Chapter 33 #2
I glanced behind me, my eyes leaving the boy for only a single second, making sure the truck was long gone. I was relieved to see it was getting smaller in the distance.
I released a heavy breath, lightening the tension in my body as I realized, I could save at least one of the kids in this house.
I blinked back to the present, to Jolie and her invisible cat.
“How are we today?” I asked, sliding onto a metal chair—the only piece of furniture in the room.
She pushed herself into a sitting position and turned to face me.
Her hand, removed from her imaginary friend, now sat with the other in her empty lap.
Tears dropped from beneath the burlap sack hanging loosely over her head.
The wet droplets sprinkled onto her naked breasts, but I kept my gaze high. On her hidden face.
“You’re interrupting again.” She sniffled. “You said you wouldn’t. You know it brings depression.”
“You once told me that Woodrow used to interrupt them, too,” I reminded her.
Truth was, she told me lots of things. I spent more time here than I should have, always requesting the cameras off. Everyone here thought I was here to use her, and that I wanted privacy to do it. But, in truth, I was letting her use me. Letting her lean on me when the days got heavy.
I became a friend.
“That was different. He was different. He was special.” Her pain ate away at me, as the tangible feeling of it thickened in the air.
“Noted.” I smiled, knowing that no one would ever compare to him. “I thought I told you to lay off; you’re not helping yourself.”
“I can’t control it.” A sob broke away from her. “Go away.”
“For you to start the same daydream over again?”
She didn’t answer me. But I knew that would happen.
It was what had been happening for the last three months, maybe longer.
But that was when I started witnessing it, because that was when she finally got sent back here, under my request. Before that, it had been a long ten years since I saw her last. If anything had happened to her in that time—if her life had been cut short—I’d have died from guilt. . .
Well, I would have if Hell didn’t kill me first.
My attention had been on him for the last ten years. I’d adopted him as a younger brother, and he wasn’t the only one. I had a small band of misfit victims living in my home—boys who needed almost as much help as he did.
Life had been hard, on me and them. But on Woodrow, especially. He’d been in and out of psych wards for the last ten years, which was why I could never leave the state to go looking for Jolie. I had to wait until I was in a position of power to bring her to us.
Woodrow needed me.
He was lost in his grief. His little sister haunted him daily, and so did the girl in front of me. He’d closed the door on all he had left—his God, and lived only for the promise I made him when I first took him in.
That I’d find his girl and bring her back to him. . . and I’d have found a way to do that already, if he was mentally prepared to handle the reunion.
He’d been released three and a half months ago. And it was the longest time he’d spent from an institute, aside from one time, three years back, when he’d been sent home to heal after an operation to remove a tumor in his throat. The tumor was cancerous and had been ignored for years.
And that was a hard fucking time, for me as well as him. Because, as a result of the fear that cancer left in its place inside Woodrow, I had to deal with an overgrown child. . . and I had no idea how to do that. I wasn’t a parent or a psychologist.
I couldn’t help him. . . and Jolie.
Until now, when Woodrow was relatively normal, by his standards, at least.
“Why does it never end happily?” I wondered, moving my attention back to the girl in front of me. Her daydreams always ended the same, without a happy ever after. With her sobbing her heart out. With Woodrow dying of cancer.
Like he almost actually did.
She didn’t know he’d had it; she didn’t know he survived the fire—she’d convinced herself he hadn’t, and it brought her misery every single day.
I hadn’t corrected her assumptions; I didn’t want to bring her more pain, brought by the hands of other brutes as she tried tirelessly to escape and find him.
Until recently, despite always knowing I’d help her, I didn’t know if Woodrow would ever be mentally well enough to see her again. Maybe my approach was wrong, but I did what I thought was right for him. Because, for the longest time, he was my top priority.
“Because we never got a happy ending,” Jolie interrupted my train of thought before it crashed into a wall of guilt.
I blinked in the image of her, her skinny fingers scratching at her skin. She’d need a lot of help after this.
And I’d pay for it all. I’d do anything to make her better, but something inside told me, it would only take one thing—one person—to bring her back to herself. To a reality she’d be happy to live in. And it wouldn’t cost a thing.
“But it’s a daydream, Jolie. You could have your happy ending.”
Her head bobbed, and the burlap sack grazed her shoulders. Her fingers rushed to the area, her nails leaving scratches on her already mauled skin.
“It is,” she replied quietly. “But I never got to grieve.”
“You’re still grieving, Jolie.” I blew out a heavy breath, as Jolie held hers, holding back the sadness. “You haven’t seen this boy since you were eighteen. Why don’t you dream of the future you wanted together?”
“It would hurt more.” She sniffled again. “It would hurt too much to wake up from that.”
I understood that pain, waking up without the person you wanted to wake up to, and she was right, it was very fucking painful.
“Why cancer?” I quizzed, feeling like she’d heard one of the almost silent conversations I probably shouldn’t have had on the phone while here in this room, even if it was long after she’d fallen asleep. Maybe her subconscious had done that, taking in details without her even knowing about it.
As I said, I was no psychologist.
“It gives me time to prepare. To grieve in advance. I never got that.”
“Do you think that’s easier?”
“No. It’s just as hard. But I’m trapped in this cycle now, and that’s okay, because for a little while, when the daydreams start over, I get to keep him. To fall in love with him all over again.”
“That’s terribly depressing, Jolie.” And it was terribly unnerving how accurate I’d heard her daydreams to be. It was like she knew the Woodrow I did—the man, not the boy.
Maybe she knew him well enough to predict how he’d turn out, or maybe her subconscious really was stealing details as I spoke and she slept.
“Have you given more thought to what I asked you yesterday?”
I sat in silence, thinking over her question from yesterday—when I spent half of the day here, having no one to answer to. My boss—Badeaux—had been killed in Paris, murdered by someone who wanted revenge. Big boss was hiding somewhere in France, knowing he’d be next.
I was low-key irked that I didn’t have their dirty blood on my hands, because no one wanted the scum that was these people, ridded from the earth more than me. I saw too much. I knew too much.
But I could be grateful to the stranger causing issues in Paris for giving me the full run of this place.
“Will you end it for me?” her question replayed in my ears, her sweet voice still innocent.
I pondered over how she’d survived here, by daydreaming the same thing over and over again. Of a savior coming in to rescue her, bringing his good and bad side along for the ride.
The bad side often came out when shady bastards came to try out the goods—girls like her, who couldn’t be sold. I guess it was easier for her to think of Hell violating her than her having to live in reality, where strangers were using and abusing her body.
“I can’t live another day without him. I can’t wake up again without him here to really save me.”
“Sometimes, you have to be your own hero.”
“I’m not a hero, and I’m done being a victim. I want to be with him. Please.” She stared at me through the single hole in the sack, cut out directly in line with her right eye. “Please,” her whisper crept through the material.
I glanced up at the camera in the corner of the room; the red light indicated that nothing was being recorded. I pulled a needle from my pocket, and in her view, I tapped on the clear barrel, filled with something I’d gotten illegally that would have her vision turning black.
Her shoulders raised and fell, her body grateful I’d decided to give her what it needed—peace.
I pushed up onto my feet and took my first step in her direction. “I’m sorry, Jolie, for letting it go on this long.