by K. L. Jessop
"Stop it, Dexter," Pepper orders softly. "You’ve got this. It's not going to be easy for either of you, but it needs to be done. You've been waiting for this moment for a lifetime. You can do this."
“Dex, don’t let your fear stop you from what you’ve been so desperate to find all these years. Tessa needs you more than you know. Like Pepper said, you can do this.” Emmet grips my shoulder, giving me that last bit of encouragement I need in order to take the next step—the next step towards something that is about to change my life all over again.
I nod at them all, agreeing with them, when on the inside I fail to have any faith in myself.
Dr Hensley steps forward with a confident smile. “Dexter, this is a massive step for you both, but we are right with you just as much as we are for Tessa. I’ll go in first and you follow behind. And if at any point we believe it’s too much for either of you, we’ll call it, okay?”
I nod, looking back at Pepper who is smiling through her tears as she mouths that she loves me.
As I enter the room, every emotion a human could possibly feel hits me fast as my legs try their hardest not to give out. Every question I want to ask her is running around my head along with the one I’m asking myself in secret: wondering what sort of woman my sister has grown into, hoping that she'll still want me in her life but scared shitless that she won’t.
“Tessa, there is someone here to see you.” Hensley smiles brightly, but the sudden halt in her pace makes my back straighten. “It’s your brother, Dexter, remember? From the photo?”
I can’t see her face as her back is to me, and the longer we stand feet apart, the more I can hear the blood rush through my body. My temples vibrate, my mouth is dry and my heart is expanding with a feeling I can’t explain.
Her body is locked so tight. Her arms rigid at her sides as her fingers continue to fidget. I can see her chest rising and falling, and I’m unsure if she’s trying to compose herself or if she’s at the point where she is about to breakdown. Either way, I need her to hear me.
"Tessa?" I murmur, barely recognising my own voice. “It’s me.”
“It’s okay, Tessa,” the nurse says, smiling at her and giving us both the encouragement that I’m lacking. “Everything is going to be okay now, remember? Just like we talked about.”
In slow motion, she turns, increasing my heart rate with each step, and when I see her face, I exhale a shaky breath.
Her eyes are pained with so much trauma, her tiny frame trembling as tears fill her eyes, and her entire face laced with distress and suffering.
It becomes very clear very quickly that my mind hasn’t really processed everything that’s happened this past week.
She is alive.
I step forward, needing to be closer as I keep my voice low. "Tess. It's me. Dexter."
"My Dexter?" she weeps in a broken whisper.
I'm gone.
Hearing her voice has me barely standing as my tears start to fall. Taking another step, I reach out to touch her but she steps back, now looking petrified. If it weren’t for the fact I know she was asking after me, I'd be on the floor in pieces with her rejection.
"It’s okay. I'm not going to hurt you. I promise." I wipe my face with my sleeve, sniffing back my tears, trying not to cause her any more distress. "You can trust me, Tessa."
Her body shudders with the onslaught of her tears as she covers her face with her hands.
I swallow hard when I get a clear visual of her arms. They are covered in bruises. Fresh ones. Old ones. Ones that are still trying to break through her skin as dark circles wrap around her wrist like dirty tattoos.
What has he done to her?
“Tessa, Dexter just wants to talk,” the nurse says, trying to ease the tension that’s suddenly wedged between us.
With a small step, I'm so close I can feel her body heat and the need to hold her is unbearable. “He’s right, Tessa. I’m not going to hurt you.” I reach out again, hoping she will connect with my touch this time. “I just want my sister back.”
But it’s as if I’ve said the wrong thing because within seconds, she smacks my hands away and takes another step. Her whole being transforms with sudden distress, and I can’t bear to witness it.
“No. No, no, no.” She digs at her arms, pacing harder than ever before as she repeats the word no over and over. Hensley tries to calm her, but while he does that, I loose the only attention I had from her and that shitty part of me want’s that back. I’ll take anything right now over nothing at all. So I say the one thing I always used to say to her when she was always so upset, hoping somehow I will make her reconnect with me.
“Tessa. It’s you and me against the world remember?”
When she stops abruptly and turns in my direction, I feel a pang of relief that I’ve got her back, but that all changes when her face becomes distraught and she screams no from the top of her lungs, coming at me fast and smacking me in the chest so hard that I stumble back. Each blow she gives she screams at me. No words. She just roars out her anguish.
I feel myself falling deeper into a world of pure heartache as she lashes out, bringing my tears to the surface thick and fast as her own now stream. Her tiny frame is raging with so much anger that even Hensley and the nurse are pushed back. I try to stop her blows but something inside of me tells me that not only does she need this, I fucking deserve every hit. When Hensley heads towards her again, I tell him to leave her, holding my hand up to them and let my sister use me as a human punch bag, my tears falling hard and heavy.
With each hit I deserve, she takes my strength, and if I haven’t got that, I don’t have anything for either of us. I’m defeated, lost, and my heart is in so much pain right now. I want Pepper with me to give me that extra power, and I hate the fact she can see all of this as she stands watching through a window I can’t see her through. My chest hurts from the intensity of Tessa’s punches, shattering with her cry as she falls apart.
