by Nashoda Rose
“You were forced to have sex with men and women, Ream.”
“No. Coerced. Not forced.”
“Same difference,” I muttered. Sudden realization dawned. “That’s why you had to stop. Why you froze when we were having sex? Why you … you don’t like my mouth on you?”
He nodded. “Sometimes the voices … I still hear them. It’s worse when I don’t have control and a woman down on me ...”
“Has the control,” I finished.
He nodded. “A lot of times, I never made it through the sex … it was always ugly for me. But with you … you could stop them. Christ you did. Told you from the beginning that you changed something in me. Never liked having sex until you.”
I was drowning in confusion. I wanted to wrap him up in my arms and hold the boy who had suffered such a horrific circumstance, to bring the Ream I knew back from the cold darkness he was now living in.
“It was when Lenny died that things went to shit and I knew we had to get out of there. But we had no place to go and no money. Lenny’s friend Olaf moved in with us and I didn’t trust him not to … I was afraid he’d make Haven and I work downstairs … and I couldn’t do it anymore.
“And Haven, Christ we were sixteen and she was too fuckin’ pretty. There was one guy who used to come around and buy drugs from Lenny all the time. He’d watch her, it was really creepy, but he never did anything except watch her.” My heart started beating faster and cold shivers raced down my spine. “But when Lenny died … he stopped watching. He raped her. I didn’t know about it for months. Shit, I knew something was wrong with her. She was in her room all the time, barely ate, but she never told me until I saw the track marks on her arm one day. I went ballistic. She told me what happened, fuck what was still happening. The guy came to her room for months and I never knew. I never fuckin’ knew. He gave her the drugs. He fucked her up so bad that … I went after him. Killed him with a marble statue over his head.”
I gasped and my body was screaming to go to him as I listened with horror.
“It felt good. And I’d do it again in a second. I hit him over and over again until his skull was crushed and his face was unrecognizable. And to this day … I don’t regret it. That is the type of man I am.”
My throat was so tight that swallowing was painful. Haven. His twin. Raped over and over again. The drugs. Why he’d freaked over Brett watching me. My pain over Ream cheating seemed so inconsequential now.
“I knew we’d have to leave. Escape before anyone saw the body. Well, his daughter saw what I did but I didn’t care about her. We ran and lived on the streets, scared as shit that we’d be found and killed. Everyone knew everyone on the streets. An old woman found us sleeping in her shed one morning when we over slept. We always left before the sun rose; it was safer that way. But Urma saw us when she was getting her gardening tools, and she just smiled and asked if we were hungry. We stayed in the shed for a few months. I don’t know why she never called social services, but she didn’t. She even offered a place in her house, but I was scared that if Urma got involved in our lives she’d be in danger too.
Haven … yeah, Haven never got over what happened to her. I saw it in her haunted face every single fuckin’ day. She’d find the drugs no matter how much I tried to stop it. She was desperate to have them and she’d do anything to get them. The drugs were her escape, I guess, and she kept getting fucked up. Five times I took her to the hospital for overdosing. I’d have to get her out of there the moment she was well enough before social services picked us up. The last time … I was in the waiting room an hour before the doctor came out and told me she was gone. I didn’t believe him. She hadn’t been that bad. She’d been fucked up way worse before. Why would she die this time? I freaked out. They had to sedate me and when I woke up I was in children’s aid care.
“There was no funeral for Haven. I tried to find out where she was buried, but they had no record of her. Just another dead kid lost in the system. A few months later, I was lucky to be fostered by Crisis’ parents.” Ream looked at me, his eyes still unemotional as if he had to be that way in order to tell me all this. “You see, Kat, I am a piece shit, and you were right to get out while you could.”
“Ream, I was angry. I don’t … Ream I didn’t mean what I said.”
He huffed. “Sure you did, beautiful. I just needed to hear it to remember.”
