by Dark, Ava
“Without you here to protect—” I stop myself, but it’s too late. I rush on. “When you left, things changed, got worse, and I had to adapt. She likes it when I call her Mom. I don’t know why.” Except, sometimes I think I do. And I don’t like to think about it. Because it makes her too human. Makes it hard to think of her as the monster she is. “So I call her what she wants, because it makes my life easier. Not easy, but not as hard as it could be.”
“But you’re getting along?”
“You really have changed. You used to see through her facade.”
He shakes his head. “No. I just still have hope.”
“Well, you shouldn’t.”
He locks me in his gaze. “Maggie.” Oh great, he never calls me that. “I can get you out of here. Into your own place. Let me help you.”
“I don’t want your charity.”
“But you need it.”
I shake my head as I turn and walk away.
“Mags!” he calls.
I halt and turn to face him. “What!”
“Come with me.”
“What the fuck, Cade! I can’t handle this. And even if I could, you’re just going to leave me again. Forget all about me.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s true! You’re just going to fly back home to your penthouse or mansion or whatever the hell multimillion-dollar structure you call home, and leave me here with my absent dad and your psycho mom. Again.”
“I didn’t leave you,” he says emphatically.
“It sure as hell seems like it.”
He is silent, staring at me. Then he blurts, “Then come with me. Live with me in San Francisco.”
I shake my head slowly. “So you can freak out on me again? No thanks.”
“Don’t want to leave your job? I know you’ve got a bright future ahead of you as Head Waitress, but I can find something at least as good.”
“So I can work at Hooters in San Francisco?”
“At my company.”
I laugh bitterly. “The only thing I can do on a computer is get on the internet.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. I know you, Mags. You have lots of things you’re good at.”
I look away, shaking my head.
He comes closer, and grabs my chin. “Look at me.”
I resist.
“Maggie.”
I lock eyes with him defiantly.
“You’re smart. You are great at talking to people. And at solving problems. You don’t have to be able to write code to make something life-changing.”
“I can’t. I can’t leave Mom and Dad.”
He lets go of me. ”Oh come on, that’s bullshit. What have they ever done for you?”
“Fed me! Gave me a house. Didn’t leave me standing alone in a dark kitchen, waiting for them to get home, to see the surprise I had made for them. Didn’t make me cry myself to sleep for months. Didn’t make me think I wasn’t good enough to be in their lives.”
“I di—”
“Don’t!” I interrupt. “Stop with the bullshit.”
He takes my hand. “Look. I want you to come with me. I need you.”
I chuckle without humor. “Yeah.”
“I’m serious. I need someone I can trust. It’d be a junior position, but you could move up. It only pays sixty a year, but you wouldn’t have rent, or anything else really.”
I stare at him. “Sixty what?”
“Dollars. Thousand.” He frowns when he sees how I’m looking at him. “What is it?”
I continue to stare. “You’re offering me, a nineteen-year-old with no college, and no programming experience, a job that pays sixty K a year?” I shake my head.
He raises an eyebrow. “Are we negotiating now?”
“No. What?”
“I can bump it up to sixty-five, if you insist. But people might get suspicious. And I don’t want the media to accuse me of nepotism.”
“That’s not my point.”
“So you don’t want the money.”
“No. I mean, yes. But no.” I exhale forcefully. “Stop changing the subject. I can’t go with you.”
“Because of our wonderful parents.”
“At least they were there,” I mutter, unable to meet his eyes.
“And now I am. And I promise I’ll take care of you.”
God, I want to believe him. It sounds so good. But he’s already hurt me once. I barely survived it. I can’t do it again.
“I came here for you,” he says.
“What?”
“I wasn’t at your restaurant by accident. I knew you worked there. I came for you. I couldn’t take being without you anymore.” He looks at the door to the house. “I didn’t know it was so bad. I would have come sooner. I thought you were living out a happy little life, and didn’t need me ruining it for you.”
I bark a bitter laugh.
“But I’m here for you now. Please Mags, I need you.”
My eyes burn and I can’t even think straight. I feel sick and happy. Like my body doesn’t know whether to vomit in joy or laugh in sorrow. “I can’t deal with this right now.” I turn away and walk quickly toward the door.
“Mags! Maggie!”
I ignore him, and pull open the screen door, which squeals loudly, then walk inside.
‘Mom’ is waiting.
Chapter 8
“Who was that?” Cynthia asks, sitting at the kitchen table in that cutoff turtle neck sweater which shows a bit of midriff and which I secretly want to steal but could never pull off, working on her laptop. She hasn’t completely dropped the facade, but her artificial sweetness is gone.
“Just a friend.” I wipe my eyes and head into the kitchen. It’s not that I want to be with her, but I am hungry. And looking at the hotel menu, with all its amazing, and incredibly expensive dishes, didn’t help. And I need something to take my mind off of all this shit.
“Where’d you meet him?”
“Work,” I answer truthfully.
“I heard you left early. I see why now.”
