by Sonya Jesus
I drop my fork. “What?”
“I’m no longer moving to California, this year.” Stone tacks on the last part to annoy me.
But it doesn’t. He’s not going to be moving there until I’m ready to let him go, and neither is Kelsie.
She won’t be as easy to convince as my brother. Pretending to be morally challenged with certain aspects of the business and allowing my brother to intervene with nonviolence won’t be enough to keep Kelsie around.
“Why not?” she asks and checks her phone.
“I’m staying to help Breaker.”
“Okay.” She purses her lips together and swallows whatever else she’s going to say. “I’m going to find out if she’s still at the refuge.” She puts her phone on the island and forks some pasta into her mouth.
“What are you suggesting?” My question earns me points with her and my brother, who is pleased with my comment. Either that or he’s making googly eyes at me while he dangles his fork in the air. He is a strange one.
“I’m infiltrating the refuge.”
I smile wide, pleased with her initiative.
“Stop looking at me like that!” she growls at both of us.
“Like what?”
“Like you a hold a long blink for a second too long and it means ‘fuck you’ or something.”
I chuckle. “Like, Morris code for the eyes?”
“Two blinks for yes, three for no.” Stone shares my happy smile until a thought crosses his mind. “Oh, hell no! You can’t just go in there shooting people up!”
She cuts her gaze to him and rolls her eyes. “Relax, I’m not supporting the bullet questioning. I have a bit more grace than that.” She finishes the last of her food.
Stone scoffs, and before taking a large chug of his wine delivers his dig. “You never know with you two. Next thing you know you’re going to be engraving bullets and delivering them to your targets, like the guy on the news.”
Kelsie whacks Stone in the chest. “Hit me!”
Kelsie and I both laugh as he chokes and pinches the bridge of his nose as the alcohol burns its way up his nostrils.
After clearing his throat and blinking rapidly to clear the water from his eyes, he swivels his body toward her and pushes her off the stool, gently. “What is it with you and hitting today? Did you step in Foxy’s shit pile?”
“I can only take you in doses.” She takes a few seconds too long to quip back, turning Stone’s speculation into evidence. “I’ve had a long day.”
Her clipped tone means she doesn’t want to elaborate, so I take the opportunity to get in her good graces. “How do you plan on getting in there?”
She tilts her head toward me and studies me, searching my body for a sign of sarcasm. Once she realizes I’m genuinely curious, she replies, “I’ve already been to the hospital, so they know about the history. The nurse called Addie before giving me the name and number.”
“Addie?” I question, curious as to the nickname. “Who is that? Isn’t it Addison?”
She shrugs and chooses to ignore my question.
“Fine, did you get the nurse’s name?”
The way she crosses her arms over her chest says she did, but refused to give it to me. “I’m not going back to the hospital, but I can’t go unless you or Stone punch me.”
“Are you insane, Kelsie?” Stone doesn’t move a muscle. “Don’t even think about it, Breaker!”
No way in hell would I hit my sister. I might be aggressive with women, but I don’t hit them, not unless they ask me to. “No,” I clarify and grab the three plates to take to the sink. “This seems like a Kelsie-Stone conversation.”
“No, Kelsie.”
“It’s either that or I show up at the damn shelter and kill every last one of them.” She wouldn’t, but I would. Clever girl.
“Bullshit,” Stone calls her bluff. “If I hit you, you’re going to tell Hayden, and he’s going to be down my throat all fucking day. I’m already going to have to tell him where you’re going.”
“I already texted him,” she quips out.
They argue back and forth, and by the time I’ve put the dishes in the dishwasher, I realize two things: they are fucking annoying, and I need a cook.
“Enough!” I intervene, and ask Stone for his phone. He gives it to me, and I dial Franco, putting it on speaker. “Where are you?”
“About to pull into the mansion. Did you know you’re six men short tonight?”
“Stone and Kelsie are here. And you. So technically just three.”
