Chapter Twenty-Four
Amelia
There was no reason for that to be the key.
Hilary should have been the trigger. Any of dozens of things the man had said or done could have catapulted him back into the past. The books.
The music. Jokes, and movies, and food, and kisses.
The sweater and the unfolded stars in the mason jar.
So many, many things it could have been.
But for some reason, it was that voice, and that tone, that had him answering, “Mom?”
It was the passcode he hadn’t set. And then it flared to life. All of it, and all at once. He didn’t feel the phone dropping from his hands. Didn’t feel himself rising from the brick stairs.
Axel Marlin. He’d read the name in the court reports, but until then it had been just letters on the page, just one of the victims to his senseless violence, and now not a victim at all. Axel was the one who had—and to his own Hilary—
The taser hit Trenton in the chest and neck.
Fifty thousand volts that locked his muscles and had him crashing against the doorjamb and half inside, but the chaos of that could hardly touch the turmoil he was already experiencing.
He was seeing it all again, a horror story of images.
The bat shattering his arm, and the separation, that car ride and Hilary trussed like a turkey, being dragged into the warehouse, the fear painted so thickly on him, and then that bat again, but this time with Axel—
“Quiet! Be QUIET!” Hilary’s voice was tight and hard, and Trenton realized he was inside again and the silver duct tape back on his wrists.
When he tried to lunge upward, Hilary tazed him again.
It had always been hiding in plain sight, that taser.
The man kept it either in the pocket of his jeans or in his jacket.
It was a decent precaution, Trenton had thought, for someone as pretty as Hilary, who often worked at odd hours, and not in the best neighborhood.
He’d been glad his beloved carried it. He hadn’t realized—it had never once occurred to him—that the reason Hilary carried it, and the only reason, was because of him.
This time, when he regained his senses, his legs were tied as well, and Hilary was working on his mouth. That more than anything was a problem. “Hil—”
“Not a word!” Hilary was more desperate than he’d ever seen him, the panic cracked so tightly over his features it was a wonder he could breathe. “One word, and I’m getting the propofol. You would not believe the number of drugs I have in this house.”
Trenton did believe it. He’d even seen some of the hoard.
And it was more than drugs. The shelves were stuffed with canned goods, and there was a tower of toilet paper in the hall closet.
They were the kind of preparations you’d expect of someone with higher-than-average anxiety.
There was also a treasure trove of medical equipment.
Not just the standard first aid kit, but practically an entire emergency room.
Hilary had joked once that he could treat a bullet wound from the comfort of their living room.
And Trenton was realizing now that it hadn’t been a joke.
Hilary had been preparing for this. A just-in-case kind of scenario.
And then it was too late to speak. Hilary had tied off his head with so much duct tape he’d definitely lose most of his hair once it was ripped off—If it was ever ripped off.
“Not a sound,” Hilary repeated, more and more unstable by the second.
“Not one. I’m serious, Trent. Not now. I can’t take it. ”
Trenton wanted to reach for him. To touch him—any part of him.
To feel the heart that beat beneath that skin.
Alive. Perhaps not well, but alive. Not bleeding.
Not vomiting or sobbing out his name, no screams to savage his brain and cut away everything inside.
Hilary, who hadn’t lied about anything. Who had not exaggerated or been crazy in the slightest. The man was no stalker, no delicate neurotic.
And all the accusations were true.
He had run away, just like Hilary said. Had betrayed his beloved and run off and left him when he needed him most. Not once, which would have been bad enough, but seven times.
Seven separate instances of forgetting that spanned over a decade, two of which had been longer than this one now.
Hilary was right about the kitchen. Trenton had chosen not just the paint, but the appliances, the placement of everything.
Hilary had given him free rein. And in all that time, in all those meetings and lives together, they had been many things to each other.
Friends, colleagues, neighbors, fellow students, rivals, and even lovers.
He was not, as he had thought, a virgin.
He and Hilary had slept together in two of their seven relationships.
One of those times had been a disaster. Trenton had remembered a part of their past together halfway through the act, and the next moment he’d been out in the street, his feet bare, having forgotten again.
But the other time—two meetings before—had not been anxious at all.
Maybe they hadn’t had sex as much as other couples, reserving it mostly for special occasions, but it had been loving.
Passionate. And just thinking of it had the tears streaming down his face.
All of it—every one of those sacred meetings—he’d dumped from his mind like so much trash.
They’d gone to college together. Worked at a café together.
Had even come close to disliking each other once during the period of nursing school when Hilary had been so burned out with stress and loneliness that the man had tried, for once, to cut him off.
That terrible time had lasted nearly nine months before the pull became too strong, and they were brought together again.
But always, always, Hilary had loved him.
Not for one day—not for one minute—had that waned.
Hilary had been there for him. Had protected him.
And had never, not once, punished him for it.
Hilary should have. Like his mother had with Amelia, so small, and so loud.
The little creature would cry and cry, his sister and her sore tummy.
Trenton hadn’t been allowed to touch her.
