I froze, goose bumps burrowing under my skin and making my whole body feel oversensitive. “What?”
She chuckled and the sound was somewhat eerie, the misery reflected in the usual happy sound making my gut twist. “We were neighbours. For so long.”
I couldn’t form words to question her. I wanted her to speak quicker, to fill in the blank parts for me, yet shock rendered me stupid.
“We used to play together. We were best friends.”
“I don’t understand,” I finally managed, falling back against the tiled wall to support myself.
“It was my own mother that introduced Terry to the Dawson’s.”
My head shook. My heart was beating so rapidly that I felt dizzy and high. Snapping myself out of the revulsion that was overwhelming me, I grabbed Kloe’s shoulders and shook her. “Who is he, Kloe? Tell me!”
She blinked slowly and smiled. “He’s my father, Anderson. My dad has come back for me.”
HER SILENCE TOLD ME SO much more than she had.
She was keeping something from me but I let it ride for now.
“He said my parents and yours were best friends way before we were born.” She shivered even though I covered her with my arms and pulled her back against me. The bedroom was dark and we huddled under the quilt together, the cocoon of my embrace and the duvet providing her with the safety net she needed. “I think they were kind of connected to a cult,” she mumbled, her brow creasing. “But I’m not sure. I couldn’t make out some of the things he’d said.”
I grimaced, the picture of Terry’s mutilated body in my head explaining why he probably hadn’t managed to say much, but I didn’t share that thought with Kloe.
“Janice, your mother, owed a lot in drug debts, Terry said. They’d tried to pimp you out, Anderson, but Terry said no one in their circle much cared for little boys.”
Kloe gagged as blood heated the fury bubbling in the pit of my soul. The dirty bastard. The sick, twisted fucks!
“And my wonderful mother heard on the grapevine of an odd couple that lived in a farmhouse in Deenslow.”
The rest of my story was history, as they say. “So I was sold for one thousand pounds so my mother could pay her drug debt?”
Kloe nodded and twisted in my arms. Sadness overwhelmed her and she reached up to cup my cheek. I could barely see her in the darkness but her love and her sorrow were so passionate they were practically visible. “I’m so sorry, Anderson.”
“Don’t be. At least now I have an explanation, as shit as it is.” I shook my head, placing my hand over hers. “So what happened to your father?”
“I don’t know. Terry just said he went away. He wasn’t much up for talking by that point.”
Once again I winced and nodded in understanding.
Kloe became lost in thought and I pinched her chin. “What else did he say?”
She tensed but shook her head. “That was it. He spat a lot of hatred and bullshit.”
“Bullshit?”
“Just… stuff.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what happened in there, Anderson. I… Something took over and I don’t…”
“It’s okay. I know.” And I did. Rage, necessity, determination, corruption, and the deep sense of survival that lived in all of us did a job sometimes we didn’t want to do.
“He screamed so loud,” she divulged with a slight shudder. “And his blood, it was so pretty. So riveting to watch it leak from him so effortlessly. I felt a strength I never had before. It grew in my belly until it completely took over.”
I tightened my arms around her when the repulsion in her eyes made her wince. “We do what we have to, Kloe.” I didn’t tell her that most people didn’t actually go as far as she had. Yet Kloe had been through so much that no one could quite understand where her state of mind was now. What should disgust so many of us was becoming the normal for Kloe. And although what I had witnessed had sickened even me, I was so proud of her. She proved to me that she was ready for me to leave her. She would survive this after all, and she would protect our baby with her life.
She blinked up at me. “I found it,” she whispered.
I frowned. “You found what?”
“Whatever I’d been looking for. The crack of thunder in the middle of the storm. The hottest fire in hell. The epitome of sin. I’d been looking for light, Anderson, for hope in the middle of hopelessness. For an escape from the middle of escapism. All along I’d been looking for the opposite of what I needed.
“Something clicked when I watched the blood drain from Terry, from the cut that I’d inflicted. The loss of his life gave me mine. His last breath was my first in a long while. Does that make sense?”
I nodded, pressing my lips to her forehead. “It makes perfect sense. We all tend to look for the things we think we need, when all along, if we’d just closed our eyes and really looked, we’d have found what lies within us is the very thing we’ve been looking for.”