Page 69 of You are the Reason

“Who?” I ask, as he slips my blouse off my shoulders and unclasps my bra.

“Louise; I’ve seen her before. I just can’t place it.”

“As long as you don’t wake me up at 2am when it pops into your head, we’ll be fine.” I try to laugh it off, I don’t think I have any brain capacity left for emotions tonight.

He turns the water on and begins unbuttoning his shirt. “I’m serious, Kinsley. I have a gut feeling that I know her. I haven’t just seen her in passing. It’s not like that.” Running a hand through his hair, he leans against the basin. I step forward, his open shirt revealing the new addition to his tattooed chest. Gently, I place a kiss in its place and he wraps his arms around me. “I know we need to talk, but I need you, Pip.”

The room is steaming up from the running water; I take his hand and walk us backwards towards the shower, quickly stepping out of my underwear.I never stopped needing him.

* * *

“We are still missing one important detail,” Tanner interjects, both Dad and I turning our attention to him. “Who the fuck is George Watson?”

“Ah, now that is something I need to explain.” Dad shifts in his seat. “George Watson is a false identity I made up to try and keep you safe. I thought if I could just get you to back off a little —”

“YOUthreatened me? As a joke? I thought I was being stalked.” My jaw drops to the floor, and I narrow my eyes on him.

“It’s kind of genius.” Tanner smirks. Turning on him sharply, the back of my hand connects with his chest.

“Think about it, Pip. If you hadn’t been caught up with these threats, you would have gone in guns blazing all by yourself. Who knows what the outcome would have been.”

“They knew someone was onto them so it was only a matter of time until they found out who.” His voice drops lower, almost to a whisper, “— as soon as Laura killed herself, I knew you wouldn’t be safe anymore.”

Laura.It’s been so long since I have heard my mother’s name. My heart rate picks up, thundering in my chest. “Wh — wait. How would Mum being alive keep me safe? I didn’t even live with her, we barely had a relationship.”

He exhales a long breath, guilt written all over his face. “It was her.” His eyes look straight through me as he speaks. “She was in charge of it all. The drugs. The crime. Lance. She was the only thing that stood between them and you.”

Tanner straightens in his seat. Ignoring the bomb my dad just dropped about my mother, he asks, “Why would they want Kinsley?”

Dad scoffs, shaking his head in disgust. “Since the day she was born, people would stop and look at her,‘oh she’s so pretty’they would say,‘look at her with those honey-coloured eyes’.” He pins me with a haunted sense of emptiness. “I tried so hard to always tell you how smart and kind you were, I wanted you to know that there was more to you than the compliments you received from strangers, they were always focusing on how you looked.”

“They wanted to sell her?”

“I didn’t find any of this out until afterwards — I swear.” He shakes his head. “The way I overheard the men speak, they made it sound like Lance had been trying to convince Laura to hand Kinsley over since she was a toddler.” Dad pinches the bridge of his nose. “I still don’t know how Laura even knew Lance or how she got involved in all of this. Sounds awful to say it, but with all the shit I now know she was responsible for, I’m surprised she didn’t.”

He looks at me now, as bile rises up my throat at the thought of my own mother being involved in girls being sold for sex. I make a run for the kitchen sink;there goes this morning’s coffee.

Dad has spent the last two hours filling us in on the past fourteen years. My head is spinning with everything I am trying to process. The night he went missing, he believes Mum drugged his whiskey, and had one of Lance’s men come to take him. When he woke up, he was locked in what seemed to be a basement. Ironic how we both woke up to our worlds tipped upside down.

“What about Kyle?” Tanner directs his question to Dad as he holds my eye contact;I know he’s watching for any cracks to surface; knowing it’s the question I have been desperate to find an answer for all these years.

“Kyle came looking for me,” he sighs. “I caught a glimpse of them one night; him and Jesse. I knew they saw me but,dammit, I didn’t think he would come for me — he was so young. I can still hear his tortured voice; his screams — he fought so hard.” Dad stands and begins pacing the room. “I don’t know how long they beat him, but when they threw his limp body into the room they had me locked in, I knew he didn’t stand a chance. They left him there with me. They —” He drops to his knees, unable to string any more words together.

“It’s okay, Dad,” I soothe, kneeling down beside him. “There was nothing you could do.”

“She let them,” his voice getting louder; it has so much force I shuffle backwards. “She declined the autopsy and let it get swept under the carpet as a fucking hit and run!” Standing once again, he throws his arms in the air.

Tanner approaches with a short glass of amber liquid.Here, Warren, have a glass of whiskey, it’s not drugged this time.I shake off my inner thoughts that have no place here, why would I even think that right now?

Dad tips the liquid offering back in one go.

“Another?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I think I might go for a walk to cool off.” His knuckles go white with the tension he’s holding onto the door handle with, “Meadow?” he says much more softly now.

“Yeah, Dad?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t express my frustrations that way.”

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