Chapter 3

The sun fellon the side of my face and it was even warmer than it had been when I first left Annabelle’s. Or maybe it was the fact that I was following a stranger who looked like a character out of a fairytale to…where exactly was she taking me?

It didn’t matter. I was on my way. I was walking.

I wanted to fucking run—but she’d already stopped.

I had yet to slow my heartbeat, breathe in deeply and take in my surroundings. I had yet to understand the outcome of my actions. I was rebelling, it seemed, and apparently there is no time to question how you’re rebelling when you are.

Consequences be damned—I was doing this. I was doing exactly what I knew for a fact I shouldn’t be doing, and that was exactly why I was doing it.

Those thoughts ran through my head until I stopped in front of Mama Si, while the woman holding her umbrella stayed behind her, silent as the trees at our sides. Trees—beautiful green trees, the gorgeous blue of the sky beyond them, and to the side, the ocean trying its best to separate itself. Trying to draw a line across the horizon, a darker line as if to say, I end here. I am not the sky, only the sea.

I wanted to draw a line like that, too, one that clearly separated me from the person I appeared to be. From the person that shared the same colors as me but was not me. It was simply who the world decided I was, and I just…let them. I let them decide.

Why do you wake up in the morning?

“Follow my eyes, doll.”

I blinked, turning away from the ocean and to Mama Si.

Colors. So many bright colors trapped in those black orbs. Shimmering so beautifully.

“Now, breathe in together with me. Come on, do it…” So, we breathed in. “And exhale. Loudly. Deeply…” My heart beat like a drum in my ears so I noticed when it began to slow down. I blinked and the pool to the side of which we’d stopped became visible again. The surface of the water was so still—blue like the sky, like it was trying so hard, standing so still just to mirror it. To mirror the world over it.

Like me. Like I’d done my whole life.

And now suddenly I didn’t want to be the pool anymore. I wanted to be the ocean.

“That’s better,” the woman said, her voice snaking its way into my ears. “Keep your focus on me and understand that it is okay to be overwhelmed.”

Oh, overwhelmed might have been the understatement of the year. “I’m okay,” I lied, and that made her smile.

“The Paradise is no ordinary place. There is magic in the air here.” She raised her gloved hand, moving her fingers in rhythm with the melody playing in the distance. Slow and seductive. “It takes some getting used to, doll. But I need you to stay with me before I make you my proposition.”

I shook my head, goose bumps all over me. “I’m listening.”

“Tell me, then, why are you here?”

“For the open?—”

“No, doll, no. Why are you in my Paradise today?” And though the question was the same, I somehow understood exactly what she meant.

Again, I shook my head. “I needed a job and nobody else is hiring.”

“Why do you need a job?”

“Because I need money.”

“But why, though, doll? Why?”

She knew. It was like she fucking knew all of my life’s story and she wanted me to spell it out for her as well.

“Because I need money to live,” I insisted, and she continued to smile as she slowly turned her head toward the ocean. It was indeed a lovely view, but now that I’d focused on her, now that I’d seen her, I couldn’t look away. Not from her sharp jawline or the tight curls of her hair or the way her brows extended almost to her hairline…

Mama Si raised her hand slowly, and her fingertips touched my chin before she turned to me again.

She was no longer wearing a glove, only red on her long, sharp fingernails, which was a bit strange. I could have sworn her gloves were part of her dress, one with it, not separate.

But then she whispered, “Tell me, doll. I do so love a good story. Tell me why you came to me today.”

The touch of her hand was so warm. Just the way the air lightened up all of a sudden. The way it became so easy to let go.

“My boyfriend kicked me out because the woman he was cheating with doesn’t want me in the apartment anymore. I have no money. I have nothing, and I can’t go back home,” I reluctantly said. It wasn’t a good story by any means, but she asked for it herself.

“To Detroit,” she said with a nod. “Where nobody waits for you.”

“Nobody.” Nobody who cared.

“I see.” She moved her hand away.

The air became thick again, just like that.

“Come, Fall Doll. Observe.”

She turned around and continued down the narrow path to the side of the trees, the glove attached to her dress covering her hand again.

More pools a levelbelow the yard. More music. More people. More of those girls with the shimmery skins and the gorgeous sequin bikinis.

A few who caught my attention sat to the side of a pool shaped like a heart, the tiles pink and white, which then made the water look pink, too. It must have come out of a dream. The loungers were white and the side tables as well, but the umbrellas seemed to have been dipped into pink glitter. They shimmered so beautifully.