“Ream, no.” Oh God. No. No matter what I saw, what broke us apart, he wasn’t undeserving. He protected his sister, let his body be used instead of hers. He tried to get her out of that life. I understood why he was crazy protective of me. Possessive. Maybe I understood it about him all along. I accepted it without even knowing this part of him. I didn’t need to know because I’d loved him anyway.
“Women have always meant nothing to me. Even when I escaped that life, being with a woman made me ill. I felt soiled and disgusted by the way they fawned all over me. Even now, being in the band … the women treat me like an object, something to brag about to their friends.”
I was desperate to say no, but it was true. To them he was an object, a rock star. I wanted to hold him in my arms, but I stood silent and still, listening to his haunting words.
“Until you.”
I met his eyes and had to look away or I knew I’d falter.
“You never groveled over me or made me feel like I was being used.” He sighed and put his head down. “The first woman I slept with who I wanted to curl up with and wake up next to in the morning.”
I choked back the sob that clogged my throat. I couldn’t listen to him anymore. I didn’t want to hear this. Where was the anger? I wanted it back. I needed to lock the tears away again and be strong. I had to remember despite his horrific story, he still cheated on me.
“No child should ever have to live what you and your sister did. I wish …” What? That I could erase that from him? Maybe the pain and hurt, but not who it made him. But the worst was that no matter how much I wanted to forgive him, I couldn’t. “I can’t forgive you, Ream.”
His voice was hard as he said, “Never asked you to.”
I flinched and then started for the bedroom door. I needed to leave before I did something stupid as fall back into his arms. “Did you love me?”
Ream’s head jerked in my direction and his face tightened. “It’s over, Kat. And I don’t ever want your pity.”
I nodded. “Yeah.” I understood that better than anyone. And then I walked out.
***
I was numb to it now. My body separated from my mind.
I could go off into another place where no one could touch me.
He didn’t like it.
He made me ask for mercy. I did, just to please him.
I had to please him or it would be worse. He could always make it worse.
I was a toy.
Unfeeling. Cold. Indifferent.
And broken.
It was another two days before I saw him again. Deck had told me or rather ordered me to take his car back home while he stayed with Ream. I stayed locked to my easel and painted away my emotions.
Deck’s words continued to haunt me. That cheating wasn’t in Ream’s makeup. That what you see is not always what it is. I wanted so badly to believe that he didn’t cheat and I kept running the scene over and over in my head but every time it broke me down a little more.
I couldn’t let it go. I even asked Crisis if Ream had ever been so drunk that he didn’t remember what he did the night before. Crisis said no.
Then I went back further. What happened that night? Ream had gone into the back of the bar to talk to Brett … to threaten him. It made sense why he did it. How that guy used to watch his sister all the time. The guy who ended up raping her at the first opportunity. I saw the haunted look in his eyes when he told me. Brett wasn’t some low-life drug dealer, but Ream was vigilant and he had every right to be. He needed to make sure he never made the same mistake, and if it took warning Brett to stay away from me, then he’d d
o it.
When Ream walked into the house a week later, his eyes were dark and sunken like he wasn’t sleeping, but behind the restlessness I saw the same cold darkness I’d seen at the cottage. Maybe Deck was right and he wouldn’t come back from this, and that terrified me because I saw who Ream could be and that man I missed like hell.
Georgie was over since Emily and Logan had gone to sign papers for their new house, and I suspected Emily had asked her to come by and keep me company. I stopped fighting their need to care for me, and accepted it.
“What are you doing here?” Georgie attacked Ream the second he walked in the door, and I put my hand on her not wanting a fight.
“Georgie. Please.”
“Just getting my stuff.” His voice was stiff … monotone.
She huffed and flipped her now purple strands over her shoulder and grabbed my hand. “You’re a piece of shit, you know that. No more cupcake for you, asshole.”
I flinched. Ream didn’t.
