Chapter 58 #2
It feels like I’m thirteen again, staring at an older, handsome cop who’s offering me his coat because it’s the middle of winter with a foot of snow outside and there’s no heat in our trailer. My hands are over my ears while my mom screams and begs them not to arrest her current deadbeat boyfriend—
“Do you have somewhere to go for the night?” he asks.
“Sometimes I sleep at the school,” I admit, then feel ridiculously stupid because I just admitted to something illegal to a cop. “Please don’t tell.”
He chuckles and swipes some melting snow from his ashy blond hair. “I won’t. But I really don’t think you should stay here tonight.”
“Oh.” I nod, swallowing hard. “Okay. Yeah. I, um, can maybe ask our neighbor?”
The officer grimaces. “No. I don’t—” He huffs a long breath and then looks around at the other officers, one of whom is trying to calm my mother down while the others shove the strung-out addict into the back of a cop car.
“What’s your name?” he asks, the question so abrupt I gape for a second, like I can’t remember.
“Um, Paloma.”
He smiles. “That’s a really pretty name, Paloma. I’m Officer Marks, but you can call me Ethan if you want.”
“Okay.” I nod, but choose not to, huddling tighter into the thick coat. “Thanks, for this.”
He shakes his head. “Sure.” Glancing around again, Officer Marks squats into the snow so I’m no longer staring up at him.
He’s handsome, much more than the guys that hang around our trailer or the men my mom dates—probably because they’re all gaunt and drugged up.
He looks clean, safe. Like a real adult.
“Listen, I shouldn’t offer, because it’s inappropriate, but I really don’t think you should stay here. Especially with your mom this upset.”
I peek over at her again. Everyone says we look alike, blond bouncy curls and dark brown eyes, a golden undertone to our complexions and apricot lips—even with her reckless lifestyle, everyone says she’s beautiful.
And I’m her twin—a fact that gives me more anxiety than it does any complimentary feelings.
“Yeah.”
“So, if you can hang here for a bit, I’ll come back and get you. I have an extra guest room you can sleep in just for tonight, okay?”
Hesitancy has me biting down on my lip. Men have offered this before, or something similar—to take me from my mom, to go on a little trip with them while she’s high. But it always leads to them trying to take something I don’t want to give. An exchange I didn’t agree to.
I curl in tighter at the thought. He looks safe, but assumptions have gotten me nowhere good.
It must be written all over my face, because he raises his hands in surrender. “Just a warm place to sleep—safe, I promise. I won’t touch you, okay? I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
Part of me wants to say no, self-preservation and fear riding me hard. But it’s freezing, and I don’t want to go back in the trailer with Mom while she cries all night and yells at me—finds a way to blame me for it all.
“Okay,” I agree, nodding my head. He smiles and it makes me feel a little warmer in the icy snow.
Panicked breaths saw out of me, and Ethan’s eyes widen just slightly.
“Relax, Polly,” he whispers. “Breathe.”
I can’t.
“You need to cry? That’s okay—they can’t hear it in here, okay? Just calm down.”
I shake my head, wanting to scream and cry and rage. “Stop it,” I beg instead. Hatred for myself only grows.
Tears work down my cheeks for a long moment, but I’m too scared to look away from him. Ethan steps forward, hands still raised as if to placate me. He grabs the hand towel off the hook by my head, reaching out slowly to wipe away my tears.
It’s worse. At one time, I would’ve begged for this affection, when it was the only touch I knew. The confusing swirl of comfort and fear only serves to make me sicker.
“All better,” he sighs, releasing my chin and stepping back. “God, Polly—you still look so much like your mom. Just more beautiful.”
Just like your mom.
“I’ll let you wash your hands,” he says. “But hurry. You better get back to your sweet boyfriend. I’ll go keep my wife and my stepson company until you’re all put together.”
The reminder is as sharp as the snick of the door.
I let a few silent sobs rake out, ugly and harsh as I run the tap to cover the noise just in case.
Closing my eyes tightly, I pull it all back, slow and sure.
Until everything is sealed behind my comforting barrier of ice.
Walls of adamant steel are cracked but strong where they’ve protected me for so long. I hide behind them now.
It’s like mourning myself as I stare in the mirror, knowing that I have to let go of who I’ve been since arriving in Waterfell—the image of myself I’d finally created that was good and nearly whole, without the darkened shadows of my past. And I have to let go of the one person I’ve ever tried to hold on to for myself.
Bennett.
Stop it. You knew this would happen. It was stupid to try to hold him. Stupid.
I try to shake the thought from my head, ripping a few pieces of toilet paper to dab below my eyes.