Violet Grenade(77)

Cain wipes his hands over his knees. Gently at first, then rougher and faster like the officer's blood is a venomous thing, like it'll rot the skin from his bones.

My scalp tingles when I realize what I'm about to do, what I'm about to admit. But if I don't do it now, here, I will never do it. I'll carry around my secret like a cancer, let it eat me whole, one mutated cell at a time. "Cain, I'm going to tell you about my dad. And how him leaving changed my mother, and then me, into something terrible."





Chapter Forty-Nine

I Won't Abandon You

As we drive-the sky purple, the stars quiet as they eavesdrop-I tell Cain everything. Wilson wails inside my mind the entire time, making it difficult for me to recount the story. This isn't something he wants me to share.

I can hold this for you, Wilson complains, wounded by my admission. You don't need anyone but me.




       
         
       
        
Though he is insistent, I speak past his complaints. I tell Cain how my mother brought unsuspecting men home, how I learned the best way to make a person writhe in agony, the best way to cover their screams so the neighbors didn't hear. The graphic details … I can't recall. Wilson keeps them hidden in the recesses of my brain. He swirls the key around his index finger like he's taunting me, but the look on his face speaks the truth.

He doesn't want me to remember the worst bits.

He doesn't believe I can handle them.

Cain doesn't interrupt me once during my midnight confession. He only stares ahead, his hands still on his knees.

When I'm finished, I ask him for one single favor. "Please don't tell anyone. I know you won't want to be around me anymore, but don't tell, okay?"

Cain pulls in a deep breath and lets it out. He runs a hand over his shaved head, and his face scrunches. "Is anyone looking for you? Or your mom?"

I shake my head. "Not that I know of. Mother was always careful."

"And you don't know what happened to them in the end? Those guys?"

"I know," I say, my voice hardly above a whisper. "I just can't remember."

"You were twelve years old," Cain states.

"I was sixteen before I left."

"Holy shit, Domino." He shakes his head back and forth. "Holy shit."

"Now you know why I can't possibly think of you as a monster." I've held back as long as I can, but now tears thicken my voice. "Because I see one in the mirror every day when I wake up."

Cain looks at me as I drive, as tears slip down my cheeks. I peek at him from the corner of my eye and see that the color has leached from his face. His jaw hangs open, and he stares at me as if I'm someone he's meeting for the first time. His gaze travels to my hands, no doubt envisioning the things they've done. The tools of suffering they've held. He runs his own hands over his head and mutters "Holy shit" over and over until the words lose their meaning.

And then something happens. He falls back in the seat and stares up at the roof of the car, pulls in long breaths through flared nostrils. The nervous energy leaves him, and in its place settles a calm sort of resolve.

"Listen to me." Cain's voice is heavy and sure. "What happened to you was messed up in the most horrific way possible. When we leave here, you'll need to talk to someone. I probably will, too. But this was not your fault. It was your mother, for crying out loud. Your mother. She manipulated you. She didn't give you a choice."

"No," I argue. "I had a choice. And I did the wrong thing. It's unforgivable." 

"To who? To who is it unforgivable?"

I gasp for air, trying to stop the emotion from welling up again.

Wilson, I need you, I think.

I'm here, he responds at once. I've got you.

Wilson tows my memories back toward him like a sailor hauling a rusted anchor from the sea. Relief washes over me, making my body feel light and warm.

"I'm not going to abandon you," Cain says softly. "So you can get that thought out of your head right now."

I briefly clench my eyes against what he's saying. It's almost too much to hope for.

He reaches over and grabs my elbow, squeezes it awkwardly. A soothing current engulfs my entire body at his touch. "I mean it. You and I, we've started something, even if it's only in each other. I feel different when you're around. I feel like maybe I could move past the things I've done and focus on the things I could do." He hesitates. "Do you feel the same way?"

I don't know how to respond. Cain does make me feel different. If I can tell him that I partook in torturing men and he can stick by me, that's got to be something. Then again, maybe that's the definition of being screwed up. That we're so damaged that regardless of what the other person says they've done, we just shrug and say, Hey, as long as you don't leave me, we're square.