“Neither were you.” Addie moved toward him and put her hand over his heart before she spoke again. “But you don’t know what I was, do you?”
“What are you?” Her laughter had him backing from her, and as he watched, she began to change, to morph into something he thought he might recognize. Before him now stood the man who had tortured him nearly all his childhood. His stepfather, Dane Glass.
“Do you know me now, little Nicky? Do you remember how much fun we had in your bedroom? How I fucked that pretty little ass of yours until you told on me?” Nick backed away and fell over another stone. “I can see that you do. Do you want me again? I’ve been thinking of you for a very long time, Nicky boy. A very long time.”
“You’re not real. You’re not real.” He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. It was an old habit. Once he had tried to block out the screams from his sister when she was being raped as well. “You’re not real and cannot hurt me anymore.”
A scream tore through the now chilly night. Nick looked up to see Dane grabbing Addie. His fear was so profound that Nick was frozen to the spot. He watched in horror as Dane tore his hand into her chest and pulled her still beating heart from her. Then he licked the blood from it as Addie fell backwards.
“See how much I’m not real? Do you have any idea how long I’ve been haunting you? Terrorizing you so that you wet your pants like you did before?” Dane threw back his head and laughed, spilling blood from his chin down his chest. “I’m going to kill you both for what you did to me. I will not allow you any more happiness than you took from me.”
The heart hit him in the chest. The pain of it, the blinding pain, took his breath away again, and he fell backward. Screaming now, screaming for what he’d done once again, he struggled to get away from the hold on him, knowing it was Dane again.
“Nick.” His name was being shouted over and over, but he didn’t want to go to it. “Nick, it’s me. Christ, man, wake the fuck up.”
He did finally. Nick stared at the man over him for several seconds before he pulled Steele to him and held onto him. Having something real and alive hold him back had him sobbing hard. Even as he realized how ridiculous he must look, Nick held onto his lifeline.
“He killed her and I let him.” Steele might have said something, but Nick was beyond knowing what it was. “He ripped her heart out, and I stood there and watched him. I didn’t do a fucking thing to help her.”
Steele never left him after that. Nick fully expected him to order him out of the house and never to return. But he didn’t. Instead, he held him. Then when Nick pulled away, Steele sat on the bed beside him and waited. Embarrassed now, Nick got up to pace the room, and then when that wasn’t enough, he sat on the window seat that looked out over the back yard.
“I was raped as a child. Not once, but nearly daily until I turned fourteen and got big enough to fight back. My stepfather, Dane Glass, would take me or my sister, sometimes both, while my mother lay drunk or stoned in the other room.” Steele asked him where his sister was. “She died. Killed herself after Mom died. They both died of a drug overdose. Ana was twelve, my mother…I have no idea. I never really cared enough to look it up.”
“You said that he killed her. I thought you meant your sister. He didn’t?” Nick looked out the window thinking about the dream again. “Nick?”
“He killed the woman I was telling you about. The one that I think I’m supposed to fall in love with. I was at her grave. Her name is…Addison. I’m not sure what her surname is, but that’s more than I ever had before.” He turned back to Steele. “He said that he’s coming for us both. For this Addie person and me.”
“He’s dead.” Nick nodded and looked out the window. “How did it happen? Jail? The chair?”
“I did it. I rammed a knife into his chest while he stood over me. I was fourteen then, my birthday. He’d been in my room for about an hour and wasn’t quite finished, he said. Ana was gone. Not dead yet, but gone to someone’s house for something. So that left me. When he finished and had gone to the bathroom for something, I pulled out the knife I had hidden there to use. When he returned, hard and naked again, I felt something in my mind snap. When he came to the bed again, I sat up and slammed it into his chest.”
“Good.” Nick looked at Steele. “Someone should have done it long before then. What happened to you after that?”
“I ran. I was caught, of course, but I ran. The police found me about an hour later. My mother had called the cops on me because I’d killed him. After…they examined me, because of all the blood they said, and found that I had been raped. It was pretty clear to them that I had to do it. But I spent the next two years in foster care until I got out. By then Mother was dead, as was my sister.”