“What is there to say? The person I love the most in the world is the product of the person I hated the most. I should hate you; I should run from you as fast as I can. I should loathe you. But when I am with you, I don’t care about any of it. All I care about is how you make me feel.”
I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I had never known relief as I did in that moment and I never would again.
“It started when I was eight. Nothing sexual at first. He was actually cool, letting me eat candy, and watch movies that my mother was dead set against. Things that made him a cool uncle. He would say inappropriate things, sexual type things, but it was never directed at me, just in general.” He let out a humorless laugh.. It was a cynical laugh, the laugh of someone that had seen darkness and tried to shrug it off, even while being suffocated by it. “It was over a year before he started touching me or asking me to touch him, before any of that shit happened. One of the expensive therapists my parents sent me to called that grooming.”
“Your parents knew?”
“They say they didn’t know who it was until after Pierce died, but I heard my mother once accuse my father of knowing. It’s why my parents act the way they do. Believe it or not, at one time they actually loved each other. But for some reason, my molestation didn’t just destroy me, it destroyed them. My father started working more, much more than normal, and my mother started hitting the old bottle. When I was around ten, that’s when the touching happened.” Kyler turned his face away from me and I felt my heart breaking into a million shattered pieces.
As I listened to him, I felt the bile start to rise from my throat. I was grateful that Pierce Black was dead. If he wasn’t, I was pretty sure I would kill him myself. I hated that his blood was running through my veins. I had no idea how Kyler and my mother could care about me, knowing I had his DNA.
“Don’t cry,” Kyler said, wiping the tears from my cheeks. His touch was so gentle and it gave me hope. Hope that I knew was a mirage but I allowed myself to feel it anyway.
“How can you stand to look at me?” I whimpered through the tears blurring my eyes.
“None of this is your fault,” he said, matter-of-factly. “My love for you, Maddy, trumps all other feelings I have.”
“But you have other feelings?”
“If I told you that all this isn’t fucked up, I’d be lying. You are a casualty Maddy. You aren’t him. If I can see that, even with how fucked up I am, then why can’t you?”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” The moment I asked the question, I regretted it. I knew why he didn’t tell. He was a small child. How could he stand up to someone as powerful as Pierce Black?
“I told him I was going to. After the first time he touched me, I told him I was going to tell. He told me that if I ever breathed a word to anyone, he would kill Tamlin. I couldn’t let that happen. He was the boogieman. I had to be brave and endure so that Tammy was safe.” He looked at his arms, brushing a finger along a scar under the black design of his tattoo. “That’s when I started to cut myself. There was just something about seeing the scars. I kept thinking if I made marks on my body I would disgust him and he wouldn’t want me anymore. Nothing worked, though, until I slashed my wrists at twelve and my parents committed me. It was there that one of the doctors suggested a boarding school for troubled youth in Switzerland. However, I didn’t want to go. I was scared that if I went, he would do something to Tammy. My parents sent her away too. The boarding school was a godsend; I was getting better, doing well. Then one night I saw one of the guards on top of one of the boys and I lost it. I beat him so bad that I left him in a coma. The only reason I am not in jail is because my father paid off every single person he could think of.”
“Oh, Kyler.”
“Don’t do that,” he said, pushing my hand away. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me, Maddy. Pity is not what I want from you.”
“What do you want?” I asked, looking at the mess of clutter on the floor.
“You,” he said, pulling me to him and wrapping his arms around me. “I have never wanted anything until I saw you.”
Chapter 33
Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Kyler
“I’d go to the ends of the Earth and back to make you happy.” I nuzzled into her silky skin as she slept beside me later that night.
I couldn't sleep, not after everything that had passed between us. So much revealed, so much exposed. I felt like a raw wire waiting for her to light a match.
“What are you doing to me, little mouse?”
I stroked her jaw before placing a reverent kiss on her cheek, my fingertips darting down the nape of her neck, watching as shivers erupted and raced across her flesh. I'd been terrified to give her too much of me in the beginning, afraid to hurt her too much, but not having her felt like the real crime