I say nothing, instead opening the fridge. I thought she’d stopped checking up on me. Maybe Nina, my boss, just stopped telling me.
There’s a slice of cake.
I close my eyes and tell myself it’s not worth listening to Cynthia lecture me. I bend over and open the vegetable crisper.
“So you just walked right out on your shift, while you still had tables? Do you think that’s wise?”
“Why do you care? You hate the place.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t do your job. You entered into an agreement.”
“Whatever.”
“Don’t be so apathetic. You wouldn’t want me to ground you again.”
I freeze pulling the celery out of the fridge, my mind immediately going back to that week, when I was sixteen, when my damnation well and truly began.
I try to shrug it off. I close the fridge and toss the celery on the counter.
I open the drawer noisily—on purpose because I know she hates it—and pull out a knife.
My fingers wrap tightly around the smooth wood and it makes me feel better.
I’m an adult now. She can’t punish me like she used to.
“Pretending to ignore me isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
I turn on her, glaring down at her face.
Her stupid face, wearing that stupid, satisfied smile.
She looks me up and down. “You’re barely wearing anything already. I wonder if you’d even notice.” In my mind, I see her lips as cracked and thin, her teeth black and rotten. But as that smile spreads, and her lips part to speak, they are plump and full, and her teeth are pearly white and straight. “I’m sure you’d get better tips.”
“You can’t do that.” In my head, I’m shouting this, but my voice sounds weak.
She raises an eyebrow—the same way Cade does, and it makes me hate her even more for having anything in common with him, for reminding me that he came from her�
��and says, “Oh? You’re in my house. If you want to move, that’s fine. But while you’re here…”
I hate when she does that. Doesn’t finish her sentences, like it’s supposed to make her seem more intimidating, more sinister. Like I’m supposed to imagine all the terrible things she could mean. ‘You better do this, or else.’
She looks at the knife in my hand. Then looks up to me. “Have something you want to say, dear?”
I just stare at her.
She turns back to her work. “Don’t forget to wash the knife.”
She’s thin, weak. I can see her spine through her sweater. I could plunge the knife in, all the way to her black heart. End it all.
I look down at my hand. The blade is a chef’s knife, one of those big ones that are squared off at the bottom, forming a sharp corner, before tapering down to the handle. This corner is digging into my knuckle, and a trickle of blood is running down my palm.
I raise the knife above my head, ready to bring it down into her back.
I remember how humiliated I was. How she told me if I was so proud of my body, then I shouldn’t cover it.
My stomach sinks as I imagine what it will feel like as the knife enters her. My heart soars, and a surge of adrenaline rushes through me.
I can do it. All I have to do is bear down with my weight, and it would all end.
But I already know I won’t. It’s just a futile gesture. Shaking my fists at the sky. It doesn’t change anything. I can’t change anything.
Maybe Cade could do it. But not me, not an ineffectual little fat girl like me.
I throw the knife at the sink and run out. I hear it bounce out and hit the floor, but I don’t care. I just had to get out of there. Have to get out of here.
I burst through the screen door, its squawk shorter this time but no less loud, run down the steps, across the yard, through the hole in the fence, past the group of trees, down the embankment, and into my hideaway, a cave with a floor made of a disused storm drain that we long ago covered with old carpet, and ceiling of roots that lets just enough light in.
I curl up inside, bringing my knees to my chest.
And then I cry.
I hate myself for it. For being so weak. For letting her get to me.
But my hate doesn’t stop the tears.
It never does.
Chapter 9
I hear footsteps, and my head shoots up, my eyes darting to the entrance.
No, I’m such an idiot. She must have seen. Seen me come in here. Not even this, do I get to keep. After remaining a secret, remaining safe, for nine years, this hideaway Cade and I found on the first day we met, would be no more.
Because now she knows about it. And it’s not safe.
I find myself scuttling back toward the rear of the cave, like some frightened animal. Like prey. And she’s the predator. The apex predator. The one even other predators fear. My father included, though he’s more a coyote, or vulture, than a real predator.
I stare at the opening, waiting to see her horrible, beautiful face. I’ll kick her. If she comes in, I’ll kick her.
“Can I come in?”
Confusion mixes in mind at the voice, and it takes me a moment to realize the other emotion I’m feeling is relief.
It’s not Cynthia’s voice, but Cade’s. He’s still here. He didn’t leave.
He stayed.
“Cade?”
He gets on his knees, on the dirt, and crawls in. “Did this get smaller?”
I laugh, wiping tears from my eyes. “You just got bigger.”
“Stupid personal trainers. It was my publicist’s idea.” He crawls in and sits across from me.
“Your suit,” I say, and I can’t help the laughter breaking free.
He looks down at it, then back up at me. His expression is blank. “Shit.”
And like that, he’s back. My Cade. My protector. He’s come back for me, my knight in shining armor.
My savior.
Chapter 10
“Why the rain, little bird?”
I wipe my eyes some more. “I’m not crying.”
