Page 82 of Restitution

In the end, I survived because I kept holding on forher, even when I didn’t realise it – promising myself I’d get back to Stacey as the same eighteen-year-old kid who fell in love with her.

But I didn’t survive. I might be free, but I’m still there. At least mentally. I hear the voices. The laughter. Feel the pain, the unwanted touches, the warmth of my own blood leaking out of my body.

Even now I can barely open my eyes without feeling the walls closing in, hearing so many different voices from past clients, and feeling their hands all over me.

I tried to burn my palms on a hotplate to get rid of the feeling, the dirtiness, the invisible blood, but Mum stopped me. Hence the doctor she called in and how many meds are in my system right now.

I was in a dark-as-fuck place when we were in the lodge, and although I feel like I’m slowly climbing out of the void, something is trying to drag me back down. Its claws are deep in my soul, and I’m barely holding on.

I know Stacey was there with me most of the time. I could hear her talking, even when I was disconnecting, battling with reality. Her fingers were brushing through my hair while she talked about everything we used to do when we were normal. Just two eighteen-year-old kids getting to know each other.

She doesn’t know me now, and I’m not sure I want her to.

The joint burns between my fingers with each harsh inhalation, and the smoke dissipates above me in a cloud as I blow out. I nearly drop it given how ridiculous my hand-to-mouth coordination is.

I hear a radio beeping faintly to my right as a guard walks byduring his patrol. I sigh and rest my elbows on my knees. When my eyes lift to the kitchen, which has a large window that looks onto the back of the grounds, I see Stacey filling a glass with juice. The view is blocked mostly by the trees that circle the pool house, but there’s just enough of a gap that I can watch her gulp down the liquid and wipe the back of her hand across her mouth.

My chest aches with how beautiful she is. How, after everything I’ve put her through, she’s still here. Still fighting for me. Fighting for us. Not to be in a relationship, because we’re both too fucked for that, but to find level ground.

She should kick me to the kerb and tell me never to speak to her again after I pushed her out of my life for two years. After I shot her. The wound is almost healed, but will definitely scar, and I stare at it every time I see her.

I want to go to her, to kiss her and touch her and ask her to love me, but I can’t.

I was in a bad place those first few days after I got away from Bernadette. I couldn’t even take a piss without freaking out. But what happened in that lodge kicked me back into reality. Well, a little. There are parts of me that are still struggling, but I’m zeroed in on Bernadette, her husband wasting away in my basement and how much I’m going to make them regret even looking in my direction.

Stacey leans her palms on the kitchen unit and closes her eyes. When she drops her forehead to the counter, I wonder what she’s thinking about. What’s making her so upset?

Could be several things.

Her dead brother. My dead brother. My soon-to-be-dead father. Or me. Her vile ex who can’t even look at her without feeling his hands tremble and hiding his face like she’d judge him.I’ve kept my distance, and I intend to keep doing so.

Maybe she’s just tired. Tired of all this bullshit. I know I am.

I miss her. I miss her infectious giggle. The dimple that dents when she smiles at me after I kiss her. Her snarky texts. The way she always wants to laze around and watch TV with the dogs. I miss watching her dance, deep in a routine, or watching her unravel with my tongue inside her…

I get a flash of what I did to her in front of her stepbrother and feel myself recoil, a painful twist in my chest. Something we haven’t spoken about. Something we shouldn’t have done. Something I can barely remember.

Being like this sucks. I keep either dissociating or going completely blank. Sometimes I seize; sometimes I just stare at nothingness, trapped in my own mind, yelling for someone to help me. Most of the time I don’t realise it’s happening.

I never truly knew what it was like inside my dad’s head, but I think I do now. It’s fucking scary and lonely, and I get so damn angry all the time.

Stacey disappears from my view, and I lower my head again, running my middle finger across my lips to feel how dry they are, flinching when I feel rough skin at the corner.

I wear the face covering less, but when I’m around her, I make sure it stays in place. She looks at it when it’s accidentally in view, like everyone else, and her expression turns to pity.

I don’t want pity.

I want everyone to leave me the fuck alone and let me focus on getting Bernadette six feet under after months of torturing the sadistic bitch. I want her to see how much I can ruin her husband.

There’s an abandoned dog shelter I now own that I can takeher to. I’ll stuff her into a crate and watch her suffer. My dad did the same thing before he was arrested twenty-three years ago, and it only seems fitting that I follow in his footsteps.

Barry located the eroding building with the plaque outside for my aunt Gabriella – a remembrance. She was killed there by Dad’s lunatic friend, but that’s an entirely different story.

There’s a team up there now securing the place. There are cameras, computers and a room they’ve reconstructed into a shiny new cell for one. I’ll make her watch me ripping her husband to shreds, then I’ll strangle her with his intestines.

With over two hundred client names on file, and hundreds more she has connections with, I have enough evidence to take down most of them. But that family deserves more than fame as criminals. They deserve death, over and over again.

If I can save my dad in the process, then it’s another win, but I won’t hold my breath.