“Your brother really needs to get the men paid because I just spent two hours convincing them to stay.”
“Hurry up. We need your services,” I growl.
“Seriously?” Franco hangs up on me just as Stone flips out.
“No!” Stone gets up and swipes his hand through the air, symbolically cutting through layers of wild jungle foliage. “No, no, no.”
I bite my tongue again, letting him think he has a say in it and that he’s rubbing off on me. Maybe he kind of is.
Kelsie baits Stone, “You hit like a girl. I had to tell the nurse it was the first time this ever happened.”
“Am I interrupting?” Franco asks, causing all our heads to turn in his direction. He’s wearing black trousers—ironed black trousers—and an expensive button-down shirt, and his eyes are burrowed on Kelsie.
“Yes.” I point to my sister as she snarls her lip at him. “We were discussing something.”
Stone transforms his eyes into a bow and arrow and locks in on his target—Franco. At least it’s not me, I think, stifling the humorous prickle in my throat with a cough. Does he think he’s shooting arrows at him every time he blinks? He hasn’t quite gotten the intimidation thing down.
My attention bounces to Kelsie, who’s glaring at Franco. The more she does that, the more he likes her. She’s the only girl who can give him a hard-on without being bloody, and I’m a bit worried about what she’s going to do.
“I’m all ears,” he says with a dip in his pitch. “What can I do for you?”
She rolls her eyes and marches over to him. “I need you to shut up, and hit me.”
His eyes darken with excitation as he narrows his gaze on her. “What?”
Don’t repeat it, I mentally say, but she does, and before she’s even finished he adjusts his pants, making room for his boner.
“Franco,” I intervene. “We found 327, and Kelsie needs a way in.”
Kelsie chimes in, “Which means I need you to be convincing. Hit me.”
He straightens up, tent pitched and ready for the fall down Kelsie mountains. His right arm swings back as he gears up for the hit.
I want to intercede; every single fiber in my body begs me to knock Franco out, but he doesn’t know Kelsie is my sister. To him, nothing has changed. But to me it has.
“Kelsie,” I call for some reason.
“What?” she asks, looking in my direction. “This needs to be done…”
I tune her out as Franco glances at me for approval.
Before I can shake my head, his hand flies through the air and lands on Kelsie’s cheek, knocking her off her axis. She howls and curses in the air, holding her face in the palm of her hand as she turns murderous eyes on Franco.
He caught her off guard. Because of me.
Stone’s on his feet and marching toward them, but Kelsie puts her hands up on either side, stopping us, not that I have moved forward. She spits out blood, saliva, and a piece of her tooth. Then, she dabs at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Both of you leave.” She spits again and glares at Franco.
He doesn’t look so cocky anymore.
“You don’t have to do this, Kelsie. One’s enough,” Stone bargains.
Franco digs his fingers into her spit and pulls out the piece of her tooth that broke off. He holds it in the air between them and smirks. “I think there’s another piece I can knock out.”
“She needs to be able to speak, Franco.”
&nbs
p; “Get out.” Kelsie has already made her decision. “I’ve been through worse, and you’re going to owe me one after this, Breaker.”
My chest constricts at her confession. She was referring to the emotional beating her life had given her. She’s still standing. A few bruises and cuts were nothing compared to what she’s been through.
That’s why, on my way out, I whisper my warning to Franco, “Any permanent damage you inflict on her, I will inflict on you, before I butcher you myself.”
10
Heartbreak, Maybe
327
Pregnant. That’s what the doctor said right before he took my blood. My last period was somewhere between Breaker’s confession and the day before he made me watch Scar remove 324’s ovaries and then her emerald eyes, which was also around the time I told him to kill me. Every time we had sex that week, I appealed—not to the guy who walked in but to the guy who stayed with me—asking him to let me go or kill me.
And every day that week, he made me watch someone die. He killed them for me.
