Chapter 12
Twelve
THE CALLER
Idrag a chair across the room and pull it in front of the mirror. The scrape of metal is sharp enough to sting my ears, but she can’t hear anything. I sit and look up. There is no reflection of me, only her. She can’t see me.
I pull a cigarette from my pocket and light it.
Smoke curls around me. This room has no windows, only a door hidden behind one of the hallway pictures, low enough that you have to crawl to get in.
My grandfather built it in the seventies to hide his liquor, and to drink alone.
My father always called him a lunatic. He said he saw ghosts in this house.
Said he drank himself to death in here because he thought they couldn’t find him.
He used to lock me inside this same room. The same room she stands in now. I never knew he was watching me through this glass, watching me claw at that door, trying to crawl my way out. Maybe that’s why my nails never grow on my index fingers. I dug into the wood so deeply they just fell away.
He was a respected man. No one ever knew. And I was too afraid to tell my father. So, when I started pulling away from people as I got older, I became a problem. It always comes back to family. Always.
I take another drag, watching her, tracking every move. She steps closer to the mirror, lifting her red hair and tying it up with a rubber band she grabbed from the kitchen drawer. I wonder if she knows Margaret keeps those there, pulled from chicken legs. She calls them chicken ties.
Not very bright, kitten. Not very bright.
I lean closer as she does. She presses her palm to the glass to steady herself while she slips on her All Stars. Then she bends closer. Her chest presses against the thin white top.
Fuck.
I feel my balls getting blue and my cock getting hard just thinking of her next to me. I want to press my mouth to the glass and lick it. I want to lick her out.
I draw in a breath, then another, letting it out slowly. My fingers tremble as I hold the cigarette.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
She’s been my obsession for a long time.
I used to see her like a little sister. Someone I had to protect.
That’s what I told myself. But as we got older, that feeling grew into something else.
Every time she got close, my pulse would trip over itself.
My hands would go still. I kept my distance because I didn’t know how to behave myself.
I would always throw in a dumb comment, a joke, anything to keep us safe in that space between friends.
It broke something in me when I found out she had a crush on me. All that time, she had no idea I felt it too. Maybe some people are meant to stay stuck like that. In the waiting. Until one of them finally says the words that have been building for years.
I never did.
And I won’t forgive myself for that.
Nothing cuts deeper than loving someone who can’t remember you. Watching her smile at everyone else, hearing their names on her lips while mine is gone like it never existed. Like someone reached into her life and pulled me out, leaving space empty.
People say you have to be strong, that if you love someone, you let them go. Whoever said that never stood where I stand now, never loved like this.
Seventeen years of knowing her just wiped away.
Now all I get is to watch her. To be her shadow in the corner, and a voice on the other end of the line, The Caller. Even when I get close, she gets scared. All I can do is play the part. To be someone who calls, so she can be the one who answers.
She steps away from the mirror and sits on the bed. I notice the white rose I left is still there, resting beside her. She’s holding something in her hands.
A book. No, a notebook.
I’ve never seen her read like this before.
A strand of hair slips loose and falls across her forehead. She huffs softly, blowing it away without looking up. Her fingers press into the page. Her brows mesh together as she scans the lines, like she’s trying to make sense of something. Then she tilts her head.
“Lily, do you think Daniel loved me?”
My gaze snaps around the room.
No one is there.
“Victor said they found bodies,” she says. Her voice is thinner now. “But I keep wondering if they found him. Or if he’s still out there.”
A tear slips down her cheek.
She’s crying over him. Over that asshole?!
My hands curl into fists. I slam one into the wall. The impact shot up my arm, making a dull sound that reached her room.
She gasps, standing up and spinning toward the sound. Her eyes scan the room, trying to find where the sound came from. After a moment, she turns back and sits on the bed, pulling her legs in close.
“A part of me wants him to be alive so I can tell him how I really felt,” she says. Then she turns again, scanning the space around her like someone might answer. “Lily?” she asks the empty air.
She is still thinking about him, and she can’t even remember me?! She remembers the person who made her so miserable and she can’t remember the one she said she loved?! Did she really love me, or did she just want me to feel loved because she owed me for saving her so many times?
My teeth grind together as I take a step away from the mirror.
Anger rises fast in my chest. I’m angry at her for not remembering. Angry at myself for putting her here. If I had let her walk away with him, she would still have her memories of me, but she wouldn’t have me.
Now she has neither.
The worst part is that I don’t know what else to do to make her remember.
I decided to show her the darkest parts of me first. The version I built during the years without her.
The one that existed before she came back into my life.
Before she could fall for the version of me that came after her.
Because right now those two versions feel like strangers to each other.
And neither of them deserves her. No one does.
I wish she knew that.
And I hope she never learns that I’m the reason she is like this.
The reason she lost her parents.
The reason she lost her memories.
The reason for the scar across her hand that stole the piano from her life.
That night by the rocks, I shoved her out of the way to save her. I pushed so hard that her hand slammed against the stone. One careless moment. One desperate move. And the thing she loved most slipped out of her life forever.
