Page 7 of Walking in Darkness

Sitting in the passenger seat of Pax’s car and peering at them through the windshield where they were gathered at the small neighborhood park, I felt as if I were watching them through a distorted, clouded mirror.

The car idled in the cold, the heater was working overtime, and I couldn’t seem to make myself move from the spot as I stared at the people I loved most.

People who had so misunderstood me.

Right then, it felt as if time and space were stretched between us. A million years passed. It seemed impossible that it’d barely been two weeks since the day I was placed in the mental care facility.

It felt as if, during that time, everything had been reconfigured.

As if I’d aged twenty years during that time. My eyes opened and my heart changed.

Theirs had, too.

I could feel it in my mother’s gaze when she looked up from where she was sitting on a bench. It gave her a good view of my brothers, who played in a field at the neighborhood park near my grandmother’s.

On the far side of the park, my younger sister, Brianna, sat on top of a picnic table under a ramada, her long brown hair whipping around her face, her downturned focus on her phone.

It was cold and dreary out, but when I’d texted my mother this morning after Pax and I had gone to the store to purchase a phone—since I refused to be cut off from my mother any longer—we decided this would be a safe place to meet. No walls surrounding us.

We were still on edge after Pax had broken me out of the institution, worried the local police might be looking for him, but after what had happened with my father last night, I needed to maintain contact with my mother.

She had stayed at my grandmother’s last night, but I didn’t want to deal with the pressure of others listening in on us. I wanted a place where we could talk.

Really talk.

Because for the first time in my life, I didn’t have to hide my truth.

God, how many years had I ached for her to know me? To truly see me?

“You sure this is something you want to do?” Pax’s voice was low and riddled with concern. He reached out a tattooed hand and threaded his fingers through mine.

Silent support.

I knew it would be a long, long time before he forgave them, if that was even possible.

Maybe longer before he trusted them.

I stared across at my mother, whose attention was fully trained on the car. I could feel her pain radiating out.

The regret.

The confusion.

More than any of it, her love.

“I can’t imagine what my mother was feeling last night.” My voice was wispy. “Can’t imagine the trauma she went through before I got there. She had to have beenterrified.” My chest tightened with the thought of that type of trauma.

My father’s mind had been taken over by a Ghorl, the strongest of the Kruen. It had been a manipulation to draw me back to my home so the Ghorl could end me. My father had held my mother hostage through the middle of it, and she’d had to witness him trying to kill me.

But we’d destroyed the Ghorl. Prevailed over its power.

“To witness my father that way? To have him treat her that way? Then to see what she saw? To see you?”

My mother had always believed Pax was a figment of my deranged mind. That he’d told me to hurt myself when they believed my scars from Faydor had been personally inflicted.

Then to find out my nightmare world was real? It had to have been so much for her.

Shifting, I let my gaze travel over his face, and I reached out and scratched my fingernails through the stubble that coated his jaw.