Chapter Sixteen
Kytten
Dr. Dunaway wouldn’t let me have the day. When I needed a break, I took the day after a tough session. This time, he told me no. And Cash backed him up.
I sat in my chair and glared at him. I couldn’t do this today. I was too raw. Too open. My insides had been flayed open yesterday, and I hadn’t even revealed anything yet. How would I tell him my secrets? How could I explain the monsters without letting him know why I needed them?
“Are we just going to sit and stare at each other?”
“We are waiting for someone to join us.”
I sat up in my chair. There was no fucking way I would talk with someone else here. He probably wanted to bring Melissa in. Yeah, I had dropped the Dr. Jefferson shit. When I got to know her a little, I realized she wasn’t all that bad.
Melissa came across abrasive. Like a cold-hearted bitch who only cared about herself and Dani. But she was a good mom to Dani. She was a real mom. The way she was with Dani made me think of my mom.
She was different with Dante too. She and Sypher had a weird dynamic. She treated him like an annoying little brother she couldn’t get away from.
Which I guess in a way was true. She would have to put up with him if she wanted Dani in her life.
She had started working with Tabby, Ellie’s little girl.
Ellie said she had done wonders for Tabby.
I liked little Tabby. There was something about her that made you feel safe.
Which was crazy when you realized she was a three-year-old.
But that little girl would make a big impact on the world. Mark my words.
“Who?” I asked as the door opened and my brother walked in.
Panic rose up, tightening my chest and threatening to choke the life out of me. His eyes locked on mine and I knew he wasn’t happy to be here. I only remembered Thorne looking at me like that once.
“I’m sorry, Thorne.” I cried, tears running down my face. “I didn’t mean to.”
“What happened?” Mom asked, stepping between us.
Thorne was glaring at me and if he was part of the X-men like Iceman or Pyro, I would either be an ice sculpture he could shatter into millions of pieces to melt into the floor or burned to a crisp pile of ashes that could be blown away with the wind.
Either way, I was dead, and I knew it.
“Rose broke my Nintendo.”
“I said I was sorry.” I cried harder. I hated when my brother was mad at me.
“How?” Mom asked as she looked between us.
My eyes pleaded with him not to tell her. I knew she would be mad too. But he wouldn’t play with me.
“She threw it out the window,” he said as he glared some more.
“I’M SORRY,” I wailed.
Mom pulled me into her arms, “Oh, Rosebud, why would you do that?”
My words came out broken between hiccups. “He... wouldn’t...”—hiccup—“play with me.”
I buried my face in Mom’s chest and cried.
“Thorne—”
“NO!” he yelled. “You always take her side! She grabbed it out of my hand and threw it out the window! It broke into pieces!”
“She said she was sorry, Thorne.”
“Sorry won’t fix it.”
“She doesn’t have anyone to play with.” Mom plead my case.
“NEITHER DO I!”
I heard his feet stomp up the stairs. The sound of the door slamming shut made me jump.
“Well, Rosebud, I guess you’re sleeping with me tonight.
We just have to be patient with him. Your brother needs some time to himself to calm down.
” She pushed me back and wiped my tears.
“That wasn’t very nice, though. Your brother won’t always be able to stop what he’s doing to play with you. We have to learn to rely on ourselves.”
Later that night, I snuck into the hall when Mom went to talk to Thorne.
“I’ll get you a new one, Son.”
“I don’t want one.”
“Yes, you do.”
I sat on the floor outside the bedroom door I shared with my brother and listened.
“I know our life isn’t easy.” Thorne snorted so loud I could hear him from the hallway.
“It’s my job to keep you both safe. The only way I can do that is if people don’t know about you.
But I need your help, baby. I need you to protect your sister.
No matter what. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices to keep people safe. ”
“So I have to sacrifice my life for hers?” he asked.
“If it comes to that, yes.”
It took Thorne three days to accept my apology and stop being mad at me. I wondered how long it would take this time.
Thorne stalked to the chair beside me and sat down. He wouldn’t look at me. He stared ahead, waiting to be told what to do.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” he said, and I slumped back in my chair.
“Mimic, do I need to stay?” Sam asked. I hadn’t realized she’d come in with him.
“No.”
My eyes welled up at his clipped answer. In the weeks I had been here, I had never heard him talk to Sam that way. And it was my fault.
“Thank you, Sam. I’ve got it.”
Sam walked up behind him and kissed the top of his head. “I love you. We’ll talk after.”
Then she did something I never would have expected. She stepped over to me, kissed the top of my head, and whispered, “I love you, Kytten. Be patient with him.”
I stared at her as she left the room. Turning to look at my brother, I didn’t say I was sorry again. I knew he didn’t want to hear it. He wasn’t a big believer in the word. He never had been.
He used to tell me if I was sorry that meant I knew it was wrong and I shouldn’t have done it to begin with. Maybe he was right. There were a lot of things in my life I knew shouldn’t have happened.
