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“You know I love you. You’re my pretty girl, Pike. Things will be better if we’re alone again,” is the first thing that comes out of his mouth.My father’s words to me at dinner earlier.And he heard it.
17
PIKE: CHAPTER XVII
Now
“It’s not what you think it is.” I walk over to where Rhys is and fall to my knees before him. “You and Mum left and I was all alone.”
He reaches out and I flinch, almost expecting him to hurt me or do some other twisted thing to me. But he doesn’t. He just grabs me by my shoulders.
And then he laughs. His shoulders tremble as if I’ve said something extremely hilarious.
“So you’re going to paint yourself as the victim, Pi? You’re not a sacrificial lamb so stop fucking acting like one.”
I shrug his hand off of me and feel the anger start to bubble to the surface. I’ve had my own demons tormenting me for days, weeks — months and yet Rhys thinks he’s the only one who’s suffered from the sickness that runs through our family.
“You think you’re the only one who’s suffering?” I ask, my voice bitter. “You have no idea what I go through.”
You have no idea about the demons I have to fight in my mind every single fucking day. The words scream in my mind, aching to be let free, aching to let him hear my pain too.
“You knew our mother died and you never called once during those two weeks,” Rhys says. “I come here and see that you’re still fine as day. You never cared about me or her, you just decided to live here in your little charming castle and you were actually okay with that until you saw me again.”
“How do you know?!” I snap.
My anger is simmering on the surface now and so are the tears that are waiting to spill, but I can’t let them free.Not yet.If anyone’s been living in a fantasy world it’s Rhys. He gets pleasure from exacting revenge on me and yet he doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know the hell I go through, that I’ve been going through ever since he left with our Mother.
“You think you know everything just by one look?” I ask him bitterly. “Then you’re incredibly delusional Rhys, because you don’t know. You know nothing.”
He’s up on his feet in seconds, grabbing me by my arms and forcing me to my feet. We move backwards, him pushing me until my back is pressed up against the cold wall.
“Enlighten me then, Pi. How could your life have been worse than mine?” He brings his face close to mine and his voice is low, but dark and dangerous. There’s a warning in his tone. “I was only fifteen, sixteen and I had to be the man of the house. We barely had anything to eat. When mother went mad sometimes, I would lock myself in a room and pretend I was with you.” He presses his forehead against the wall above me and grabs me by my neck, forcing me to look up at him. Forcing me to look into those stormy grey depths that have so much turmoil in them. Turmoil no nineteen-year-old should have to know. I see him now. The real Rhys. My brother is nothing but a broken shell of a man. But I need to make him understand that it wasn’t just him.It was both of us.
“Rhys, the issue is that you think you’re the only one that had to deal with shit for all those years,” I reach out and place my palms flat on the hard surface of his chest.
His face is inches away from mine now and I can feel the heat from his lips on mine.
“When you and mum left,” I softly continue, my heart beating hard against my breastbone. “He’d come into my room at night.”
A frown settles in between Rhys’ thick eyebrows now. “Who used to come into your room?”
“You don’t know what it’s like night after night, day after day, praying for it to stop.” My temple starts to throb as I think of everything that has happened in these past few years.
I became so sick, so disgusted with myself that my only form of control began when I started purging myself. It’s the only way I could escape. Starve myself to the brink of death.
“He would use me. I reminded him ofher. Of Mum. Except I was not like her and that’s what he liked most about me. You think that it was only you Rhys, but it was both of us. And at least Mother loved you in some twisted way, but she never loved me,” I say, my voice cracking now.
“Who used to come into your room, Pi?” Rhys asks menacingly slowly now. He already knows the answer, he just doesn’t want to acknowledge it until I say the words.
“Father,” I whisper. “He likes to touch me and I don’t want him to touch me any more, Rhys.”
18
PIKE: CHAPTER XVIII
Now
“He touches you?” Rhys repeats almost as if he’s saying the words to himself to try and wrap his head around what I just said.
