by Kit Kyndall
“I want you out of my house.”
Mia froze in my arms before lifting her head. She glared at her dad, and I could sense outrage rolling off her in waves even before she spoke. “What the hell? Laura just died, and you’re being a dick, Dad.”
Gaithway’s eyes narrowed, and his thin lips pursed. “Don’t take that tone with me, young lady. I already told you as soon as she was gone, I wanted him out.”
I stiffened, looking at Mia for confirmation. The trace of guilt across her features confirmed she had known her father’s intentions.
She firmed her lips. “I know what you said, but I didn’t believe you would be so cruel. I didn’t really believe you would do this. If Paxton goes, I go.”
Dirk’s face turned an angry shade of red. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“He’s family, and I’m not going to let you treat him like this. His mom just died, and he’s not going anywhere alone right now. So if you want him to leave, fine. He’ll leave, but we’re leaving together—and don’t expect me to come back.”
Dirk seemed to swell like an enraged toad, and I hoped he’d have a heart attack and die right there. The justice of it would be delicious. Unfortunately, he took a few deep breaths. His face paled slightly, though he was nowhere near his normal color. Clearly still enraged, he didn’t even look my way when he said through gritted teeth, “You can stay for the funeral.” Without looking at either one of us, he turned and marched from the room.
Mia sagged against me, her arms wrapped around me. “I’m so sorry about that, Paxton. I don’t know why he’s like that with you.”
I could have educated her, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see the horror on her face, or get into that right now. My thoughts were still centered on my mom, and her passing. I was also overwhelmed with gratitude and emotion I couldn’t quite name that Mia had stood up for me, demanding I be allowed to stay, or she would go with me. I wasn’t going to stay very long, certainly not through the funeral, but I didn’t resist when she came with me to my room, taking me into her arms again as she rocked me on the bed in a soothing manner.
Before I knew it, sobs ripped from my throat, and I buried my face against her shoulder, soaking her thin T-shirt with my salty tears. As she rocked and murmured comforting words to me, I cried for losing my mom, and for the years I had lost with my mother. I also cried for the childhood I’d lost—that had been stolen from me by a ruthless pervert, and I cried for what I had endured every night then and since.
She laid down with me, and there was nothing sexual about the way she held me so tenderly. Mia was giving me comfort, and I took it as the selfish bastard I am. I ran my hands through her hair because the gesture soothed me as much as it calmed her. I hated being so egocentric and focused on my needs, but I couldn’t seem to stop drawing her comfort like I was a sponge, and she was water.
“Why does my father hate you so much, Paxton?”
I was too raw and emotional to even think about lying or deflecting the truth. “He hates me because I know the truth.”
She held me closer, her lips brushing against my cheek in a tender gesture of support before she whispered, “What truth?”
A strange sense of numbness slipped over me, and I didn’t know if it was grief, apathy, or just sheer exhaustion. Whatever the cause, it prevented me from lying or evading her question.
“The truth is, Mia, Dirk Gaithway is a pedophile and a bully. He raped me almost every night for the four years I lived in this house, and it wasn’t until he told me he was going to share me with his friends that I found the balls to run away. I couldn’t take anymore, so I left my mom behind, and I bowed to his intimidation when I called and tried to get hold of her. I was afraid of him, so afraid that I let him run me out of my mom’s life for eleven years. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have seen her the past few days, and I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to tell her how much I loved her. Thank you for that.”
She had gone stiff in my arms, but she hadn’t pushed me away. After a second, a harsh slob escaped her, and she clung even tighter to me. I had braced myself for her doubt, or her outright refusal to believe, so when all she did was hold me and pull me closer, whispering sounds of sorrow at what I had endured, I simply surrendered. I surrendered to her embrace, to her comfort, and to the blackness creeping through me. I don’t know if I fell asleep or passed out, but I let go of everything around me, including my consciousness, as I drifted into a state of unawareness.
***
Mia
I woke alone. I wasn’t terribly surprised to find him gone, but it broke my heart to know he hadn’t stayed around to see my reaction the morning after his revelations. I had believed him without question. My dad had never behaved in a way to suggest he was a pedophile, but as Paxton had told me the truth, the words resonated within me, and I had known he wasn’t lying. It sickened me to think the man I had looked up to, who had doted on me like an adored and pampered princess, was a child rapist who had planned to share his stepson with his equally perverted friends. It was all I could do not to throw up as I contemplated his actions.
Not only had he abused a helpless young boy whose own father had died a few years before, he had manipulated a single mother into marriage just so he could have access to her son. Paxton had confessed that to me in the early hours of the morning, when we had both awakened at one point.
The conversation had picked up as if it had never stopped the first time. He had whispered to me that was why he was so enraged that day in the gym. My father had admitted to him bluntly he was the reason Dirk had had any interest in Laura, and the reason he had married her.