But you didn’t always have control over your own life.
“Kytten, I want you to tell your brother what we talked about yesterday.”
“Wh-what?”
Thorne looked at me questioningly.
“Tell him what you told me about when he left to go get food. How you felt the first night he didn’t come back.”
I dropped my head and stared at my hands. The pull to wake the monsters was so strong. I flexed my hands. My fingers wiggled on their own as they longed to dig into my skin.
I took a deep breath. I just needed them to wake up a little. Maybe one or two, just to get me through this. The index finger on my right hand worked its way under the frayed threads of the hole in my jeans. I traced the tattoo, trying to garner the strength to tell him something.
Anything that wouldn’t make him hate me.
I absently scratched at my skin, digging my nail into my leg.
“STOP!” Thorne yelled as he grabbed my hand. “Why are you doing this?”
I stared at my brother. I couldn’t tell him why. I couldn’t tell anyone why. Not the real reason. Not the reason I needed the monsters to take it all away. I didn’t want to feel it anymore. I didn’t want to remember it.
“Is this my fault?” he asked.
“What? No!” I cried, shaking my head.
“I tried to come back,” he whispered. “I tried to get away. But I didn’t want him to know about you. I had to protect you.”
“Mimic, can you tell Kytten what happened when you went to get food?” Dr. Dunaway asked.
The guilt and shame I saw on my brother’s face was something I never wanted to see. “It wasn’t his fault,” I said. “I didn’t listen. I didn’t stay where he told me to. It was my fault.”
“No one is at fault, Kytten. You were both children. You should never have been on the street, let alone left to fend for yourselves.”
That was what Melissa said. But I didn’t believe her. I didn’t believe Dr. Dunaway either. Because if it wasn’t our fault, it was our mother’s fault. And I could never blame her.
She didn’t want to leave.
The man made her.
“I’m sorry you were scared,” Thorne said.
“I wasn’t scared because you left. I was always scared.” Dr. Dunaway nodded, encouraging me to go on. “I was lonely.”
“Me too,” Thorne whispered.
“Then what, Kytten?”
I glared at Dr. Dunaway. I didn’t want to tell Thorne this. It would make him feel bad.
“It’s as important for him to hear it as it is for you to say it, Kytten.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “I felt abandoned.”
Thorne closed his eyes and squeezed my hand. “It wasn’t your fault,” I whispered.
“Mimic, tell Kytten why you didn’t come back.”
Thorne glared at Dr. Dunaway. “Can you leave?”
“No,” he answered.
“I don’t trust you,” my brother said. My eyes danced between them as they stared at each other.
“I know. But Kytten does. I won’t leave her to hear this by herself. Unless you prefer I bring Cash in?”
“Fuck no.” Thorne’s nostrils flared in anger at the mention of Cash, and I didn’t understand why.
“What’s going on?” I asked, but they ignored my voice as they had a conversation I wasn’t a part of.
“You can’t tell him. If I talk in here, you can’t tell him.”
“You have my word. But he will have to be told eventually. It will have to be dealt with,” Dr. Dunaway agreed.
“His day is coming,” Thorne promised.
“What the fuck is going on?” I shouted.
Thorne turned to me. He held my hand and looked into my eyes as he told me what had happened to him when he had left me to get food. He told me everything. How they took him and what happened. How long they held him. What he had to do to escape. How he survived without me.
“He found me, Rose.”
“Who found you?”
“The man found me.”
I yanked my hands back and stumbled out of my chair. “No.”
“Kytten, sit down please.” I heard Dr. Dunaway’s voice, but it was far away.
“No, no, no,” I chanted as I paced the room. “How? He didn’t know about us. She said he didn’t know.”
“She told him about me but not you,” Thorne confessed. He left his seat and reached for me, but I pulled my hands back.
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“She did.”
“NO!” I screamed. “NO!” My back hit the wall, and I slid to the floor. “She wouldn’t do that. She loved us.” Somewhere in the distance I heard a door slam, then boots stomping into the room.
He was here. Crouched in front of me. I looked up at him as the tears fell. Unashamed of the emotions coursing through my body, I cried into his chest as he pulled me close. He held me in his arms, his love beating back the monsters.
“It’s okay, baby. I’m here. Let it out. I’ve got you.
I’m not going anywhere.” Over and over, he said the words, causing the monsters to retreat.
I cried harder than I ever had in my life.
I cried about the shit hand life had dealt me.
I cried for my brother and everything he had endured. And I cried for our mom.
I didn’t believe him when he said she had told the man about us. She wouldn’t do that. He found out another way. He had to.
“Baby, who is he?”
I shook my head against Cash’s chest. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell anyone. I looked up at Thorne. Sam had come in, and she held him in her arms as he watched me. He shook his head.
He wouldn’t tell either.
This was our secret.
Something we shared.
Only the two of us knew who he was.
And when the time was right, together we would bring the motherfucker down.