle were seeing the same therapist. That’s how all this happened.”
“You knew about this,” Quin says, his anger back. “Just like you knew why Rochelle left.”
“I didn’t,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose as I walk back towards the Club. “I didn’t know any of that. And I didn’t know that she got an abortion, Quin. I was just giving her options.”
“Options,” Quin seethes. “And you decided I didn’t get to know about it? That was one of the options?”
“I didn’t know,” I say.
But I should’ve.
Chapter Forty - Chella
“How are you feeling now, Chella?” Dr. Chatwell asks me.
I’m lying on her couch in her office. The lights are dim and the curtains are closed to keep the sunlight out. She gave me a light sedative. To help me cope, she explained.
“Very stupid,” I answer honestly.
“Why?”
“Because you warned me.” She did too. She told me it would be a very messy exit. And I don’t think they come any messier than that. “And I refused to believe you. I thought I could handle it.”
“Did something bad happen last night?” she asks in her calm voice.
“Not at first. At first it was…” I sigh, thinking about it. “Wonderful. Just how I thought it would be.”
“Just like the fantasy you imagined?”
“Yes.”
“And where did things start to go wrong?”
“I blacked out, I think. Near the end.”
“Why?”
“It felt good.”
“That’s it?” she asks.
“It was perfect and wonderful. And it just felt… it felt…”
“It made you feel something?” she offers.
“Yes.”
“What did it make you feel, Chella?”
“Happy,” I say, trying not to cry.
“And why do you think that you blacked out at that point?”
“Because feeling good about sex is wrong.”
“But we know that’s not true, right?”
I nod, drawing in a deep breath. “It’s the shame. The shame my mother made me feel about it all growing up. It’s natural. And if consenting adults agree, it’s normal, no matter how they like it.”
She’s silent, but I know her well enough to understand she’s nodding her head at me.
After seven years of being on her couch, trying to work all this shame out of my f*cked-up mind, I know her just as well as she knows me. And we’ve been over this a million times.