Page 36 of Like An Animal

THE GHOST

T his is not good. I should’ve just lied to Jeremy and told him that Lottie’s father was dead. I could’ve made up a name and circumstance. Now, my daughter knows who her father is and that has complicated everything.

She has never looked as happy as she did when she hugged Jeremy’s legs, like she just found her home. It hurt my heart because it was more than I could ever hope for and the one thing I could never give her. It’s also something that will disappear when we have to run again.

Maybe we’re safe from The Fathers in this compound with all of their guards, but what about when Jeremy has us moved? Will there be as many guards then?

Will it be in an undisclosed location where no one outside those walls knows that Bronwyn Durst and her child are there?

Doubt it. If The Fathers want to find me and Lottie, Jeremy will be the first person they look for.

Just because he doesn’t plan to kill me or torture Lottie doesn’t change anything. We still have to leave.

Something deep down inside me doesn’t want to though. I like seeing my daughter happy and around the people she should’ve been with all this time. I also hate to admit that I missed them, too.

I missed Xavi, Massimo, and Jeremy. They were always the only ones I considered family.

It’s like being back home because home isn’t a place. It’s the people.

That just makes this even harder. It would’ve been hard enough if it was just Jeremy that found me, but it’s all three of them.

I stand in the corner as I watch Lottie scarf down her stack of pancakes like it’s going out of style. She always eats like a wild animal that has been starved for a week.

Massimo places a glass of milk in front of her before rubbing his hand on top of her hair, messing it up, but her head snaps up with a piece of pancake sticking out of her mouth. She points at him demandingly before saying around the piece of food, “No touchy!”

A small smile pulls at my lips from the move. She doesn’t like being touched unless she is asking for a hug, especially not when she’s eating.

She’s a lot more like Jeremy than they have realized.

I like to think she is who he would be if he hadn’t gone through all the horrible things he did as a small child.

Even when I asked, he couldn’t tell me when Kathy started abusing him.

He said it had been going on for as long as he could remember.

At least I knew when my father started abusing me.

It started slow, but I could pinpoint the first time he did something inappropriate.

It was the time he was helping me out of the pool when I was four.

He put his hand on my lower back and lowered it down to my butt.

It shouldn’t have been something I noticed because of how small it was, but I did.

Jeremy must’ve been much younger than that for him not to remember that first time.

Anytime I think about it, I feel that hurt and love I once felt for him trying to break through, but I would push it down. Jeremy was the only one capable of hurting me, which is why I had to abandon all those feelings to survive.

Lottie needed me. She still does.

She doesn’t know much about Jeremy other than he’s her biological father.

She’s only four. She won’t remember much about him when we disappear into the night.

Maybe one day if someone manages to destroy The Fathers and their entire operation, we can come out into the light and make our way back to Jeremy.

I doubt it though.

That sounds like a happy ending to me and people like me and Jeremy don’t get happy endings. We get endless torment from the people who think they own us.

As soon as Lottie finishes eating, she washes her hands in the sink before running over to me. I drop down to her level and accept a big hug from her.

“Bye, Mommy,” she whispers and I squeeze her tight. It’s hard to let her go, but I know I have to. Otherwise, Jeremy will pry her out of my hold and I don’t want Lottie to witness something like that.

It will be okay though.

Xavi will take care of her and like Jeremy said, he’ll have plenty of guards with him to protect my sweet girl.

“Have fun, okay?” She pulls away before she runs over to Jeremy who stands there as impassive as ever, except when Lottie crashes into his legs, wrapping her arms around them.

His eyes shift slightly, but it’s not much of a change.

He hesitates to reach his hand over and rub her back, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Bye, Daddy!” Then, she darts out of the kitchen with Xavi right behind her.

“Slow down, kid. I swear, she has more energy than I ever did.” He rolls his eyes before exiting the kitchen.

“I’ll go with him. He may need the extra hands, with or without the added guards,” Massimo says, probably feeling the tension in the room between me and Jeremy.

Massimo darts out and I don’t say anything. If Jeremy has something to say, he can do it without my help.

I’m not going to start a conversation. For years before everything went down, every conversation was started by me with the exception of maybe once.

Not anymore. If he wants to know something, he can ask. I won’t pry for answers from him anymore.

“Come on,” Jeremy mutters as he nods toward the door. He walks to it before extending his hand to me. I stare down at his fingers, feeling like the olive branch is a snake waiting to strike.

What kind of torment is he going to put me through now?

He doesn’t look mad or irritated. Honestly, he looks like he hasn’t slept in years. The dark circles under his eyes are ten times as intense as they were back then.

Something in his eyes pushes me to place my hand in his. It's something that screams he’s no threat to me, not right now at least.

Jeremy pulls me behind him, but the tug is gentle, not like it was earlier. His whole mood has changed. So has the energy surrounding us. It’s as if he has abandoned the anger, even if just temporarily.

I’ll take it, even if it will only be short-lived.

He guides me down the hall we went down before until we reach a set of stairs and we walk up them to the second floor. He remains silent all the way down the empty hall until we reach a room at the end. He pushes open the door and pulls me in.

