Chapter 4 A Bit Feral
a bit feral
Sariah
Cian follows me to the living room where Renée is reclined on the sofa, her legs dangling over one arm. Her thumbs fly over her phone screen as the light from it washes her face in a blue glow.
“Renée, this is Cian.” I toss my gaze over my shoulder, but never make eye contact. “Ci, this is my daughter, Renée.”
“You sent the flowers?” My daughter looks away from her phone to study Cian.
“I did.”
“You knew they were her favorites.” It’s a statement, not a question.
The man behind me is close enough I can feel his heat, but he doesn’t touch me. “They were when I knew her a long time ago.”
Renée nods and returns her attention to her phone. Her eyes never stray from the device, but she manages to say, “We’re watching How to Train Your Dragon. Do you know it?”
The sharp inhale behind me tells me I’ve revealed more than I ever intended. “Yeah, but it’s been a while. How far are you into it?”
Renée sets the scene as I take the sofa next to her, leaving the chair for our guest. No way in hell is he piling on the sofa with my daughter, and he’s sure not snuggling up next to me.
Boundaries. I need boundaries.
With a blanket pulled over my body, I cuddle into the corner. My body is calm, but my mind most certainly is not.
Cian is here. My bruised lips are proof. He kissed me with a ferocity that wasn’t there before. I mean, there was always passion, lust, and love. But the kiss just now wasn’t a boy and girl fumbling and wishing and wanting.
It was a man who knows what he’s doing.
A man who kindled in me a spark that could set my body ablaze.
A man who gave me just enough that I’m desperate for more.
Renée hits play just as Cian slides to the floor with his back to the sofa, his long legs stretched out before him.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I’d entered a parallel universe. My daughter and the man who stole my heart forever ago laugh and gasp at the same moments, both having seen this movie more times than I can count. And that’s just when I was in the same room as them… individually, that is.
At one point when Toothless and Hiccup have a particularly poignant moment, Renée makes a comment under her breath. Cian turns to give her a fist bump. “You’re a cool chick. I like you.”
My heart stutters because I truly believe he means it.
Eventually his arm stretches out along the line of the sofa cushions, and we watch in companionable silence until the credits roll.
The whole time, my mind stays in the past or in an alternate future. I waiver between who we were as kids and who we could have been if life hadn’t happened.
I don’t regret Renée. She’s the best thing I’ve ever done. She’s the reason I keep fighting. If it comes down to it, I will sacrifice my happiness, every dime in the bank, and even my life to keep her safe.
I’ve done it. We’ve packed up, gone on the lam, started new schools, and picked up odd jobs. If we never pack and move again, it’ll be too soon. But that’s a pipe dream I can’t control.
How I got her… that I’ve come to accept. It was how I was raised, what I grew up knowing. Though I never expected to be truly free, I always dreamed I could be. I was determined to make it happen. And I did.
Only to be dragged back.
“Night, Cian. Night, Mom.” My daughter’s comment surprises me.
“Goodnight, Renée. I enjoyed meeting you. I hope I can crash movie night again soon.” Cian’s focus is on my daughter as she wanders away.
I clear my throat until she stops her path toward the hall, pivots, and returns to place her phone face down on the long table in the living room.
“Good try. And sleep well, baby. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Ci’s eyebrows rise and a smirk plays on his mouth. “Tough room.” His eyes come to me. “Is it time?”
This man. He’s waited more than an hour. He’s been fully with us where we are, not forcing a conversation and not phishing for details.
The sigh that leaves me is more than a decade in the making. “Yes. I suppose it is.”
He pushes to his feet and slides back into the spot Renée vacated.
He stares between his feet for a moment before lifting his gaze to mine.
“I want to know everything. How long have you been in town? Or have you been here the whole time? What happened with us?” He pauses and quietly adds, “Why did you leave?”
“It wasn’t you.”
“Please spare me the it wasn’t you, it was me talk.”
“Ci.” I extend a hand in a placating gesture but retract it and bury it under the blanket. “This will be hard for me, so please be patient. And some things—” I look over my shoulder down the hall. “Some things will be left for later.”
“I deserve to know.”
“You do… Regardless, there are things Renée doesn’t know, and I won’t say where she might overhear. That’s not up for negotiation.” I level my gaze on him.
He holds my eyes as if he could read my thoughts. When I don’t break, he simply extends a hand as if the floor is mine.
“I want to start by saying I never meant to lie to you. And where I could, I was truthful. Where I wasn’t, it was because I was young and scared. It wasn’t you. Truly. It was me.”
His jaw goes hard, but he maintains his silence.
“Now I’m older and scared, but not for myself anymore.
Nothing they could do—nothing he could do to me—is worth a second thought.
Renée, on the other hand… She’s my everything.
And nothing is off the table to protect her.
” My expression must tell him what my words might not.
“Nothing. She’s my priority. And given any danger, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure she never learns the fear I’ve lived with. ”
“Angel.”
My nickname on his lips is a salve to the wounds I’m about to reopen.
“I was raised in South Dakota in what I know now was a polygamist cult.”
Cian’s eyebrows hit his hairline, and his eyes blow wide.
“Women are property and girls are regarded as less than that. I ran away from there. It took three attempts because the first two… well, let’s just say I had guts, but my plans weren’t well developed.
The third time, I had both. I had a strategy and the determination, and”—I hold his gaze—“I was willing to die to get out. Desperation makes people do strange things.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
“Yeah?”
