Chapter 32 Laynie
Ijerked myself awake, forgetting where I was. I was in his arms and he had saved me from hell but last night was so foggy from the pills Alek gave me. I looked around the room and saw it was a hotel room. I didn’t even remember coming here.
Linc was awake when I peaked up at him. I felt like I was still in shock. So many emotions were running through me and I couldn’t separate them. I needed to categorize my feelings in little boxes because they were so scrambled up right now.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Hi,” I whispered back.
“How do you feel?”
“Bad,” I said while looking at my fingernails. They felt a little better today, but when I stopped focusing on that pain, another ailment would ache.
He touched my fingers and brought them to his lips. He kissed each one. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
I shut my eyes, trying to hold back tears. “How is J.C.?”
A knock at the door interrupted whatever he was going to say next. I grabbed onto him. They are coming back for me. I knew it.
“It’s okay,” he assured me.
He tried to get up, but I was clinging to him and felt tears forming.
“Laynie, it’s just J.C. at the door,” he said.
I let him go and watched him walk towards the door. He took a deep breath before opening it.
My heart stopped when I saw Charlie enter the room. Charlie looked like she has seen a ghost when her eyes landed on me.
“Laynie!” she screamed. She lunged towards the bed and met me with the tightest embrace I had ever felt.
How? How was she with Linc and J.C.? My thoughts were all over the place, but all I could do was cry. I thought she was dead for years. I thought I would never see her again.
“Where have you been?” I asked when she finally let me go.
“I was with Alek until 6 months ago when I escaped. Linc and J.C. found me.”
I couldn’t stop crying and touching her face. She was real. She was really right here in front of me.
J.C. was smiling at us as she leaned against Linc. It looked like she hadn’t slept in days, with big black circles around her eyes and her disheveled hair.
“We’ll leave you guys alone for a bit. We’ll be next door. Room 407,” Linc said it, but worded it as a question.
I nodded, and I felt him searching my eyes for reassurance.
I turned back to Charlie when he closed the door. “He hurt you too.” I touched a scar on the side of her face.
She squeezed her eyes closed, holding back tears. “Fuck them. Fuck all of them.”
“I’m so sorry, Charlie. What about your date? The night we got taken?”
“They slit her throat in the back of the van.”
My hand covered my mouth. “Oh, my God. This is all my fault, Charlie. We would have never been in this shit if it wasn’t for me.” The tears spilled over my eyes.
“Shut up, Laynie, this is not anyone’s fault. We fucking made it. We got out. Fuck the rest.”
I pulled my knees to my chest and sobbed. “You don’t understand Charlie. I didn’t warn you. Instead of warning you, I chose to hide.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
I told her the story of what happened that night and I saw the understanding in her eyes when I was done.
“None of that matters, Laynie. This isn’t your fault. Look at me.”
I pulled my head up from my knees.
“This is not your fault, Alayna.”
I nodded and tried to wipe the snot from my nose. “Have you told my parents? Have you talked to them?”
She hesitated for a moment. “No, I wanted to find you first.”
I could see a sadness had taken over her face when mentioning my parents. “What’s wrong Charlie?”
“I have to tell you something and I’m just not sure when the right time for that is.”
“Tell me now, Charlie.” My heart was pounding in anticipation. Something had happened. Oh God, something had happened.
Charlie ran her hands through her hair and turned away from me. I waited in silence for the words to leave her lips.
“When I got out, I looked up your parents and…” she hesitated.
“What happened to them?” I whispered.
“It’s your dad… he died, Laynie.”
“No. No. You’re wrong. You’re wrong Charlie. He’s at home. He’s with my mom.” I jumped out of the bed and winced at the sudden pain that jabbed my side. “Please tell me you’re lying. You’re lying!” I was screaming now.
Linc busted in the door. “What happened?” he said, looking frantic.
“I told her about her dad,” Charlie said.
“She’s lying. Tell me she’s lying.” I collapsed to the ground, sobbing.
Linc sat next to me and scooped me into his lap.
I hit him in his chest over and over. “It’s not true! It’s not true!”
He didn’t stop me from hitting him, but let me release everything onto him.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” he kept saying.
His voice felt far away and I couldn’t hear anything except my own screams in my head. Why was this happening to me?
“When?” No one answered me so I screamed it, “When!?”
“A year after they took us.”
This whole time my dad was dead. This whole time I had cried myself to sleep thinking he would come through the doors and rescue me and he was dead.
“How?” I asked, staring past Linc at the wall in front of me. I felt numb.
“Heart attack,” Charlie whispered. “Laynie I’m so sorry. I know how much you loved him.”
She was already speaking about him in the past tense. I loved him. I didn’t love him, but I had loved him. My poor daddy. He was my everything. He would have done anything for me. I was his little girl, and he died not knowing where I was or what had happened to me. My mom. Oh God, my poor mother. She had lost both of us.
“Mom?” I asked Charlie.
“She’s okay.”
I wanted to call her, but I knew I didn’t want her to see me this way. I was so broken and damaged. Before anything else, I had to heal. Also, I had to ensure that going there wouldn’t lead Alek to her. Did he know where she was? God, my head hurt so bad I felt my brain was going to explode.