He did look at me though, and I felt goose bumps scatter across my skin; it was from fear and dread at what I saw in him. Ream’s hard look was something that I knew could make him slip away from all of us. I wanted to hold out my hand and save him, bring back the man I’d seen laugh and tease me, but it was too late for that.
“Come on, Kat.” Georgie tried to pull me away. We were taking a few of my paintings to the new gallery. I dragged my feet, stumbling as my arm brushed against his as we passed. My breath stopped, my heart pumped crazily, and every molecule was pulling at me to turn around and go back to him.
I just couldn’t understand. He’d been so possessive of me. He loved me. God, he spoke to several neurologists when he’d been on tour. Why would he turn around and cheat on me? It made even less sense now that I knew about his past. If he hated sex so much, why would he risk everything to do it?
He never made a move to stop me. Touch me. Nothing. He just let me walk away and why shouldn’t he?
“Kat, get in.” I didn’t realize that I stood at the passenger door with it wide open and Georgie had already started the engine.
Georgie jabbered about pretty much nothing except the hot guys that had been in her coffee shop this week and how Deck hadn’t even stopped in to see her when he’d been here for two days. I never told her what Deck said about her brother. It would’ve been stupid to give her hope only to have it taken away.
We unloaded my paintings at the new gallery. Then I stayed to help the owner set them up while Georgie went to check up on her coffee shop.
I couldn’t get the image out of my head of how Ream looked, dead and cold. I imagined that was how he was when he was a kid, trying to make it through one more night in order to pay off a debt. It made me so angry, at Molly and her roommates, at myself. Yeah, I was mad at myself for missing that piece of Ream that was so broken and damaged. I’d seen that dark, haunted look in his eyes, but I thought it had been from the loss of his sister. I never imagined the abuse he suffered.
I had to talk to Molly. She was the last person I wanted to see, but I had to find out what led Ream to do something that disgusted him. It didn’t make sense. Or maybe it did. Christ, what did I know?
I knew Ream and he wouldn’t do this to me. Somewhere inside I believed that, and I held onto to the thread of hope with the last of my determination.
“Shit,” I jumped up and down then grabbed my hair and leaned over, making a low growling sound. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Then I grabbed my purse and called out to the gallery owner, Marie. “I have to go do something, I’ll be back later.”
I darted out the door, glancing at my phone. It was still early, plenty of time before Georgie got back. I hailed a cab and told him the address. The entire way there I wrung my hands together, my heart pounding, nerves on edge.
But I had to do this. I’d promised myself to not be afraid to live; well, this was part of living. Finding the truth. Facing the truth head on.
When I got out of the cab, I swayed as the blinding pain of what transpired here hit me. I wanted to run as fast as I could, but I’d run long enough.
I went to knock on the door when it swung open and Molly stood there. “Kat? What are you doing here?” She stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind her. “Everything okay? Does Matt need me at the bar early? Did Ream come back? I heard he took off after … well, you know.”
Yeah, I did fucking know. “Yeah, he’s back.” I thought it strange she didn’t invite me in and instead closed me out. “I came to talk to you about what happened that night.”
“Oh?” She avoided looking at me, and it was nothing unusual for her. She was always shy and insecure. Shit, a slap on the ass from Crisis made her blush. That was the other thing that didn’t make sense; I couldn’t imagine her asking Ream to stay and have a drink with her. But how did her roommates get involved? “Listen, Molly. Why was Ream here? What happened that night?”
She shifted her feet from side to side and her hair fell in front of her eyes so I couldn’t even see her expression. “I was scared. My ex had been harassing me and—”
“I thought your ex was in Vancouver?”
She softly moved the rickety wood chair next to her. “Yeah, he is. Well, he was. Now he’s here.”
“Why didn’t you tell Matt? You know he’d help you out. Send one of his bouncers home with you. Or Brett. I’m sure he’d have helped too.” I was screaming inside. Why Ream? Why did you choose Ream? It wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t her fault. They’d been leaving at the same time. He chose to share a cab, and then like tumbleweed, it rolled into everything else.
