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No.No I am very not fucking okay.I shake my head and Josiah jumps into action, drawing his shirt over his head and using it to wipe my mouth, angling his head down so he can see me.
“Can you make it upstairs?”
“Yeah.” Now that the pressure is off, I think I might be okay, as long as he doesn’t grab me like that again.
“Come on, baby.” He puts his arm around my back and helps me up the stairs, leading me to the bathroom. Silently, he appraises me everywhere but my face. I think he’s afraid to see the tears, and the pain I’m in. He puts his hands under the hem of my shirt, and I raise my arms up high so he can take it off me.
His plan isn’t clear to me, but I meant what I said earlier. I trust him. He won’t hurt me. He wants me to hear him, and numbness is spreading down to my fingertips. I could fight. Icouldif I wanted to. He wouldn’t let me hurt myself either. If I put myself in enough danger trying to get out, I believe he would eventually release me back to the wild.
The only threat to my life now is inside the gates. Josiah continues to avoid my gaze as he pulls my pants down my legs and I step free of them. He doesn’t pay my naked body any attention either, which is strange, but he plugs the drain and turns the shower on before lifting me under my arms and settling me down in the cold tub.
When I shiver, he slides in behind me fully clothed and crosses his arms over my chest, his legs surrounding mine. “I’m sorry, Phoebe. I’m sorry. I should have told you when you asked, or before. Way before. When we met I didn’t think it would matter, but then I knew it would and I was too afraid to speak up. If I admitted it to you, then I’d lose you. I can’t lose you.” His nose presses into the underside of my jaw. “Promise you won’t leave me,” he whispers.
The warm water and his body surrounding me are evicting the stupefied paralysis from my bones, but I don’t want to move. I’m overwhelmed in a thousand ways. It’s all too much.
“Talk, baby. Just so I know you still can.”
But I can’t. I have too many emotions and thoughts battering at me from all angles. I have no idea what to say, or how to speak. I’m overflowing and empty at the same time.
I knew Josiah killed his parents. Well, I thought I did, but I wasn’t one-hundred percent certain until now. His reaction when I asked what happened to them planted the seeds in my mind that he must have had something to do with him and Rose becoming orphans. His paranoia and Rose’s caution from even before Tony put his hands on her convinced me further.
I mean, Josiah lives in a fucking safehouse and is terrified of ‘the outside’. Rose wasn’t quite that bad, but she was jumpy. She was so loud and social at school, but back home at the Foster Factory, she was quiet and nervous. She knew something I didn’t, and I thought that was all about Tony until Josiah’s refusal to talk about his parents’ death started the spiral through my head of all the possibilities.
But now I know for sure. Josiah killed his fucking parents, and I can’t figure out how I feel about it. I know that I’d be totally justified to be screaming and running away right now. No one would blame me if I fought Josiah like my life depends on it and tried to escape.
I’d have to go through the front to avoid Tony, but my only real chance of getting on the other side of the fence would be with Reaper’s help. It would probably be another challenge to get him on my side, and then there’d be more violence. There’s so much violence already.
“Please,please,” Josiah says, pressing open-mouth kisses to the side of my neck. “Don’t leave me, baby. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, honestly. I’ll tell you the truth- all of it. You just have to ask me for it.”
I should be running and fighting and begging Reaper for help, but the only thing that keeps flashing through my mind is Josiah catching me in my attempts. Iwanthim to, and I want him to fuck me when he does, but like he’s forcing me. I can’t make sense of my thoughts. I shouldn’t be turned on by him right now, by Josiah’s begging and the hideous fantasies running through my head, but I am.
I’m disgusted by myself and my life and what I’ve just heard. The sound of Tony screaming was supposed to be cleansing. I expected it to satisfy some deep, primal part of me that begged for justice, but it didn’t. It made me sick. We can’t fix something so horrifically wrong that happened a long time ago by doing another wrong thing.
My lower lip wobbles as the tears start to mix with the water, and silent sobs shake my chest, making Josiah hold me closer. His fingers turn my jaw so I can see him over my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Phoebe. I should have told you.” His big eyes are watery and it breaks my heart. He’s hurting more than I am because I can't find the words to say. He’s falling to pieces around me, and I’m not helping him pick them back up.
“I know,” I whimper back. They’re the only words I can get through my swollen throat. I know he’s sorry. I know he’s fucking petrified at the thought of me leaving. I know he should have told me. I know, and I understand.
It hurts in my chest hearing his voice full of so much desperation. This man is so big and strong. He’s built a physical fortress to keep people out, and he let me in. Totally randomly, he letmein. And now… we’re this- crying in the bathtub with the shower spraying water over us, him clothed and me naked as he pleads with me not to leave him alone, not to make him suffer through life all by himself again. I know.
“If I could take it back and do it all over-”
“I know.” I’m not ready to comfort him or make promises. Not while everything is still so raw and fresh, but I want him to do it for me. It’s selfish, but hearing him loudly confess his need for me is warming up my insides like the water is doing on the outside, knocking the chill off so I'm at least alive.
“Tell me what you’re thinking. I need to know, whatever it is. Tell me you hate me, tell me you want to leave. Tell me you’re not going to anyway. Just speak. Please.”
I shake my head again, trying to clear a path through my thoughts and find a way to speak words again. “I don’t know what to say,” I confess. “It’s just… so much, ya know? Everything, it’s just… a lot.”
Josiah kisses my cheek and rests his forehead against my temple. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“Do you hate me?”
A flood of hot tears pours down my face and my breath stutters. “No.” I could never hate him. Maybe that’s wrong, but I couldn’t do it. No matter what he does, who he kills, I don’t think I’ll ever truly hate him. Or leave him. I’m too scared to be without him.
“They hurt her,” he whispers against my ear. “I couldn’t stand to see it. I was an adult, and she wasn’t. I thought they would let me take care of her when our parents were gone, but being of age didn’t make me mature. I didn’t consider reality. I was the buffer between her and the pain our parents doled out, taking all of it for her. When I moved out, I didn’t think they would take all the hate and pile it on her head. I thought it would stay with me.”