I looked up and saw J.C. wiping tears from her eyes near the door. This had to be one of the worst moments of my life and yet I had found Charlie. I needed to be alone. I really needed to cut. This pain was too much for me to bear.
“I want to be alone,” I said as I picked myself off the ground from Linc’s lap.
“We aren’t leaving you alone, Laynie. One of us needs to be with you,” Linc said.
“I want to be alone, I don’t need any of you.” I know this probably hurt Charlie, but I was being consumed by darkness.
J.C. took the hint and was the first to leave the hotel room. Charlie was next. Linc didn’t move from where he was sitting.
“Leave.”
“No.”
“I hate you,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. Despite not hating him, the words simply slipped out of my mouth.
“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll leave you alone, but I’m not leaving this room, Alayna.”
I ignored him and slammed the bathroom door behind me.
“Fuuuuuuck!” I screamed.
I sat in the empty tub for hours. Linc would open the door every 30 minutes, probably to make sure I hadn’t offed myself. I ignored him every time.
He finally had enough the last time he came in. “Laynie, come lay down.”
“Fuck you.”
He sighed and sat down against the tub.
“Tell me about your dad,” he said.
“Why?” I asked without looking at him.
“Because I want to know about him. I want to know all about the people you love.”
I sat up, and the waterworks started again. It took me a full 5 minutes to gain the composure to speak. “My dad was older. My parents had trouble conceiving and didn’t have my brother and I until their 40s. In middle school, I always felt embarrassed because my dad seemed so much older than everyone else. I hope he didn’t realize this, but I’m sure he did. My dad was hardworking. Every morning he woke up at 4am to feed the horses, goats and chickens. He never complained about anything and he loved my mom more than life itself. They had been married 22 years before I was born. Dad always agreed with momma on everything and that annoyed me as a teenager. It was like me against them, but I understand how lucky I am now. To be born to two best friends who put their marriage and love for each other before everything. My dad taught me everything I know about cars and animals. He wasn’t the disciplinarian, my mom was. He used to leave the room if I was getting in trouble because it hurt his heart seeing me sad. I was his everything. I was his baby girl,” my voice started shaking. “The thought of him knowing I was either dead or somewhere suffering is something I can’t even begin to imagine. It killed him.”
Linc looked at me with sad eyes. “He sounds like the perfect dad.”
“He was,” I said. We sat in silence for another full 5 minutes.
“Tell me about your dad,” I finally said.
Linc sat up a bit and stared straight ahead. “It’s not the same kind of story.”
“Everyone has a different story.”
He nodded. “My dad is a piece of shit. He abused my mother my entire childhood. When I turned 10, the abuse started being directed at me because I stood up for my mom. He wouldn’t allow my mother to speak Italian when he was around and if I got caught speaking it, he would beat me. He said we were in America and needed to act like it. When I was 5 he cheated on my mom and had J.C. with a drug addict. Her mom dragged her around from home to home and eventually my dad got custody of her. He brought her to live with us when she was 6 and I was 11. It broke my mom’s heart, and it was hard for her to accept J.C. at first, but eventually she did and treated her like her own daughter. My dad eventually turned his anger on J.C. and when she was 10 and I was 15, she confided in me that he was abusing her. That’s when I snapped and beat him with a crowbar that I found in the garage. I spent a year in juvi for that while J.C. had no one to protect her. When I was almost 17, I got out and took J.C. with me. She’s been with me ever since. My mom finally left my dad, but it was too late. The damage was done. The fucked up part is J.C. refuses to cut him out of her life.”
My heart broke. “I’m so sorry.”
“We all have a story, right? What counts is what we do after that. I put J.C. through college and made sure she would never suffer at the hands of a man again.”
I nodded. “She is so sweet and carefree. I would have never thought.”
“You don’t have to be defined by what happened to you, Alayna. You are still you inside of there,” he pointed to my heart.
“I don’t even know who I am.”
“Well, let’s find her.”
I nodded and reached for his hand and he helped me out of the tub. He grabbed my arm and helped me up.
“I’m starving. I can’t remember the last time I ate. Maybe 2 days ago.”
“What do you want? I’ll order anything.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and leaned into him. “Pizza.” He wrapped his arms around me and I wanted to feel safe, but this part of me knew that if Alek found me, there would be nothing Linc could do to protect me. The ring of this operation went past Alek. I had only met the man who was over him once, and it was enough to make my bones chill. Although he didn’t actually touch me or even speak to me, I knew he was a man to be feared. What if he came for me? I didn’t even remember his name, only his face. I’m sure Alek would have to report that I was missing to him. It was going to be a witch hunt soon. Going home was a decision I struggled with. How could I lead them right to my mother’s address? I could never live with myself if something happened to my mother because of me.
I was listening to Linc’s breathing and felt his hand rubbing the side of my arm, but I felt numb. Numb to his touch and numb to my feelings. I couldn’t believe my father was gone.
The pizza arrived and I noticed it was from my favorite place. The smell hit my nose, and I felt ravenous. I was starving.
Linc let me eat half the pizza and didn’t say a word. I couldn’t remember the last time my stomach actually felt full.