Molly didn’t say anything and she kept her head down, but I noticed her body stiffen and her fingers curl into fists then uncurl.
“Molly. I’m just trying to figure out why I found my boyfriend in bed with your two roommates. It just seems so …” Yeah, it was unlike him. “Ream’s not like that.” Because he was forced as a teenager to have sex with adults. The more I thought about it, the less it made sense. Ream choosing to randomly have sex with two strangers? Why? To get off? But he wouldn’t get off on that, he said so himself. That sex was meaningless until me.
Until me.
“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think.”
My eyes widened at her thoughtless retort, and there was an edge in her voice. She peered up at me and for a brief second I saw the corners of her lips curl up, but then it was gone so fast I thought I imagined it.
“I’m sorry. God, Kat. I’m just not getting along with my roommates after that stuff with Ream and with my ex back … I’ve been uptight.”
I nodded. “Yeah.” What I wanted to say was “try being in my shoes bitch.” Because despite always liking Molly, I suddenly hated her. She destroyed everything. Ream was locked inside himself, hating who he was and thinking he wasn’t worth anything. I was living on edge, afraid to wake up in the morning and not feel him next to me.
“Listen, I better get ready for work.” She turned to the door, her hand on the knob, then she said, “Maybe you should just leave him alone. Forget him.”
Whoa. Did Molly want Ream for herself? “Did you fuck him too, Molly? Or did you just let your friends take advantage of a drunk rock star so they could brag about it?” The anger in my voice tightened. “Because he was mine, damn it. Mine.” I don’t know why I said it. Pissed off. Feeling like I was falling apart again after seeing Ream at the farm. Whatever it was, it made Molly react. She swung around and hit me across the face so hard I went falling backwards and stumbled down the steps until I landed on my ass.
I held my hand to my cheek in complete shock. Holy shit. What the hell?
The door opened.
Confusion, then sudden panic grabbed hold.
“Do I have to clean up your mess again, Alexa?” My breath hitched as I recognized Lance’s voice.
Alexa? Molly was … who was Alexa?
Lance strode toward me and I scuttled back on my butt then tried to turn around and get my footing, but
his arm looped around my waist and he picked me off the ground. I started screaming, but his hand plastered over my mouth and muffled the sound.
I inhaled frantically through my nose, the scent of his cologne churning my stomach. He picked me up and carried my flailing body into the house.
***
I was dumped in the foyer and my knees hit the hard unforgiving wood floor. I started to scramble away when I heard the distinct click of a gun. Shit, I’d never forget that sound for the rest of my life.
“You move again, I’ll blow off your leg.” Molly gripped the gun casually with one hand as she pointed at me. “It’ll be messy, so I’d prefer if you stayed quiet and behaved yourself.”
“What do you want to do with her?” Lance asked, casually leaning against the door as if this was a conversation about the weather.
“We can’t leave her here. She’ll have to come with us.”
“Molly? Why?” Her hand was steady as a rock and there wasn’t a single part of her that I recognized. Her shoulders were back and her eyes met mine, hard and fierce. She sneered at me like she wanted to kill me with her bare hands. I wasn’t stupid enough to give her attitude because there was no doubt in my mind she’d shoot me. This wasn’t Molly at all; this woman was Alexa, whoever the hell that was.
“Meet us out back.” I glanced up at Lance on the phone to someone. This was a man I’d kissed, dated, and let into my life.
He put his phone back in his pocket and then strode into the other room and came back with a coiled yellow rope. “Hands, princess.” I started to back away and he chuckled. “Alexa, she thinks she can get away.”
He grabbed my hands and pulled them together in front of me then tightly wrapped the rope around them. Then he leaned in close and seized the bottom of my blouse. I panicked and started fighting, kicking and screaming, trying to crawl away with my hands tied in front of me. I felt like a seal out of water attempting to escape.