Page 191 of I Never Stopped Loving You

“Stop it!” Noah lunges at him punching him across the face.

One of the last remaining teeth in his rotted mouth flies out and bounces across the floor, but his laughter doesn’t end.

“Do you remember the sound of my knife, the knife you stabbed me with? It’s all because of you, Willow. I only had that knife because. Of. You!” he annunciates those last words, punching them into my soul.

“No.”

“Yes, Willow. If you had just been a good girl and gone upstairs like you always did, none of that would have happened.”

“Stop it,” I cry out as I sink to the floor and cover my ears.

Another sickening sound resonates through the room as Noah punches him again, but he won’t stop taunting me.

“It’s your fault, Willow. You just had to grab that knife…You just had to try and save her, didn’t you?”

“You wouldn’t stop. All you did was hurt her…Hurt us. Why?” I scream the last word.

Tears fill my eyes, blurring my vision as I watch Noah’s hands tighten around my father’s throat.

“Noah, stop. Wait,” I shout, but it’s like he doesn’t hear me.

I run to him and grab his arm. The feeling of my damp hands covered in dirt and grime from the floor seems to make him feel me.

“Wait, please. I need to know why,” I plead with him, staring into his eyes.

His fingers release slightly letting the monster in the chair gasp for breath.

“Why?” he chokes out. “You want to know why I beat you?”

“No. I want to know why you killed her. What happened that night?” I demand as the tears continue to fall.

“I told you, you handed me the…”

“No! What made you snap?” I scream, cutting him off.

He tilts his head and smiles at me. The corner of his eye is twitching as his lips curl.

“Your mother wanted to take you away from me. She had the fucking car packed and everything. But you forgot something, didn’t you, Willow?” he sneers.

Mr. Snuggles…

“My rabbit.”

“Bingo. I heard her searching in your room for that fucking thing. She was cussing up a storm thinking I was still passed out in bed. When I walked downstairs and saw the disgusting thing on the ground next to the bench, I noticed you sitting in that car.”

My mind drifts to that night again, blurring the lines between the past and present. I remember his silhouette in that doorway. The small hallway light illuminating him from behind casting his dark, ominous shadow across the lawn. The little shadow of my rabbit being dangling by his ripped ear.

“You just wouldn’t listen. I told you to get into the house. Bad girls who don’t listen get punished,” he repeats the words that have lingered at the edges of my mind for years. Every time someone was upset with me, I could hear him in my mind.

“Why did you kill her? You hurt us both so much, but you killed her that night.”

“I told you, Willow. You gave me the knife.”

Noah is pacing, letting me interrogate my father. I can tell he wants to step in and shield me from this, to protect me, but this needs to happen.

“Tell her the truth, James,” Noah finally says. “Tell her what you told me about that night.”

Noah steps behind me placing his hands on my shoulders. My father watches Noah with disgust as his grip tightens, helping ground me to this reality.