Page 44 of Burn Like An Angel

Xander laughs humourlessly. “I didn’t have to.”

“Why?”

He drags his other hand over his weary face. “The bastard admitted it all. I wasn’t the only person he hurt. He was charged with multiple counts of sexual assault and died in prison four years later.”

Emotion boils behind my eyes, matching the white-hot sensation his blade is inflicting. I don’t pity him. He doesn’t need that. Yet the truth tears at my soul regardless.

“What happened after?” I ask in a guttural voice.

“I bounced between foster homes until I aged out of the system a decade later. No one wanted to adopt the antisocial kid who liked to cut himself. I scared off every potential adoption.”

“Your mother never came back for you?”

Lowering the pocketknife fully, his shoulders slump. “No. I never saw her again. She could be dead for all I know and care.”

Watching him breathe heavily, I can’t comprehend how any mother could abandon her son like that. Sure, she was sick. But to never come back for him or make contact? After everything? It’s plain cruel.

“When he…” His voice falters as he looks down. “When he used to hurt me, I’d cry and plead with him to stop. He warned me about what happens to little boys who cry.”

“Xan. You don’t have to keep going.”

“I need to say it,” he explains with a newfound fierceness.

I close my mouth, waiting for him to continue.

“After years of his nightly visits, it was easy to switch off to the pain, the fear, the confusion and disgust I felt… and feel nothing at all. He told me not to cry. So I stopped.”

“He threatened you?”

My voice is barely a whisper, fraught with horror for that poor little boy, alone and scared, who found a sense of safety in not feeling at all.

“Me… Mother… His threats were indiscriminate. Crying wouldn’t save me. If I laid there silently, the time passed quicker. The less I cared, the less it hurt each time he came back for more.”

The broken person standing in front of me hardly resembles the white-haired demon I met in Priory Lane. The same man who tried to scare me into submission. Who kept me busy while his best friend ensured Holly’s demise.

Xander scoffs, his gaze focused on the floor. “I never cared about anything ever again.”

My attention latches on to his visible scars. I wondered about them for months in Priory Lane.

“These look old.”

“It started in foster care.”

“Can you tell me why?”

Xander pauses for a long moment, searching for the right words. He flips the pocketknife in his hands, uncaring of my sticky blood coating the surface.

“No matter how many times I sliced my skin until I ran out of space, I felt nothing. But I loved the act of doing it. The pain became a way to prove to myself that I’d never be vulnerable again. As long as I could confirm that the numbness was still there… keeping me safe.”

I can’t help but think of Rae. Her own addiction to pain. But for Xander, he wasn’t cutting to feel something. He did it to check whether he still felt nothing at all.

His need for pain suddenly makes more sense. Not just his own, but the pain he inflicts on others. It’s all a test of his control. A way to ensure his own survival. If everyone else is hurting, then they can’t hurt him.

“That’s why I didn’t care about Holly.” Xander finally looks up at me. “I didn’t care how much it would affect you either. I was willing to push her over the edge.”

“Because it was necessary?”

He shakes his head. “I know how it sounds.”

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