Chapter 6
Tessa
The world around me is silent as I move along the overgrown path that leads me up to my dad’s old trailer. It’s still in the exact same place, though the years have not been kind to it. The porch built along the front is sagging in most places, broken in others.
Overhead, lightning splits the sky, a warning of a coming storm that matches the way I’m feeling inside. Tense and ready to break through at any moment. I can do this. It’s just a shell.
The single light on the top of the electrical pole casts an eerie orange glow over the place, giving it a horror movie vibe. Which, given all that happened here over the years, is more than fitting.
Two windows have been shattered. Since they were partially boarded up, I’m guessing the damage is likely from rocks the other kids in the trailer park threw. Even though our place sat a quarter mile away from everyone else, they still came out here and poked at my dad any chance they got.
Let’s rile up the drunk. It was a game they played, and I was the one who paid the price.
Fresh pain tightens my chest.
I haven’t stood here in a long, long time.
And the last time I saw this place, I was stumbling toward my dad’s car, ready to steal it so I could put this place behind me. Which is exactly what I thought I’d done. Yet here I am. Once again, with nowhere else to go.
“You’ll never be anything else, Tessa. You’ll always end up back here.” His words are damaging even after all these years. Like an anvil dropped on my head over and over again.
Considering that lying low here in town is no longer an option, I really should have left town once I’d gotten out of the hospital, but this is business left unfinished.
I need to prove to myself that this broken shell doesn’t hold any power over me.
Not anymore. Maybe once I face it, the nightmares will stop, and I can finally truly move forward.
With a deep breath, I limp forward and grip the wooden banister of the porch. The rotting wood bites into my hand just enough that I know I’ll probably end up with a few splinters. Unfortunately, climbing the steps without it right now just isn’t an option, so I ignore the pain.
It’s only fitting that the place leaves one final mark on me, anyway.
The door is unlocked, so I shove it open and remain outside as the putrid stench of stale beer and urine assaults me. There were days he’d just urinate all over himself because he was too drunk to even walk to the bathroom.
I’d given up on trying to wash the couch cushions and just started avoiding the living room at all costs.
Tears sting the corners of my eyes as panic rises in my chest.
He’s not here, Tessa. He’s dead. Long gone.
This place does not hold power over me.
With one arm over my nose and mouth, I move into the room.
There’s no electricity in here anymore, so I use my free hand to retrieve the pen light I always have in my pocket. After one too many times locked in the dark, I know to always be prepared.
The thin beam shines over the stained carpet, or rather, what’s left of the pieces of it that haven’t been completely worn away.
The couch sags, its stained grey fabric a reminder of all the times I found him passed out on it. There were nights I’d even checked his pulse because I was sure he was dead. I hated the disappointment I’d often feel when I felt the steady thumping against my fingertips.
No, I couldn’t be that lucky. He wasn’t done tormenting me yet.
The recliner he spent most of his time in—when he wasn’t passed out on the couch—is gone. Which is honestly surprising. Either someone stole it, it was thrown out after he died, or he got rid of it before death claimed him.
There are empty beer cans all over the dust-covered kitchen. Even a plate of rotted food still sits on a TV tray beside the couch.
I know he’s gone, but as I stand here, I can all but picture him rushing toward me, fist raised, screaming because I’d done something in his eyes worthy of a beating. After angrily wiping away tears, I move down the hall and toward my bedroom.
The door is closed, so I shove it open. Since the curtains are wide open and the solar-powered light on the top of the electric post is just outside my window, there’s enough light in here that I can turn the pen light off as I study the room.
Everything is the same.
The stench in here is a lot less than out there, though the air is stale, and my bed is still made from the last morning I’d stayed here. Posters are pinned to the wall, and there’s a shelf of worn books I’d bought with spare quarters during one of the library’s clean-out sales.
This was the place I’d rest my head, but it was never home.
Because home was never a place for me. It was always a person.
“I thought you’d come here.”
As if my thoughts brought him here, a masculine voice behind me has me lunging forward. I nearly fall over, but a large hand steadies me by gripping my forearm. Heat spreads through me at the contact, warming me from the outside in.
Zane.
