Page 50

V 's motorcycle rumbled to a stop in front of my parents' house. Before the engine died completely, the front door swung open. Dad rushed down the porch steps, face lined with worry I hadn't seen before. Mom remained framed in the doorway, fingers clutching the frame, eyes red-rimmed and swollen.

I stayed rooted beside the motorcycle, unable to move forward. My chest tightened with each shallow breath. V dismounted first, then placed his hand against the small of my back. The pressure was firm, insistent. I stared at the fifteen feet between us and my parents—a distance that felt impossible to cross. I'd avoided this moment for days.

V positioned himself slightly behind me, his eyes locking with mine when I glanced back at him. His hand remained on the small of my back as I took the first step forward. I twisted my fingers together at my waist, unable to keep them still. "C-Can we talk?"

Dad froze at the bottom of the steps, just staring at me. Relief and fear battled across his features. Then he closed the distance in three quick strides and pulled me into his arms, nearly lifting me off the ground. "Come inside," he murmured roughly against my hair, one arm staying around my shoulders as he guided me toward the house.

The path to the front door stretched endlessly. Each step felt heavier than the last. Mom straightened in the doorway as we approached, her eyes never leaving mine. She stepped aside to let us enter, her hand briefly touching my arm as I passed.

We moved through the entryway into the living room. The familiar surroundings felt strange now. Family photos lined the hallway walls—snapshots of birthday parties, graduations, holidays—moments from a life I was now questioning. Was anything in those smiling images real? Was any of it true?

Dad settled onto the couch first, patting the cushion beside him. Mom took the loveseat across from us. V remained standing, positioning himself against the far wall where he could see everyone.

Dad leaned forward, elbows on his knees, then straightened again. Mom's fingers worried the edge of a throw pillow.

"Your father wants to tell you some things, honey," Mom said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "Just... hear him out, okay?"

I nodded—that was what I had come here to do. I found myself glancing toward V, drawing strength from his unwavering presence. The silent support in his gaze kept me grounded when I felt like I might float away.

Dad shifted to face me, his shoulders squared as if bracing himself. He reached for my hand, then stopped halfway, uncertain if I would accept his touch.

"I need to tell you about where you came from," Dad began. "About who you are and who I am." His eyes, so much like my own, held mine. "I've kept these secrets because I thought I was protecting you, but now I see I was wrong. You deserve the truth—all of it."

He glanced at Mom, who gave him an encouraging nod from her position in the armchair.

"I was born inside a cult called Divine Diligence." The same cult that V's mom was sent to. Dad's voice turned distant. "We lived cut off from the world. Leaders controlled everything."

Dad's hands clasped tightly in his lap as he continued. "When I turned seventeen, they chose Valerie for me." Dad's voice splintered on her name. "Neither of us had a choice. Once married, we had to produce a child immediately. We were never in love, we barely knew each other. We were..." his eyes closed, his hands shaking slightly. When he finally continued, his voice was barely above a whisper, "...forced into it. We were monitored and they wouldn't leave until we were done."

My gaze darted between my parents, these familiar strangers, tears burning behind my eyes but refusing to fall. I watched Mom reach across the coffee table to place her hand on Dad's knee, a silent gesture of support. My throat worked as I forced the question out. "What happened to her?"

Dad lifted his eyes to meet mine, the pain in them ancient and raw. "She died." His voice scraped out, rough with an old grief I'd never seen before.

Dad covered my hand with his, holding it firmly as he spoke. I saw V shift his weight slightly, pushing away from the wall to stand more alertly, his entire focus locked on my father's words as he revealed the truth. "You were only four months old when we decided to escape. We knew what happened to children—they were torn away from their families as soon as they were old enough. The fence surrounding the compound was high, they kept us weak so we wouldn't be able to climb." His voice caught. "She handed you to me and I climbed over since I was stronger. She started to..." His eyes glassed over, reliving the memory. His hand quivered as it covered mine, swallowing hard. "She was shot. Point blank. Right in front of me. She told me to take care of you, and I promised her I always would."

Dad's voice completely broke then, a sound so gut-wrenching it wasn't even a sob—just a gasp trying to push past a hurt that had never healed. He tried to speak again but couldn't form words, his body quaking with the grief he held back for two decades.

Mom rose from her chair and moved to sit on Dad's other side, her arm wrapping around his shoulders.

