Page 40
DELILAH
K ane hasn’t looked at me since he dressed me in his shirt and lifted me out of the restraints.
The entire car ride to the jet and subsequent flight were in silence, but his hand hasn’t left mine.
I stare at the air in front of me as we walk down the steps of the jet into the strangest airport I’ve ever seen.
It’s nothing more than a large, barren patch of flattened dirt surrounded by pale, narrow trees.
The runway only has one end that’s open enough for the small jet to land. There’s no normal people around.
My parents walk ahead, getting into their car, and Helene follows us into another.
Kane stands behind me and widens the door for me to get in first. Dirty footprints mark the floor as I shuffle through to sit with my back to the driver’s cab.
He gets in after me but he doesn’t take the bench opposite, sitting beside me instead.
Our sides line up and he slowly examines the interior as Helene takes her seat.
She sits primly with her ornate stick resting on the seat beside her, while we huddle on the seat opposite.
Or I do. Kane doesn’t show any discomfort as he meets her eyes, while I want to crawl in a ball and hide because everything I thought was fake is real and the things he made me believe aren’t real.
The most fucked up part is that I was so lost and desperate to escape the shit in my head that I never really fought him.
Accepting that I murdered Kane was easier than acknowledging that my life was so desolate I had no one to corroborate my memories.
But he’s my only safety around these people.
It’s the same thing I felt as a child when he would hug me or hold my hand because I wasn’t allowed to admit I was scared.
He never asked me if I was. He would simply place his hand in mine or wrap his arms around me and promise that he was my best friend.
I want that now. For the innocent, sweet Kane to wrap his arms around me and promise that it will be just us two and it doesn’t matter what I do, he’ll always be my best friend.
He doesn’t pay me any notice other than his hand clasping mine as he asks Helene, “Where are you taking us?”
Her lips are permanently set in an obnoxious smirk that makes me wish she could have watched Asher’s body go up in flames.
If I felt any guilt over killing that prick, I definitely don’t now because his family are all monsters.
I’ll work my way through them until only Kane is left.
The false reality where I killed Kane hurt, the truth of burning Asher is a public service that I deserve a medal for.
Or a national holiday. Saint Delilah Day has a nice ring to it.
Though my pride is enough to warm me for the time being.
She looks down at our joined hands, then flicks her creepy pale eyes back up to our faces. “Home.” She says like that’s something that exists for Kane and me.
They stare at each other as we drive through the empty hillside roads.
Helene smiles at him. It’s unnerving and she doesn’t even blink, but Kane doesn’t look away.
He does it back, gently squeezing my hand.
My feet are cold, and goosebumps dot my legs, so I rub my free hand down my limbs to warm myself.
He leans over to the side panel to adjust the air to blow directly on me.
The warmth feels nice, and I sink into his side, my cheek behind his bicep, attempting to hide from the wicked bitch opposite us.
Grandparents are supposed to be loving, supportive, and kind.
Not bitter and twisted. Helene raises her cane and presses the horn to a button on the roof.
All the windows roll down. Cold air blows into the car as she taps the stick against the lip of the pane.
We speed up and the air rushes in, warping around our ears and making me struggle to hear my own breathing.
With his free hand, Kane holds my knees and pulls me closer to him.
His chest inflates, causing him to grow in size and violence as he snaps, “Close them.” Helene remains unmoved.
He leans forward an inch to darkly add, “Now. Or the agreement you wanted will end before you have a chance to collect.”
“Oh, sweet boy,” she croons, slightly tilting her head to the side to catch my eyes. She looks back at Kane, her eyes hardening to match her tone. “You are incapable of hurting that girl. Therefore, your threats carry no weight.”
The warmth wrapped around my knee leaves to cover my throat, then Kane uses his hold on my neck to pull me forward so that my ass is hanging off the edge of the seat. He roughly tugs me to look up at him and I catch myself with my hand on his knee.
“What happened to your apartment, Delilah?” His nostrils flare, and I don’t answer because the way he left me feels like he was trying to save me in comparison to everything that’s happened since.
The longer my silence stretches, the angrier he gets, and his fingers flex around my throat. “What. Happened?”
“You—” I croak, attempting to pull his hand off me to speak clearly. “Yo-You set it on fire.”
Smoothing his hand up the column of my throat, he grips my jaw and turns my head to face Helene. “And where were you when I did that?”
Her pale eyes volley between Kane and me as I weakly answer, “Tied to the bed.”
My eyes close while she laughs. My head softly hits the cushioned seat as he throws me backwards, discarding me like I’m nothing. He doesn’t hold my knee again as he tells his grandmother, “She is my wife, therefore, the only harm that comes to her is from me. Close. The. Windows.”
Whirring fills the air, then the breeze is cut off.
The warmth of the air conditioning soon wraps around me, but I want it to be Kane’s arms. It’s too confusing to work out which memories are real and distinguish them from my dreams. They have to be dreams, otherwise my father is worse than I ever thought he was.
I’ve spent over a decade telling myself that those dreams were a psychological manifestation of my resentment.
That it was a fabrication of how I felt living with them.
But he laughed when Rowan gave him the option to repeat the vile acts.
I push myself closer to Kane’s side, silently begging him to take it all away and give me his version of torment.
I’d accept his violence and mind games, because at least he has a boundary.
He taunted me, made me think I was crazy, but he exposed himself in the end.
There’s something sinister when the pain is from a parent, because society lies to everyone, telling them that parents are a sense of morality and protection.
