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And while the motherfucker would love to get reacquainted with her cunt more than anything, I grab her wrists and pull them free. “What’s going on?”
“I want you to fuck me. That’s what’s going on.”
“Believe me, sweetheart, I’ll fuck the living daylights out of you, but not before you tell me why you appear as if you’ve seen a ghost.” I comb my fingers through her fiery hair and she shudders, slowly closing her eyes.
“Can’t you just fuck me? You’d usually jump all over the opportunity.”
“Usually isn’t now. So you might as well start talking.”
“Goddamn you and your stubbornness and your annoying controlling behavior.” She drops her forehead against the center of my torso, but she doesn’t hug me, her hands hanging lifeless at either side of her.
“Glad you got all that off your chest.”
She shudders, her breathing shattering against my chest and I realize something.
She’s hiding.
Fully intent on not letting me see her face.
“Today is the anniversary of Mom’s death.” She trembles as if the words rattle her. “I have two days a year I allow myself to be emotional. The day I thought my daughter died and the day Mom swallowed all the pills she could get her hands on to finally escape my father. Now that I know Gwen is alive, I think all the stupid emotions are coming back to haunt me. I hate it.”
My fingers get lost in her hair, slowly caressing it. She goes still at my touch like a small child who’s getting comforted for the first time. “Hate what?”
“The emotions. I’m not good with them, and all I can think about is how useless I was, how I spent as much time as I could outside to keep from going back home and seeing how pathetically weak Mom was. I hated my father for beating her, but I hated her, too, sometimes for not standing up for herself. I hated her when I cleaned her wounds, heated canned food, and bathed her. I hated her for forcing me to become her parent instead of the other way around. So I went out more, stayed at school more, hoping not to witness Dad’s violent episodes and her crying sessions that always followed. I also hoped to escape Dad’s orbit, because whenever he was mad, really mad, his poison of violence extended to me as well. He didn’t hit me as much as he hit Mom, but if I got in his way, I would get a slap in the face or a kick in the stomach. And that life suffocated me. The constant anxiety, fear, and worry crippled me and I had no hopes to change it. Which is why I preferred the impersonal outside world instead. Until one day, I got home and it was too silent. Too…lifeless. She used to always have the radio on, listening to talk shows and focusing on other people’s problems instead of her own. That day, it was hauntingly…silent. I think I knew even before I went to her bedroom, I knew something was wrong. Like…like…like…”
“She’d had enough and ended it,” I whisper, the words too hoarse for my liking.
“Yeah.” Her voice cracks as she digs her fingers into my waist, using me as an anchor. “She was lying in her bed as if she were asleep, but she wasn’t breathing, and… For the first time in my life, I saw a smile on her bruised face. She was happy to finally leave and end her misery. To this day, I wonder if I could’ve saved her if I’d just stayed around more. If I hadn’t run off to escape her and Dad’s negative orbit. Maybe if I’d been a more reliable daughter, she would’ve survived.”
“No, she wouldn’t have. She’d already made up her mind probably months or even years prior to that moment. You were a kid and had no power to stop it, so blaming yourself is not only useless, it’s also illogical.”
She rests her chin on my chest and stares up at me with an unnatural shine in her eyes. “And yet, you blame yourself for your mother’s death.”
“I don’t blame myself.”
“Is that why you’re after Susan with the spirit of a vengeful ghost?”
“It’s called revenge, sweetheart. My contribution to humanity is ridding it of one gold digger.”
“Bullshit,” she says softly and reaches a hand out to stroke my cheek, hesitantly at first, as if she has no clue how to do this, then it’s more proactive and with pure determination. “You feel as guilty as I do, maybe even more because you chose to stay with your dad to torment your stepmom instead of living with your mom.”
“How the hell do you even know that?”
“Nate.”
That motherfucker.
“You were young, too, Kingsley. You couldn’t have done anything, and it’s time to finally let it go.”
“You got your revenge against your father by shoving him into prison. I haven’t.”
“And look where that got me. I’ve been looking over my shoulder for twenty-five years, counting days and months for his eventual release. Revenge is not the answer, not when more important things are at stake.”
My jaw clenches beneath her touch. “I found my mother swimming in her own blood with tears in her eyes and my father’s cursed lighter between her fingers when I was damn thirteen. So I will not, under any fucking circumstances, allow the woman who caused that scene to get away with it.”
“You’re not doing it for her, you’re doing it foryou.” She grabs my tie, shaking me and pulling me close at the same time. “Can’t you see how it’s stripping away your humanity? How it’s torturing you? Even Gwen knows to stay away from you on Susan days because you look more like a stranger than her father. Is that what you want to be for the rest of your life?”
“Are you done?”