Dad straightened after a moment and cleared his throat. He rose from the couch, crossing the room to the built-in bookshelf near the fireplace that had been there my entire life. He pulled down an old wooden box I'd never seen before. His back remained to us as he opened it, his shoulders visibly tense. From inside, he withdrew a small, worn notebook, its edges frayed and cover discolored with age. A few dark marks stained the leather binding—permanent reminders of that night.

Dad returned to the couch, settling back into his original spot beside me. "When she knew she was pregnant, Valerie started writing to you. Every chance she got. Just in case..." His fingers shook as he held it out to me. "She was afraid something might happen, that she might never get to tell you herself how much she loved you."

I stared at the journal. My hands trembled as I reached for it, the leather cool and worn against my fingertips. Her fingerprints overlapped with mine across decades—a mother I never knew reaching through time to touch me. Dad watched me take it, his face etched with tension. He swallowed, not looking away from me. "To them, you weren't Oakley. You were 9472."

His eyes clouded with memory. "I was 724," he said quietly. "Not Trevor. Just 724."

I turned toward V, his gaze fixed on mine across the room, empty and unflinching. "6325."

Something clicked into place—the missing pieces of my childhood I'd never questioned before. I turned back to Dad. "That's why I never met your parents."

Dad nodded, his face etched with old hurt. "I was four when they separated me from my parents. I barely remember their faces now." His voice grew hollow. "The cult raised us in groups, taught us that attachment was weakness. Some kids were luckier than others with their caretakers. I wasn't one of the lucky ones."

The weight of inherited suffering washed over me. My father hadn't just saved me from a cult—he'd severed a pattern that had consumed his own childhood, his own parents. He'd risked everything to ensure I wouldn't endure the same fate.

My father—my strong, steady father—had been violated in the worst way possible. And I was the result.

"We named you Oakley because you were born under an oak tree. It was the one beautiful thing we could give you in that place." His hands clenched into fists, knuckles white with the effort of revisiting memories he'd tried to bury. "The moment I held you, this tiny, perfect little thing, none of that mattered anymore. You were everything."

My father's face blurred through my tears as he continued, his voice cracking. "Valerie and I promised each other if something ever happened to one of us, we'd take care of you."

I looked down at our intertwined hands, at the fingers that had wiped away my tears, that had tucked me in at night, that had taught me to ride a bike and tie my shoes. Hands that had carried me as a newborn through fences and across state lines, running from a darkness I never knew existed. My throat closed around the question that had been haunting me since I first learned the truth.

"You could've given me up and had a great life."

Dad's face crumpled, raw hurt flashing across his features. He shifted on the couch to face me fully, his knee bumping mine. For a moment, he looked as young and scared as he must have been back then—just seventeen, alone in the world with a baby and nowhere to go.

"Is that what you think?" Dad leaned forward, his eyes fierce with an intensity that made me shrink back against the couch arm. "That you somehow ruined my life?"

I couldn't meet his gaze. My chest felt like it might cave in, each breath shallow and painful. I stared down at my lap where my fingers twisted together painfully. The truth I'd been running from rose up inside me like bile.

"You were just a kid," I whispered, my voice breaking on every word. "They forced you to—" I couldn't finish. The horror of it stuck in my throat as my voice shattered completely. "And then she died... because of me."

I was contaminating everyone I loved, a quiet decay they'd carried for years because of me.

V moved from his position against the wall, taking a single step forward, his muscles tightening at my words. His eyes narrowed slightly. Something in his silent reaction gave me courage to continue, to face my father's response.

I finally looked up at him through tears that distorted his face. I needed to see the confirmation in his eyes, the resentment he must have buried for twenty years. How could he not hate me, even a little? I was the living reminder of his worst nightmare.

Instead, what I saw made me forget how to breathe.

Dad's hands shook intensely as he reached for mine, tears streaming unchecked down his face. At that moment, he wasn't the father who had raised me, he was the terrified seventeen-year-old boy holding a newborn, running for his life.

"Listen to me, Oakley." His voice broke open, stripped of everything but devastating truth. "You are the best thing that has ever happened to me." He gripped my hands with such desperation I thought my bones might break. "You weren't some burden I carried, you're the reason I'm still alive."

A sob tore from his chest, the sound so primal it sent shivers down my spine. "Without you, I would never have escaped. I would have died in that place, Oakley. Do you understand? I would have died." His voice dropped to a whisper. "You didn't ruin my life. You gave me one."

His trembling hand reached up to wipe the tears from my face, lingering against my cheek as if afraid I might vanish if he let go. "Oakley," he said softly, his voice breaking, "no matter where you came from, every nightmare, every tragedy—we'd choose it all again just to have you."

