Chapter 52 #2
I looked over my shoulder, chewing on my lower lip nervously over the possibility of either one of my parents coming out of the house to check on me.
If they found me whispering in the shadows with Kain Montgomery, it would just be another screaming match.
I didn’t have the energy to take another one of my father’s screaming matches.
Coming to that decision, I took the first step, walking past Kain a little, before he caught up and matched my stride.
“You wanna tell me why you were crying?” he asked as we passed the suburban two-stories that lined my quiet street. His tone could almost pass for concerned.
“No.” I hated the way my heart beat so fast now, the way my body behaved as if this man meant something to me when I wanted so badly for him to mean nothing.
I could see Kain shake his head from the corner of my eye, a long exhale leaving him before he spoke again. “Yeah, you do.”
I hated the way my body responded to the sound of his voice. My mind could try to not remember him, but from the way the hairs on my arms stood straight, the way my breathing could no longer keep pace, and the growing heat from between my legs—I just knew my body remembered him just fine.
Could he tell? If he could, did he feel powerful because of it?
The air that hung around us was somehow both familiar and tense at the same time.
We were close together enough to notice we were close, and far enough apart for it to feel deliberate.
Even though we spoke to one another as if no time had passed, time had clearly passed.
Neither of us spoke as we walked side-by-side, breathing out clouds in the cool December night.
I used to be so uncomfortable with silence.
The anxiety it gave me would have me rush to fill empty space with words that didn’t need to be said.
Silence used to be intimidating. Now, I found relief in it, thankful I didn’t have to say anything anymore.
“Lauren—” I flinched, a visual representation of my heartbeat pausing for one deadly second.
It had been so long since I’d heard my name said in that voice.
There were parts of me that were convinced I’d never hear it again, and now those parts of me awoke at the exact moment he said the word, awakening my body with a visible jolt.
Noting my reaction, Kain stopped what he was saying, and checked in. “You good?”
I was afraid of my voice sounding unconvincing, so I could only nod. And he nodded in response to this, accepting this as my truth. I took a step away, holding my breath as something in my chest waited for him to follow, waited for him to deny me the opportunity of creating distance.
Kain took a step to the side, keeping the six-inch space between us from getting any larger. I breathed out. It sounded relieved.
“Last night was…” He trailed off, unsure of what he should call it. “I just… I guess I just wanna know if you’re gonna be alright.”
What the hell did I say to him last night? Why is he behaving this way? From the bits and pieces I could remember from the night before, I knew Rashad made me cry last night. Did I tell Kain something about Rashad when I was drunk? Was that why he was still here, sounding all concerned about me?
Kain and I had met almost two years ago at a party where he stopped me from getting raped.
If I’d gotten drunk last night and told him about the incident with Rashad, I could see why he would feel some type of way about it.
All that trouble saving me last year, just for it to ultimately happen anyway.
“If this is about what I might’ve said about my boyfriend last night,” I started to explain defensively, “just know that he doesn’t always do that to me.
You don’t need to check up on me over it.
It was one time and… it was kind of my fault ‘cause I’d gotten him all horny, and…
and it didn’t even hurt. I don’t need you popping up at my house, checking to see if I’m good. ”
Kain stopped walking.
“What?”
This was the tone of a man who was hearing all of this for the first time, blindsided. But that’s not all he was. Understanding what I was implying, I watched calm and composed features morph into something resembling alarm.
Shit.
“Lauren, what do you mean?” Kain wasn’t asking for clarification.
Actually, he was more like pleading for some sort of indication that he’d misunderstood me.
I’d misguidedly revealed the ugliest of bombshells, and now he stood before me, unable to mask the horror in his features.
Kain’s hands grasped at my shoulders tightly, facing me with urgency. “What the fuck do you mean?”
I shook my head vehemently, trying to shrug away his tight grip on me. Though, I couldn’t shake him loose. Kain’s hands held onto me firmly, unwilling to let me go in case I wanted to run from this.
“Why are you yelling at me?” I asked, feeling my squeaking voice shake. Did he think I did something wrong? Was he mad at me for it?
“You just told me that a nigga raped you! And you still callin’ him your boyfriend after that?”
He was still shouting at me. I’d gotten enough of my fair share of being yelled at today. The volume of Kain’s words grew, and between his hands, I shrunk.
I shook my head, feeling a pool form at the rims of my eyes. “Don’t call it that.”
“Call it what? Rape?” Still shouting, but not as loud.
My voice sounded tormented when I asked—begged—him to stop. “Please stop calling it that.”
“Lauren,” his voice hushed to a whisper, pulling me in closer by my shoulders. Kain sounded tormented as well when he whispered out the question, “Baby, what happened to you?”
I refused to be spoken to like I was broken.
“Nothing happened to me!” I shouted back, not looking him in the eyes. “It was nothing!”
