UNTIL LOVE SETS US APART ( JENLISA)

Chapter 12

Jennie POV

I stared at the ceiling, at the peeling paint above me, and wondered how I had ended up here once more.

I lifted my head from the lumpy pillow and looked around, brow furrowed. I hadn't gone anywhere. I was still trapped here, cruelly ripped away from the life I had only caught a single glimpse of.

That small beautiful life with Lisa was the hardest part. If Kai had just taken me straight from that awful place to this awful place, I might have been more amenable. Maybe, just maybe, I would have gone along with it, have had convinced myself that it was so much better than what I had been forced to endure before so it must be romantic. But I had seen what life could have been like if I had just stayed with Lisa, if I had found the nerve in myself to accept that I was worthy of her affections and the life She brought with her. And that just made this so much harder to handle

I wasn't sure how long it had been since Kai had taken me. A week, maybe more? The days seemed to blur into one another, as I spent most of my time sleeping to avoid him, pulling the covers up over my head and squeezing my eyes shut until I slipped into unconsciousness. Not that my sleep had stopped him before, but for some reason, he was approaching me a little differently now - as though he was willing to give me some space, some time. Not that much space, of course, as he still had me stuck in this dingy apartment, but he was treating me like I was an errant lover more than the exploited teenager he had dragged into his awful place and beaten and raped for years.

I couldn't have felt less for him - well, any thing less than the utter disdain that filled my system every time I looked at him - but he seemed to adore me, carefully lying next to me while I pretended to sleep and stroking my hair, growing furious every time I would suggest leaving. For Kai, this was love or the closest thing he had known to it. And I had no idea why I was the focus of his attention.

No, that wasn't true. I was beginning to understand why I was here. When he had lost the brothel, his entire life had been torn away from him, everything that had given him power and control vanishing in a second with out a moment's notice. When he had fled that place, he had told, he had been helpless:

"I've never felt that way in my life, Jennie," he spoke, reaching out to touch my face gently. His fingers were clammy on my skin, and I fought the urge to jerk away, knowing that his tenderness could morph to hard edges if I made the wrong move. I sat there, not saying a word, looking at him and waiting for him to continue.

"So powerless," he shook his head, finally letting his hand drop from my face. "And I thought... I tried to remember the last time I'd felt powerful without the old home, you know?"

He called it the old home', as though it had been anything other than a brothel that he had used to exploit innocent women like me. Kai refused to see the evil in what he had done, and sometimes I wanted to catch him by the shoulders and scream it into his face. Did he really believe he had done nothing wrong? Was he that sick? How much did a man have to move from his morals to sit there and talk as though years of violently exploiting women had been home for them? I swallowed my words, as I had done a dozen times over the course of the last few days, and waited for him to continue.

"And I thought of you," he reached out to take my hand, and I looked down at his fingers touching mine. I could physically see that our skin was in contact, but it was like I had floated from my body and couldn't feel it at all. I looked him in the eyes, pleading for some distant human part of him to see how much I craved my freedom, but I came up a dead blank. He really thought this was romance. That his feelings of power had come from love, not from the literal dominion he had held over me. "You always made me feel so strong, Jennie," he continued. "And I'm so glad we're finally back together...”