She’d been too little, and so had he been.
But he’d rubbed that small tummy over and over with his chubby hand and told her not to cry, please not to cry, mommy would be home soon, and it would all be okay.
Except it hadn’t been. For little Amelia, nothing had been okay.
And then she’d died.
She’d been dead before his mother had ever left the house that day.
Trenton knew, because she’d been quiet that whole night—and night was her worst time.
Always before he’d been up for large chunks of it, with one of his fat arms stuck between the bars of her crib, rubbing her tummy over and over and waiting for the morning to come.
But that night he had slept the whole way through, and when he woke, his mother had been quiet too, and then she’d left the house, and it had only been him and his sister and all that quiet.
It was the first time he'd lifted her, had taken her up into his lap, her little mouth tinted blue, only a doll, not his sister anymore, and he’d rubbed her tummy, even though she didn’t need it anymore, telling her that mommy would be home soon and that it would be okay.
But it hadn’t been okay, and when the police found him three days later, he was in the kitchen, alone.
And he didn’t have a little sister, he told them.
Because he had forgotten. They found Amelia under the bed, wrapped in her blanket with a bottle of old formula tucked inside of it with her.
His tiny sister. The only person in the world he had loved as much as Hilary. And he had forgotten both of them.
Hilary dragged him to the main room before his energy gave out. Then his beloved crawled a short way to the end of the room and had a panic attack that was mostly silent except for the vomiting at the end.
Trenton watched it happen. He could squirm around a little, and he did, angling himself to see Hilary as best as he could.
But he didn’t go to him, sure that would only make it worse.
He had done this, had made Hilary believe he had to go through it alone, and that’s what Hilary was doing, being quietly sick, unable to look at him, to go to him, to trust him enough to see him through it—because he hadn’t.
Hilary left to shower after that. Or maybe he only turned on the shower and sat in the bathroom.
The man did that sometimes. For the sound of it, and to be alone.
Hilary left the door open, though. Probably to listen out to hear of any potential escaping.
It was one of the reasons Trenton needed Hilary to take the tape off his mouth.
With that, he could have promised, at least, not to go anywhere.
That he wouldn’t leave even if he was forced to.
But what would that do? A few words couldn’t erase fifteen years of betrayal.
He could only watch the bathroom and wait.
The shower was shorter than usual. When Hilary came out, he came to the bed to look at his partner, eyes intent, desperate but untrusting.
The man never turned his back on Trenton, eyes on him as he pulled on some sweats.
But Hilary couldn’t approach. As if his friend was toxic now with his memories back.
But Hilary couldn’t keep away either. He hovered there at the edge of the bed, his breathing shallow and fast.
Come. If the man had ever truly been a mind reader, Hilary would have heard the verbal command, repeated over and over.
And maybe he did, because Hilary seemed to grow more distressed with each passing minute until he let out an angry kind of wail and kicked the bed frame.
“Why now? Is it all just a joke? Is my whole life a joke to you?”
Trenton couldn’t speak. He could try to make sounds through the tape, maybe, but he knew that would cause distress.
Hilary was saying the words, but not really asking.
The man didn’t expect, or even want, an answer.
Not from him. So Trenton only looked at his beloved, trying to be calm, to be thinking of what was best, but the memories were an endless onslaught.
He kept seeing it, feeling it, the way his body had reacted to that invasion, how his own flesh seemed to tear with it.
And the demon who had done it, alive even in death.
It wasn’t enough to have killed him, and Trenton hadn’t forgotten.
It had been inside him all that time and always would be.
Hilary knelt, pressing his face into the mattress, and made that angry wail again. Each time he did it, Trenton felt his wrists jerk against the tape. Needing to take hold, to check over and analyze every hurt, every place that touch may have scarred his darling.
Come up on the bed. He was begging it with his eyes, trying to get Hilary to lift his face. Look at me. Come up where I can see you.
But Hilary didn’t look at him. Even when he finally did rise, it wasn’t to look at him. The man lay down there on the bed, at the edge of it, and cried like a puppy without a mother.
Trenton felt it when his wrists began to bleed, trickling down into his palms to dry in a sticky kind of residue, but there was no point to it.
Hilary needed him to be still, to not escape, but god, what he wouldn’t have given to pull the man closer, every one of those sobs another accusation, one more sin for him to carry.
Call Annette, was the next order he tried to push out with the mental shouting.
Please call her. Perhaps she was on her way already.
He couldn’t imagine she’d stay away if she thought Hilary was in danger.
But they weren’t in the same town anymore.
Not the same state. Nor even the same part of the country.
It wouldn’t be easy for her to come, and not soon in any case.
Trenton made the choice to move. The wrong choice, it turned out. The moment he clenched his muscles to take that first squirming inch, Hilary was up like a strike of lightning. “Don’t!” It was pure panic again, his shout going shrill with it.
Trenton froze where he was, but it wasn’t enough. Hilary made a sound like he was being torn apart and flung himself down against the mattress again, sobbing like his heart was being crushed inside him.