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Authors: Ella James
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wedding.
Hunter West.
His name still leaves a sour taste in my mouth, and I know I have no right. I was a whore just like good Mr. West, so who am I to judge his past?
Speaking of pasts: Missy King. Meredith Kinsey. I torture myself, imagining her fate. Wondering, for the thousandth time, if Meredith really is Missy King, or if this is some elaborate plot my father cooked up to throw me off the trail.
And if she is, what happened to her? How did she go from crusading college reporter to sex slave?
People like you happened to her.
As I weave between a Mack truck and a van, I think about how true it is. The guy arrested on drug charges back in Georgia was probably her boyfriend. Maybe she fled to Vegas, where she didn’t have any money, and she met my father, who probably promised to take care of her.
I used to think of myself as one of the good guys. Sure, I slept around, but every woman I was with wanted to be there, too. They wanted the sex as much as I did, and when it was over, we usually parted as friends. I try to stay away from anyone who might want something else.
See? One of the good guys.
But for almost a year, I knew what happened to Missy King and I pretended I didn’t. I believed she deserved what she got. Innocent women don't fuck married men, right?
The thought makes me feel nauseated.
I let fate stay its hand while I sat on her secret. While I protected my father. I let him get away with something abhorrent, and then, that night outside Hunter West's house, I paid for it. Jim Gunn, evil fucker that he is, was doling out justice in my case. I still want to kill him—preferably after feeding him his balls—but I know by the time this is over, I'll see just how much I deserve what I got.
I take a sharp curve around a clump of cacti and my body tenses at the feeling of off-balencedness I get from steering. I’ve got a fucked up left hand, and I can't even ride a bike without losing my damn nerve. No way I'll be saving anybody.
And for the first time yet, I wonder if I'm really going to Mexico to die.
Almost six hours later, I cross the border at Mexicali, the capital of the state of Baja California, Mexico, with my passport and a story about motorcycling through the country. In the bottom of my bag is a second passport, for 'Meredith Carlson'.
It's my hand, I tell myself. Because I'm disabled now, I need to feel like I can actually do something. But doing something is telling the cops. Not riding into a drug cartel’s turf.
As I get into the bustle of Lazaro Cardenas Boulevard, with its half-dozen lanes of thick traffic baking under the hot sun, I take a very stupid risk, balancing with my left shoulder and hand and sticking my right into my pocket, where I grasp Meredith's picture and throw it out into the wind.
The second after, I’m wrenched with regret. Just another sign that I'm pathetic. A lump of emotion rises in my throat, but I swallow hard and navigate the traffic. I focus on finding my way to Islas Agrarias Boulevard, which will take me to a little side street—Av de Los Serdan—where I should find La Casa del Amor.
I'm in shoulder-knotting traffic for almost an hour, feeling the sweat drip through my hair and down my neck, wondering what will happen when I get to the strip club, when I finally spot the turnoff onto Islas Agrarias. My phone isn’t working like my provider told me it would, so I’m relying on visual memory of the map as I look for Calz Tierra something, the smaller street that will take me to the even smaller Av de Los Serdan.
The roads here are paved but it’s been a while. Small, square business signs, nothing but colorful paper plastered over plywood squares, line Islas Agrarias, advertising party spots, a lawyer’s office, free colas. There’s no grass anywhere—just piles of sand that sprinkles across the road as a dry wind slaps me in the face.
I squint through the sweat in my eyes, pass an old brown Jeep, and get into the right lane, where
Hunter West.
His name still leaves a sour taste in my mouth, and I know I have no right. I was a whore just like good Mr. West, so who am I to judge his past?
Speaking of pasts: Missy King. Meredith Kinsey. I torture myself, imagining her fate. Wondering, for the thousandth time, if Meredith really is Missy King, or if this is some elaborate plot my father cooked up to throw me off the trail.
And if she is, what happened to her? How did she go from crusading college reporter to sex slave?
People like you happened to her.
As I weave between a Mack truck and a van, I think about how true it is. The guy arrested on drug charges back in Georgia was probably her boyfriend. Maybe she fled to Vegas, where she didn’t have any money, and she met my father, who probably promised to take care of her.
I used to think of myself as one of the good guys. Sure, I slept around, but every woman I was with wanted to be there, too. They wanted the sex as much as I did, and when it was over, we usually parted as friends. I try to stay away from anyone who might want something else.
See? One of the good guys.
But for almost a year, I knew what happened to Missy King and I pretended I didn’t. I believed she deserved what she got. Innocent women don't fuck married men, right?
The thought makes me feel nauseated.
I let fate stay its hand while I sat on her secret. While I protected my father. I let him get away with something abhorrent, and then, that night outside Hunter West's house, I paid for it. Jim Gunn, evil fucker that he is, was doling out justice in my case. I still want to kill him—preferably after feeding him his balls—but I know by the time this is over, I'll see just how much I deserve what I got.
I take a sharp curve around a clump of cacti and my body tenses at the feeling of off-balencedness I get from steering. I’ve got a fucked up left hand, and I can't even ride a bike without losing my damn nerve. No way I'll be saving anybody.
And for the first time yet, I wonder if I'm really going to Mexico to die.
Almost six hours later, I cross the border at Mexicali, the capital of the state of Baja California, Mexico, with my passport and a story about motorcycling through the country. In the bottom of my bag is a second passport, for 'Meredith Carlson'.
It's my hand, I tell myself. Because I'm disabled now, I need to feel like I can actually do something. But doing something is telling the cops. Not riding into a drug cartel’s turf.
As I get into the bustle of Lazaro Cardenas Boulevard, with its half-dozen lanes of thick traffic baking under the hot sun, I take a very stupid risk, balancing with my left shoulder and hand and sticking my right into my pocket, where I grasp Meredith's picture and throw it out into the wind.
The second after, I’m wrenched with regret. Just another sign that I'm pathetic. A lump of emotion rises in my throat, but I swallow hard and navigate the traffic. I focus on finding my way to Islas Agrarias Boulevard, which will take me to a little side street—Av de Los Serdan—where I should find La Casa del Amor.
I'm in shoulder-knotting traffic for almost an hour, feeling the sweat drip through my hair and down my neck, wondering what will happen when I get to the strip club, when I finally spot the turnoff onto Islas Agrarias. My phone isn’t working like my provider told me it would, so I’m relying on visual memory of the map as I look for Calz Tierra something, the smaller street that will take me to the even smaller Av de Los Serdan.
The roads here are paved but it’s been a while. Small, square business signs, nothing but colorful paper plastered over plywood squares, line Islas Agrarias, advertising party spots, a lawyer’s office, free colas. There’s no grass anywhere—just piles of sand that sprinkles across the road as a dry wind slaps me in the face.
I squint through the sweat in my eyes, pass an old brown Jeep, and get into the right lane, where
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