Needing to calm her in any way I can, I reach out, fighting her blows as the rawness in her voice begins to crack.
“Tessa, stop!” Doing the only thing that comes to mind, I grab her arms, twist her fast and pin her back flush against me, wrapping my arms around her tightly to restrain her as she tries to fight herself free.
“Lies. It’s all lies,” she screams but I ignore her.
“I’ve got you, Tessa. It’s going to be okay.”
“No.” Her body fails fast and she starts to give up the fight the tighter I hold her. Shifting my leg over hers, I pull her down so our legs give out and she falls with me, and only then do her screams stop and a deep hysterical cry leaves her tiny frame harder than her tears before it. Now clinging onto me like her life depends on it, she buries her head into the dip of my neck.
“I’m here, Tessa. I’ve got you.” I rock us gently, trying to ease her distress. “I’ve got you now. You’re safe now.”
“Dexter…” she weeps, her voice now as fragile as my heart. “My Dexter.”
“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Not anymore.” I stroke her hair, holding her so close to comfort her as if the separated years have never been split between us. I’m taken right back there, to all those times when I was young, and she was even smaller. The way I held her then is no different to the way I am now, and I know she can feel it, too. With each passing second, I can sense her body calm and the tension leaves her distraught limbs as she relaxes against me. I’m unsure whose heart is beating the loudest because that’s all I can hear now, as Hensley and the nurse sit back and watch us.
I probably shouldn’t have restrained her—I should have let them take control—but she’s my sister and I couldn’t have just let her be taken from me again.
Resting my head back against the wall in defeat, silent tears fall down my temples as I look at the window trying anyway I can to connect with Pepper through the one-way glass, knowing her eyes are on me from the other side. But as we fall into the aftermath of her outburst, Tessa’s voice br
ings my attention back to her as she whispers over and over.
“Don’t let me go. Don’t let me go. Don’t let me go.” Her scattered breath from the onslaught of her tears takes her breath unexpectedly.
I’ll never let her go again, no matter how poorly she is or how long she has to remain in here. I’ll never let her go again. Not now that I’ve got her back.
“I’ve got you, Tessa.”
“Don’t let me go.”
“I won’t.” I kiss her head, trying with everything I can to reassure her. “You’re safe, now. I promise.”
Her voice cracks as her body shudders with another round of tears, her fists now balling into the material of my shirt, weeping out her next words that rip me in two. “Don’t let them hurt me anymore.”
And that’s all it takes for my own tears to truly erupt because of everything that’s just happened and everything she’s been through when I promised I’d protect her forever.
I failed her.
They broke her.
Our mother killed us both.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dexter
“What are you smiling about?” Pepper asks, reaching out to me across the bed.
I can’t even begin to comprehend what life has been like these past couple of months. It’s a crazy feeling when the person you’ve longed to find for so long is right back in the centre of your life, and as much as that lightens everything around you, it plays havoc with your mind.
My anxieties are once again all over the place—they have been ever since the day I first reunited with Tessa. That day had brought on so many feelings and emotions, I can’t even begin to explain. Even now, I wake up in a panic thinking it was all a dream and that I’m going to find myself back at square one—still searching, still hurting—but then as I lay looking up at my ceiling, allowing my body and mind to adjust themselves to my surroundings, it all comes leaping back and the beam on my face grows wider.
Today is no different, but in many ways it is.
I tilt my head to the side and reach up to dust my fingers over Pepper’s lips. Today may not be the first morning I’ve woken up beside her, but it’s the first morning she’s woken up beside me knowing she’s officially living with me.
In the weeks after I’d connected with Tessa, I’d fallen hard. I’d told her of my bipolar and that sometimes I wouldn’t be around as much as I would like, and I’m glad I did because the impact of reuniting had me deteriorating into a depression where I hadn’t been able to get out of bed for days. I’d had no energy. I’d felt so helpless at everything I’d tried to do for my sister because she’d been struggling so bad that it all just got the better of me. I’d spoken with Tessa on the phone instead of visiting, and that in itself had killed me, too, because I’d felt like I was doing her wrong by not going to see her. Not only that, it had been so hard at times, barely getting any form of conversation out of her. What had kept me going was knowing she had support from Pepper and Emmet, along with the doctors that had been taking care of her.
Pepper has held me close, showered me when I’ve needed it and loved me more with each day I’ve struggled to fix myself. Before I’d known it, her stuff was in my home and neither of us had even questioned it.
My house is now fully furnished: I have a bed instead of a mattress on the floor and a woman who keeps it warm just like she does my heart. Life right now is good.
“I’m smiling because for the first time in forever, I’m happy.”
“You deserve to be happy.”
“Thank you for sticking with my moody arse.”
“Thank you for smacking mine when yours isn’t,” she grins.
Pulling her over me, I run my hands down her back before grabbing her arse as her fingers slide through my hair.
“I love this arse.”
“Oh, I know you do.”
