“He stole me.”
Even as I delve deeper, the psychologist in me denies it all. Repressed memories aren’t credible. They’re rarely ever accurate. They’re the mind’s way of reshelving memories, sorting too many moments that we’re unable to catalog. I want to continue to deny it, but it’s as if a shroud has been lifted. Everything so clear, so vivid.
So real.
And I’ve never felt more alone.
You know.
I do know. I’ve always known about the girls, because I was once one of them. Until he pulled me from the cell and kept mefor his own. He was a cop. He was the fucking sheriff. Of course, he was also my protector. I stayed in his asylum willingly, and left the other world behind, locking it away forever.
The man I killed was not my father. But the patients I tortured to understand who I am, what I am…suddenly, there are too many of them. The doors crack down the middle, light splintering through the shadows, and the overload flips the kill switch.
Full collapse.
26
TILL DEATH
GRAYSON
After forty-six hours in the cage, London loses the fight.
The mind is a fucked-up place.
I push Stop on the recorder, and log the timestamp in my notes. The first half was spent in defiance, cursing me, blaming me, creatively detailing the ways I should die—I enjoyed that part.
She doesn’t realize how talented she is. I smile to myself as I jot down her assumption about the drugs. Not a bad idea. Maybe next time.
Her last four hours were her most trying, and her most revealing. Even a strong-willed woman like Dr. Noble can’t keep her demons locked away forever. I watch her on the monitor now, arms cradling her body as she sleeps.
Denial is a strenuous mental exercise. You have to be utterly, completely delusional not to bend when confronted by veracity in its barest form. London doesn’t suffer from idiosyncratic beliefs; she isn’t delusional. Mastering the art of lying was hersurvival mechanism, a way to protect herself and enable her pursuit of greatness despite her past.
I just had to pull at her thread until the spool unraveled, exposing the truth. Pleased with the analogy, my hand flies across the journal page. I want to remember this moment. It will be important later.
Can I claim I knew all the answers before I first entered her therapy room? No, not at all. Not like I typically do. Mounting extensive research on a subject before introductions. But with her—she was different, so goddamn special. There was only afeeling.
Something I discredited as bullshit my whole life. I work with facts and evidence, not gut instinct or intuition. I trust what great minds before me have tested and studied and produced concrete evidence of.
But like I said, she’s different. I sensed our kindred connection, and it became a compulsion to tease our relationship apart, dissect it and layer the pieces together in a way I could analyze and understand.
I went against my nature by relying on instinct in this one instance. Trusting this strange new sensation that heats my blood whenever I think of her. Love—if that’s what it truly is—decided we were a match, and she’s offered proof. Finally.
I flip the page, resting the ballpoint to the journal as I click back on the footage. Hair in beautiful tangles over her face, she whispers it over and over, rocking against the floor: “He’s not my father.”
I move closer to her image on the screen, an anxious thrill flaring over my nerves. This moment is too visceral to be an act. The admission too specific, precise.
Her truth matches my own.
It’s what called out to me, why we belong together.
We are the stolen children raised by monsters.
“I want out.” London’s voice is barely audible, so I increase the volume. “Let me out of this fucking trap.”
She’s so close, but she doesn’t understand everything fully yet. This isn’t her trap. The burial, the cage…it was all in preparationforher trap. She can’t go in until she’s ready, her mind open to accept our reality—to acceptus.
But she’s close.
