18. Lena #2
I look down at my hands. They’re twisted together too tightly in my lap.
“I remember moving,” I say, my voice quieter now.
“Boxes sometimes. Car rides. Different houses. New rules every few months.” I swallow.
“Different names for me. Different names I was supposed to use for adults. A lot of being told to behave. A lot of being grateful.”
No one interrupts.
So I keep going. “I remember one house with yellow curtains. One with a dog that hated me. A woman who smoked in the kitchen and said my hair was too wild. A man who always called me kid instead of my name.” I shake my head. “It’s all like that.”
Knox says, “Before that?”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
At first there’s nothing. Just black and pressure and the stupid, humiliating awareness of three men standing there waiting for me to reach into parts of myself I haven’t touched in years.
Then something flickers.
Small. Pale.
Not a scene. More like a flashbulb going off in the dark.
A woman. Blonde.
That’s the first thing I know about her. Blonde hair, bright even in whatever dim place this is. Not pretty in the memory. Not calm. Terrified.
My breath catches. The room around me seems to thin.
I can’t see her clearly. Not all at once. Pieces. Her face too close to mine. Her hands on my shoulders. Her eyes wide in a way that makes my stomach turn before I even understand why.
And her voice. Urgent. Shaking.
Hide, hide yourself, Lenny. Don’t let them find you.
The words hit me so hard I jerk.
My eyes fly open, and for a second, I don’t know where I am.
Motel room. Lamp. Bedspread under my hands. My own heartbeat pounding too fast in my ears. I shudder once, sharp and involuntary, like something cold just moved through me.
Vale takes a half-step forward before stopping himself.
“What?” Knox says immediately. “What did you remember?”
I stare at the floor.
Not because I don’t want to answer. Because I’m trying not to throw up. “No,” I say. “I told you. I don’t remember.”
Knox’s eyes narrow. “Lena.”
I’m already shaking my head. “I said no.”
The room feels wrong all at once. Too close. Too warm. My skin is cold. There’s something rising fast in me, panic and nausea and the sick, awful feeling of having reached into myself and pulled up something rotten and alive.
Havoc straightens off the wall.
Vale takes a step toward me. “Lena.”
That only makes it worse.
I’m off the bed before I really know I’ve moved.
The room tilts. My shoulder clips the side table.
Somebody says my name again, maybe Knox this time, maybe Vale, but I don’t stop long enough to care.
I get to the bathroom, barely make it to the toilet, and then I’m on my knees with my hair falling into my face, throwing up hard enough it hurts.
It’s mostly acid and nerves and whatever stale fear has been sitting in my stomach all night. My eyes water. My throat burns. I grip the edge of the toilet and stay there, breathing through my mouth, waiting to see if my body is done humiliating me.
It isn’t.
Another wave hits.
By the time it passes, I’m shaking so badly I can barely wipe my mouth. The cheap motel bathroom light buzzes overhead. The tiles are cold under my knees. I can hear muffled movement outside the door, then voices too low to make out.
Then the door opens.
Not all the way. Just enough.
I look up, ready to tell whoever it is to get out, and see Vale standing there.
Of course it’s him.
He doesn’t come in right away. Just stands in the doorway like he’s asking permission without saying the words. “I’m not going to touch you,” he says quietly.
My laugh comes out thin and ugly. “Great. Amazing. Thank you for the restraint.”
He takes that without flinching.
I hate that a little.
I wipe my mouth again with the back of my hand and sit back against the side of the tub because my legs don’t trust me anymore. Everything in me feels wrung out. Hollowed. The kind of sick that leaves your body but not your nerves.
Vale steps in then, slow and careful, and shuts the door most of the way behind him. Not enough to trap me. Enough to keep the others out.
That, more than anything, tells me this was his idea.
He crouches a few feet away, not close enough to crowd me. “I’m sorry,” he says.
I look at him, breathing hard through my nose. “For what?” I ask. “You’re going to have to narrow that down.”
His face tightens slightly. “For pushing.”
I don’t answer.
He goes on. “You didn’t want to go there. We should’ve stopped.”
There’s no defense in it. No trying to tell me it was necessary. Just the apology laid there between us, quiet and plain. And that, for some reason, almost undoes me more than the questions did.
I drag my knees up and wrap my arms around them because I need something to hold. When I look at him again, really look, the scar catches me first.
It always does. Not because it’s ugly. Because it makes the rest of his face feel more honest.
In this bathroom light, he doesn’t look like a killer.
He looks tired. A little older than me, maybe not by much.
A man with a ruined cheek, clear eyes, and too much control in the way he holds himself.
The kind of man I might’ve seen on a train or in a grocery line and looked at twice for completely different reasons.
But I know better now. I know what his hands can do. I know how calm he is around violence. I know what kind of world he belongs to.
And somehow that makes the disconnect worse, not better.
“You don’t look like a monster.”