He releases me, so I turn to face him, doing what I can to keep my walls firmly in place. I’d slipped out of the hospital room even before they’d given me discharge instructions because I didn’t want to have to turn his mother down on the ride I knew she was about to offer me.
The Knox family has already done too much for me, and I don’t deserve any of it. The last thing I want to do is add anything else to the invoice.
“I thought I told you that I didn’t want to see you.” My tone has lost all sting as I stand here in my childhood bedroom with the man who promised to save me from the nightmare that was my life. He was the one ray of sunshine in the otherwise pitch-black darkness I couldn’t escape.
“You did.”
“Then why are you here?”
He moves farther into the room, and the light from outside fully illuminates his tortured expression.
Outside, another bolt of lightning shoots across the sky seconds before booming thunder rattles the paper-thin walls.
“I haven’t been in this room since two weeks after you left,” he says softly.
“After?”
He nods.
There was a time when Zane would sneak over and tap on my window. I’d let him in, and he’d bring me food. We’d sit on my floor and eat together while my dad slept off the alcohol in the living room.
One night when we were eighteen, Zane fell asleep beside me on the floor.
That’s all it was—innocent sleeping after a night of staying up, talking about the future we both wanted to have—but my dad stormed in and threatened to kill him.
That was the night I knew I had to leave.
Because, while I could take the beatings, I couldn’t stomach Zane getting hurt.
I still can’t.
I’d been a coward, though, and stayed until he nearly killed me. Zane came to my rescue then, too, and begged me to leave this life. So, I finally did.
“I broke in while your dad was passed out so I could look for any sign of you. I knew he’d hurt you. There was no evidence, but I felt it in my gut. I wasn’t sure that I’d find you alive, but I’d hoped.” His gaze shifts to me. “I guess I was right.”
The pain in his gaze is so fresh.
The ache in my heart has been multiplying with every second. “I guess so.”
He shifts his attention away from me. “Why did you come here?”
It’s a strange question, given all the others he could ask. Why did I leave? Why did I sneak out of the hospital? Why did I kick him out of my room?
And every single one of those answers is the same. Because I loved him too much to let him see me broken. So I guess it’s a good thing he avoided those. I’m sure I don’t have the strength to tell him the truth, and I don’t want to lie anymore.
Not to Zane. Not if I can help it.
Clearing my throat, I force my attention away from him. “I needed to prove to myself that this place is nothing.”
“And?”
I limp forward and lift a dust-covered stuffed animal from the shelf. It’s a white rabbit, won for me by the man standing just behind me at one of the shoreside carnivals. “There’s nothing for me here.” Even though I want to do the exact opposite, I toss the rabbit onto the bed.
He can’t know how broken I am.
He can’t see my pain.
Because I believe that, even after everything I’ve done to him, Zane Knox is still a man who would wrap me up in a safety blanket and protect me from the world. And with my track record, that might just cost him his life.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” I turn toward him.
“Pretend you don’t care at all? What did I do to make you hate me?”
You loved me more than anyone else in my life ever has.
“What makes you think I hate you?”
“The way you’re acting,” he replies. “You look at me as though you can’t wait to be rid of me, all while I’m still reeling over the fact that you’re alive.”
Tears burn in the corners of my eyes as I force my gaze away from him.
Zane Knox is the only man who has ever possessed the power to break me.
My dad certainly tried; that’s for sure. He broke plenty of my bones—shattered any hope I had of ever being worth something—but Zane Knox pieced me back together in such a way that, even in my darkest moments, there was a light surrounding me.
I believed that, as long as I had him, everything would be okay.
And then I lost him, too.
“I don’t hate you,” I reply. “I just don’t have anything for you.”
He cocks his head to the side to study me in that way he does. Like he can see straight through what I want him to see, and deep into all that I try to hide. “What makes you think I want something?”
“The fact that you’re here,” I reply coolly.
“You followed me all the way out here because you’re looking for any shred of the girl you knew before.
She’s gone. Dead and buried along with the remnants of our relationship.
” The words are frigid, but my voice trembles as I force myself to say what he needs to hear.
Or rather, what I need him to hear because he’s still looking at me like I was good enough for him.
I never was.