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t want to lay here for a while.”
Kissing the top of her head, I close my eyes, enjoying the feel of her in my arms.
“I told you my mother was killed when I was a girl, and that my father raised me. That wasn’t a lie. He did raise me, but only for a few years.”
My eyes snap open when she starts to talk. I look down at her, but she’s focused on her finger, which is drawing circles over my chest. I wait patiently for her to continue. After several long moments of silence, I scoot up in bed, resting my back against the headboard, and lift her onto my lap.
“Please, keep going.”
She gives the slightest nod. “He was taken from me when I was nine. At the time, I didn’t have any living relatives who could care for me, so I was placed with a family, and they ended up adopting me.”
Shae closes her eyes, a look of sorrow passing over her face, and when a tear trickles down her cheek, I wipe it away.
“I was so lost and scared. I don’t think I’d ever been that scared. I had a good life,” she says, opening her eyes. They’re glassy and pain radiates from them in waves. “In the blink of an eye, the life I knew was gone, and I was thrust into a new family and a new school and a new routine. My adoptive parents tried to love me, they really did, but I didn’t make it easy for them, and eventually they gave up.”
My body stiffens. “What do you mean they gave up?”
“Right after my father’s death, I asked a lot of questions. I wanted to know where certain things were, things from home. Toys, pictures, albums—but they kept telling me they didn’t know, and I got angry. How could they not know? Where did all of that stuff go? It should’ve been mine, right? But it didn’t matter. Every question I asked was left unanswered, including questions about my father’s death, and I began to act out. At first it was in-school detention, then after-school detention, and eventually suspension. For the first several months, Janet and Mike—my adoptive parents—would ground me, but that only made things worse. I would scream and yell, throw things, punch the walls, and I even started picking on their daughter. I’m not proud of that, by the way.” She sighs. “By the end of my first year in their home, Mike was spanking me, and something in Janet just snapped. She started calling me vile names and telling me how much she hated me and how I’d ruined their life, their daughter’s life. But that didn’t make sense, because they adopted me. I didn’t pick them.”
With each word out of Shae’s mouth, I grow more and more angry—angry at the system for putting an innocent, scared child into that situation. Angry at her adoptive parents for not understanding her pain and doing something about it, rather than making it worse.
Feeling restless and more than helpless, I run my hands up her bare back, over her shoulders and then back down, trying to show her she isn’t alone anymore and that I’ll carry her pain with her. I want her to know I’m here and, so help me God, if anyone ever lays another finger on her, I’ll fucking kill them.
“Tell me the rest,” I grind out.
Rex’s gravelly voice tells me how affected he is by my story. Never in a million years did I think I would open up like this to someone. But now that It’s happening, I sort of wish it would’ve happened sooner because with each word I speak, with each part of the story I reveal to him, a little piece of the girl I once was returns.
It’s strange to have some memories so easily accessible and others I’m trying desperately to recover. Reliving my childhood isn’t easy. I don’t like stirring up these memories, but I’d do it a million times over to feel this relief. As odd as it probably sounds, I feel like I’m letting the Blacks go, like I’m letting Shae go, and reaching for Bianca.
I didn’t lie to Rex about being placed with the Blacks. I just left out the part about it being through the Witness Protection Program. That little piece of information I need to keep to myself, but the rest of it I’m going to tell him.
The Blacks have held on to a piece of me for so long, and day by day, year by year, the memories of growing up in their house have made me bitter and angry. But not anymore. They don’t deserve my pain, and they sure as hell don’t deserve my tears.
“Please keep going,” Rex urges.
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Mike slapped me around a few times, but lucky for me, it didn’t escalate to more than a few bruises here and there.”
“Lucky for you?” he sputters. Rage blazes in his eyes. “Are you kidding? He should’ve never laid a finger on you. You were a kid, Shae.”
“I was a bratty shithead, and I knew how to push all of his buttons.”
Rex shakes his head. “I don’t give a damn what button you pushed or how often you pushed it, you didn’t deserve to be hit. No kid deserves to be hit. There are other forms of punishment.”
“Trust me, I know.”
Rex’s brows dip low, and he gives me a look that clearly says explain. So I do.
“By the time I was eleven, the Blacks had pulled me from school, and Janet began homeschooling me. I wasn’t allowed to play with their daughter or any of the kids from the neighborhood because I was a bad influence. You can only imagine how I handled that.” I grin at Rex trying to lighten the mood, but he’s having none of it.
“Finish the story,” he says dryly. I lift a brow, and he sighs. “Please. Please finish the damn story so I can order a hit on someone.”
As soon as the words pass from his lips, his eyes widen, but he quickly schools his features.
“Order a hit?” Talk about being thrust back in time fourteen years. That sounds like something I would’ve heard my dad say while I was eavesdropping on his phone conversations.
Rex rolls his eyes, blowing me off. “It’s a figure of speech. You know what I mean. Continue.”
“Eating dinner with the Blacks at the table was a privilege, one that I lost, and they began bringing my food to me in my room. I ate alone, I played alone… Everything I did, I did alone. The next several years were spent just watching the Blacks. I watched them play with their daughter. They would shower her with gifts on her birthday and Christmas. They taught her how to swim and—” Emotion clogs my throat, but I swallow past it. “—and how to ride a bike, and they took her skating. I never got to do those things.
