24. BUNNY
Astartle passes through me when I wake on top of a smooth, plush mattress and not the cold, painful stone of my cell floor. I freeze with my hands clutching the soft blankets, holding the edge just below my nose as I explore the barely sunlit room.
Breathing easier, I slowly rise onto my elbow, forgetting how beautiful it is to wake to sunlight. I start to call Cade’s name, needing him to see the warm, yellow glow, but he isn’t beside me. My heart breaks when I see he’s on the floor instead. No blankets. No pillows. Nothing but rough carpet surely stabbing into the scars on his back. Suddenly, the sun seems less important.
Doing my best not to disturb his pinched sleep, I slide off the bed with the heavy quilt in my hands. For a moment, I forgot I was naked. The realization turns my cheeks into a blazing fire, but I ignore my embarrassment while I sprawl the blanket over him.
Unlike me, Cade was still clothed in his blood-stained sweats. Thankfully, blood no longer mars his perfectly chiseled face. However, it’s marked with fresh lashings, lesions, bruises, and scars of the past. The sight of them all too clearly reminds me of my own.
I haven’t even looked at my face or the rest of my body yet. I didn’t have the energy to study it last night. So, I step away from Cade now, preparing my mind to do just that as I step closer to the bathroom mirror.
As softly as I can, I shut the door behind me, resting my head against the grainy wood with the lights off, gathering my courage.
I am strong.
I am strong.
I am strong.
I repeat the phrase until I feel it might be true, flipping on the switch before I decide it’s not, and turn to face me.
Underneath the blood and grime, I see hints of me—my nose is still the same shape, minus the purple and yellow discolorations. My mouth is still plump, though the slight upturn that pissed Denise off sinks lower, crusted with ugly and grisly scabs of blood. My hair still shines with copper tones. I just have to ignore the patches that are missing, and my skin, however mottled and injured, leaves no permanent damage.
I hope.
It’s my eyes that hold the most scarring. I lean in close to see how much.
My entire life, I’ve been told my eyes resemble the darkening sky, light as air, with waves of deep navy swirling around my irises. They were dazzling, alluring—“seductive,” my male teachers liked to whisper behind closed doors.
They were perfect.
And now…
I peer even closer, holding them as open as possible, searching for anything inside.
Now they’re dull. Empty.
The most broken part of me.
I turn away from the mirror, unable to stomach the sight of them anymore. While my back faces my broken reflection, I glare at the door, a series of emotions ripping through me at once.
Anger.
Betrayal.
Sadness.
Fear.
Weak.
Weak.
Weak!
“Augh!”Disgusted by it all, I stomp out, ripping a complementary bathrobe off the shower hook and bustling out of the room.
I can’t begin to imagine how insane I must look with my beaten frame: wild, unbrushed hair, labored breathing, and a glare that would turn anyone to stone. Thankfully, there’s no one around. Similarly to last night, the lobby seems to be mostly empty.
Small blessings. I don’t think I could handle a crowd right now.
My pace slows as I approach the front room, coming almost to a standstill when the entryway’s in sight. Inhaling deeply to rein in my rage and disappointment, I peek around the corner, eyeing the empty lobby and the steaming coffeepot on the table. Cups wait beside it, so I take that as my invitation to serve myself and Cade. I’m in the middle of pouring the second cup, when Susie comes up behind me.
“Sleep well?”
“Fuck!” I startle, spilling some of the scalding drink across the thin skin of my knuckles. It reddens instantly, the stinging seeping deep. Setting the cup down, I reach for the small pile of napkins, pressing them against the inflammation while swiveling to face her. “Fine… Thank you.”
Dried but still swollen, I toss the towels in the trash, thanking Susie again with a smile. I gather the cups to leave, but she speaks again, this time low and quiet. Words only for me to hear.
“A man came in late last night, not that long after you. Asked if a shaggy-haired boy and ginger-haired girl came through here.”
Everything freezes but my trembling hands, which threaten to spill more scalding liquid onto my skin unless I find a way to control it. I work on breathing while Susie waits for a response, her stare traveling across the side of my face, studying every marking staining my flesh.
I want to choke on my heartbeat as it lodges in my throat. I want the thumps cracking my sternum to be so powerful it creates a crater beneath me, devouring me whole.
“Oh, and…and what did you tell him?” I still can’t meet her eyes, so she moves to meet mine. Taking the coffees from my quivering grasp, she places them on the countertop of her desk. She has to pry them from my grip, but after she does, Susie lowers slightly, studying the markings on my face.
“I told him no one’s come in here looking like that. Only truck drivers and drunks stay at my lovely little motel.”
“Wh-what did he say?” I squeeze through clenched teeth.
She shakes her head. “He smiled and walked out the door. He got into a car that had no markings. A man came around the side, shut him in, and drove away, but not before waving me goodbye through his window.”
That smile.
It flashes for a second behind Susie’s, handsome and wicked. Bile fills my throat, its sour flavor overpowering my painful heartbeat. I use all my energy to swallow it, though some make it past the seam of my lips.
