CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #4
"One time, when I was fourteen, he was desperate for a fix, but he didn't have any money. His supplier took one look at me and said, 'I'll give you a hit if I can have twenty minutes with this kid.' And you know what Gerry did?"
She laid a hand over her mouth as she shook her head. "Oh God," she whispered from beneath her palm.
"God wasn't with me that day," I hissed in reply, my jaw tight.
The rage in me was bubbling over as my fist clenched tight against the bed. But she never looked away, and in her eyes, I saw the understanding of someone who’d been there too.
Kindred spirits was what we were, and, oh, how my soul wanted to reach out and grasp onto hers. I’d let it hold on forever if I thought it wouldn’t kill us both.
"People can change," she whispered, her argument weak.
"Yeah, sure. Some," I replied, pulling away and straightening my back. "But not him. And I'm telling you right now, he doesn't give a fuck about me or what I have to say." Or what I want.
We fell into an uncomfortable silence. The things we wanted to say but couldn't permeating the space between us, clouding the air and making it heavy.
I wanted to tell her that, in another life, it might've been different.
That if I hadn't been Gerald's son and she hadn't been Virginia's daughter, there wouldn't have been anything stopping us from acting on this and being together.
But what the hell was the point of dwelling on something that wasn't? This was simply how our lives had panned out. Some people were meant to be together, and some people weren’t, and there was nothing more to it.
"I should go," I announced abruptly.
I stood and began to head toward the doorway leading to the sitting area when she said quietly, "I'm going to miss you."
"No, you won't," I replied. "You don't even know me. You think you do, but—"
"I don't need to know your name or your face or your favorite color or where you live to know you," she interjected, her voice on the edge of tears once again. "I've known you for years. I know the terrible things you've been through because I've been through them too. I know—"
"You have no idea what I've been through," I cut her off. "You couldn't even imagine the shit that I've—"
"And don't assume I don't know," she snapped. "You see this life I have now, you see my things and my clothes … you see a princess. But you have no idea what happened before." She hesitated, giving herself a moment to swallow before adding, "You have no idea what happens now."
I cocked my head. "Someone hurts you now?"
She dropped her gaze, her silence speaking volumes.
"Who?"
"We'll just add that to the list of things you can't do anything about," she replied in a hushed tone.
My hand clenched into a fist, itching for the knife in my pocket. "Give me names."
"No," she replied. "You'd only get yourself killed, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I was the reason I never saw you again."
"Is it Dean?"
She looked up at me, horror written across her face. "Oh my God, no! Dean is one of the only people in this house who would never ever hurt me. Dean is my friend."
I already knew this, of course. But it was that shock that helped me to understand her reaction when I asked, "How about Benjamin?"
She turned away, practically curling in on herself. "Please stop asking."
I knew Benjamin wasn’t a good guy, but I never thought before that he physically hurt her. With a low sound teetering toward a growl, I narrowed my eyes. "And Gerald?"
She looked toward me again, her glare fiery. This time, she looked less afraid and more annoyed. "Stop. I mean it."
She didn’t love Gerald. She likely thought he was an asshole, probably didn’t care for his methods and the things he did. But she wasn’t scared of him.
"So, Benjamin," I muttered, nodding to myself. "Noted."
Her face contorted with genuine amusement, and there was that little glimmer of hope sparkling in her deep eyes. "Will you stop? Oh my God, I didn't say he did anything."
"But you didn't say he didn't," I countered.
"You are insufferable," she replied as the smile dropped from her lips to pave the way for a terrible gloom. "And I'm really, really going to miss you."
"You'll see me again," I promised, even as I worried about why she believed she wouldn’t. "You're getting married and moving out. You're not … going across the country."
She offered a fragile smile, one that couldn’t stay for long, and her lips began to quiver, giving way to a sadness that couldn’t seem to lift from the room.
"Thank you for caring about me," she whispered. “Even if you can’t do anything to help, it means more to me than you can imagine, knowing you care.”
I nodded, then turned to head toward the door, forcing a distance that seemed to stretch miles with every inch.
Then, before I could leave altogether, I replied in a low, gravelly tone, "All the time, Princess.”
I care about you all the time, I thought as I exited the room and abandoned what was left of my heart within its walls. If only that could be enough.