When Paxton ran away, Laura and Dirk had quickly drifted apart, though I had been too self-absorbed in my tween dramas to notice that. It had taken me a long time to realize their marriage wasn’t a close one any longer, but I never would’ve guessed the reason why my father had married her in the first place. I wondered if Laura had guessed the reason too, and I couldn’t fight a surge of bile at that thought. I leaned over and puked into the trash can beside the bed as I thought of Laura speculating about her husband having an unnatural interest in her son, but choosing to stay.
I shook my head, instantly rejecting the notion. There was no way Laura would have stayed with Dirk if she had ever imagined he had been raping Paxton. She would have taken her son and fled, because she had loved Paxton as much as she’d loved me. Laura was the kind of woman who was a mother first. She wouldn’t have let a rich lifestyle or an influential husband keep her in that kind of soul-destroying relationship, even if Paxton had already run away before she realized what had happened.
Slowly, I eased from the bed and made it to my own room without running into anyone in the hallway. I showered and dressed in a simple black T-shirt and black capris. It seemed fitting, though the funeral wouldn’t be for a couple of days yet. Bright colors were the last thing I wanted to wear, and the last person I wanted to see was my father when I emerged from my room a little while later.
Thankfully, he was busy with a solemn-looking man in a dark suit, and they were entering his office downstairs. I managed not to vomit out accusations as he nodded at me, though his expression was cold, while he led the other man into his home office. I assumed it must be the undertaker, because I had seen him once before, during a meeting with Laura, so I wouldn’t have to deal with facing my father just yet.
Instead, I dialed Paxton’s cell number, but it went straight to voicemail. He had turned it off. I left a message for him, striving for a calm tone and trying not to sound desperate to reach him. I didn’t want to frighten him away, and I was in an emotional state at the moment.
I’d lost the woman I considered my mother yesterday, and I’d basically lost my father too. He was still alive, but might as well be dead to me. I couldn’t continue living here, maintaining the charade he was a loving father, now that I knew what he had done. God, there was no telling how many other times he’d done it,
and how many other young lives he had wrecked in the process. Even now, he might be indulging in his sick perversities. Not right this minute, but he probably had some poor child at his mercy in some context.
At that thought, I hastened back to my room, quickly losing the contents of my stomach into the commode. I hadn’t eaten much the last twenty-four hours, but I had a surprising amount of vomit come forth as I tortured myself with thoughts of what my father was, and what he had done.
Each wave of bile seemed to wipe away a little more of the love I’d felt for him. By the time I had purged my stomach completely, I think I had also purged all trace of emotion for my father as well. In a way, he was just as dead as Laura. The man I had thought he was clearly had never existed, or he had definitely died last night with Paxton’s revelations. I was orphaned and alone, with only Paxton, and he didn’t answer his phone when I’d tried calling him again.
As the day passed, my messages were a little more frantic, until I found myself begging him to call me back. I fell asleep on my bed, tear tracks on my cheeks, and my stomach still burning with the last vestiges of remaining bile.
When I woke, I immediately called his number again. Instead of sending me to voicemail, a disembodied recording informed me the number had been disconnected. Paxton had cut me out of his life as surely as I planned to cut my father out of mine. I shouldn’t have had any additional tears left after yesterday’s crying jag, but new moisture flooded my eyes as I curled up into a miserable fall and surrendered to my grief—grief for Laura, and grief for what could have been with Paxton.
Chapter Twelve
Paxton
Like a goddamned coward, I observed my mother’s funeral from a distance. I didn’t bother going to the mortuary for the memorial service, but I observed her interment from a distance. I saw Mia standing by her graveside, and Dirk was a few feet away. I wanted to reach out for her, to apologize for freaking out and running away, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t go to her anymore than I could return her calls, and I couldn’t undo disconnecting my phone number. I couldn’t handle hearing her voice any longer, with the faint waiver in her tone, and the hint of tears in her voice.
I had hurt her, and I knew it. I had told her the truth, which had been an unforgivable sin. I had stolen her father from her, and though he wasn’t much of a person to be worth bothering with, he had been her parent. I’d had no right to dump that burden on her.
I’d had no right to revel in her compassion, or to drain her empathy. I had no right to her, because she was too good and too pure for everything that I was. I was a tainted, foul thing, and allowing myself to have her would be the absolute worst thing I had ever done to anyone in the world. I was a selfish bastard, but maybe I wasn’t that selfish. I was doing my best to protect her from myself. I was also protecting my heart from Mia, though she had already wormed her way inside.
I stayed until everyone had gone, watching the workers shovel the dirt onto my mother’s grave with a digger. When they had departed too, I walked over to her freshly dug grave, sans marker, which would come later. Kneeling down on the raw earth, I passed my hand to the ground and whispered a final goodbye, knowing I would never return to this place. Not just the cemetery, but this entire fucking town. I would go back to my life in Vegas and try to forget any of this had ever happened. It was the best thing for me, and more importantly, it was the best thing for Mia too.
***
I threw myself into fighting. My life became all about training in the octagon. The opponent facing me ceased to matter, as did anything else besides the release I received every time my fist connected with flesh or my foot hit a body. Intense workouts in the gym also offered escape into adrenaline-induced oblivion, so I trained harder than ever.