“But you were.” He gets on his toes, toe-walks awkwardly over, and sits next to me. When his arm wraps around my shoulders, I lean into him without thinking. “Tell me,” he says quietly.
I shake my head. My cheek brushes against his suit, and I’m surprised at how soft it is. “Is this silk?”
“Maybe.”
I chuckle.
“You were saying?”
“Same shit as always. I let your mom get to me.”
“I always told you not to.”
“That was easier to do when you were here.”
He hugs me tighter, and I almost start crying again. “I know you think I left you, little bird. I didn’t. I know it seems like that. I’m so sorry you had to deal with them all alone.”
My throat is too tight to respond. I try anyway, but just make a choked sound.
“She’s a bastard.” He pets my head with one hand, using the other to keep it pressed against his chest. “She really did a number on you. What happened? Was she mad I didn’t come in?” He suddenly leans back, grabbing my shoulders and making me look at him. “Did she recognize me?” He looks to the entrance of the hideaway, as though she might have been waiting there all this time, for just this moment, to appear just as this revelation is revealed.
“It’s not you,” I say, wanting to lean back against him. Instead, I make myself pull away.
“Then what?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
I shake my head. “It’s a long time ago.”
“Tell me.”
I bite my lip and look down at my hands. My right wrist looks puffy, and at seeing this it starts to hurt. I wonder if it’s placebo, or that other one, the bad one that sounds similar.
“Mags?” He touches my chin, but doesn’t force me to look up.
“It’s nothing,” I say, still staring at my wrist. It’s throbbing now. “She just grounded me.”
“I know you’re tougher than that.”
I lick my lips. “It’s the way she did it. It was embarrassing. More than embarrassing.”
“What?”
I turn away, lean back, and peak my head out the hole.
“Mags?”
When I see there’s no one watching, I scurry out. My wrist lets out a yelp of pain, but I ignore it and get to my feet and climb up the embankment.
I hear Cade bumping around, then hear him cry out. “Fuck.”
He comes out, and climbs to where I’m standing. His cheek is smeared with dirt. “Fucking roots.”
“You always cut them.” I smile, then shrug. “They don’t bother me any.”
I dash off through the trees, and duck through the hole in the fence.
“Mags,” Cade calls after me.
I stop on the other side, waiting in our yard.
I smile as Cade crawls through the hole.
He stands fully, shakes his head, and opens his mouth to say something.
And then comes a sound that sends chills through me.
I hear Cade mutter something under his breath as he looks past me. It sounds like “Shit,” but I could be wrong.
I turn as the squeaky hinge ceases its cry.
Cynthia is standing in the doorway to our house, and for once, it feels like I have changed something. But not something I wanted to.
Chapter 11
“Hi there,” Cynthia calls out sweetly as she comes down the steps. “I’m Cynthia, Maggie’s mom. Are—”
But then she freezes in her tracks.
“Hi Mom,” Cade says coolly.
“Cade… But…” She looks at me, as though I’ll have some kind of answer for her.
But I don’t even know the question.
“It’s me,” Cade says.
She looks back at her son. “What are you… I mean. You didn’t call. I…” She shakes her head, and my heart sinks, because she loo
ks so much like her son in that moment.
“I wasn’t planning on stopping by.” He puts an arm around my shoulder. “But then I ran into Maggie.”
Fuck. Now she’s gonna take it out on me. My pulse speeds up.
Cynthia looks back and forth between us. She stops on Cade. “Your father will be here soon. You should say hi.”
“Really? He’s coming all the way from Denmark?”
“Your real father, the one who raised you through your toughest years. Not the one who contributed a couple minutes and a few grunts.”
“Great job he did ‘raising me’.”
“Look at you. You’re doing so well. You have us to thank for—”
“Bullshit!” Cade interrupts, letting go of me and advancing on his mother.
He doesn’t tower over her the way he does me, but I see now that he’s grown since I last saw him, because he’s taller than her now. When he left, they were the same height. Which is still pretty tall.
Seeing him standing there next to her, I can tell he’s even taller than my dad. The one who ‘raised’ him. Which is bull, since Cade was already thirteen when my dad met Cynthia, a year before he divorced my mom.
“You contributed nothing. Nothing except pain and hardship.”
“Oh, don’t be melodramatic,” she says, but she can’t look him in the eye. She can’t even look at me, instead staring at a point off to the side.
“I’m not.” He turns to me. “Come on, Mags, we’re leaving.”
Cynthia turns on him. “She’s not going anywhere.”
Cade ignores her, and grabs my arm. “Do you have anything you want to keep, that I can’t buy you a new one of?”
“My computer,” I say slowly.
“It’s not backed up in the cloud?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cynthia interrupts. “Because she’s not going anywhere. You can’t just barge in and kidnap her.”
“She’s not a kid,” Cade growls. He’s looking at me as he says this. Then, “Come on, I’ll go with you.” He leads me toward the door.
“You can’t just barge in like this!” his mother repeats. “That’s my house.”
Cade ignores her. I look back and see her following.
“Cade,” I whimper. “This is a bad idea.”