Chapter Twelve #3
“Please… don’t go,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around her waist one last time.
“That’s enough,” he growled.
The door shut with a final click. Not loud. Not slamming. Just… final.
I didn’t cry. There’s no point. Because I already know what comes next. And it’s not a bedtime story.
Athens — Age 6⒈／⒉
Daddy only comes into my room when it rains.
The louder the thunder, the quieter he moves. I think he likes it best when the sky is loud, it hides his footsteps. Mommy doesn’t hear him on stormy nights, even though she sleeps just down the hall.
She’s been trying to be home more lately. I heard her yelling at Daddy last week, saying she wanted to stop working nights so she could stay with me. He said no. He got really angry. Slammed a door.
It didn’t matter. Even when she’s home, she sleeps too deep to know he’s there.
It used to be stories. Narnia. Aslan. His voice would get low and soft when he talked about the lion. Back then, he stayed on the other side of the bed with a pillow between us. Now, he moves the pillow. Now, he calls it 'our special time.”
Now, he touches my legs. My belly. The places my nightgown doesn’t cover.
Sometimes I pretend to sleep and hope he stops.
But when I flinch, or say no, he hurts me.
He says it’s my fault. That I make him do it.
He says, “Daddy has to make sure you're still pure. That you stay good. That you're ready when it’s time.”
I don’t know what time he means.
But I know it’s not bedtime anymore.
He started using the belt when I fought back. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t scream. He just makes me cry without a sound, and tells me I’m learning.
I tried to tell Mommy. I almost did. Once.
But he was standing in the hallway. Watching. Smiling.
That night, the belt came out again. He told me next time, it wouldn’t be the belt.
So I didn’t tell her.
But one day, I will. One day I’ll scream loud enough that even the thunder can’t hide it.
And when I do… I hope Mommy hears.
And I hope he finally learns what it means to be scared in the dark.
I can’t stop the tears.
They pour down my cheeks like something vital has split inside me. Like every word in that journal carved open an old wound I didn’t know I still bled from. My breath hitches. Chest tight. Vision blurred.
Then I’m yanked, gutted from the inside out, as Karter pulls me into his lap. My body shakes, hiccups ripping from my throat like screams trapped in a too-small space. I cling to him, fists curled in his shirt, but my eyes find Wyck.
“Wyck?” I croak, barely recognizing my own voice. It's brittle. Fractured.
“I’m here, Little Fox,” he murmurs, already kneeling beside me like he’s ready to slit throats on my behalf.
I look at him through swollen eyes, and I already know the answer. But I ask anyway. “Did my father really… do those things?”
His jaw flexes. Fire flickers behind his eyes. But he stays still. Controlled rage simmering beneath the surface. “What did you read?”
My voice shatters. “He molested me.”
The words taste like ash. Like rot and bile and the kind of shame I can’t scrub off.
Karter flinches, his arms tightening as if he could crush the memory out of me. I don’t let him. I pound my fists into his chest over and over, sobbing, screaming, “No, no, no!”
I’m weightless the next second, lifted up, carried like something sacred and broken. I breathe in cedar and smoke and warmth.
Wells.
He says nothing. Doesn’t have to. His silence is the kind that echoes.
He drops into a chair and pulls me onto his lap, letting me straddle him, my face buried in his neck like it’s the only place that still makes sense. His hands rub up and down my back, slow and steady, and under any other circumstance, I’d be squirming from the heat between us.
Now? I feel nothing but ruin.
I feel… Contaminated.
Destroyed.
Like a haunted doll that someone tried to love after it had already been broken.
“Wells?” I whisper, voice shaking. His hand stills in my hair. “Just hold me,” I beg.
He surprises me. Actually speaks. “Anything for you.” His voice is low, gruff, wrecked.
His arms cage around me like he’s trying to keep the world out, and all the monsters inside.
I collapse into him. Let myself be rocked like a child that no one saved in time.
I don’t know how long I cry. I don’t know if I breathe. All I know is I’ve never felt more hollow.
Until Wyck speaks. “You need to read more.”
I freeze.
Wells tenses beneath me. “Don’t you think she’s read enough for tonight?” His voice is low, but sharp, like a blade dragged across glass.
I tilt my head up, startled. He never talks back. Not to Wyck. Not like this.
But Wyck doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even look at him. His gaze is on me. Sharp. Stern. Unforgiving.
“No,” he growls. “I don’t.”
Silence stretches, and something thick and ugly uncoils between the two of them. A power play laced in heat and something unspoken.
“What are you talking about?” Wells mutters, jaw tight. His voice says more than his words ever could.
Wyck just leans forward, brushing the tear tracks from my cheeks with the back of his knuckles.
“I’m saying the truth doesn’t get to sleep just because it hurts.”