Leaning down, she presses her lips against mine and slips her tongue into my mouth, kissing me the same way she does each morning: full of passion and promise in a way that has my heart racing like it’s the first time I’m experiencing the feelings she creates.
My heart only beats now because she gave me life.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She pecks her lips once more against mine. “But I’ll love you more if you make me pancakes for breakfast.”
“What is with you and pancakes at the moment? You eat more than I do.”
“It’s not my fault you make good ones. Now get up. I need to shower if we’re going to see Tessa today.”
“Ugh, fine.” I smack her backside and she squeals before getting up from the bed and walking her naked body over to the kitchen. I can’t help but chuckle when she heads to the fridge and helps herself to some strawberries before walking back towards the bathroom and giving me a wink en route.
All I can say is I’m glad Emmet has now learnt the art of knocking on my door before he enters because that time he forgot, it was a little interesting.
Getting up from the bed, I slip on some jeans and head to the kitchen to prepare Pepper her breakfast, listening to her humming to herself in the bathroom as she gets ready. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without her now, or her parents for that matter. Andrew and Caroline have been Godsends. With the knowledge of Tessa and the strain it was going to put on everything else, they have helped out with the gallery and selling my work while Pepper and I have supported Tessa.
I’m still painting when I can, but sometimes that means working extra at night to make up the hours when I’d rather be spending my time curled up with my girl. But I have more things to not give up on now. At some point, when she leaves the unit, Tessa will need outside support. When that will be is still unknown because for every good day she has, she’s hit back with two bad ones. The Doctors say her progress will be long and slow, but they have every faith she will make a great recovery. She’s yet to open up to me about her life after we were separated, and I’m fine with that because I know how hard it can be. It took me years. But right now, I’m glad I’ve got her back. Everything else can wait.
“They smell so good,” Pepper singsongs as she heads out of the bathroom, just in time for me to dish them up.
“Why do you always time it right and sit yourself down when I’ve finished cooking?”
“Because the term ‘make me breakfast’ doesn’t usually involve me helping. The clue is in the words.” She grins playfully as I place her plate in front of her.
“Strawberries and chocolate or lemon and sugar topping today?” I ask, turning back to the kitchen.
“Strawberries and chocolate, please.”
“You ready to go see Tessa after this? Emmet is meeting us there around eleven.”
“Yeah, I’m good.” She says with a mouthful. “Why is he coming today? I thought he had work.”
“He worked through the night; he’s stopping off before he heads home.”
I lean against the kitchen counter, thinking about the last conversation I’d had with Emmet over Clyro’s case. They were going to try and talk to Tessa some more to see if she is ready to give a full statement. Although they have enough to go on with the drugs and weapons, they still feel that Tessa’s information could be vital as she was taken at such a young age. My only concern is what effect that will have on her once they pressure her more, and the even bigger worry is that Tessa’s story goes a lot deeper and Emmet himself knows this and is not telling me shit in a bid to protect us both.
“Eat, Dexter,” Pepper orders, cutting through my thoughts.
“I’m not hungry.”
“No, you’re stressing, which means you still need to eat. You need your energy.”
“Do you think she will ever be free of her demons?” I ask, loathing the fact that we’ve both been provided with a lifetime of fucking torture.
Getting up from her seat, Pepper links her arms around my waist. I don’t know how many times I’ve asked her questions like this. I’ve repeated myself, and she always
responds as if it’s the first time I’ve asked them.
“Is anyone ever free of them? They can be controlled with meds. They can be concealed with therapy, but I don’t think anyone will ever be free of demons. There’s always that one time that they spring up behind you from nowhere, hit you hard and make you cry when you least expect it. But you deal with them as best you can.”
I’d underestimated her strength not long after Tessa was found. So many times, I’ve wanted to talk about my sister, the times I’ve remembered and the new things we’ve shared since her return. For a moment, I’d completely forgotten about Pepper’s loss until I’d found her crying in the bathroom one night because she’d felt emptiness hitting her hard from knowing I’d found my sibling when she’d never get hers back.
I’d felt like a fucking arsehole for not considering her heart in all of this, and it’d hurt like hell knowing I’d brought tears to her eyes. That had been the only time her strength had faltered, and that night, she’d needed mine to hold her up.
Wiping some chocolate from the corner of her mouth, I pull her close and whisper against her lips before kissing her. “Your words always make me feel so much better.”
She grins. “Thank you. Now repay the favour while I finish getting ready and eat some damn breakfast.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll completely lose my shit and we both know that that’s not much fun.”
I raise a brow, grinning. “Oh, I don’t know, losing your shit is what had me falling for you in the first place.”
“Tick tock, Dexter,” she says, walking away from me.
“What are you now, my mother?”
“That’s not even funny.”
I laugh, rolling up one of the pancakes and taking a bite.
I knock on the door to Tessa’s room and pop my head inside. For a moment, I wonder what personality I’m going to be faced with today as each day is still so new. “Hey, Tess. Can we come in?”
She nods with a smile before looking down at what has caught her interest.