“Keep going. I’ll tell you mine after you tell me yours.”
“My third attempt was when I’d just turned fourteen.”
“Fourteen?” It’s a strangled whisper.
I nod and gather my courage to continue. “My first two attempts were with my best friend. That was part of my mistake. Loose lips. Looking out for each other. We were double the target. If we’d thought to split up, it would’ve been smarter, but we didn’t. So the last time, it was just me.”
I pull the blanket up over my shoulders, using it as armor to protect me.
“I bailed in the middle of the night after a full moon festival. It was the only time men were allowed to drink, aside from weddings, and those celebrations were one of the few reprieves people had from pre-dawn wake-up calls. I figured it might buy me an extra hour on the road before I was discovered. And it worked.”
“You escaped.” Disbelief colors his voice.
I nod. “Yep. I made it four miles down the road before a trucker picked me up hitchhiking.”
“What?”
“I told you. I was desperate and I was willing to die to get out. He was hauling a load to Milwaukee. I didn’t know much about geography, but it was far enough away and a big enough place.
I was free. Randy—that was his name—knew something was up and called his wife to meet us at a diner.
She and I had dinner while he dropped the load at the warehouse.
My facade of being eighteen and independent was gone.
I was so tired, and I ended up unloading everything on her.
I told her about our home… I didn’t know the words cult or polygamy or anything like that.
It was my normal, so I didn’t know I’d shocked her and worried her. ”
“Was she a safe person?”
“She was amazing. Rosie is, to this day, the best person I could’ve asked for. She’s fierce and loyal. She’s a bit feral for me and for Renée. She’s her grandma in every way but blood, and I don’t put much stock in blood.”
“Randy and Rosie?”
“Randy and Rosie. She’s here now. She stays with Renée after school and when I’m at work.”
“And Randy?”
I suck in a deep breath. “Randy passed away nine years ago. It was an accident in his rig. Rosie needs us as much as we need her, so we’ve stuck together.”
“So you were in Milwaukee,” Cian prompts.
“School was tricky since I didn’t have any foundation with traditional school. I could read and write and had some math skills.”
He opens his mouth to ask a question, but I keep going.
“Rosie homeschooled me. I was behind. Crazy far behind. I didn’t know computers or any other technology, so there were basics I needed to understand before we could even begin.
Since that’s how those programs work. We had electricity growing up, but nothing like what’s standard today.
No microwaves or dishwashers. Absolutely no televisions or computers, so going from nothing to that kind of stimulation and sound took some serious adjustment. ”
“I’d say.”
“I took the name Renée. I love that name. And it fit their Rs. Their last name was Ocotea.”
“Renée Ocotea.”
“It wasn’t a lie. It was who I was. When I met you, the girl I had been growing up was no more. I was Randy and Rosie’s daughter as much as I could be. And I willed the rest of it. I wanted to be Renée Ocotea. I was Renée Ocotea.”
“How did you enroll at CSU if you were so far behind in school?”
“I—” I pause. “I wasn’t enrolled. I took every class I could fit in with my work schedule. I bought the books and went to the lectures. I couldn’t be graded, but I’d take the tests at home and grade myself to learn where I was missing concepts. While I was there, I worked.”
“You had the strongest work ethic I’ve ever known.”
A smile breaks across my face. “Thank you. That’s a huge compliment to me. I wanted better for my life. I’m not property. I refused to be uneducated stock to be bred.”
“So Renée Ocotea, the non-matriculating student who worked her ass off, ended up in Fort Collins. How?”
“We came this way on a vacation the summer between what would’ve been my senior year of high school and my first year of college age-wise anyway.
It was beautiful. The blue skies were even better than South Dakota, and that’s saying something.
I had a new identity and a renewed purpose and found a place that was worth the risk of leaving home. For real this time.”
“How did that go over with Rosie and Randy?”
“They never had kids of their own and were okay with that decision. Finding themselves with a teenage runaway was not part of the plan, though I never felt like a burden. They were okay with an empty nest so long as they knew I was safe and happy and that I’d come home for holidays.
I did. They’d send plane tickets, and I’d get home every chance I could. ”
“The picture you’re painting verges on idyllic.”
“It was great. Then I met you.”
His head snaps to mine.
I extend a hand. “Wait. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
He nods once.
“It was great. Then I met you, and things were even better. With the exception of you potentially rejecting me based on the secrets I was keeping. My life couldn’t have been improved.”
He tilts his head. “Then why?” He leaves the question dangling.
“I told you about the women and the girls where I grew up. And a little about the men. The sons, though, were a different story. Boys were given choices. They could stay and become men on the compound. Men were educated—though I use that term loosely—and worked, but they worked for the good of the commune. ‘For the good’”—I mimic air quotes—“is a thing. Women cook. Women clean. Women procreate. Girls are raised the same. Men till the soil and build the homes. They’re the teachers.
Labor is for men. Barefoot and pregnant is for women. ”
Cian’s fist clench and unclench as his jaw does the same.
“It’s disgusting. Boys, though… if they don’t want to be laborers, they’re expelled. Girls can’t leave. Boys must. It’s fucked up. One of those boys who was cast out from the compound came into the bar I was working at. He recognized me instantly.”
“Your eyes.”
“My eyes.” I drop them closed as I confirm what he knows. Now’s the hard part. Or one of the hard parts. “I panicked. Girls don’t escape. They can’t leave. We can’t leave. They haul us back. They punish us for trying.”