Page 61 of When Sinners Fear
I’m stronger than this. I endured more than this.
Catching my breath, I turn to look at the home I should be racing towards. There’s safety within those walls. There’s a family I love and who loves me, so what’s stopping me?
The enormity of everything I need to confess to my mother hits me and prevents me from taking another step forward. There’s nothing in my way physically, and I know that if I will myself to do it, I can force my body to move. But it’s as if two sides of my mind are at war with each other, and the fallout is my inability to move. I'm trapped in a limbo where I need to resolve the incidents and subsequent feelings before reconciling and going back to my ‘before’ life, no matter how guilty that makes me feel.
When I take a moment to process, I notice a few lights on inside. One deep cleansing breath sets my heart rate to normal, and I move towards the door. It should be locked – all doors should be locked from now on, but as I turn the knob, it clicks open.
Nobody comes flying to see who’s there, so I push the door another few inches and wait.
Silence greets me, and in a rush, I step inside and close the door behind me softly. It’s warm against my skin, and the lingering smell of a chicken dinner rests in the air. The den is quiet, and there aren’t any voices drifting from upstairs.
At some point these last few days, I’ve found new courage, and I pull on that to venture upstairs. I still peer around the corners but follow the rhythmic breathing sound. It comes from Mom’s room, and as I crack her door wider, I see her lying on the bed, her breathing steady but laboured.
I stand in the doorway, watching, checking that the breathing doesn’t change. My eyes pool with tears. She wasn’t this bad before I left. One step inside the room and the floor creaks, causing her to murmur, but I continue until I sit on her bed.
With care, I pull her hand into my lap and hold it.
“Hi, Mom,” I whisper. “I’m home.” I squeeze her hand gently, hoping that on some level, if she remembers this, she might think it a dream. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” My eyes sting, too dry to shed more tears, but I cry anyway. “Mom, I can’t come back yet. I’m not ready to explain. I used to think everything was simple, that there was an answer or solution to every problem, but that’s not true. I failed you. There’s nothing I can do to take away your pain, and now … Now, I don’t know how to set my mind right. Please know that I want to be your little girl again. I’d gladly come back if that were the case, but I’m not the same person.” My voice cracks, and she turns her head in her sleep, murmuring again. “If we could just stay here, freeze time, would that be okay?”
“Peyton?” Her voice is thready and makes me freeze. I release my grip on her hand and hear the pounding of my heart. My lips stay silent, and she slips back under.
With careful steps, I ease from her bedside and then race to my bedroom, flinging open the door and hiding inside. Nothing has changed. It’s like a time capsule, reminding me of everything I’ve lost. Reminding me of everything I was.
I pull a satchel from under my bed and stuff it with a few changes of clothes before changing out of the borrowed clothes. I put on one of my mom’s favourite dresses and add a cardigan and tights to stave off the chill. Standing in front of the mirror, I look like me. Or rather, the me I used to recognise.
Not knowing how long I have, I scribble a note to Evie. I tell her how much I love her, that I’ll explain everything to her in the future, that I need some time, and to take care of Mom and remind her that I love her even when I can’t be here. The note to Matthew is similar, but I add in to watch over Evie.
My dad’s note is simple – Forgive me.
With the letters delivered, I take a few bills from the cookie jar in the kitchen, call a cab, and leave, walking down to the end of the street to wait for my ride.
CHAPTER TWENTY - THREE
KNOX
“You okay?”
I stare out at the dusty ground around me, taking in the darkness that stretches for miles, and continue to question that myself. I should be. I should be back to hard worn heartlessness and functional normality, but I’m not.
Looking down at Kai as he sits, I huff at his slight smile and gaze back outwards. “Leave me alone, Kai.”
“Nah. Think I’ll sit a while. Mariana’s out tonight.”
He doesn’t say anything else, and, for whatever reason, I don’t push him away from me or take myself elsewhere. We just remain here, maybe both contemplating our own realities. For me, that involves my lacking empathy around girls who I’ve stolen through the years. Guess that’s what happens when you’re the one on the receiving end of the torment. Mix in the constant image of Peyton still, of her fragility and her fear and her bruises – ones that I put there – and I’m repetitively in a state of confusion. Not good for a guy like me, and certainly not good for a family business like this one.
Frowning, I attempt reasoning that ongoing complication out in my head. Equations multiply in my mind, and scenarios map out with endless unknowns. Nothing makes logical sense. I feel. I am emotionally invested in something out of my control. And nothing completes the circuit back to where I was. No equation helps. No answers are there to find.
I just need to kill Reed, that’s all. Just kill him and make him suffer and watch as he pleads for fucking mercy that he’ll never get. I’ll have my revenge then, and life will right itself.
“You healing?” Kai eventually asks.
I stare into the distance and blow out some smoke, not ready to talk about any of it still. Especially not with someone I barely know. “I’m fine.”
“You’re far from fine, Knox. You’re an ugly son of a bitch for a start.” The corner of my mouth tips up, relatively amused at the remark. “And you’re not you, you know? What was that about with Naja? Never seen a woman so broken up. You’re not usually like that.” My memories drift to what Ratchet did to her earlier under my instruction. Raped. Beaten. She’s still in there chained up as far as I know, dangling from her wrists like I was – like Peyton was. I even made him cut her hair off to the skull, like I was trying to cleanse myself of my own fucking sins somehow. It made sense to me at the time. Doesn’t now. “No digs for a while. No smart asshole behaviour, either,” Kai continues. “And now you look like I did when I was making decisions.”
I look at the ground, as he picks some dirt up and rubs it between his hands. “Decisions about what?”
“About where my loyalties lay.”