Page 75 of Let Me
I look up at Benji, who’s watching me, face unreadable.
I can’t look at him as I keep talking. I glance at the pool. “The next morning, I run downstairs, ready to feed him. I see he’s still asleep, curled up on his side at the edge of the lawn, by the fence. I run over in bare feet, ready to pounce on him, to wake him up. His fur was nearly white, it was so blonde. It was so fucking soft, and it was blowing in the wind, like little yellow clouds. I fucking loved it. But when I get to him…he’s stiff. Cold.”
I meet Benji’s eyes again. “My father comes up behind me, clamps a tight hand on my shoulder.He wouldn’t shut up, son,” I mimic in my father’s stern voice, “I just helped him sleep.”
I laugh again, shaking my head, even though nothing is funny. “He killed him. He choked him to death because he wouldn’t stop barking.” I turn to face Benji fully. “So, no. I don’t want to deal with my father. He’ll get his, too, for what he’s doing. But not now. He doesn’t deserve a quick death.”
Benji is quiet a moment, but he knows what I’ve not said by what I just answered him with. He blows out a long breath. Then he says, “Let’s go tonight.”
I glance up at the overhead sky. There probably isn’t a flight tonight.
“I’ve booked roundtrip.”
I almost laugh, at how prepared he is.
He loved Jack like his very own little brother. Without much family of his own, mine was his. At least I was, and Jack was. He doesn’t know what it was like to taste Riley, though. To be so wrapped up in her that I didn’t spare a thought for my own flesh and blood the night of his death.
And he’s still ready to go to bat for me.
I nod.
“We’re not killing her,” I say, to make the lines very clear.
“We won’t kill her,” he agrees, although I think he would if I hadn’t said that. “But she’s a monster, right? We’ll give her what she deserves. We’ll get her to talk.”
I’m not exactly sure what he means by that, but I don’t ask any more questions. Because even though the thought of touching her should make me feel physically ill by now, instead, it makes me excited. To wrap my hands around her throat. To hurt her, in the way she enjoys. And I’m going to do it. And then I’m going to find out who that motherfucker is in that video, and I’m going after him, too.
THIRTY-FOUR
Present
MOM IS ASLEEP, and I’m lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.
Benji didn’t text me again, and for that matter, neither did Rolland. Adam did, however, and he must have gotten the video too. He never knew.
You’re fucking disgusting.
I blocked his number.
I didn’t find a new job yet, although I have a few leads. It was just impossible for me to have a coherent conversation with a potential employer after that video, so I didn’t go in anywhere. I came home, Mom and I ate TV dinners, and I told her nothing. There’s nothing she could do about it, and she knows nothing of what happened with me and Rolland. She knows nothing, even though it’s partially her fault. She should have protected me. She should havemotheredme.
But being angry at her for a past she can’t go back to will do neither of us any good.
I toss and turn in bed and feel disgusted with myself. I deleted the video soon after I watched it, but the memory of it is burned into my brain. It has been for three long, miserable years.
And remembering that I’ve spent those years being subject to Rolland’s beck and call, a puppet on a string, doing everything he asked…I want to tear my own skin off.
I close my eyes tight, trying to forget. Trying to think of something else.Anythingelse. But there’s nothing.
Nothing, and then what sounds like a knock on the door startles me.
I sit up, staring at my bedroom door.
The knock hadn’t come from outside of the apartment.
And Mom never knocks.
Hell, she never gets up in the middle of the night. She claims she can’t see well in the dark, so she’d rather wait ‘til light. Besides, I hear her gentle snores through the thin walls.
