Why hadn’t she eaten? Why didn’t she ever fucking eat unless LJ was there to cook? She didn’t need to lose weight, didn’t need to shape her body to anyone’s pleasure. Her best friend was a cook, for Christ’s sake, and even Wild Falls had restaurants. It was like some part of her didn’t think she deserved food.

She swallowed past her tattered throat and remembered how hard it had been to look at herself in the mirror at all those department stores. She kept trying to hide her body under fabric but from who? From what?

Gingerly, she reached down and touched her belly. It was a little concave, the skin velvety and dotted with water droplets. She lifted her hand and laid it over one breast. She didn’t touch herself except when she was washing up, and her nipple felt odd against her hand.

It shouldn’t, though, should it? It was hers. It was her.

Her lip trembled and she cupped her breast, cradling the weight in her palm as the water slipped over her shoulders, surrounding her in warmth. This was how LJ touched her, no matter if it was her back, her elbow, her knee. Even her hair. His hands were always smiling, and he was never careless in how he put them on her.

She wished she could touch herself with the same respect.

That website should have been exciting, maybe even a little arousing. She could have been clicking through to the most interesting toys instead of choosing the one that scared her the most. She’d been approaching the purchase as if it were a vaccination instead of a joy. Planning on using it roughly, a punishment against a body whose reactions kept betraying her. Everything about that suddenly struck her as wrong.

When her wrists had been bound to Gavin’s headboard, her body had felt like a cage she couldn’t rip her way out of, but it wasn’t a cage or a burden. It had carried her. Through nineteen terrible hours, and out the window. Her fingers had worked those screws free, even after her fingernails had broken and bled.

She let her hands cradle the muscles of her arms. They’d lowered her from Gavin’s window. Her legs had caught her and propelled her away. She’d rescued herself when no one else had.

Andra closed her eyes and stroked her palms down herself, the way she would the coat of a foal newly into the world. Her skin was soft, vulnerable. Unbidden, love rose in her: natural and quavering, the way it did for every innocent foal.