by Elyse, Drew
She turned then. She didn’t say anything, but I had her eyes. Whether she meant it as a reward for talking or not, I was taking it as one.
“Mac was the one that took her from pot and liquor up to meth and heroin.”
Some of that hardness went out of her face at that. She knew what it was like growing up with an addict, even if her father had been largely functioning before he went off the fucking deep end.
“He used, but it was always more casual for him. I think his real high came from getting her hooked on the shit and having complete power over her since he controlled her supply.”
I watched as her crossed arms went from being a defensive position to cradling herself, like she was bracing for where this was going. Or holding herself back from coming to me. She looked so fragile standing there that it made my throat tighten up.
“Why don’t you sit down?”
She shook her head. “Please.”
I knew what she wanted, and I’d give her anything.
“He beat us both. Me more than her, really. Abuse is about power, and he had that over her whether he used his fists on her or not. I tried sticking it out, just waiting until I was old enough to work, then I could take off and never look back. Believe it or not, I was a straight-A student before I was a fucking drop out.”
She didn’t laugh, but it wasn’t funny.
“Shit came to a head, and I couldn’t take it there anymore,” I went on.
“What shit?” she interrupted.
I hesitated, the instinct to not talk about it taking over, and her eyes shut down.
Fuck.
I had to give her everything, that was the whole point here.
“They’d have friends over, go on crazy benders right there in the house. I was expected to stay in my room. That shit would last for days, sometimes multiple. I was allowed in my room and the bathroom, that was it. Didn’t matter if I had school, didn’t matter if I was hungry.”
“They didn’t feed you?” she whispered.
“No. They didn’t give a shit about me, they just wanted me out of the way.” I didn’t let myself focus on the sympathy that was leaking into her gaze. I just kept talking, wanting to get this done one way or another.
“I was fifteen. I should have known better at that point, but I thought I was smart. Thought, with how much they’d all been smoking and drinking, that I could sneak to the kitchen and back and they wouldn’t notice. I’m not sure Mac had anything but liquor in his system. Probably just enjoying being the big man that got everyone else their fix. He noticed me, grabbed me, beat me right there in front of them all.”
Gwen’s brows were together, her mouth pinched. She was getting angry on my behalf and she didn’t even know it all yet. I forged ahead before she could go off on one.
“When he was done with me, he called her over. She was high as a fucking kite, but that was nothing new. Then, while I was lying there unable to move after the beating he’d given me, he made her climb onto his cock right in front of all the other people there, right in front of me. And that motherfucker looked right at me while she rode him and told me that she didn’t give a fuck I was there. Because she didn’t. She never had.
“I don’t know why that broke me. I’d known a long time the woman didn’t give a shit about me. But that night, I was done. I stuck around another week while I healed up, then I took off.”
“Where did you go?”
“Didn’t have anywhere to go. Took what little I had, stole some cash Mac left around, and just walked out. I tried shelters for a while, but a fifteen-year-old kid on his own meant CPS getting a call. I wasn’t about to go into the system and get bounced around that way, so I’d be gone before they could show.
“Problem was, that fifteen-year-old kid with no ID, no address, no nothing, he couldn’t get a job. I’d occasionally land some day labor shit that was paid in cash, but I didn’t even have a way to get a bank account. I’d find some places to crash when I had money, but the money disappeared fast.”
Gwen took a step closer to me, but I didn’t take that invitation. I couldn’t be touching her and going back into this shit at the same time.
“Got to the point that my only option was finding somewhere to squat. Sometimes that panned out, an empty building no one was keeping an eye on that hadn’t been taken over by junkies that’d pull a knife on you if they thought you had so much as chump change that could help them finance another high. More often I’d end up in an alley somewhere.
“People don’t realize how that shit perpetuates. I had no money to put a roof over my head, had no money for food, which left me too weak to keep walking all over the city looking for a way to earn some money to get those things. I stayed out there, my clothes got worn down to nothing, I smelled like rot, those few opportunities for work died out to nothing.”
Her expression held taut, but her eyes betrayed her fear. She knew where we were.
“I was starving. Seriously starting to wonder how much longer I’d make it, when they approached. Two of them, not big dudes, but it was obvious you didn’t fuck with them all the same. Started off with just handing me food. Then cash as days went on. It was a test, seeing if I was going to blow that money on getting drunk or high. Amounts increased a bit at a time. I never spent it all, worried it’d stop, worried that it had a cost.
“Then one day, there was no cash, just an offer.”
“You want to keep earning, we got a job for you,” the smaller one said. He was the talker, always. Hadn’t heard the bald one say a thing anytime they made their approaches.
I knew it was coming. This was the part where they showed their true colors. Fucking perverts or gang bangers or fuck knew what.
“What kinda job?”
“We help people take care of problems. Sometimes, those problems need to be dealt with by someone who’s face doesn’t mean anything. Someone who isn’t anyone to be traced.”
