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“Who the fuck is ‘him’? Who the fuck is stalking you?” Lily’s lip trembled and she bit it hard enough to draw blood. She wrung her hands, staring at the phone in my hand like it would strike her.
“I don’t know.”
“God damnit, Lily. I can’t protect you if you keep lying to me. Who is he?”
“I don’t know! He texted me for the first time a few weeks ago and I wrote it off, just assuming it was a wrong number. But the messages kept coming and I guess I just hoped that if I ignored them, he’d get bored and stop.”
“Are you worried it’s your father?”
It was a prick thing to say, I knew it the second the words came out of my mouth, knew that her father finding her was her greatest fear. I also knew that the mother fucker was dead and she didn’t, which made my question even more shitty.
“What did you just say?” Lily’s words were so quiet, I almost didn’t hear them.
My shoulders slumped and I knew I had no choice but to come clean to her about what I’d done. That I’d looked into her background without her permission and had been keeping it a secret all this time. “I know who you really are, Lily, that Reynolds is a fake name.”
She backed away from me, making my heart jump into my throat. Lily collapsed into one of the chairs at the breakfast table, her gaze trained on the floor and I was becoming more and more worried as the silence grew between us.
“Say something, sweetheart.Please,” I begged.
“You investigated me,” her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Yes,” I croaked, wishing I could go back in time and stop myself. I’d known it was wrong, even then. I’d violated her privacy, her trust.
A woman who didn’t give that trust easily because very few in her life had probably earned that right, but she’d trusted me. She had every right to tell me to go to hell and walk out my door. But then again, I’d still fight like hell for her.
Lily sighed and finally looked up at me, tears streaming down her face. Each one tearing a whole in my heart. “Of course, you did. Honestly, I’m shocked it took you this long to call me on my lies. Do you hate me?”
“No,” the word clawed itself up my throat as I collapsed to my knees in front of her, taking her beautiful face in my hands and dropping my forehead to hers. “You were protecting yourself. But now it’s time for you to let me take on that job.”
Tears dripped off her chin to land on her lap as she nodded. She lifted her head and her eyes pierced mine. “My real name is Lily Barrett. I’ve been in hiding for years. Ask me what you want to know, Grayson.”
Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I rasped out the one question I didn’t know the answer to, “What made you leave?”
Lily drew herself up, determination written all over her, my brave girl. “My father was always a terrible person, Grayson, especially to me. After my mother died, I didn’t have any family other than him, no one to step in and save me. I learned at a very young age to try and avoid him as much as possible. There was no predicting when he might lash out—mad, happy, it didn’t matter, and my existence was a constant annoyance to him.
I tried to ignore the feeling of being hungry. Sometimes I was lucky and neighbors would take pity and give me something to eat. But more or less I was on my own and I’d try to sneak what I could out of the kitchen or find places around town where I could get day-old bread, things like that.”
I’d known that it had been bad. That her father hurt her, but it was so much worse than I could have imagined. My girl had been on her own for almost as long as she’d been alive.
“And there were always men there; mean and disgusting just like him. If my father wasn’t hitting me, he’d ignore me, always getting drunk and high with his friends. The men that he brought to our trailer didn’t ignore me though, they looked and they looked in ways that men shouldn’t look at young girls.”
“Jesus, sweetheart, did they…” I couldn’t make myself say it. If they’d touched her, hurt her in that way, I knew I’d hunt every single one of them down and end them.
She shivered but made eye contact with me, “No, never, thank God. One of the rules my father always enforced was that I was off limits. No one was allowed to be alone with me or even think about touching me. I thought it meant that deep down he actually cared about me.” She laughed bitterly.
“But he didn’t, he was saving me. Saving me for someone else.” Her hands gripped mine so tightly her knuckles had gone white but I still felt them trembling.
I fucking hated everything she was telling me but I couldn’t stop her. Now that she’d started, she needed to finish it. To purge the story from her body like it was poison.
I squeezed her hands, wanting to keep her tethered to me, silently letting her know she wasn’t alone. “What next, sweetheart?”
“One day I overheard him on the phone. He was speaking to a man, assuring him that I was ready for him. Insisting that I wouldn’t be missed.” Bile rose in my throat and I knew what was coming next, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear.
“He was going to sell me, Grayson.” She shook herself out of the memory, hatred and anguish warring in her eyes. “Myfatherwas going to sell his only child for money to a man who was going to do God knows what to me.”
Sobs tore from her throat and I couldn’t take it anymore. I scooped her up and went to the couch where I placed her in my lap and listened to her cries. Had she ever been able to mourn the childhood that was stolen from her by the very man who should have been protecting her?
I rocked her gently back and forth. Lily was shattered, broken in so many ways and I vowed to do everything in my power to keep the fucking darkness that she grew up surrounded by from ever touching her again.