I already broke her.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
And Daniel… he has his own debt to pay. If she wants to tell him how she feels, then he will hear it. She will get the pieces of him until the day she remembers that once, she felt nothing for him at all.
Two days have passed since I saw her, and there is a good reason for that. My hands have been full of her dead fiancé, Daniel Grant. The man who is not as dead as everyone believes.
I walk into the basement, and the smell of rotting flesh and rusted metal hits my nostrils.
Daniel hangs from the chains, his body swinging, every movement dragging another broken whimper out of him.
He has been hanging here for three months.
By now I thought he would have died. Somehow, he is still breathing.
Victor sits in the corner, watching him. When he notices me, his eyes slide over. He has been by my side for years. I thought this would be where he drew the line, but the bastard enjoys it. He once told me he used to do “stuff like this for money.”
I took it as a green flag and offered him good pay to beat the living hell out of Daniel Grant.
And every time he was done with him. I had my own share of punishment. The closet in the corner was brought here just for him. The same closet he used to lock Aurelia in. Now his little reminder he won’t do it ever again.
If it were up to me, I would leave him there to rot. But no. She still needs to confess her feelings for this asshole, so he has to stay alive until she does.
“What do you think? How long will he last?” Victor asks, pointing at him.
“We will see how long it takes his fiancée to remember how great he was,” I say as I walk to the table of tools. I pick up the pliers and turn back toward them.
Victor shakes his head. “He has no more teeth left to pull.” He nods toward the bucket.
I glance inside. Bloody teeth stare back at me.
“How about nails?” I ask.
Daniel whimpers.
I roll my shoulders back and crack my neck. My jaw tightens as I reach for the axe and rest it on my shoulder.
“Why don’t I take the whole hand?” I smile. “I bet Aurelia will appreciate getting your bones instead of rotten flesh.”
His head jerks from side to side in a weak attempt to protest.
“Aww.” I press my palm to my cheek and blink at him. “Aren’t you adorable, shaking like that?”
I lift the axe and bring it down across his wrist.
The blade cuts through with a snap, his severed hand dropping down on the ground. His body jerks, the chains rattling as the force makes him swing.
I bend and pick it up.
Blood pours from the stump, spraying across his chest and splattering the basement walls.
I step toward him with the severed hand, but his head falls forward, passing out while the blood keeps dripping, spreading the pod of the blood at the floor.
“Can we boil it?” I ask Victor. “I just need the bones. You can keep the flesh.”
Victor nods, he stopped asking questions a long time ago.
He slips the hand into a plastic bag and walks out of the basement.
Daniel twitches against the chains. Slowly, he begins to wake up.
I walk over to the wall where the chain is and unhook it, letting his body drop to the floor.
He groans as consciousness crawls back into him. One of his eyes is swollen shut, the skin stretched purple and black. The other stares up at me, bloodshot red.
“Why?” he rasps, spitting blood onto the floor as he struggles to push himself up. “Why are you doing this?”
“Did you lose your memory too,” I say as I crouch down in front of him, “or are you just playing dumb?”
“You can have her,” he slurs. “Just let me go.”
“Tsk, tsk.” I shake my head slowly. “That’s not going to happen.”
I lean closer.
“You had seven years to make her happy. Seven years. And you turned her life into a living hell instead.”
“You can have all my money,” he mutters, another string of bloody saliva hitting the floor between us.
A laugh escapes me.
“You mean the money you stole from her father?” I raise a brow. “I don’t want it.”
I stand and grab the chain from the ground, wrapping it around my knuckles. With one sharp pull, I drag him across the floor. His body scrapes behind me, leaving a dark trail of blood.
I stop at the far end of the basement, right in front of the closet.
The door creaks when I open it.
For a moment I remember her pounding against the wood from the inside. Her voice breaking as she begged to be let out.
I grab Daniel by the collar and shove him inside, the heavy chain clattering beside him, before slamming the door and twisting the key in the lock.
I hear him scream again, but it’s nothing compared to what I will do next.
The easiest lesson you can teach an abuser is how it feels to be abused back. The hardest one is that no matter how desperately they beg for their life, they still end up six feet under the ground.
I pull another cigarette from my pocket and light it. Smoke fills my lungs as I lean my shoulder against the closet door.
Memories creep in. All the times I had to pull her away from him, all the times she still chose him.
It’s not easy to just leave. I know that now.
We lived separate lives. She had Daniel. I had Lilibeth. It’s a cruel thing to live beside someone who loves you while your heart belongs to someone else. It’s not fair to anyone involved. No matter what you do, someone will always get hurt. I chose the easiest path.
I waited.
I inhale slowly, then release another stream of smoke into the air.
My fist knocks twice against the closet door.
“Knock, knock,” I say calmly.
He doesn’t answer.
“I said knock fucking knock,” I snap, slamming my palm against the door hard enough to make the hinges shake.
“W… who’s there?” he finally stutters from inside.
I flick the cigarette to the ground and crush it under my shoe.
“Your worst nightmare,” I say as I turn the key and pull the closet door open.