Maybe he wanted to show me what death looked like at The Farm and scare me into changing my answer, but the truth is, I’d rather have died than become an incubator.
Had I known I was already one, maybe I wouldn’t have begged to be killed.
Or maybe he wouldn’t have let me go.
Lucky for me, there was no way he could have known. Ivy helped me plot and narrow down the sex dates, and we estimated date of conception around mid-January, right before he let me go. The night before he set me free, he stayed all night and held me. Nothing was different than the other nights. We were still on the same recently new mattress, dirtied only with our bodies. I still asked him to have mercy on me and kill me, and he still distracted me from the awfulness of my life by giving me pleasure and security.
Then he woke up, placed a kiss to the top of my head, and took me outside, naked and with one command: run.
Words weren’t his thing.
They weren’t mine either, but the numbers scribbled out on paper and the due date circled in red, said a different story. October 11. I will never forget that day.
It was just a little blood.
The tear-blotched paper and ultrasound in my nightstand attest to the fact that a lot of blood wasn’t necessary to have a miscarriage in the first trimester. I haven’t shown anyone the ultrasound. Only Addie and Ivy know where the blood came from, and I don’t ever want to talk about this again.
I know I’ll have to, but…
My hand rubs my stomach as tears form in my eyes. There was a baby attached to the right part of my uterus, and I didn’t even know. Now, it is just fetal tissue. It’ll never be a son or a daughter, or a brother or a sister. It will never breathe or cry in my arms. Never walk, or talk, or call me Mom. I’ll never know if it would look like me or look like him, and I’ll never meet him or her, despite it growing inside me. It will forever be an it because I never named the baby.
Our baby. It was a part of Breaker, but it was also a part of me, which may not be a good thing. I’d be a horrible mother.
How would I provide for a kid? Steal baby identities? Return to my real name and face the consequences of everything I’ve done?
They’d probably take the baby from me and lock me up in jail for arson. I use both hands to rub at my temples in circular motions, before the anxiety overwhelms me. The more I think about the life it’ll never have, the more I cry. And the more I cry, the deeper it hurts and the quicker my heart beats and thoughts flood my brain.
What kind of life did it have?
Three chaotic months in utero. That’s the extent of its life. Panic attacks, night terrors, restlessness… Can stress pass the umbilical cord? I shake my panicked thoughts and tell myself, I’m okay. Everything is fine.
But it’s not fine. I failed. The baby is dead because I didn’t pay attention.
Inhale and exhale, I command my brain as I guide myself through the onset of an attack. There’s nothing I can do to change the outcome of what happened.
The thought gives me some comfort, and my breaths return to a normal rate. I’ve always had irregular periods, and I thought the malnourishment and stress from… Would what? Serve as a contraceptive? I’m such an idiot.
Frustrated with myself for having to go through all of this, I stare at the ceiling and wipe my eyes. The doctor said the hormonal changes from the pregnancy might contribute to the increased anxiety, but Addie thinks it’s from the traumatic experience, especially because of the fainting and recurrent experiences.
It’s probably both.
And now I’m mourning a baby I didn’t even know I wanted, and I keep calling the baby it. Like an animal, which is what they did at The Farm.
“Sawyer,” I say into the air, baptizing the nonexistent child. This way gender wouldn’t matter. “I’m sorry.” The apology does little to soothe the ache in my womb.
Another heartbreak caused by Breaker Beneventi.
I woke up last night again because of him. When I got back from the doctor, I slept all through the day and night. Probably because they gave me some sleep aids that I’m not supposed to use again.
Friday, Ivy slept with me and kept waking me up every couple of hours because she kept talking to me, or to herself. I think she likes to hear the sound of her own voice, which is okay, because it helped me not have an anxiety attack. She even bought me a soothing bodywash with lavender and rose oil and a scented candle, but neither of them are very effective when she’s talking through them. Lucky for me, she left me alone this past night.
