He hesitated.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I should have told you this before you moved in, I didn't expect you to get kicked out. I was gonna break to to you gently, you know?”
“You made meth,” I said.
He looked at me.
“It all adds up. Knowing my father, plus horrible burns, plus guilt. Also, when I asked if you were going to cook tonight a few weeks ago, you winced. You were a cook and you got... really unlucky.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I was a cook. It was really, really awful of me. I shouldn't ever have even thought about it, but I was dumb and looking for quick money.”
“Did you get it?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Not really worth it, though. I'd trade every penny to look like myself in the mirror.”
I had no idea what to say to such a frank admission.
He didn't like himself in the mirror?
That's not something I ever expected to hear from a guy, especially one that had a body like Beast.
“Are you nuts?” I asked. “You're six-five, jacked to the ceiling, and have cute hair. You don't look half as bad as you think you do, okay?”
He smiled a slow smile at me, warmth spreading across his face and lighting up his eyes.
“I like the way you look at me,” he said.
I didn't know what to say to that, either.
“I need to go to the writing center tomorrow. Before class. Is that okay?”
“Sure, you can borrow the car. Wait, you do know how to drive, right?”
I winced.
“Um, there's a gas pedal and a brake pedal? I have my license, but I haven't driven more than two or three times since I got it.”
“Okay, that's fine, I'll start giving you lessons. Not like I don't have time, right? I'll take you to campus, too. Just let me know at breakfast when you want to be there.”
When I got settled in to living with Beast full-time, I decided that the least I could do was all of the cooking and cleaning. My goal was always to have breakfast on the table when he got out of the shower and dinner on the table at six, and I was very good at it.
The high-speed internet that he paid for so he could spend time gaming made my classwork so much easier, so I had plenty of time.
I even started texting some old friends again and – to my surprise – they were happy to hear from me, willing to pick it right back up. One of them even invited me over immediately.
I didn't accept. It was hard enough to say hello.
That was progress enough for one month.
My life would have been amazing the rest of that semester, alone with Beast most of the time, except for two things:
Barely getting to see my sisters.
And every night, before bed, Beast finding me and asking “Tabitha? Will you testify against your father?”
After one month of living with Beast full-time, I was the happiest I had ever been in my life. I had plenty of time, so I had raised my grade to an A in every single class, even math. I cleaned Beast’s house and helped him with the yard work, but there was still only a few hours of that a day, and that was keeping everything hospital-clean.
It was good.
I had time to play video games. Beast set me up with my own account on his consoles, and recommended ones to start with. I played through Dragon Age in three days, and then started over to play again. Whenever I worried that I was taking up his TV, Beast laughed and told me not to worry about it, lounging on the couch with his laptop, playing his own video games or just, as he put it, wasting time on the internet.
I’d started to relax more than I had since… well, since my mother died when I was a kid.
She had protected me from my father, and now I had Beast for that.
I was waking up rested and refreshed, and… I was laughing.
I had thought for years that I didn’t really laugh any more because I was growing up, but I was grinning like a fool and giggling like a kid, every day.
Maybe this was who I was. My mother laughed all the time, and she wasn’t childish.
Maybe it was okay to have a sense of humor again.
Beast loved it, for sure. He laughed with me, every time, even if he’d looked gloomy or in pain before.
It made me want to find reasons to laugh, knowing I could cheer him up.
Once I relaxed, the dreams started.
I woke up two or three times a night in a sweat, every muscle in my body frozen with terror.
I only hoped that I never screamed or cried in the night - or walked in my sleep. It would be a disaster if I called out and Beast came into my room.
Kandy had been angry with my father for a while, and kept the girls totally away from him.
It hurt my heart, not seeing them, but… it was a bit of a relief sometimes, too. I didn’t have to worry about getting from the cabin to town, about keeping my father’s house impeccable, about also keeping on top of my work for college…
It was easier.
I hated myself for thinking that. I wanted to be with my sisters, but every time I was, I was stuck between them and their parents, knowing that everything I said or did would either hurt their feelings or piss off my father or Kandy.
Even when I ruined dinner or dug up the wrong plant in his garden, Beast just shrugged and said that these things happened.
I could mess up without getting slapped or cried at or burnt.