“I don’t exactly got somewhere to hide out if the cops start looking.”
“Cops aren’t the concern,” baldy finally piped up.
His friend elaborated, “Our clients live on a grid where the players are all known. Someone makes a move, there’s talk. Someone who’s no one makes that move, there’s nothing but confusion. Everyone’s so busy trying to figure out who set shit in motion, no one’s looking for the no one that did it.”
“Did what, exactly?”
“Whatever needs to be done.”
“They recruited you.”
“Yeah.”
“All that stuff you said, they were the ones that paid for it.”
That stuff. Like I’d talked about odd jobs, not beating the shit out of lowlifes in Seattle’s underbelly, not leading them into the hands of their enemies to be disposed of.
“Yeah.”
“And you did it, because it was that or starve.”
Fuck.
“No, Gwen. You can’t make excuses for me.”
Her arms dropped from her protective hold of herself, spreading at her sides. “I’m not making excuses, but how else would you describe it? If you hadn’t done what they asked, they’d have left you there to suffer, to probably die out on the street. I’m not saying it was right, but you needed a way out and you found it. And that’s supposed to scare me? That you did whatever it took to survive?”
“Because of shit I did, other people didn’t survive. Don’t try to ignore that. I knew what handing them over to their enemies meant, and I did it anyway.”
She gulped. “You were a cog in a wheel that was turning either way.”
“Not sure the assholes I handed over would agree with you.”
“I’m not sure that the people Braden puts in jail would all agree he’s dispensing justice,” she shot back.
“You know damn well those things don’t compare. I should just as well be one of those people Braden locks up. I didn’t exactly clarify what they were wanted for, only hunt down the assholes I felt had it coming. I did what I was tol
d, what I was paid to do.”
She exhaled hard, looking away. She seemed so tired, and I knew it was my fault. “You’re right. You did terrible things. Things that turn my stomach.” Her eyes fixed back on me. “But there’s still a difference between being in your position and being the type of person that hired those guys. There’s a difference between being desperate and being the kind of manipulative asshole that would use poor kids on the street to do their dirty work because they are desperate. You did horrible things that I know you regret, but it’s not like you were a hired killer.”
Chapter Thirty
Gwen
Panic hit his eyes, and I felt bile creep up my throat.
No.
“Parker?” I couldn’t contain the way my voice shook even in just his name.
He couldn’t. It wasn’t possible that he…
“The last job I was given,” he started, and I stopped breathing. He dropped his head, eyes to the ground before he ground out, “That’s what they wanted from me.”
No. No. No.
Wait.
“Wanted?”
He looked up at me again, a devastation in them I knew, because I had seen it once before.
It was the same look I saw in my father’s eyes the first time he saw me in that courtroom.
“I couldn’t do it,” he whispered.
It was like I’d been shocked with a defibrillator. All at once, my heart was beating again, I could breathe. Of course he couldn’t do that.
He might think he was a monster, but I knew the truth.
The truth was Park had a dark past. He’d made mistakes, ones that it wasn’t my place to offer him forgiveness for, ones that I knew he would regret for the rest of his life. But it hadn’t been recklessness or ambivalence that led him down that road, not like it had for my father or his mother. It had been desperation.
How could I hold his decisions against him when I had no idea what it was like to be in that position?
For all my mother’s shortcomings, for all the damage my father caused to me at every level, I’d always been fed. I’d always had a roof over my head. With the exception of the heartbeat when I saw the headlights coming too close to the living room window before everything went black, I’d never had to know fear for my own survival like that.
Park had lived that way, not for moments, but day in and day out.
People did far worse things for far less imperative reasons. Like that woman that birthed him letting her own son suffer that way because she’d rather get high. Like those assholes that used him and probably plenty of other people in desperate pad their pockets.
Unable to stand by and see him like that, the way he was torturing himself, I moved across the room. There was a touch of panic in Park’s eyes as I got close. It was like that fifteen-year-old kid was still in there, still terrified of what horrible thing would happen next.
Not giving him a chance to keep me at arm’s length, I stepped in close, wrapping my arms around him and pressing my face into his chest.
He was tense for a long time, and I worried he would try to push me off. Then, he sagged. It was like all the fight, all the steel he’d had to infuse in his spine for years and years, melted out of him. He wrapped me up, dropping his face to my neck.
“Gwen.” My name was like a prayer on his lips.
“It’s okay.”
For a time, I let it lie. I let him take the comfort he obviously needed. But there was more that I needed, too.
“Tell me the rest.”
I heard him swallow, his hold on me tightening just a touch, like he was bracing for the moment I would throw him off and disappear.
“I was so close. I had enough that I was finding sublets then, not having to sleep out on the streets. I wanted out, to be done with the shit they made me do, but I didn’t have enough to put a security deposit down. Worse, I didn’t have any ID.”
“What?”
