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The man managed to push his way out my bedroom door, but he fell to his knees and onto his stomach when the blood loss became too much.
I wouldn’t let him get up again.
With both hands, I stabbed him everywhere I could. Until a crimson stain pooled beneath him with so much blood, I thought the whole room would flood with it. Until I could no longer lift my arms because they shook too much.
His pleas and groans and gurgles on his own blood finally stopped.
I didn’t notice my mother was standing by his feet until she said, “We have to make him disappear.”
I took his feet while she lifted him under the arms. We heaved and sputtered as we dragged him to the bathtub, where my mother ordered me to grab bleach and bags from under the sink before scrubbing the blood off me, handing me my shirt, and sending me to the grumpy neighbor’s apartment a floor down.
The old woman allowed me through the door with great reluctance and threw a blanket that smelled like mothballs over me as I spent the night on her couch. My mother finally came for me in the morning, and we carried the bags I’d brought to her out the door, disposing of them in various dumpsters around the city.
When we returned home, the bathtub reeked of bleach and was polished cleaner than it had ever been, even when we moved in.
“How many times did it happen?” she asked me.
“Just that time.”
She crouched to the floor so she was eye-level with me, stroking both my arms. “Where did he touch you?”
I pointed to my arm and my face, and when I stopped, she hugged me and sobbed.
The monster was never found. But he wasn’t done hurting us.
My mother and I hopped from city to city after that, never staying in one place long. I was oblivious as to why, and she refused to explain.
Until I finally got my answer. When the monster’s brother left my mother’s dead body in an alleyway.
He’d been chasing us since he discovered one of us had ended his brother’s life. He assumed it had been my mother.
I didn’t protect her the way she protected me. I wasn’t there when she needed me. I failed her.
I’ll never make that mistake again. Certainly not with Briar.
“I’m sorry that happened to you. Your mother sounds like an incredible woman,” Briar says now. She’s twisting her hands together, distressed at the images that now plague her mind.
I wish I hadn’t needed to fill her head with them, but if she’s going to fall for me, if she’s going to be mine forever, she needs to know me. Just as I need to know her. All of the darkest parts.
“She was the only person I had in the entire world.”
“My mother and I are close too.” Briar manages a small smile. Happiness flutters in my chest that she still has her mother. “So what did you do to him?”
“To him?”
“The man who...killed your mother.” She swallows, gaze cast down on her fidgeting hands. “You murdered a man for daring to lay his hands on me. I’m sure you did much worse to your mother’s killer.”
I try to suppress the dormant rage that simmers beneath the surface. Warren Marshall is dead to me, even if he still breathes. “Believe it or not, I spared his life. Even though I despised him for what he did, part of me understood. That in his shoes, I’d do the same.”
Her brows lift. “So you didn’t go after him?”
“Of course I went after him—he killed my mother. But I took someone he loved; he took someone I loved. So I stopped at cutting off his ear.”
“That’s disgusting. Please don’t tell me you’ve held onto it like some sick trophy.”
“Then I won’t tell you.”
She snorts. “Give it to my father. He lost his in a dog attack.”