It’s a big bedroom, but what really pulls at my non-existent heart strings is that it’s set up exactly like his room at the old house, complete with the projector we watched movies with every night.

There’s even our photographs on the bedside tables, including the one I took with me.

He even has the frame of my yearbook photo from freshman year with our strip of pictures of making out in the photo booth at the fair in the frame.

He built our safe place.

He recreated the place where I fell in love with him.

The place where we shared our trauma and built memories together.

The place we lost our virginities to each other.

It’s more than just his bedroom.

He replicated our little world.

My heart sputters as I look up at him, staring down at me. “How?” I whisper, a mixture of confused and baffled.

How did he pull this off?

How did he know that this would make me feel more comfortable in this fortress?

How did he manage to get the picture I had taken with me?

He doesn’t speak. Instead, he tugs my hand as he leads me to the attached bathroom, his fingers tightening around mine.

This also looks familiar, even having the same black towels hanging on the towel rack.

With every step, the walls I’ve held strong around my heart are crumbling down to the ground, and letting in everything I’ve been trying so hard to keep out, even the bad memories.

“Take off the dress,” he grumbles as he drops my hand and walks over to the shower. Pulling back the foggy glass door, he switches it on and adjusts the water.

I tug the dress up and over my head.

Either he didn’t notice the scars before or he’s biding his time to ask where they came from, but I don’t think I could handle him asking for answers now.

I thought about having them removed, but when I visited a doctor about it, they said that the scars were too deep. Even if I had them removed on the surface layer, they would still be visible.

I’m stuck with them for the rest of my life, my reminder of what I have survived and escaped.

Jeremy unbuttons his shirt and pushes it down his arms as my eyes widen.

It’s not that I’ve never seen him naked before, but the Jeremy Borza I remember didn’t look like this.

I could tell he had bulked up a bit, but not even that prepared me for how much his physique has changed.

Why did he get all these tattoos? He never had an interest in them before. Was it just because he was in prison?

Maybe, but they don’t look like prison tattoos. These look like they were done by a professional.

When he takes off his pants, I see that the ink continues on, even onto his cock. I just couldn’t see it before because it was so dark in my house.

On one side it says “little” and the other says “ghost”. He inked his nickname for me on his dick as if to say it belongs to me and me alone.

He takes my hand and guides me into the shower.

Warm water belts down on my cool skin, soaking my hair down to my scars, and I enjoy every second of it.

Jeremy’s finger runs along my shoulders and up into my hair.

He lifts it into his fingers and then…he freezes.

I can feel his eyes burning into the scars covering my spine down to the top of my ass.

We both know they weren’t there five years ago, not the last time he saw my naked body in the light of day.

“What the fuck happened here?” he rasps in my ear as he trails his thumb over the raised skin.

I can’t handle talking about it right now. Sure, I could just tell him and go through the emotional rollercoaster of telling him the trauma he is unaware of, but no. This will remain a roadblock between us because he doesn’t need to know. It will only cause unnecessary pain.

“You don’t want to know,” I mutter. He doesn’t push it, but I can just imagine he wants to punish me for not telling him, but maybe he’s just as exhausted as I am.

There’s only so much I can take right now and I bet it’s the same for him.

He doesn’t speak. Instead, he grabs the bottle of shampoo sitting on the ledge and covers his hands before working it through my hair slowly and gently, two things that have never matched Jeremy’s energy. He presses soft kisses on my shoulder as he works in the soap.

I have to admit, this feels really nice, but it's not the Jeremy I know. He would always leave me to shower alone, but this man isn’t the same one I left behind. He’s changed, as have I.

After he finishes washing my hair, he cleans my body until he whispers in my ear, “Now, you will only smell like me, little ghost.”

That’s why he wanted to get in here with me. He wanted to make sure I washed away any trace of Kyle and that house.

He’s so fucking possessive and jealous. Like it wasn’t bad enough that he cut off Kyle’s dick and made him eat it.

Fucking psycho.

He rinses me off before turning off the shower. He wraps me in a towel before helping me out, as if I haven’t done this thousands of times without busting my ass. Unassisted at that.

We walk into the bedroom and he climbs into bed after pulling back the blanket. It’s as if we’ve jumped into the past, into the days where I would sneak into his room.

Much like then, I get in the bed, face away from him with the blanket up to my chin. And like it used to be, he pulls me back into his warm body, my back against his chest. His strong arms don’t act like a cage. No, they’re a security blanket and with that safety, tears fall down my face.

I want to grab the Jeremy I once knew and tell him how sorry I am for what I had to do. I want to explain why I betrayed him and framed him for a crime he didn’t do, why I wasn’t there when he got out.

Tears roll down my face as a sob falls from my lips, vibrating through my chest, but his arm just tightens around me.

“I’m sorry.” The words break as they leave my lips…and they hold all the truth inside me. I hate myself for what I did to him and what I did to me .

“Shh.” Jeremy peppers kisses along my neck and shoulder as he offers me his hand. I take it instantly, pressing it against my throat for comfort. “Just breathe. I’ve got you, little ghost.”

Breathe.

Just breathe.

That’s easier said than done.