While he orders enough Chinese takeout to feed thirty guys his size, I contemplate my options.
What if I tell him and he kicks me out again? I can’t bear to lose him, but keeping secrets got me in trouble before. He called me a liar and accused me of manipulating him. He compared me to my parents. My stomach lurches and I breathe through the urge to barf.
I have to tell him regardless of the fallout.
Rex has taught me that hiding from the truth, no matter how ugly, only prolongs the inevitable. Facing the fire head on, knowing it has the potential to burn and destroy, is always the best thing to do. The right thing to do.
And now that I have him back, I’ve vowed to always do right by him.
“Shit, Gia. You’re crying?” He shifts up on the bed, trying to look at my face.
I am? I wipe away the hot tears that wet his chest. “Ha.” I force out a laugh. “Guess so.”
“That’s it.” He pushes back so that he’s resting against the headboard. “What’s going on?”
I wrap up in the sheet and face him cross-legged. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from all this, it’s that I want to always be honest with you.”
His eyes narrow and the sting of possible rejection has me second guessing my vow.
“Honest about what?”
This is the right thing to do. I take a deep breath. He needs to know, and after this, I’ll never keep a secret from him again. If he’ll still have me.
“Rex, I’ve been trying to tell you something important, but every time I get the chance, it just doesn’t come out.”
His mouth forms a tight line, mimicking his eyes. He nods once. Firm and demanding.
“It’s about your biological father.” I study his expression and only see a slight response in the flare of his eyes. “I know who he is.”
He shakes his head. “Impossible. No one knows who he is. My mom didn’t even know. There was no name on my birth certificate.”
This is going to be harder than I thought. It’s as if he’s refusing to even entertain the idea of having a biological father to avoid the pain it might bring. Makes sense, but it doesn’t change the fact that he needs to know.
“When they took you from my house, I thought you were dead.” I shake my head, trying to rid my mind of the memory. “God, Rex. There was so much blood.”
He blinks rapidly, either pushing back the memory as well, or fighting off the emotion that comes with it.
“I was miserable, thinking I’d signed your death warrant. My parents thought you’d talk, but then . . . you didn’t. You were gone. No one believed me when I cried and screamed at the top of my lungs that you’d been abused. It was like it never happened.”
He rubs the back of his neck, obviously uncomfortable, but then he looks at me. “Go on.”
“Then he showed up and pulled me from the dark closet I’d been locked up in.” Relief billows in my chest even now remembering his face, bright blond hair slicked back to reveal the blue-green eyes that were so clear they were ethereal. I thought he was an angel. “He took me in, fed me, and spoke so sweetly that I was convinced with him all the world would be made right.”
“I don’t understand.”
I chuckle at the irony. “I didn’t either. The day I was locked up in the institution, a raving little girl going on about bad men and my dead brother, he walked away from me and I realized then he was the incarnation of evil.” My body breaks out in a rush of goose bumps as I remember his evil grin as he stared down at me with the pride of an executioner. “Before he said goodbye, he leaned in and whispered the words I’ll never forget.”
The more you talk and scream, the crazier you sound.
“Wait, are you talking about . . .?” His biceps flex and a muscle in his jaw jumps. “What did he say?”
Keep it up, Georgia. You’ll never get out of here.
He used my love for Rex and my fight for justice against me. According to the police, Rex was a troubled foster child who tried to kill himself. He didn’t speak of what happened to him in the basement. Nothing I said was taken seriously.
Accused of being crazy eventually made me just that.
“Rex is alive.” I swallow the next words and say a quick prayer that when they come up again they don’t slaughter him. A single tear rolls slowly down my face. “And he’s my son.”
Twenty-nine
Love isn’t a two-way street.
It’s a one-way gate.
--Gia
Rex
I’m in my bed, in the safety of my home, sitting naked with the only person in the world who knows everything about me and loves me anyway. And yet, I’m totally alone, secluded in the dark, tumbling down, and grasping for a sliver of sanity.
“That can’t be right.” It can’t be, right? I drop my head into my hands and scrub my eyes. “He lied. It’s not true.”
“Think about it, Rex. My parents worked for him. How do you think you ended up in our house?”