He sighed. “I have no idea what would have happened to me if I’d stayed in that house but running was fucking stupid. I was too young to realize what I was getting myself into and too young to plan well. I left without any papers. No birth certificate, no social security card. I didn’t have an ID yet, just one for school. I didn’t have shit that could prove who I was, and you needed that kind of thing to get a job or an apartment.
“They knew I didn’t have that shit, so they came that night with an offer. They had resources. They could get me ID. On top of being the highest pay for a job yet, they’d get me the paperwork. But it would come at a cost.”
His heart was beating fast, so fast that it set mine off too.
“They gave me the address, told me when he’d be home. Then they took out the gloves and the knife. It was so surreal. I knew what they were implying. They’d never given me anything before a job before. I never did any of it armed. I still couldn’t process it.”
In my mind, could picture it so clearly. Park, younger, without the tattoos, leaner even than he was now I imagined. That same absolute panic that I’d seen in his eyes just minutes ago as they handed him the tools to do to something he could never come back from.
I squeezed him tighter.
“I actually asked,” he went on. A laugh that was completely devoid of humor rolling through the words. “I asked them what it was they wanted me to do. They looked at me like I was fucking stupid and told me to fucking take care of it.”
His breathing was unsteady, and I knew it was all playing out in his head even as he struggled to put it all into words.
“I didn’t want to, but I wasn’t sure I had any choice. I knew what they could do, what they did do even if they put some of those tasks on kids like me. They wanted that job done, and I feared what the punishment would be if I didn’t do it. So I went.
“It took me fucking forever to walk there. I kept having to stop, sit down right back in those alleys I’d done everything to escape because I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to die before I even made it there, and their retribution for not coming through wouldn’t matter.”
“Panic attacks,” I guessed.
“Yeah.” He took a shaky breath. “I got there eventually, but it took me another forty minutes before I could even get close enough to check for a way in. The backdoor was unlocked, and I swear I almost dropped and cried right there. I wanted it to be hard. I wanted to have no choice but to break a window and give the guy a chance to run. But that door just popped open without a sound.”
His hold on me was tight enough to hurt, but I didn’t say a thing.
“He was in the living room, watching TV. I was coming up behind him, debating with every step if I should just turn around and run. But one spot on the floor creaked, and he turned around. I was about to bolt, but he came at me. I didn’t get it. I had a knife, not a gun. If he’d kept that distance, there was only so much I could do. He didn’t hold back, though. He was fighting for his life, and he knew it. I fought him off, getting him with the knife a few times on the arms, but he was overpowering me, going for my throat.”
I clenched my eyes shut, wanting it to stop. Wanting to end this now. But he needed to get it out. I hadn’t realized how much until now.
“I…I drove the knife into his arm. I’ll never forget how that felt, how his blood…” He took a long moment before he pushed on. “He reared back, and I got free. I was standing over him when she walked in.”
My eyes popped open, and I gasped. “She?”
His head shook. “His daughter. Had to be. She was younger than me. Twelve, thirteen maybe. They told me he would be alone. They swore he’d be the only one there. But they lied. I knew it in my gut. They knew there was at least a chance she would be there. She didn’t even run when she saw the knife in my hand. She just stood there and pleaded with me not to hurt him.”
I held him while that memory took over. He kept shaking his head like he was trying to escape it.
“I ran,” he finally said. “I ran right out of that house. I went b
ack to the shithole I was subletting, careful to make sure they weren’t around. I grabbed everything I had, and I was on the first Greyhound out of Seattle. Spent the whole ride terrified I’d get off that bus and they’d be there ready to take me, but I was prepared to get whatever was coming to me. I wasn’t prepared to take a man’s life.”
He didn’t say anything else. I didn’t, either.
What did you say to that? What words could possibly follow all he’d shared?
I just held fast, hoping that alone would communicate what I needed it to.
It was a long time before he broke the silence, and his whispered plea broke my heart.
“Please don’t go.”
Because he believed I would. He’d probably be certain from the start that if I ever learned about his past, I would be gone.
I bunched his shirt into my hands, gripping for dear life.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He squeezed until I could scarcely pull in a breath, and then my feet were leaving the ground. On instinct, I wrapped my legs around him. He carried us to the couch, lowering us both down until he was pressing me into it, his face still buried in my neck.
“Tell me you mean it,” he demanded, voice raw.
I knew I was still talking to Park, but this wasn’t my Park. This was that scared child who’d never had anything of unconditional love. Not until they brought him into the family that was Sailor’s Grave, but he’d never let them all the way in. He never accepted what they were giving freely, because it would devastate him to lose it.
Like he was still afraid of losing me.
“I mean it,” I swore.
He let out a gust of breath but didn’t fully relax. He wanted to believe me, was desperate to even. But he couldn’t.
I released him with one arm, bringing my hand up to his cheek, and pressing until he gave me what I wanted and lifted his head. The trepidation in his eyes made my heart ache.