Behind them, on a yet lower level, was another pool, this one oval-shaped and half covered in pink foam. A round bar was in the middle of it, half into the water, and men and women were laughing and dancing and partying like they had no care in the world. They played a different kind of music here, the kind that makes you move. Electric, Brandon used to say. The kind of music that encourages you to make bad decisions.

Maybe that’s why I’d decided to come with him to Roven two years ago. He’d been in his room listening to music like this when he first asked me to join him.

I observed, just like this stranger with the colorful eyes asked me to. I observed the women around the heart-shaped pool, how fancy and sophisticated and beautiful they were as they sipped their colorful drinks and laughed and spoke to each other, completely at ease in their skins. Of course, they were—look at them! Each more beautiful than the last.

I observed, and I had this incredible urge to be them so badly. It would give me a break from my own life if I was like them. It would take me away from everything I knew, everything I thought I stood for, if I was like them.

But eventually, I had to get back to reality. Eventually, I found Mama Si had stopped a couple feet behind me, watching me with a small smile on her face that reminded me of thorns hidden underneath the velvety leaves of the most beautiful roses.

“Oh, do carry on, doll,” she said with a short laugh. “Keep watching. I’m watching, too.” And she made a point of looking down my body.

Suddenly, I felt naked, and my arms wrapped around my torso all on their own. She threw a quick look at the woman standing behind her, holding up the umbrella, making sure to catch every single sun ray before it had the chance to touch Mama Si’s face.

“What do you think?” she asked her friend, who was looking at me just as intently, and I hadn’t even noticed.

The woman shrugged. “I’d fuck her.”

Blood rushed to my cheeks instantly. What the fuck?!

“Me, too!” said Mama Si, a huge smile on her face that said she was both in awe and surprised of her friend’s answer. “She’s got that look about her…” Her index finger, now covered with the glove, spun around as she pointed at my body. “So…so desperate. So fragile. So vulnerable.”

Her whisper seemed to slip under my clothes and touch my bare skin slowly. My cheeks felt so hot I feared they’d melt off my face any second now. I had nothing to say, nothing to think, just watched the two women watching me, slowly nodding in approval.

Then Mama Si stepped forward. “I’m going to give you the opportunity to change your life today, Fall Doll,” she told me. “An opportunity that will change the whole world to your eyes.” And she waved her hand forward, toward the pools, toward the people secluded from the rest of the world in this dreamy palace, having the time of their lives.

My eyes found the women dancing on the men’s laps. The women hanging on the men’s backs. The women pouring drinks in men’s mouths, and others rubbing that pink foam on their naked chests.

Bile rose up my throat. “No. No, that’s not?—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, Fall Doll,” she cut me off, and her hand came around my chin from behind. She pushed my head slightly to the side, toward the heart-shaped pool where the girls were having fun on their own. “That is what I’m offering.”

I fisted my hands so tightly my fingernails cut into my skin. “I am not a prostitute,” I said through gritted teeth, pushing down this insane, absurd urge to say yes. Shoving away this insane, absurd desire to be right there by that pool, sipping a pink drink and wearing a sequin bikini, talking and laughing like nothing in the world could get to me. Like I was safe—as safe and as beautiful as those women were.

Then Mama Si laughed, throwing her head back.

“Oh, Fall Doll,” she said, stepping to my side, looking down at me like she actually pitied me. Her friend was behind her already, the shade of the umbrella falling over me, too.

“You are nothing at all right now,” Mama Si told me. “This is me giving you the opportunity to be something. Someone. Brave, beautiful, independent—such a dangerous combination.” She leaned closer and closer to me, those eyes on my parted lips while my heart beat like my body believed I was being hunted by the most vicious predator alive. “I am giving you what every woman in the world truly needs: the chance to be free.”

Free.

Free of Missy. Free of Brandon. Free of Autumn Hayes.

Impossible to keep my eyes off those women once Mama Si moved away from my side.

“Think about it. You know where to find me when you make up your mind,” she said after a minute, and I heard their footsteps.

I knew they were walking away, but I still couldn’t fucking move. I still couldn’t look away from those women at all.

“And Fall Doll?” Mama Si called when she was a good distance away, by the trees through which we’d come. “If you do decide to walk through my gates again, you will be coming to stay. Do not take anything of your old life with you. And I mean anything.”

With that, she walked away, leaving me all alone in her Paradise.