Chapter 20 #3
He looks at the monitors. At the IV. At the thin hospital bed that was not designed for two people. Then he takes off his shoes, lowers the bed rail, and climbs in beside me—carefully, so carefully, arranging his body around mine like he’s solving a puzzle where every wrong move causes pain.
My back against his chest. His arm over my waist—the side without the broken ribs. His chin on my hair. The position. The one our bodies found in the dark and have returned to every time since. The monitor beeps. The IV drips. The hospital hums around us.
“Kaid.”
“Yeah.”
“The doctor said I asked for you. When I woke up the first time. Before my dad.”
“Yeah. You did.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“I know. But it happened.”
I close my eyes. His arm tightens—gently, barely, the pressure calibrated to avoid the bandages and the burns and the rib and every other point of damage on my body. The gentleness of a boy who knows exactly how broken I am and is choosing to hold me anyway.
We sleep.
I wake to the sound of the door and a voice that sounds like it belongs in a grandmother’s kitchen, not a hospital ward.
“Alright, sweethearts. I know hospital food is a crime against humanity, but you need to eat.”
A nurse—older, round, the kind of face that makes you believe everything is going to be fine because she’s decided it will be. She’s carrying a tray in each hand.
“Two trays,” she says, setting them on the rolling table. “One for the patient. One for the boy who has not left this building in three days and who I have been watching survive on vending-machine coffee and determination.”
Kaiden sits up—carefully, not jostling me. “You didn’t have to—”
“Hush. Eat. Both of you.” She adjusts my bed to a slight incline—slowly, watching my face for pain. “The officers have been asking to speak with you, Catherine. I’ve been holding them off, but they’re getting persistent.”
“How long can you hold them?”
“As long as you need. My job is to take care of patients, not accommodate detectives.” She winks. “Finish your food. Then we’ll see.”
She leaves. Kaiden opens the trays—soup, bread, Jell-O, the universal language of hospital nutrition.
He puts a spoon in my hand. “Eat, Cat.”
“You sound like your mother.”
“Good. Eat.”
I eat. Slowly. The soup is warm and bland and exactly what a traumatized body needs—simple fuel, nothing complicated. Kaiden eats beside me with the mechanical focus of a person refueling a machine he’s been neglecting for days.
When we’re done, I put the spoon down. Look at him. “I’m ready.”
“For the cops?”
“For whatever comes next. All of it. But I want Arthur in the room.”
Kaiden nods. Texts. Five minutes later, my father walks in with Arthur Walsh—Iz’s father, the lawyer, the man who has been building the Pennington case from the civilian side.
He’s in a suit because Arthur Walsh is always in a suit, and the normalcy of it—a lawyer in a suit, doing lawyer things—is oddly comforting.
“Catherine.” Arthur sits. Professional but warm—the particular manner of a man who has known you through his son and is now representing you and is navigating both roles with care.
“The officers need your statement. You have the right to stop at any time. I’ll be here throughout.
If I tell you not to answer something, don’t answer it. ”
“Okay.”
My dad sits in the corner. Not beside me—he’s chosen the far chair, the one that’s close enough to be present but far enough to leave if the hearing becomes unbearable. I understand. Some parts of what I’m about to say will send him out of this room.
Kaiden helps me sit up a few more inches. Adjusts the pillow behind me. His hand stays on mine.
The officers come in. Two of them—a woman and a man. They set up a recorder. The woman has kind eyes and a voice that doesn’t condescend. I appreciate that more than she’ll know.
“Whenever you’re ready, Catherine.”
I’m not ready. Nobody is ever ready for this. But readiness is a luxury I stopped waiting for when I was twelve.
I tell them everything.
The locker room. The needle. Waking in the dark.
The fieldstone. The zip ties. Jon’s face in the light—the bright eyes, the unraveling.
What he told me about the system his family built.
The plan for me—the selection, the grooming, the role I was supposed to play in recruiting other girls.
Garrett’s legacy. Alastair’s architecture.
My voice detaches from my body as I talk. Not dissociation—something more intentional. A deliberate stepping-back, the way you’d step back from a fire to describe its shape. I report the events the way I’d report data: precisely, completely, without the editorial of emotion.
The beating. Jon’s fists. His boot on my ribs. The crack I felt. His whiplash—gentle fingers on my swollen face seconds after breaking my rib, the boy and the monster trading places so fast I couldn’t predict which one I was getting.
My mother’s arrival. Her face. The horror. Her inability to act. Alastair’s hand on her arm, steering her. The realization that she was a hostage too. The bleach. The scrubbing. The screaming.
The second beating. The third injection. Penny throwing herself between me and Jon’s boots. The kick to my ribs—the same side, the same break, made worse. Coughing blood.
The female officer is writing steadily. Her hand hasn’t faltered. The male officer has stopped writing twice—pausing, breathing, resuming.
When I finish, the room is quiet. The recorder runs. The monitor beeps.
My dad is standing by the window. His back to the room. I can see his reflection in the glass—his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. He didn’t leave. He stayed for all of it. And the cost of staying is written in every line of his body.
The female officer turns off the recorder. “Thank you, Catherine. I know how difficult that was. We’ll be in touch through your attorney.”
They leave. Arthur stands. Squeezes my hand.
“You did well. That statement, combined with what we already have—Ryan’s digital evidence, the camera from Kaiden’s house, the financial records, Penny’s statement—this is a comprehensive case. Jon and Alastair aren’t getting out.”
“And my mother?”
Arthur chooses his words. “Fiona’s situation is complicated. She’s cooperating. Her testimony corroborates the blackmail and confirms Alastair’s control over her decisions. The question of criminal culpability will depend on—”
“I don’t want to talk about her right now.”
“Understood.” He turns to my dad. “Walk with me? There are some things we need to discuss.”
He comes to the bed first. Leans down. Kisses my forehead. His face is wet. “I’m proud of you,” he whispers. “I will never be able to tell you how proud I am.”
He leaves with Arthur. The door closes. Kaiden. Me. The machines. The quiet.
“I want to go public,” I say.
Kaiden looks at me. “With the story.”
“With all of it. Not just what happened in the basement. Everything. Jack. Garrett. The grooming. The fire. The shooting. The Pennington family’s system—what they were building, who they were targeting, how deep it goes. People need to know. Other girls need to know they’re not alone.”
“Your dad’s campaign—”
“Fuck the campaign.” I say it the way he said it to me on a bench outside the school, a lifetime ago. “If my father’s career can’t survive the truth of what happened to his daughter, then it shouldn’t survive.”
Kaiden is quiet for a moment. “Arthur can help. He knows media law. He can control the narrative, make sure your story is told on your terms.”
“Yeah.”
“And I’ll be beside you. For every interview. Every statement. Every moment of it.”
“I know.”
He presses his lips to my temple. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met, Cat. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure the world knows it.”
I lean into him. Close my eyes. The machines beep.
The world outside the hospital window is dark and cold and full of consequences and press conferences and legal proceedings and a family of monsters in custody and a mother on bail and a father in the hallway talking to a lawyer about how to turn his daughter’s worst experience into the weapon that brings down an empire.
But in here, it’s just us. Two people in a hospital bed who found each other because a monster broke them the same way and they recognized the fractures and decided, against every rational argument, to hold on.
We’re holding on. And that’s enough.