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I wonder if she’ll notice I’ve contradicted myself, but then she’s gone. I put my phone in my pocket and stare out the window, seeing Dad with the gun and the handcuffs. He was staring like he wanted to take me, as if he regretted all the times he didn’t get to hurt me.
Sabrina hugs me from behind. “It’s going to be okay.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
Jamie
“You should give into it more,” Patrick says, prancing up and down in front of me.
He’s keyed-up, his eyes red, his hair almost black with sweat. Sweat drips down the lines on his face, too. His shirt is soaked. He tosses the needle into the corner of the room. Zack’s not in here, thank God. He’s waiting nearby, though. Patrick will snap his fingers, and the kid will come running with a drink or a snack.
“Aren’t youfeelingit?” Patrick says, waving his hands like a preacher. “It floods a man. It remakes him. There’s nothing better in all the world. The rush. The certainty. Isn’t that what you talked about in your little article?”
“I fell in love with your daughter the first time I saw her,” I say, aware I wouldn’t be talking this way if it wasn’t for that strange feeling, not at all pleasant anymore.
I’m inside a cotton ball, feeling fluffy and disconnected, but now I’ve found my woman. I want to be connected. I need it and hunger for it. Don’t ever, ever trap a hungry wolf. I’m howling inside for my woman and how wrong this is.
“Why?” Patrick says with a high-pitched, ugly laugh. “She’s not a very loveable person. She was always so boring, her head stuffed in books. I tried to do the right thing, be a good man, and raise her after her idiot mother died. You know I wouldn’t phrase it like this to her.”
“You wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings,” I say sarcastically.
The light is low. He steps into it as if to light his face more thoroughly. He has bulging, stoned-as-hell eyes and chapped lips.
“I don’t care about her, honestly. It’s a sad thing to admit. I’ve had a very sad life. I never cared about anything.”
“I’m crying for you, Patrick. I’m weeping inside, but you’re wrong. Your daughter is the most loveable person I’ve ever met. Everything about her is—”
He fires the pellet gun at me, and I’m not talking about plastic or spongy things. These are metal and fast. My chest tenses as it bounces off, leaving a stinging imprint, joining the others.
“My daughter’s extremely deranged. I read the article. She fell for you apparently when she saw you in a documentary. Does that seem like a normal thing for a person to do? And yourage gap. Jesus, man, it’s embarrassing.”
I shake my head, laughing, knowing he hates when I laugh at him and show him his tough-guy act doesn’t work with me.
“Our love goes deep. Just because you don’t understand, it doesn’t make it wrong.”
“So you think there’s nothing wrong with a forty-two-year-old man making love to a twenty-year-old child?”
“Child,” I repeat through gritted teeth. “She’s a grown woman. A confident, capable, beautiful person. She had to grow up fast because of you.”
And because of me. The lies I told and the choiceImade.
“The gall of you, Patrick, talking about children. Lucy told me what you did. I saw Zack’s black eye.”
“There’s a difference between discipline and, let’s say, well… You’d fix a buzz saw, wouldn’t you, if it wasn’t cutting correctly?”
“Your kids aren’t tools. They’re people.”
“There’s a difference.” He knocks the lightbulb, causing it to swing and whine as the light shifts across the bare room. “Between discipline and sexual excitement.”
“Our age doesn’t mean a goddamn thing.”
Patrick titters. “It will when you’re old, decrepit, and can’t walk.”
“I’ll keep my body tough. I won’t flood it with drugs. I’ll work out. I’ll keep myself healthy.” There’s a slur in my voice I don’t like, the stuff kicking in again, poisoning my veins. “I’ll do whatever it takes to stay with my woman, even if it means becoming a goddamned vampire.”
Patrick laughs, clapping his hands. “Your woman. You’re lucky she’s as stupid and insane as you are.”
“That’s your daughter you’re talking about.”
