Chapter 20: Chapter Twenty--Can't Hide Anymore

Fuck him. I’d tell him, a virtual stranger, just how damaged, how messed in the head I really was. Then he could walk away. I hoped he did. Part of me knew I wouldn’t be able to face him again.

“I don’t trust people. I don’t like people as a general rule, because they’ve never given me a damned reason to. People have no redeeming qualities. Do you have any clue what it’s like to grow up in a small town in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, with a mom who ran off, a dad who splattered his brains all over our bathroom mirror with a shotgun, and a dead psychic grandmother everyone laughed at?” I blinked, trying to reign in the volume my voice had risen to.

He shook his head, then moved to speak.

I refused to let him. “Do you have any clue what it’s like walk the streets? What they said about me? What the school allowed to happen to me? I was taunted, Kalvyn. In fact, there isn’t a good enough word for what they did. I was cornered in bathrooms by cruel girls, as they dumped garbage on my head. Kicked to the side. Tormented. I ate lunch in the janitor closet for two years to avoid them, before I was old enough to leave the school grounds during break. They convinced me my parents’ problems were my fault. I believed that my parents couldn’t possibly love me enough. I was so ineffective that neither cared when they left me. For ten years, I was known as that kid. Then I became that adult everyone pretended didn’t exist. The one who never measured up. The weird chick who lived with a crazy old woman who was Pagan, a self-proclaimed physic. The chick who spent well over half her inheritance from her dad for shrinks who put me in and out of clinics. There are whole chunks of my preteens I can’t remember. I was on and off mental health drugs so I could resemble a functioning human being for five-minute intervals.” My breath heaved.

My throat closed. Yet, I couldn’t stop now. “And after a while, I figured out how to make my grandmother and Lola, my only friend in the entire world, the happiest, was to pretend I’m normal. That I got better. I threw myself into homework, housework, cooking, I ate to stave off the depression. The nails down a chalkboard need to just slit my wrists and be done with everything. To follow in my father’s footsteps. What’s good for the gander, if good for the goose’s bastard child, right? But that would’ve killed grandma more surely than her frail, old body. She is the reason I lived. Now Lola is. But when grandma died, what little remained of my heart went into the coffin with her. Now, I function on autopilot.”

“Katrina…”

He radiated fear, sympathy, empathy. No, no. He was supposed to be disgusted. God, it was killing me. I ran out of steam. I sagged, forcing him to catch me.

“Is that what you wanted to know?” I said weakly. “Do you still think we share the same pain?” I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let me. “I hate my life. I hate it so fucking much. I never get to stop pretending. I never get to be normal. I don’t get to be that carefree woman, who sails through life without the nightmares, the memories. I didn’t get over it, and there is nothing in this world that can help me.”

How different this confession was from the first. Anybody can tell you a horrible, traumatizing story in one, concise sentence. All you get is the overview of the tragedy. You fill in the gaps with what your expectations and experiences permit you to believe. The back-story behind the sentence is what kills. When you know the whole story, laid out bare, can you have any idea what someone has gone through. Even then, a completely innocent, sheltered person can’t understand the victim. The platform wasn’t there.”

But Kalvyn? He had a platform, didn’t he?

My swirling misery reflected in those inhuman eyes. As if he understood. As if he indeed wouldn’t walk away. How could I handle that? When had hundreds of people failed me before him?

When a room full of rocks flew around my head, one diamond emerged.

He pulled me into a hug when the tears flowed. Lola stumbled out of nowhere, and threw her arms around us, crying, again. Great. That’s just what I needed. No doubt, she’d heard every damned thing, and she’d never let this go. I despised myself for hurting her.

“Kat, baby, you never told me any of this,” Lola gathered my hair behind my head. “Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why? For years, you’ve acted like those assholes didn’t bother you anymore. That life went on without their approval. You rejected my idea to move into the city, away from them, start fresh somewhere else.”

“I…can’t.” My voice cracked. “Grandma’s house.”

“Hey, kid,” she murmured. “Don’t have to sell it, or anything. I understand you need to feel close to her, but is this worth the expensive of your sanity?”

Kalvyn lifted his arm so Lola could suffocate me in a chokehold.

“Syber?” Kalvyn whispered.

He appeared instantly, as if by puppet strings.

Kalvyn pushed my hair from my face. “Perhaps we should take a trip to my cabin.”

“I believe that to be an excellent plan, Alpha.”

“Can you ask Carmen to watch the campsite while we’re gone, and Quinn to keep tabs on Lexi? Take Lola in your truck.”

Dazed, my attention shifted back and forth between them. The order of authority had never been clearer. Though, Syber was no means the low man on the totem pole. I’d seen him order around Roman and Dorian, who jumped to obey. Like military ranks.

“Will do. Lola, would you like to come with me?”

“Yes.” She straightened. “I go where she goes.”

“Then you should release Katrina, sweetheart. You will be with her again in just a little while,” Syber said gently, caressing her arm. She turned into his chest, and he held her, stance protective, recognizing her fragility.

“Kat?” She said firmly. All traces of the fragile girl I loved were gone. A steel-boned Amazon stood in her place. “What do you want?”

I looked over the forest, and spotted Bianca. “A change of scenery would be nice.”

Lola nodded. “What the woman wants, the woman gets.”

Syber cuddled her closer and then got her to her feet. They headed for his truck.

“Let’s go, beautiful. See if we can soothe the soul,” Kalvyn said.

I nodded, zombified.

I was now in the full force of what I called the “aftermath.” Ninety percent of the time, I was distanced from my emotions, good or bad. The other ten percent came at me like a freight train and left me with a weak mind. The aftermath meant my body led me around on a metaphysical leash, responding to very little, caring about less.

However, I did care about one thing.

One look at Kalvyn and it was obvious I’d scared the hell out of him.