Beast’s little cabin started to seem more and more like heaven.
One night, I was up to my elbows in dishes, watching the dusk fade into night out the window, when Beast came into the house in a hurry. He'd been out working for his buddy, he usually went out two or three days a week, and left me alone in the house.
“You know, we have a dishwasher,” he said, absentminded.
I opened my mouth to remind him that I didn’t mind washing the dishes, but he was already speaking again.
“Can you drive in the dark?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I’m getting better, but… I need more practice.”
He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.
“Look,” he said. “I have people coming over, okay? Normally they come when you’re in class, but they’ve gotta come right now, and it’s too dark for you to go for a walk.”
“Why do they need to come now?” I asked.
I didn’t know that people came over while I was in class. That was interesting.
“I can’t tell you,” he said, impatiently. “I can’t tell you anything at all, okay?”
It was the most he had ever been rude to me, and it felt worse than the slaps my father doled out.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’ll just hide like a little mouse.”
“Are you afraid of the dark?” he asked.
“No,” I lied.
“Okay, good. Please come with me.”
For the first time, he led me into his room.
I had barely peeked from the hallway, never crossed the threshold. It was tidy and clean, I heard Beast clean it every day when I cleaned mine.
There wasn’t a lot to show anything about his personality. No books, no family pictures, no memories at all.
He opened the door to the walk-in closet that took up the last bit of space on the floorplan behind the bathroom and turned on the light with a long pull chain.
“You want me to lurk in your closet?” I asked, feeling more and more grumpy.
“Not… exactly,” he said, pointing at the floor.
“Oh, no,” I said, catching sight of the trapdoor at last. “Oh, no. You have a secret basement? I don’t do secret basements.”
“It’s not a secret basement,” he said. “I thought you knew there was a basement. Through the door in the garage.”
“I never go in your garage,” I complained. “I don’t drive and there’s nothing to clean. Why would I? And if there’s a door in the basement, why do you want to send me through here?”
“Because
I don’t want you to go into the main part of the basement.”
He pulled open the trapdoor and revealed a small set of stairs, which he walked down and gestured me to follow.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m not going to shut the trapdoor, okay? And I’ll show you the other way out. I just… just, promise me you won’t go looking, okay?”
“I promise,” I said, my voice shaking a little.
The room was actually pretty comfortable. An old couch, piles of comics, pictures from magazines of pretty girls and fast cars taped to the walls - this was what I thought his bedroom would look like.
Apparently all of the interest and character was kept down here.
Beast proved that the main door to the room was unlocked, but made me promise, again, to leave it alone.
He turned on an air filter, which made a ton of noise, and hurried out, looking like a housewife who realized that she’d forgotten the pies in the oven. I thought about walking over and turning the damn thing off, but then I realized - he turned it on on purpose so I couldn’t hear him upstairs.
My suspicions were confirmed when he turned the radio upstairs on loudly - between stations. White noise above, white noise below. Damn it, if he’d just told me that I needed to get out of the house for a while, or asked me to sit in the car with music on, I would have done it. I could even have gone out with Jess. She'd been texting me about going to the movies like we did in high school.
Anything but this.
Why did he have to trap me down here?
The basement room was clean and bright, at least, with several lamps and an overhead light and fan.
The ceiling wasn’t as low and imposing as some basements, and there were no signs of nasty spiders waiting for me.
It was nothing like my father’s basement, basically. I’d been locked in there before, and this was… better.
I didn’t hear the thump of the trapdoor closing, and when I went to check, moving quietly, Beast had left it open. Some of the fear and tension eased from me. He wasn’t locking me down here. He wasn’t as bad as my father.
Of course, that was damned by faint praise indeed.
By the time I heard the front door open above me, fifteen minutes had passed and I was totally bored. I needed to work, but there was only so much I could do.
Of course, I could listen.
I carefully picked up a chair and moved it as close to the living room as I could get, standing up and tilting my head towards the floor.
Damn.
I could hear voices, but couldn’t quite make them out, and couldn’t quite get close enough in this small part of the basement.
I strained as hard as I could to hear, but even when I found a glass and held it against the ceiling, I could only make out a few words.
Tabitha.
Money.
Father.
Trial.
Meth.
Evidence.