The tears I'd been holding back finally spilled over. "But she died because?—"

"Valerie died because of that cult," he said firmly. "Not because of you."

"D-Does it hurt to look at me?"

"Never." He was sharp with his reply. "I never regretted you. Not once." His voice broke. "Every single day of my life has been worth it because you were in it."

Fresh hot tears fell at hearing these things from my father. The love in his eyes—pure and unconditional—shattered something inside me that had been broken for too long. Looking over to Mom, she was smiling, still with tears in her eyes, her hand reaching for mine across the space between us.

"How did you two meet?" I was hoping this story wasn't fueled with nightmares like everything else.

"I was a safe house for people escaping the cult," Mom explained. "No one was willing to take in a man with a baby besides me." Her eyes looked to Dad, the love she felt for him radiating from her.

"For the first month I wouldn't let Claudia hold you." He shook his head. "I slept sitting against the wall with you in my arms and only got two hours of sleep a night. I was afraid they'd come back for you."

"When did you start letting her help?" I asked quietly.

"You wouldn't stop crying one night. Nothing I did helped. I was exhausted, terrified I couldn't give you what you needed. Claudia..." He looked at her with a gratitude so raw it made my heart ache. "She just took you from my arms. You stopped crying almost immediately."

I glanced between them, suddenly curious about something I'd never thought to ask. "When did you two fall in love?"

Mom's fingers intertwined with Dad's, a small smile softening her features. "It wasn't one moment. There were thousands of them."

Dad's eyes never left Mom's face as he spoke. "Claudia helped me become a legal citizen, get my GED. She believed in me when I had nothing to offer but a bad attitude and a baby I barely knew how to take care of."

"We raised you together," Mom added, her voice gentle with memory. "I helped your father study for his law school entrance exams, quizzed him on cases late at night after you were asleep."

Dad continued, "Brewing coffee at three in the morning while I prepared for finals." His thumb traced circles on the back of Mom's hand. "She never once made me feel like we were a burden."

"When he graduated from law school," Mom said, looking at me now, "we realized we didn't want to say goodbye. We couldn't imagine our lives any other way than the three of us."

"So we got married," Dad finished simply, looking at mom with utter love and devotion. "And we haven’t looked back.”

I looked at Mom, really looked at her—the woman who had chosen us, who had opened her heart and her home to a traumatized teenage boy and his infant daughter. Who had loved us both unconditionally from the start.

I stood, pausing in front of her. What right did I have to her comfort, to the safety of her arms, after every wall I'd built to keep her out? As if reading my thoughts, Mom stood. Her eyes shimmered with tears as she reached for me.

"Oakley," she whispered, voice thick with emotion. "From the moment I held you in my arms, you were my daughter.” Her hands trembled slightly as they found mine. "I never needed to give birth to you to love you with every piece of my heart."

Her words crashed through the last of my defenses. Taking my hands in hers, she held them tight as the truth welled up inside me.

"You're my Mom." The words came out clear and certain. "You raised me, you took care of me. You loved me when you didn't have to." She'd been there for me my whole life, she'd never made me feel anything but loved. She was at every school recital, every doctor's appointment, everything. She stepped up when she didn't have to. She raised me, that made her my mom whether she’d birthed me or not.

"That will never change, my sweet girl." Throwing my arms around her after letting her hands go, I nuzzled into the warmth of my mom. Both crying now as we embraced. "I might not have given birth to you but you are my daughter, Oakley."

Blood ran through your veins whether you wanted it or not. Family was who you'd spill it for.

After V shared his pain, he'd encouraged me to share mine. Telling him had been easy; telling my parents would be hard. After that night in the woods, I became a different person, my quick witty sense of humor fizzled away, and after Anne died, I became a shell. After all those years of worrying, they deserved the truth. After watching V be so brave in telling me, I knew I could do this.

I pulled back from Mom's embrace and returned to the couch, settling beside Dad again. I set Valerie's journal gently on the coffee table, needing both hands free for what I was about to say. I drew a deep breath, sitting up straighter on the couch.

"V helped me come back here." My dad's gaze went to V, followed by my mom's. "He told me something about his past that wasn't easy. Something that someone should never have gone through. He taught me that what happens to people sometimes isn't their fault, even if they believe it is."

I looked at my husband, standing silently in the corner, the mask covering the lower half of his face.

I realized then that this was why we found each other, why we understood each other in ways no one else could. Both survivors of different kinds of abuse, both carrying aftermath—his on his body, mine in my mind.