So if the people responsible for taking care of me abuse that authority, then I can’t trust myself.
There has to be something wrong with me then, to make them go against the norm.
The lower portion of my face is hidden from Helene by Kane’s bicep. There’s nothing else to look at with the heavily tinted windows, so I copy him and stare at her. She stares back, those unnerving eyes slowly roving between my face and Kane’s for the rest of the silent drive.
My stomach lurches as we go up a steep, winding incline.
The seating arrangement means that I’m being dragged backwards, and spit fills my mouth.
Kane pulls his arm away from me and I think he’s about to be a raging dickhead again, but he pushes his arm under my knees, the other around my shoulders, then slides me into his lap so I’m facing the privacy glass of the driver’s cab.
Smoothing his hand down my back, he tucks the hem of the shirt under my ass.
The coarse hairs of his stubbled chin poke through the shirt as he rests his chin on my shoulder and continues staring at Helene.
He drops his other hand on the seat, refusing to touch anything more than my shoulder, but it’s enough to stop me feeling nauseous.
It’s enough to make me feel warm, and I take one of the only opportunities I’ll get to hug him.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I lay my cheek on his shoulder and pretend that nothing else exists. I enter a new world—one without Asher, Rowan, or Helene. One that doesn’t have my parents. They have no influence and there are no confusing secrets waiting to trip me over.
In the new world, Kane is mine, I am his, we get to be the people we dreamed of becoming. He has a tech firm and makes cool shit that I’ll never be able to understand. He smiles and kisses my cheek when he comes home. More importantly, in the new world, he hugs me back, unlike the reality we’re in.
Loose stones ping off the body of the car, the tires crunching as we drive up an even tighter loop and steeper incline.
“I miss you,” I whisper, tucking my face further into his neck. Kane doesn’t say it back and heat burns through my face, finding a home behind my eyes. “I’ve never stopped thinking about you.” Taking liberties, I press my lips below his ear.
The spot always used to allow me to feel his pulse. It would beat wildly, each thud softly kissing me back, but it doesn’t anymore. Not now. Not in the real world. It’s slow, too slow, like he’s shutting down. Or shutting me out.
I don’t stop though, instead I give him all of my admissions.
“I think you’re the only person I could ever love,” I whisper.
“Don’t become shy on my account,” Helene interrupts. “It’s natural for newlyweds to have a higher need, and,” her smile is audible, “it will not be a new sight.”
His face remains still but his pulse quickens as he calmly says, “I understand why she never spoke about you now.”
I kiss his neck again as I softly massage up his nape to thread my fingers through his hair while ignoring their conversation to have my own. “You’re the only person who ever loved me, and I miss him. That Kane would never hurt me.”
He tenses with each verbal blow he and Helene trade.
I tell myself that his increasing heart rate is due to my whispered admissions, proof that my Kane is still there.
Somewhere deep inside, he remembers me and when I leave his neck, he’ll smile at me.
He’ll hold my face in both hands, kiss my forehead, each of my eyes, then the tip of my nose, like he’s making the sign of a cross and worshipping me.
But he doesn’t.
His chest puffs out, knocking into mine as he roars, “Shut the fuck up! You conniving, stupid fucking cunt!”
Icy cold fills the car and I slowly turn my head to see Helene stare at him.
She doesn’t blink, despite her eyes filling with murder.
She thaws slightly as Kane roughly pushes me to the side.
My head nearly slams off the side panel but he wraps his fingers around my jaw to drag me up as he snarls into my face, “None of this means shit. Do you understand?”
I push against his chest, but he tightens his hold on my face.
There’s going to be fingermarks bruising my cheeks by the time he lets go.
Using his hold on my face, he makes me nod and grabs my left hand.
He brings it up between our face and his breathing is harsher as he points to my empty ring finger.
“There is no ring. So stop fucking asking for one. All you are is an agreement. A fucking thing for your father to give me as collateral.”
He flicks his gaze up and down my body like I’m lower than shit on the bottom of his shoe. Meeting my eyes, he gets closer and his hand around mine softens minutely.
“Even then,” he says, deep and husky, “you’re already used and undesired. I never wanted you, not then and not now, but a reflection has to know every part of the life they’re portraying.”
Slow clapping comes from Helene while he continues staring into my eyes like he hasn’t just crushed everything that kept me going.
If I could open my mouth to utter anything more than an unintelligible mumble, I’d scream that he’s a lying bastard.
He loved me in the way normal people do and he cared.
He fucking cared about me, and he might not now, but he doesn’t get to take the only morsel of that protection I’ve ever felt.
“Oh, sweet boy,” Helene coos while still fucking clapping. “There may be hope for you after all.”
The car comes to a stop, gently rolling back before the grinding of the handbrake can be heard.
No one moves. I stop breathing as I watch Kane.
His eyes slowly move in a triangle between my eyes and lips.
My heart fucking hurts. It’s a physical pain that I’m not allowed a moment to nurse with the sound of gravel crunching under the driver’s foot as they walk to the passenger door.
Helene’s cane rattles the small stones as she digs it into the ground to steady herself getting out of the car.
But Kane is silent.
Just staring at me with rage burning in his eyes.
I manage to find some foolish spark of confidence to whisper, “You loved me.”
He leans closer, instilling hope that I’m right as his nose brushes mine.
Then rips it away from me as he says low in his throat, “That’s my biggest regret.”
Table of Contents
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- Page 39
- Page 40 (Reading here)
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