Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
ISAIAH
Iheld her in my arms as she slept, totally sated, and I revelled in the warm, satisfied feeling that holding her created. Something I hadn’t had enough of, and something I wanted to experience more and more.
Her soft curls spread over the pillow, tickling my skin, and her short, shallow breaths seemed to ease everything.
It wasn’t often that I lay still, my brain calm and my body relaxed, but with her, now, I did.
The scent of her bed linen and her was intoxicating, and I closed my eyes, breathing deeply to soak it all in.
As seconds turned to minutes, I started to drift off myself.
And then, I felt her shudder in my arms.
She was having a nightmare again. After what’d happened over the last twenty-four hours, I wasn’t surprised. But as she started to whimper and cry, her body shaking like a leaf, I held her tighter, shushing in her ear and telling her, “It’s okay. I’m here.”
I started to rock her, gently waking her from the nightmare that was holding her captive, and as she came to, sweat glittering on her beautiful face, she opened her eyes and turned in the bed to face me.
“Are you okay? I think you were having a nightmare.” I brushed the sweat-soaked hair out of her face as delicately as I could with my finger, as it clung to her skin. It wasn’t often I was gentle. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever been that way with anyone since adulthood, but for her, I was.
“I’m fine.” She swallowed and then asked, “Did I say anything?”
“No. But I’m guessing you were dreaming about what happened tonight, and not the good part.”
The creases in her forehead told me I might be off the mark, and when she said, “No, it’s not that,” I had to know what it was. I was a tenacious bastard.
“Talk to me,” I urged, and she knew better than to argue, despite giving a cute little huff to protest.
“When I was little, I used to get upset a lot,” she said.
“I hated that my dad worked such long hours, and he was always working nights. The house didn’t feel safe without him there.
And most nights, I played my mum up, refusing to eat dinner or go to bed, you know, the usual bullshit we pulled as kids. ”
I didn’t know. When I was a kid, I’d wished I had a room to myself that I could hide in and lock the door at night. As for food, I was lucky to get any. But she didn’t need to know that.
“Anyway,” she went on. “One night, when my dad was home, he came to my room and sat on my bed. He told me I needed to be better behaved for my mum when he was away. He said it wasn’t fair to her that I caused trouble, and he felt guilty for not being there.
But he told me it was important for him to be out of the house doing his job.
He was a police officer and people needed him.
He said he was like a superhero... and then he told me about the boy in the cupboard. ”
My heart stuttered, and there was pain in my chest as the air in my lungs felt like it’d been violently ripped out.
“What was the story?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know what she knew. One hundred percent sure I didn’t want to take a trip down that shitty memory lane, especially not now, lying here.
“My dad told me about a crime scene he’d had to attend, where a couple had been killed.
Well, he didn’t tell me that part when I was little, but I figured that out when I was older.
He said he was doing a routine sweep of the house, checking for clues, as he called it, and he opened a cupboard door, and found a little boy.
The boy was dirty, malnourished, and smelt really, really bad.
He was sitting on a filthy mattress that’d been shoved into the bottom of the cupboard, and Dad said it was soaked in piss and shit.
Actually, he used the words bad stuff, but I knew what he meant.
“He said if he hadn’t been there to save him, that little boy might’ve died.
And that was why he had to do what he did.
That’s why he had to leave me for a while, because other little boys and girls needed him.
He apologised for me having to share him, but after hearing what he said, I kind of got it.
I still didn’t like it, but I understood. ”
“You have nightmares because of a boy in a cupboard?” I asked, waiting for the ball to drop, because that couldn’t be the reason she was shaking in my arms. That was years ago. A memory I preferred to keep in the past.
“No. It’s not just that.” She took a deep breath. “I went into his office one day, when he’d forgotten to lock it. I saw a folder on his desk, and when I opened it, I saw pictures, photos of the boy in the cupboard.”
What the fuck?
There were photos?
Why didn’t I know that?
“They were close-ups of the injuries,” she continued. “And there were notes too, describing the things that’d happened to him.”