The soothing soap helped me fall asleep, but didn’t do much during the sleep process. That part is a bit more complex.
“Have you seen Ivy?” Addie stands in the doorway of the annex.
“Hey, Addie. She signed out a little while ago before stopping in to see how I was.” I roll the sheets up and drop them into the laundry basket in the bathroom. “Why, what’s up? Do you need help with something?”
“Um, no… it’s just we have another girl. She’s pretty banged up, and she’s looking for a place to stay. We’re full, but I don’t have the heart to turn her away.”
“Oh, she can stay here, Addie. I can crash on the floor.” Having Ivy up my ass all the time made me a bit more of a people person.
“No, this place is yours. You pay for it.”
“Technically, I haven’t yet. I’m still learning my way around the kitchen, and—”
“And nothing! She can take one of the rooms in the main house. I’ll clear out Addison’s things and turn the room into an extra bedroom. I can probably fit a couple sets of bunk beds.”
“No,” I say softly. “I mean, you can do that, but the new girls can stay here with me. I’m kind of lonely anyway.” Peopling is hard for me, but I’m starting to get the hang of this whole talking thing. Not that I have much choice—Ivy never shuts up. Less than one week and already she knows more about me than anyone else, which still isn’t much.
Maybe that’s what normal girls do.
Then again, normal girls my age don’t wet the bed. Thankfully, Addie has all the mattresses covered with a waterproof mat that can be disinfected. I bleached it before Addie got here, along with airing out the room.
Addie whiffs the air. “Why does it smell like bleach in here?”
“I was cleaning the bathroom,” I lie.
Night terrors are awful. I woke up and couldn’t move. My legs felt like lead and my arms were weighted down. Tears dropped from my eyes and scraped down my cheeks as I tried to shut the image of The Butcher from my mind. Shutting my eyes made it worse—it transported me back to the dark hole I hid in. Despite the warm spring air and my clothes, I was freezing and naked. Gunshots roared through my dream, and a stream of liquid ran between my thighs.
Then I passed out and woke up to the sun shining through the window, the bookshelves, and the yellow walls of the room, soaked in shame. I scrubbed the night and the memories off in the shower, and then swallo
wed yet another consequence of meeting Breaker Beneventi.
Addie is still looking at me the way she did yesterday. “Did you have another dream?”
I swallow the lump in my throat, not wanting to lie to the woman who is helping me. “Yes, kind of. I had it while I was awake, and then I passed out.” Leaving out the embarrassing points are critical for me, so I skip the tears and the piss, and tell her my version of the truth. “I was hiding in a dark place.”
“A flashback?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” I take the fresh fitted sheet from the folded linen pile on the nightstand. “I couldn’t move… I think I fainted.”
Addie steps closer to help me, and between the two of us, we unfold the sheet and spread it over the mattress. “Are you having anxiety attacks again?”
“Not on Thursday or Friday.”
“Sometimes, Mercy…” She lifts the corner of the mattress and fits the material over it while deciding on whether or not she wants to broach the subject. “Some girls come here with a form of PTSD.”
“I wasn’t at war, Addie.” I smile softly as I drop the corner of the mattress and reach for the other sheet. Addie brought this up in group therapy.
“But you are, with yourself and with your memories, aren’t you? You keep to yourself, and you’re always afraid he’s going to show up here and take you away.”
That is true, but I am more concerned about the killing part. “He probably would if he knew where I was.” The Butcher would slice me open in a heartbeat. I’m not sure what Breaker would do. Just the thought freaks me out, and I busy myself with the sheet, stretching it out toward her to distract her.
She gets inside my head too easily.
We throw the sheet in the air and gently let it fall over the bed, then flatten the iron lines with the palms of our hands, tucking and smoothing as we go.
“This is what therapy does for the soul.”
“What?” I ask as I grab the pillowcases.
“It’s like making a bed. We smooth out the wrinkles and tuck in the loose ends, so you can feel secure. Fitted in place.”