Beast was getting louder and louder. I’d never heard him that angry. I didn’t even need the glass to make out the word “Agreement!” he shouted.
Angry footsteps paced, I couldn’t tell if they were Beast’s or not.
Without warning, they headed my way. I barely had time to climb off the chair and hide the glass before Beast was coming down the narrow staircase to find me.
“Yes?” I demanded.
“They want to meet you and aren’t taking goddamn no for an answer,” he said. He ran his hand through his hair again. He looked up and met my eyes. “Look. These people won’t hurt you, okay? I know that, with the shit your father has done, walking up to meet strangers like that is probably the last thing you want to do, but they. Will. Not. Hurt. You. I promise. Even if they tried, I’d fucking kill them. Will you please come up and meet them?”
He was taking deep breaths, trying hard to stay calm. I hadn’t realized how broad his chest was until it was trembling with rage - the man was fucking jacked. He probably could kill them with his bare hands.
He’d never been anything but gentle with me.
He could have done anything he wanted to me, and I had no way to stop him. He was stronger, bigger, faster than me.
He didn’t.
He took care of me.
“Okay,” I said. I tried on a small smile. “Go in the basement, leave the basement. Make up your mind, will you?”
He gave me a flash of a worried smile back.
I walked over to the staircase, heading up it with Beast behind me. It was a small space, and I could feel him a few paces behind me, feel the warmth of him.
It was a shock to realize that I wanted him. That my body responded to him, not like the tweakers my father had let paw all over me, drag me into quiet corners and dark rooms…
“Come here,” the smaller man ordered, but I was rooted to the spot.
“She’s here,” Beast rumbled behind me. “She doesn’t have to come any closer.”
The other man took a deep breath and let it out, and he… changed. He stood up straighter, stopped fiddling with his fingernails.
“Will you please come slightly closer, so we’re not shouting across the room at each other?” he asked, in a calmer, more friendly voice.
The change in demeanor was… weird.
I looked over my shoulder at Beast, who nodded, and I took another few steps into the room.
There was someone else in there, a woman in ripped trashy clothing and teased-up hair. She looked bored, mostly, but… there was something behind her eyes. Something told me that she was not quite as stupid as she first seemed.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” I said, raising my hand to both of them.
“Beast is doing some work for the guy we work for,” the man said. “He isn’t supposed to let anyone else spend much time here, so our mutual boss is very displeased to find out that you goddamn moved in.”
“It’s my house, my business,” Beast said. “She had never been in the basement. I keep it locked up tight.”
The strangers eyed me.
“Just because you’re fucking-” the woman started.
“We’re not,” Beast said. “She has her own room, she’s here to clean.”
They exchanged looks, which was weird by itself.
“Of all the friggin’ girls in town, why did you have to pick his daughter?” the man asked with a sigh. “Are you trying to get us all killed?”
He met my eyes, and I found myself pinned by his gaze.
“Look, kid. Do you trust your father?” he asked.
I shook my head, slightly.
I was afraid to say no - what if it got back to him?
“Well, she’s not totally dumb,” the woman said with a sigh.
“You bring your father into this, you get in the way of our profits, we will be extremely pissed. Got it?” he asked.
I nodded.
“What will you tell your father about what you see here?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” I said. “Look, even if I figured out what the hell you were doing and spelled it out for him, he wouldn’t listen to me, okay? That’s just… not something he does.”
“Good thing, for you,” he said. “All right I’ve heard enough. Beast, we’ll come back on Thursday, and you better have her out of the damn house this time. Not in the fucking basement.”
“Will do, boss,” Beast said, with extreme sarcasm.
Both of the strangers gave him a hard look, and they turned and left. The man let the woman go first, and then he turned back to me.
“If he starts using again, get the fuck out of here,” he said, jerking his thumb at Beast. “You wouldn’t like him when he’s high.”
I shrugged and looked away, not meeting his eyes.
Where else could I go?
Beast crossed the room and slammed the door after them.
“Cocksuckers,” he muttered. “Gotta swing their dicks around and make sure I stay in line.”
He turned back to me, eyes full of guilt.
“
I’m so sorry, Tabitha,” he said. “Seriously, I never should have asked you to wait down there. I didn’t want you to meet them and I panicked.”
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