The cult that had witnessed my birth had also created his torment. Different times, different people, same evil. His mother's ring—now my wedding band—caught the light on my finger, a symbol taken from the past and transformed into something different. Something ours.

"We're both survivors," I whispered, more to myself than anyone else. V's eyes met mine across the room, and I saw understanding there, a silent acknowledgment of our shared resilience.

Turning back to my dad, I shifted to the edge of the couch, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees. I let the words out while I still had the nerve.

"Karson..." His name tasted like poison on my tongue. "He took me and Anne to a pig party a few weeks before she committed suicide."

Dad's face transformed into something murderous. Mom's expression crumpled in confusion. "A pig party?"

"It's a party where boys find women who they think are objectively unattractive and bring them as a date to embarrass them." Dad slammed his hands down on the coffee table, shattering the glass. Shards scattered across the floor like the pieces of my shattered dignity that night. Mom flinched backward as V watched, eerily still, his eyes fixed on Dad, calculating the threat level.

Mom rushed to Dad, hands pressing against his chest as he rose, veins pulsing at his temples. "Trevor, please calm down."

"Calm down?" His voice was terrifyingly quiet. "Did you not just hear what the fuck she said? What that bastard did to our daughter?" He shoved away from Mom, pacing like a caged animal.

"I did hear her, but I don't think this is the right way to go about this," Mom pleaded, tears streaming down her face. "Listen to what she's trying to tell us, Trevor." Dad's hands slid down his face, leaving trails in the tears I hadn't noticed were falling.

His eyes found mine, devastated and raw. "What did they do to you, Oakley?"

The question hung between us like a guillotine. I collapsed inward, sobs tearing through me with such violence I couldn't breathe. V crossed the room, not touching me but positioning himself close enough that I could feel his heat against my back. I buried my face in my hands, shoulders convulsing as I tried to disappear inside myself.

I wouldn't tell them. I'd let them guess. I refused to tell them about the rape.

Dad made a sound like he'd been gutted. Mom's hands flew to her mouth, horror washing over her face.

"After Anne, when you stopped talking, stopped eating, I was terrified every time you left the house that you wouldn't come back." Dad confessed, his voice breaking. He knelt in front of me, taking my cold hands in his warm ones. "I was terrified you were going to do what Anne did."

Anne's laugh echoed through me—not the cruel one from that night, but the genuine one from before, when we'd stay up late whispering secrets under blanket forts. I couldn't remember that sound anymore. Only how it ended: with a rope and a note that said simply "I'm sorry I was the winner."

"I was."

A sob tore from Mom's throat as she covered her mouth, shoulders shaking violently. Dad's face contorted with grief he couldn't contain.

"I had pills," I continued, unable to stop now that the dam had broken. "I stole them from different medicine cabinets so no one would notice. I kept them in a mint tin. I wrote the note." My hands shook uncontrollably. "I had everything ready."

Dad's breath hitched. Mom moved to kneel beside him, reaching for me but afraid to touch me, as if I might shatter completely.

"But then I went to Anne's funeral," my voice cracked, splintering on her name. "And I saw her parents. They looked like their world ended. And I thought about what it would do to you both, finding me like that. I couldn't... I couldn't do that to you."

"Oh, baby girl." Dad's voice shattered completely as he pulled me against his chest. Mom wrapped her arms around us both, her tears soaking into my hair. Their embrace formed a cocoon of warmth I hadn't allowed myself to feel in years. I closed my eyes, breathing in the familiar scent of my mother's perfume, my father's aftershave—they smelled like comfort, like home.

I felt V's eyes on my back. Always watching, always apart. His stillness was a comfort in its own way. In a world that had never stopped spinning violently around me since that night in the woods, V was the only thing that remained steady. Untouchable to everyone but me.

As my parents held me, years of unshed tears finally broke free. For Anne. For the girl I used to be. For my biological mother who died so I could live. For my father who carried the weight of so much trauma yet still found a way to love me completely.

"I-I'm sorry," I whispered, not entirely sure what I was apologizing for. For running away? For not telling them sooner? For existing at all?

"Don't you dare apologize," Dad said fiercely against my hair. "Not ever."

I turned to look at V, standing motionless behind me. His eyes held depths no one else could fathom—the kind that came only from surviving the unsurvivable. My hand reached toward him, needing his connection now more than ever.

V grabbed my hand, his movements calculated and purposeful. The others' gazes burned into us as he approached, this dangerous man who showed nothing to anyone but me.