“Like hell, nothing happened to you!” he retorted with infuriated sarcasm. He was so enraged, so angered over the realization of what Rashad had done to me. Seeing the ferocity burn in Kain’s eyes did something to light up the anger within me as well.
“Don’t stand there and act like you haven’t done worse to me!
You are such a hypocrite!” When confusion flashed in his features, I got to explaining.
“Your father shot me! I almost died! I lost a lung! I lost our—” I shook my head, violently pushing him out of my face. “I lost so fucking much, Kain!”
Emotions on high, I didn’t care that I was shouting in the quiet neighborhood.
“I lost so much,” I repeated, bringing a hand to my face to wipe away the stray tears. “And you… You got up in front of millions of people, and defended the man who took so much from me! He tried to KILL me, and you still chose HIM!”
“Lauren—”
“Don’t stand there and act like you’re some king of caring about my wellbeing! I know he’s your father, but,” I shook with a sob, “he took so much from me. And you didn’t even love me enough to just… choose me when I needed you the most.”
Kain’s eyes shined with the hint of tears. None of them fell, but the words coming out of my mouth were clearly dishing out emotional blows, making them form. Having never seen him like that before, my breath caught, and I took a step back.
His voice was calmer when he came to understand what I was saying. “You let niggas abuse you because you measure them up against what you think I did.”
“What I think you did?” I repeated, questioning his word choice. “Oh so now you’re going to act like I’m stupid. Like I didn’t hear about the testimony that ruined my father’s career? Like I didn’t spend two weeks on life support? Like I don’t have the scars to prove it?!”
“You let niggas abuse you because you feel like it’ll never be as bad as what you think I did to you.” He seemed to only be focused on this fact. Kain sounded so… tortured.
“There’s no man, no matter what they do to me, who will ever hurt me the way you did,” I confirmed. Rashad might’ve raped me, but that was nothing compared to what Kain did.
Kain shook his head, a single drop gliding out from the inner corner of his eyes when he took another step closer to me. “There’s so much about that night that you don’t know.”
“Oh really?” I hit back skeptically. “Like what?”
When Kain’s hands drew up, taking my face between his palms, I thought he was going to kiss me as his face drew closer. Instead he simply pressed his forehead to mine, his breath hitting against my lips when he painfully replied, “I can’t tell you.”
I pushed him back, not caring if I was being rough.
“Of course you can’t!” Why was I even surprised? “‘Cause you’re lying! That’s what you do! You lie! You pretend to love me to draw me in, and when the time is right, you put me up for slaughter! You never loved me!”
“You don’t believe that.”
“What do you want me to believe?”
“You might believe a lot of things about me, Lauren, but I know you don’t believe that.”
“I don’t know what to believe!” I shouted, taking a step back as he took a step forward. “I look into your eyes, and I just… I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you can look at me like that, knowing what you did!”
“What do you think I did?” he asked, matching my volume.
“Stop acting like you don’t know!”
“I need to hear you say it!”
I was shouting at the top of my lungs now, hitting on his chest with every word I screamed.
“You. Protected. Him!” My body shook from both the emotions coursing through me, and the hurt in my heart. “He tried to kill me. And you protected him. You protected the man who tried to kill me.”
Kain’s hands took me by the shoulders, his eyes burning into mine when he slowly said the words. “No. I. Didn’t.”
“Liar!”
“Lauren,” he stressed. “It wasn’t Silas.”
“Sure it wasn’t.” I was sarcastic. I had no idea I had so many murderous enemies running around. “Who was it then, Kain? Pray tell.”
He drew in a sharp breath, ultimately shaking his head defeatedly when he, again, said the words, “I can’t tell you.” His hands on me griped tighter before I could push him away again. “It would destroy you.”
I nodded, not buying his lies for one second.
“Of course it would. That’s what this is, huh?
Some big plan to spare my feelings.” I shook him off of me, thrusting another blow against his chest, hoping it would hurt him, but knowing it didn’t when it landed.
“I gave you everything! I gave you all of me! And you betrayed me! Yet somehow that’s not as bad as whatever the real truth is. That’s bullshit, Kain!”
“I’m serious,” he stuck to his story.
“Well what if I don’t care about your feelings?” I asked angrily, throwing a fist against his chest again, seriously wanting to hurt him. “What if I tell you something that destroys you? Will you tell me then? Will you tell me if I show you that I don’t give a shit about how you feel?”
“Lauren—”
“Your father, who tried to kill me… That father that you love so fucking much…” I knew that what I was about to say, I could never take back.
But, damn, I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to hurt him the way he let me hurt.
I didn’t have all the facts, but I didn’t care.
I just wanted him to break down the way that I had broken down dozens of times this past year.
I wanted him to feel pain. “That father that you ride so hard for… Well, he…” I took a few steps back, already getting ready to head back home after I dropped this bomb. “He killed your mother.”