“The girl who breaks into people’s homes, ties them up and stabs them is scared of a child neglect case?” I know I sounded unsympathetic, and she had no idea it was me she was talking about, but I couldn’t help but make light of it. It was my way of coping.
“It wasn’t just child neglect, Isaiah. The things that boy went through were.
.. sick. And reading stuff like that can fuck you up.
I haven’t thought about it for years. But lately, I can’t stop having these dreams, these nightmares where I’m the one stuck in the cupboard.
The walls are closing in. I can’t get out. I can’t breathe. And then I see it...”
“You see what?”
“Him.”
“Who?” I sat up, the duvet falling off my chest as I leaned over her, and I put my hands either side of her head.
This was why she was having nightmares. We were getting to the crux of it all.
This wasn’t about my abuse, but something far more sinister.
This was about her. “Who do you see, Abigail?”
“No one.” She turned, pushing my hand aside, forcing me to lie back on the bed. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Why not? I want to know. Tell me who you see.”
“You don’t have to know everything. Just accept that there’s some things I don’t want to talk about.”
“You didn’t seem like the type to shy away from anything tonight, so what’s changed?”
“I do have feelings, you know. I’m not a monster. I can’t just switch off my humanity and pretend I don’t feel.”
I could. My problem was the opposite. I had trouble feeling anything. It was a curse that was changing dramatically now that I’d met her, but still, I couldn’t understand why she was so affected and why she wouldn’t tell me.
“I get that,” I told her.
I didn’t.
But a few little white lies never hurt anybody.
“But I just want to help you,” I added.
“Maybe this time you can’t. This one isn’t going to burn to ashes or disappear into a lake.”
“Does this have something to do with the guy trying to break into your apartment earlier?” I asked, convinced it was, but I wanted her to confirm it.
“No. I have no idea who that was and I’ll report it to the police in the morning. I should’ve done it tonight.”
She wouldn’t report it. I knew that. She was saying what she thought I wanted to hear.
“I hope you do.”
She was quiet for a moment, then added, “Not every problem has a solution.”
“It does in my world,” I said without thinking, because that was my truth. I was all about solutions at any cost. Usually theirs, but that was on them. They deserved it.
The expulsion of air I heard in the darkness told me she’d had enough.
“I’m tired, Isaiah. And I really don’t want to talk about this anymore. Not after tonight. I promise, one day, I might feel ready to tell you. But not now. Please. Just forget this happened.”
I said I would, but I wouldn’t. And she would tell me; there was no maybe about it.
But what more could I do? I could take her to my warehouse and force the truth out of her.
But I didn’t want to do that. I liked what we were building here, and I didn’t want to jeopardise it.
I wanted her to open up to me in her own time.
This was a problem with a solution, but it needed to be handled with kid gloves.
I’d find out what she was really frightened of, whose face she saw that made her react like that. I wouldn’t stop.
“Fine. Like I said, I’ll wait,” I replied, injecting empathy into my voice despite feeling anything but patient. “But know this, it doesn’t matter what you tell me. I’m not going anywhere. Nothing you say or do could ever scare me off.”
The room was silent, and I pulled her into my arms again, her back to my front. And then, in a quiet voice, she said, “Thank you.”
But she didn’t need to thank me. I was brought into this world to slay the kind of monsters she feared, and I was more than ready to face them.
I didn’t want to have the morning-after awkwardness that might follow if I stayed until she woke up.
I knew her well enough to know she’d feel the same.
But I didn’t want to go far, not after the visit from her stalker last night.
So, I kissed the top of her head as she slept, then crept out of her bedroom, closing the door quietly behind me.
I gathered my clothes off the living room floor, got dressed, and walked out of her apartment. But I didn’t leave the building. I found an empty storage cupboard a few doors down from where she lived and waited in there, watching her on the cameras that I could access through my phone.
About an hour after I left, she woke up, glanced around her bedroom, and then she smiled when she saw what I’d left for her on the spare pillow.
I’d borrowed two dice from a board game she had in a cupboard in her living room, and on a piece of paper underneath, I’d written, ‘I loved playing games with you last night. Do want to play again soon? I might even let you win...’