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He had absolutely no right to. Irritation flared in my chest, followed by a jab of guilt. They’d both probably been worried about me doing something stupid—more stupid than the crap I’d already put them through.
Mercy looked at me with concern I couldn’t quite believe I deserved. “Is that a problem? He isn’t really angry with you, you know. He was just frustrated.”
“You should be frustrated,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead. “Because of me, you’ve got a bounty on your head. And you still came looking for me.”
Mercy cocked her head at me as if I was being ridiculous. “I’m sure Ezra would have found a way to screw me over no matter what you did. And I was worried about you. In case you haven’t noticed, I kind of like you a little bit.”
Her wry tone brought a smile to my mouth even as my heart squeezed at her words. “Just a little bit?” I couldn’t help teasing.
She socked me in the shoulder in answer and sat down on the sand next to me, close enough that I could tuck my arm around her waist. I watched her from the corner of my eyes, still having a little trouble believing she was real.
No one had ever cared this much about me before. No one had ever bothered to follow me here. It was partly that the guys figured I knew what I needed and could sort myself out on my own, but… it was kind of nice having someone track me down just so I wouldn’t be alone.
Mercy drank in the sea air and gazed around us. With the nearby boulders sheltering us, the beach looked empty. I couldn’t hear a single voice or laugh in the distance. Most of the families farther down had probably left for the day.
The cooling evening breeze played with a few stray strands of Mercy’s hair. She tipped her face toward it. “So, why this place?”
I hesitated. Even Wylder didn’t know the whole story.
Mercy glanced over at me. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
A stronger impulse rose up in me—to show her I could be just as real with her as she’d been with me. I wasn’t sure I wanted her knowing all the fucked up stuff, but there were some things it wouldn’t be too bad to share.
I motioned behind me. “When I was a little kid, my parents were friends with another family who had a beach house out here. They’d have us come out to stay for a week every summer. Best times I had in my whole childhood.”
My throat had started to tighten. Mercy ran her fingers over my hand. “You don’t sound so happy talking about it.”
I shrugged, my other hand coming up to wrap around my dad’s dog tags where they dangled from the chain around my neck. All kinds of uncomfortable emotions were swelling up inside me. I wanted to run away from them, away from Mercy’s questions—but how would that be fair to her?
She deserved to know what kind of guy she was letting herself get tangled up with, didn’t she?
I dragged in a breath and looked down at my knees. Something inside me hummed in tune to the waves, helping me gather my words.
“My dad never totally got over the stuff he went through when he was enlisted, before I was born,” I said. “He’d have nightmares, wake up screaming. One time he punched Mom so hard in his sleep that he gave her a black eye. He didn’t believe in shrinks, though, thought they just messed you up more. At first it was only now and then, but it started getting worse. He’d get edgy even when he was awake… I think that’s why he ended up turning to the drugs.”
Mercy squeezed my hand. “You told me both of your parents were addicts. I didn’t realize that’s why.”
I nodded, my head feeling heavy with the weight of the story and all the awfulness that came with it. “At first it was only a hit here and there, and he encouraged Mom to give it a try—I think so he wouldn’t feel alone, to convince himself it was okay. But they got hooked fast. We had one last good summer here when I was five. Then everything went to hell over the next winter. Dad lost his job. Mom’s barely paid enough to cover the bills. They cared more about getting their next high than making sure we had anything in the house to eat.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mercy said, resting her head against my shoulder.
Would she still want to be this close to me when she heard the whole thing? I forced myself to keep talking. “The next summer, they brought me out here again. I was so happy, thinking maybe it was a sign that things would get better again. I was a naïve kid. I didn’t realize my mom had just lost her job too. My parents showed up at the beach house and begged their friends for money. That was the only reason we’d come. And they tried to use me for pity points.”
Mercy sucked air through her teeth. “Kaige—”
I shook my head. Now that I’d begun, I couldn’t stop the truth from pouring out of me. Even the parts that hurt coming out.
“Things only went from bad to worse from there. Their friends obviously turned them down. Back in the city, I started grabbing whatever food I could out of park garbage cans when people would toss sandwich crusts or whatever. The electricity and then the water got shut off. My parents didn’t seem to care about that or me. The only time they noticed I was even there was when they came down from a high and got angry. They would beat the shit out of me, saying they’d have it so much easier if they didn’t have to take care of me. As if they even were.”
“That’s horrible,” Mercy said in a choked voice.
And it wasn’t even the worst of it. I inhaled shakily as darkness began to consume me, the same darkness that haunted the edges of my mind every time I started to relax back in the Bend. Drugs had ruined my parents and infected me with the ugly rages that I would have to carry for the rest of my life.
“Then they decided I was the solution to their problems,” I went on. “They—They started hiring me out when I was eight. Letting men come and do what they wanted with me, as long as they paid. The first time, I didn’t even understand what was happening till I felt the pain…”
The blaze of that pain had almost made me pass out. I’d begged the man to stop, but he didn’t care, and neither did the one after him or the next one.
“They’d always come after I’d gone to sleep for the night,” I said, staring at the ocean because I couldn’t bear to see Mercy’s expression. “When I got into bed, I never knew whether I’d make it through the night alone. I’d lie there, braced for another one to come… It fucked me up. Not just the sleep, but all kinds of ways. I can’t stand letting anyone else be in control of me in any way now. I always have to be in charge when I’m hooking up with someone, and I don’t even know how to take control of myself when my anger explodes.”