“He’s not our father. We’re not…related. Any of us.”
Nodding as if she already knew, she pulls me away from the windows, hiding me from sight in the safety of her office. I’m sat on an uncomfortable couch while she paces before me, a motley array of emotions whipping across her face.
“Is he the one who did that to you? To that boy with you?”
I think of the last person I tried to tell the truth to and how quickly it backfired on me when Lakens walked into the room. That day comes back to me now, the moment a car came to drag me into a worse hell. I risk a worse end if I speak out again. After all, if cops are in Marone’s back pocket, how do I know eccentric-looking motel owners aren’t, too?
I say nothing, but women are often too familiar with what silence means. So, I know she understands mine when the tears start to well. Starting from her neck, her skin deepens into a mottled maroon, transforming her already stern face into one rippled with wrath.
Blinking, I take a look around the room, searching past the mess to maybe know a bit of the woman beneath it. Books lay underneath scattered newspapers, and photos are tacked to a corkboard that is haphazardly nailed to the wall. The girl she sent away last night sits on her lap, with her wide, crooked-teeth smile. They’re a beautiful vision of mother and daughter—something I will never experience.
“Thank you, Susie, for letting us stay here…and for everything else.”
I leave her in a hurry, racing past the front desk and our discarded coffees to Cade. In my haste, I forgot to lock the door. So I push through it with ease, startling Cade out of comfort.
He springs from the floor with his blade in hand, ready to plunge it into my face. Instead of moving to protect me, I throw my hands forward. It’s my touch that stops him, my caress on the underside of his forearms that has the knife drooping by his side.
“Bun?” he asks, almost in a trance. “Where were you? Where did you come from? Are you okay?” I take in the blood caked under his nails as he runs them across the clean robe.
This close… We were thisfuckingclose to being found.
“Marone came last night…while we were sleeping.”
His hands fall from my body as the worry dissipates from his eyes. Understanding and fury take their place. “We have to go.”
Instantly, he begins collecting our disgusting and tattered belongings, shoving my scraps of a nightgown into his pocket while throwing on his bloodied shirt.
“Wait! Stop. Stop!” I pause him, hating that repulsive garment back on his body. He doesn’t stop. Instead, he runs into the bathroom, collecting everything he can in the cradle of his arms to shove into an emptied pillowcase.
“We can’t go yet!”
“Bunny!” he shouts, dropping his load onto the bed. “We’re going!”
“I will not be hunted again!” It isn’t the anger in my shout that finally gets him to freeze. It’s the anguish. He turns to see tears not streaking down my cheeks but falling in quarter-sized droplets.
I hate crying.
God, I fuckinghate crying, but I refuse. “I will not fucking go without finding them first.”
“Who?” Cade asks, his tone soft with me… Only ever
with me. “Who do you need to find?”
“All of them.”
* * *
Susie isn’t in her office or at the front desk when Cade and I creep around the corner. As it was when I first came down, it’s quiet and empty. I take it as my opportunity to slip into the back room, where I noticed a thick yellow book beside Susie’s desk chair.
With Cade as a lookout, him holding the coffees this time, I tuck the Yellow Pages underneath my arm. “Come on.”
There is a small patio through sliding glass plane doors. I lead him through there, dressed in nothing but a robe. My bare feet freeze on the iced cement, as do his, but the sun is on my face, and its heat beats the brisk, painful wind. For a moment, Cade and I just stand there, face toward heaven, soaking it all in.
He thanks me again with a kiss. No words, just his lips on the back of my head. I lean into him, knowing I would be content to be this way with him always. A part of me feels foolish for it, that there’s no way this could be love, but when I shift to glance up, gazing at his wondrous eyes, and he drops his lips onto mine, I know it can only be that.
It can’t be anything but.
When our moment ends, we take two frozen metal seats, our heads coming together while I skim through the pages.
“Who are you looking for?”
“A cop.” That is all I can grind out while I search for Lakens’s name. A lot of men tore through me, but he’s one of the worst. His laugh as he shoved himself into my ass dry will never leave my mind, nor will the smirk he left me with every night.
I force my face to remain blank, but a sudden flash contorts it into surprise. Cade and I look up simultaneously, expressions severe as Susie lowers the camera.
“Why did you do that?” Cade asks, annoyance barely concealed in his tone. Carefully, Susie pulls out the rectangular photo, shaking it slightly before flashing it to us. “Something told me I’d never want to forget your faces.” With that, she leaves us, a grim smile tossed over her shoulder.
Cade looks back down into the book, not giving Susie another thought. I, on the other hand, feel something toward the strange woman. What, I don’t know yet, but it’s better than any feeling I’ve felt before.
After some time, I finally find his name. There are three J. Lakens in all of New York. So, we cross-reference them with the officers at the police station. It takes us a while because I couldn’t remember exactly what station I stumbled into, but when we find it…suddenly, everything becomes clear.
Together, we look up.
“I found one.”