Page 146 of Like A Moth To A Flame

After a long pause, her voice was so soft I nearly didn’t hear her over the whisper of the breeze.

“Have I ever told you why I left Cottonwood Falls in the first place? Why my dad and I didn’t speak for so long?”

I stayed quiet, and after pulling in a deep breath, she continued.

“He wanted me to go to the academy like he did. He wanted me to go to Kansas City like he did, and be a cop. He wanted me to ‘follow in his footsteps’,” she said, her fingers coming up and hooking into air quotes. “But I didn’t want to. I wanted to work with animals. He didn’t care. We got into an argument, and he basically told me he was disappointed that I was a girl, and I wouldnever be the son he wanted, and my mom had died before she could give him a boy. So I went off to college, anyway. I never came home, not even for holidays. One year on his birthday, I called to see if he would apologize. He never did. So he would call on holidays, and my birthday…”

She shrugged.

“But it was never the same after that.”

I stayed quiet, a silent anger boiling inside of me. All of this time, that man had never had anything but my utmost respect, but he had never deserved it. He was a bigger monster than I had ever been.

“I just thought…” I trailed off, unsure of what to say. “After everything that happened with Barrett—”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Anything. Always.”

“He knew, didn’t he?”

I paused, my brain running in a million different directions.

“About…?”

She sucked in a deep breath, her shoulders shaking as she let it out in a low whoosh.

“About Barrett? He knew, didn’t he?”

The words caught in my throat, stuck there like a knife in my Adam’s apple.

I didn’t want to think about this. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her—to hurt her with the knowledge that I had known this whole time.

“Not at first,” I said honestly. “But after a while, he found out.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?” she asked, and I heard the tears cracking her voice again.

Damn it. Damn it, I hated myself for hurting her like this.

“Well,” I said, and I sighed. “He said it was because he wanted you to be happy, and Barrett was the only friend you had.”

“How many people know?”

The tears in her voice had gone, and now it was only anger left.

“As far as I know? Nobody.”

“How did you find out?”

My heart slammed against my sternum. I didn’t want to relive this. I didn’t want to think about it. I clenched my fists, fighting with the anger and the hatred. Red swam at the edges of my vision, and I had to fight it away.

I sucked in a gasping breath before I could force myself to speak.

“I’ve known since I saved you,” I said, my voice low and shaking. “I heard the calls coming over the scanner. Some little old lady that lived next door was calling a couple of times a day, saying she could hear screaming coming from the basement. No one believed her, because when the officers would get there to check, the guy would come out and say it was his chihuahua, and they’d believe him, and leave without even checking.”

I paused, fighting with myself.

I couldn’t get that image out of my head. I couldn’t force the shadows away. When I spoke again, it was a rambling blurt of words that spewed from me like vomit.

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