He Called Me His Plaything in Front of His Men, So I Left Carrying His Heir novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Laundromat

I took the key on Friday.

I got it back out of the foreman's drawer at the end of my shift, with the paper tag still on it, and put it in my bra.

I did not tell my mother where I was going.

I told her I was going to a friend's.

She looked at me for a long moment over her coffee.

"Be careful of your feet," she said.

The room above the laundromat on Southwest Boulevard was one square space with a mattress on the floor and a hot plate.

A window looked down on the dryers.

At two in the morning the machines were still running below us, and the whole room hummed, warm and soft.

The light came up through the glass from the laundromat's fluorescent tubes, white and flickering.

He was already there.

He was sitting on the edge of the bare mattress with his coat off and his hands open on his knees.

He stood up when I came in.

He didn't say anything.

I locked the door behind me.

"I want to tell you something first," I said.

"All right," he said.

"On Sunday I stood behind your chair for a full minute and you didn't look at me."

"Ximena."

"No. You listen. It's my turn to talk." My voice shook, and I let it. "It was the worst thing anyone has ever said to me. I've been called worse things on that line, believe me. But it was you. I'd been in your bed for five months, and you said it like I was a coat you'd hung on a chair."

"I know."

"And they laughed."

I took a breath.

"I can't stop hearing the laugh," I said. "I wake up hearing it. I never forgot that laugh and I don't think I'm going to."

"I know," he said again, very low.

"Stop knowing," I said. "Say it."

His jaw worked.

I saw him try.

I saw him open his mouth, and I saw something come up behind his eyes and meet a wall, hard, as if he had walked into glass.

"I can't," he said. "I'm sorry. I can't."

I hit his chest with the flat of my hand, once.

It was not a hard blow, and he did not move.

"Then I'll make you say it some other way," I said.

I pushed him back down onto the mattress.

I knelt on the bare floor between his knees.

He stared down at me, and I put my hands on his belt.

"Ximena, you don't have to."

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