I turned back to Mom, a question burning inside me that I'd been afraid to ask. "Would you..." my voice wavered, "would you be upset if I wanted to know more about Valerie? If I asked Dad about her sometimes?"

Mom's eyes welled with fresh tears, but her smile radiated love. She cupped my face in her hands, thumbs wiping away my tears. "Sweetheart, your father has kept every memory of her safe. She deserves to be remembered. And you deserve to know her."

Mom pulled me against her chest, her heartbeat steady against my ear like it had been when I was small. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine a woman I'd never known. Valerie had dreams, fears, maybe even plans for us. Now she existed only in my blood, a whisper of what could have been—a ghost haunting a life I didn't know how to claim as mine.

With unsteady fingers, I opened the journal to a random page, her handwriting flowing across the page in flowery strokes:

My dearest baby,

Today I felt you kick for the first time. Such a tiny flutter, like butterfly wings against my ribs. Your father pressed his hand to my stomach for hours, waiting to feel it too. When he finally did, I saw something I'd never seen before—hope in his eyes. In this place where they try to kill everything beautiful, you're already fighting back. Already so strong. I wonder if you'll have my stubbornness or his quiet determination. Maybe both. I hope so. You'll need it.

They don't know we're planning to run. Don't know we've already named you in whispers when no one can hear. Not a number. Never a number. A name that means something. You are our Oakley. The tree that survived despite everything. Just like you will.

If you're reading this someday, know that whatever happened, whatever choices we had to make, you were loved. Completely. Desperately. With everything we had.

Always your mother,

Valerie

The journal slipped from my fingers, landing on the carpet between my feet. My knees gave out, body crumpling before my mind could catch up. I slid from the couch to the floor, landing hard on my knees, but I barely felt the impact. Dad moved from beside me on the couch to kneel on the floor, his hand hovering over my shoulder, uncertain whether his touch would be welcome.

Mom rushed from the couch where she'd been sitting beside Dad. "She wrote because she loved you enough to make sure you'd hear her voice, even if she couldn't be here to speak."

The sobs I'd been holding back broke free, years of confusion and hurt pouring out as I clung to the parents who had chosen me, fought for me, loved me through everything. All the barriers I'd built came tumbling down in that moment, leaving me exposed and vulnerable but finally, blessedly free.

We stayed like that for several long minutes, huddled together on the living room floor. Eventually, I wiped my tears with the back of my hand and looked up. My gaze found V, still standing nearby, observing the scene with calculated attention. His eyes met mine across the small distance, holding a look of assessment rather than emotion.

I gently pulled away from my parents' embrace and rose unsteadily to my feet. I crossed the room to V in halting steps. Without a word, I wrapped my arms around him, feeling his fingers close around mine. This small point of contact between us contained an entire language only we understood.

His arms circled my waist, fingers spreading wide across my back like he was trying to memorize the shape of me. When I shifted, his grip tightened—not enough to hurt, but enough to keep me there.

We were opposite sides of the same wound—he hollowed out by trauma, me overfilled with it. Yet somehow, the empty spaces in me fit perfectly with the hard edges of him. Two broken pieces making something whole.

For so long, I'd carried my past alone, a weight too heavy for one person to bear. The shame, the guilt, the sorrow—all of it locked inside where no one could see. But here, surrounded by the people who loved me most in the world, I finally understood—some loads weren't meant to be carried alone.

I'd built my entire identity around being unwanted—the unwelcome burden, the reason for so much suffering. But what if that story was just another lie? What if I'd been desperately wanted all along—by Valerie who died for me, by Dad who lived for me, by Mom who chose me, by V who saw me as something worth protecting?

Hatred was just grief with nowhere to go.

V's hand tightened fractionally around mine as if he sensed the tectonic shift happening inside me. His jaw muscle flexed beneath the mask, a barely visible crack in his usual control, revealing a shared pain only I could recognize. His empty eyes held mine, not with emotion, but with recognition—he understood what it was to be made by other people's choices.

Mom and Dad stood together now near the couch, watching us. Dad's arm circled Mom's waist, drawing her against his side. I realized they were giving me space to process with V, recognizing something in our connection that I was only beginning to understand myself.

V's thumb traced across my back, the gesture saying more than words ever could. Across the room, Mom and Dad stood with fingers intertwined.

Maybe survival was never about choosing a single truth, but carrying them all. Letting every version of me live—even the ones born in fear.

I wouldn't face anything alone.

I was Oakley. A name chosen with love.

Not my past. Not my future. Not anymore.

I had inherited a story written in blood and ink—but this chapter, finally, was mine.