“No.”
“But you are one.”
He goes quiet in a different way. Less guarded. More resigned.
“No,” he says. “I’m not.”
Something in me shivers at the fact that he doesn’t lie.
Not even now. Not when a lie would make this easier.
I push myself up to sit properly, one hand braced on the edge of the tub. My legs still feel weak, but I’m not on the floor anymore, and that counts as something.
“I hate that you’re the one in here,” I admit.
He takes that too. “Yeah,” he says. “You probably should.”
I look at him then, really look, and wish he’d stop making it so hard to hate him this way.
Outside the bathroom, I hear a floorboard creak. One of the others shifting. Waiting.
Vale glances toward the door, then back at me. “I can keep them out for a minute,” he says.
I swallow. And for one awful, human second, with the taste of acid still in my throat and my whole life splitting open around me, I’m grateful.
That feels like its own kind of sickness.
He sees something of that on my face, I think, because his expression softens by the smallest fraction. “You don’t owe us anything right now,” he says.
I laugh, tired and bitter and near tears in a way I refuse to examine. “That’s funny.”
“I mean it.”
I believe he does. I just don’t know what that’s worth.
He starts to rise then, slow and careful, giving me room before he even fully stands.
At the door, he pauses. “If you want,” he says without looking back, “I’ll tell them you remembered nothing.”
I stare at his back. At the man with the scarred face and the killer’s hands and the gentlest voice in the motel room.
And because this night hasn’t broken me in enough strange ways already, I hear myself say, “Do that.”
He nods once.
The door clicks shut behind Vale, and the bathroom goes quiet again.
Not truly quiet. The motel light still buzzes overhead. Pipes groan somewhere in the wall. Voices move faintly in the next room, too low to make out. But it’s quiet enough that I can hear my own breathing, and that turns out to be the problem.
Because the second he’s gone, she’s back.
The blonde woman.
Not clearly. Not all at once. Just in flashes that make my chest tighten until it hurts.
Blonde hair. A face too close to mine. Eyes wide with terror. Hands on my shoulders hard enough to hold, not hurt. That voice, shaking and urgent and so sure of one thing.
Hide, hide yourself, Lenny. Don’t let them find you.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the wall.
Who was she?
The question moves through me slowly, like something sharp dragged under the skin.
My mother?
The word feels strange in my head. Heavy. Almost embarrassing. I’ve never really had one, not in the way other people mean it. Not a real face I could picture. Not a voice. Not a memory. Just an absence I learned to live around.
So why now? Why her?
Why this one moment after all these years, breaking loose like it’s been sitting somewhere inside me waiting for the worst possible time?
My throat tightens. Why didn’t I remember her?
Worse, why didn’t I try?
I press a hand to my chest because it genuinely hurts there, a dull ache spreading out under my ribs.
I spent my whole life acting like none of it mattered. Like before foster care was just a blank page, inconvenient but manageable. Easier not to push at it. Easier not to ask who left me there in the first place, who lost me, who failed to come back.
Maybe I told myself I was being practical. Maybe I was just scared. Because wanting answers means admitting someone existed to answer for them.
And if she was real, if that woman was real, then where is she now?
Dead? Gone? Still hiding somewhere?
Did she lose me? Did she leave me? Did she think I was dead too?
I drag in a breath too fast and it catches halfway down. My chest hurts worse for a second, tight and hollow all at once, and I have to sit very still to keep from folding in on myself.
What kind of mess have I gotten myself into?
Yesterday I had a job. A shitty apartment. Friends who bullied me into downloading a dating app. That was my life. Small, tired, manageable.
Now there are files with my name in them. Men following me into alleys. People talking about me like I belong to some hidden war I never even knew existed. And somewhere inside all of that, a blonde woman is looking at me with terror in her face and telling me to hide.
I look up.
The bathroom window is small and dirty, set high in the wall over the toilet. The glass is rippled, old enough to blur whatever’s outside into weak gray smears. It’s probably painted shut. Or nailed. Or too narrow to fit through without breaking something important.
Still, I stare at it. And I think about running.
Not leaving politely. Not waiting for one of them to decide what happens to me next. Running. Climbing out barefoot if I have to, cutting my hands on cheap glass, landing wrong in motel gravel and just going.
Away from all three of those psychos and whatever black hole of violence they dragged into my life.
For one second, I can almost see it. Me pushing the window open. Me dropping into the dark. Me running until my lungs tear and my legs give out and nobody knows where I went.
But the image doesn’t hold.
Because then what?
If they’re right, if someone really is looking for me, then running doesn’t get me out. It just gets me lost, alone, and easier to take.
I hate that they’ve gotten inside my thinking enough that I know that.
I hate even more that they might be right.
So I stay where I am, sitting on the cold bathroom floor under the buzzing light, staring at the window like it owes me an answer. One thing is for certain. I need to get to the bottom of things.