That night, I stood in the locker room after a fight, breathing heavily. I had won my match, and Charlie Short hadn’t stood a chance against me. He’d been higher ranked than me, and he was a fan favorite, but I had decimated him. I’d pursued victory with single-minded determination, leaving him gasping on the mat. I should have felt victorious, but all I felt was numb.
I looked up at the click of heels, an incongruous sound in the men’s locker room. Lila came striding toward me, her face a mask that filtered any clue of how she felt.
Her voice, however, was not so ambiguous. She sounded like she was biting on ice cubes and frosting each word she pushed through her lips. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean the way you’re fighting. You had no mercy for that guy.”
I regarded her coolly. “Since when am I supposed to have mercy for my opponent? I won the match, and that’s all that matters.”
She shook her head, her disgust evident, which made me feel about five inches tall. “No, that isn’t all that matters. You want a good guy image, and I thought you were a good guy. A little rough, with a dark edge, but a good guy. You might lose some endorsements after that fight, and you’re lucky you weren’t disqualified. You hit him long past when you had to. You almost killed him.”
I could feel my shoulders slumping, and I recognized the truth in her words, though I didn’t want to hear it. “Don’t be so dramatic, Lila. I’m not going to lose any endorsements, and you’ll still get your cut.”
Her lips clamped into a thin line, and she glared at me for a long second before sadness filled her eyes. “I don’t know where you disappeared to when you were gone for those two weeks, and I don’t know what happened to you, but you need to deal with it and do it quickly, before you lose not just your career, but every person in the world who cares about you.”
Without another word, she turned on those ridiculously high heels and strode from the locker room. I stared after her, wanting to dismiss her words, even as I felt a hollow pang in my chest. She had a point. I knew she had a point. Hell, I could feel myself getting out of control in the octagon. I was hard on my opponents, far harder than I needed to be. There was a difference between winning a match and destroying your opponent. Guilt weighed heavily on me, and I made a note to call Charlie in a few days to check on him.
I stripped off the last of my gear before striding to the shower, turning the water on full blast and icy cold in an attempt to master my emotions and regain control. I couldn’t keep going on like this, but I had forgotten how to function any other way.
Chapter Thirteen
Mia
I guess I should have given up on Paxton by now, but I couldn’t make my heart do that. He hadn’t returned any of the messages I had left for him through his various underlings, and the letter I had mailed to his apartment had been returned to sender. I could take a hint, and if he genuinely hadn’t wanted to see me, and if he hadn’t needed to see me, I would have respected the fact it was over.
But it wasn’t over. It had barely begun before he had run away. I understood his reasons, though it still hurt like hell to know he could reject me so easily. Still, I couldn’t just let things fester, and I couldn’t walk away.
Neither could I let my dad get away with what he had done. I had started with a discreet inquiry at the police department, learning—not to my surprise, but to my dismay—the statute of limitations had expired for Paxton to file a complaint of sexual abuse against my father.
I wasn’t entirely sure I could have convinced Paxton to take that route anyway. He still seemed deeply ashamed by what had happened, though he’d had no choice in the matter. It was a classic victim response, as I had discovered from Dr. Google. That in no way qualified me to help him sort through his lingering emotions, but it gave me some perspective I needed to understand what he was going through. What he was putting us both through, if I were honest.
My heart ached for him, and nothing seemed important without him. I had made the grave error of falling in love with a man who’d never wanted a commitment. In light of his revelations, and the severing of the last technical bond between us with Laura’s death, we seemed doomed to
failure. I should have just let it go, but I didn’t believe in quitting. It wasn’t even so much that as I was driven to help Paxton. Even if he didn’t want me in his life, and he was completely finished with our relationship, I couldn’t just walk away from him yet.
That brought me to my dad’s home office, as I sneaked around furtively. He was at his work office, so it seemed safe enough to explore his home office. I didn’t even really know what I was looking for, but I figured if he was doing anything shady, he would hide the truth here at home rather than in his office. It seemed like it would be safer from a criminal’s perspective—if he was doing anything illegal besides hurting children.
I rifled through drawers and searched through the filing cabinets with little success. I wasn’t completely financially illiterate, since I had taken a few economics courses in college, but I had been glad to be done with them. I had one more year ahead of me before graduation, and my schedule was filled with more pleasurable classes focusing on my degree in art history. I was obviously underqualified to detect any shenanigans, but I was determined to keep looking. This was my third attempt searching his office, so I went to the area I hadn’t looked at before.
He had a bookshelf full of unread books, which was so pretentious. They were classics and first editions, and I knew he’d never read one of them. He used to brag to Laura about what an investment they were, and my stepmother had rolled her eyes more than once at the idea. Like me, she had been an avid reader, and there was something sad about a shelf of pristine books.
Temporarily distracted, I eyed them with a sigh of regret. I had the urge to pull them off the shelves and flip through them, just so they would look like they had been read at least once. It was a silly reaction, and I shook my head as I started to move on.