Page 88 of His Captive

“I want you to tell me everything,” she says resting her head against my chest.

So I do. I tell her everything. Right from the very start.

I tell her how my father worked for Millie’s parents and how I’d fallen for her the second I saw her. How I hated Sorrento because I knew she wasn’t meant to be his, that really, she was mine. I tell her why the butterfly I stole from his room was so important and why I’d kept it all these years. Why my heart shattered to a thousand pieces when I watched her slip through my fingers and give herself to him. How I was weak the night she called me and how I’ve blamed myself for her killing herself for all these years. Convinced that she’d regretted what had happened between us.

I tell her how I’d brought this house as soon as Sorrento put it on the market. Because I needed to feel close to her. How I’d been physically sick when I saw what he kept in the basement and found the photographs of the things he had done to her. And how I’d survived it, by taking from Sorrento piece by piece.

When I’m finished, she places a kiss against my skin and thanks me and then she falls asleep in my arms. And just for a little while, everything is right with the world.

I wake up when I hear noises downstairs. The daylight has turned to darkness and Lysa’s warm body is breathing softly against mine. I slip from beneath her. Pulling on some sweatpants, then heading down to see what the noise is. I find Buddy on the floor of the kitchen, arms wrapped around his legs, rocking on his ass, and sobbing like a child.

“What the fuck you doing here, Bud?” I ask him. Breathing a sigh of relief that it’s not someone else breaking in to try and take her from me.

“I need to know we’re ok, Eth. I can’t… I can’t live with it. Not if you hate me.”

“What do you expect me to do, Bud. Crack open a bottle of scotch with you? Talk through your feelings and sympathize with your guilt?”

“I could sink a scotch.” He sniffs, wiping his nose on his sleeve. The kid never did grasp sarcasm, and right now I’m trying really fucking hard to be patient with him when in reality all I want to do is make him hurt like I had when I’d found her lifeless in her room.

“I thought I was helping her. Sorrento told me it was what she wanted,” he mutters.

“I was fucking gonna help her, Buddy. I was coming to take her away from him.”

“Well, I didn’t know that Ethan. I didn’t fucking know. Hell, she’d been waiting for you for long enough.”

This is the first time Buddy has ever raised his voice at me, at anyone for that matter, and it makes me take a step back.

“She was waiting for you, Ethan. She always said you would come for her, but you never did. She’d tried it all. Cutting her wrists, one time I had to stop her from jumping out the attic window, she even tried to drown herself. And I saved her every fucking time, because I thought you were coming too.”

My teeth grind against each other and my throat constricts, as guilt rushes over me. All those years I’d spent being bitter, Millie had been waiting for me to save her.

“I had no idea, she’d been with you that night,” Buddy continues. “Sorrento already had it planned. He said she was too unhappy to carry on, that it would be kinder that way. Like when a horse breaks its leg.” I wipe my hand over my face. I’ve always seen Buddy as vulnerable, and Sorrento had taken full advantage.

“He got everything for her, I just had to put it in her drink. She would slip off peacefully, without having to be scared like she had been all the times before. She wanted to do it. Ethan, I saw it in her eyes. She didn’t want to live anymore. She wanted out. And the way he treated her. I couldn’t blame her for that.”

“She came back that morning and she seemed so sad. She never mentioned being with you. Sorrento rang me, he told me it was time. He said she’d called him and asked where she could find a hose. He thought she was gonna try and use the fumes from the car. I couldn’t bear to think about her going like that, so I made her the drink. And then I laid next to her on the bed. I spoke to her about when we were all kids and how you two would sneak into the woods and meet me. I held her hand while she fell asleep, she was at peace. I saved her from him,” Buddy says, wiping away his tears.

I suddenly feel responsible. All those years wasted, if only I’d have come for her instead of wallowing in self-pity and throwing myself into vengeance. Maybe I could have really saved her.

“I’m sorry I lied to you. I was scared. When I found out it was you that bought the house, and you kept me on, I almost told you. But, I couldn’t. This place is all I’ve ever known. It’s my home. And people never accepted me the way you and Millie did. I’m prepared to suffer for what I did,” he tells me standing up and trying to look brave instead of helpless.

“You’ve suffered, Buddy,” I tell him. “We all fucking have…. Enough.” I tip my head and turn to leave.

“Wait. Does this mean I can stay, here with you and Lysa?” he asks hopefully.

“You can stay,” I tell him, heading for the door then looking back.

“Just stay out of my way.”

I head back up the stairs a lot more sad than angry. There are so many questions I’d never have answered.

Was Millie really planning to kill herself after we’d been together? Was I just the last thing she’d needed before she left her miserable life? Or, had Sorrento lied, manipulated Buddy into finishing it for her. The perfect murder.

I get back into bed. Lysa’s body immediately finds mine, snuggling into me. It’s everything I need. She’s everything I need, and not to hurt, or to torture…

“I love you,” I whisper. Finishing off what she’d prevented me from telling her earlier. I know she can’t hear me, she’s sound asleep. But it doesn’t matter, I’ll tell her again tomorrow, and then a thousand times more if she’ll let me.

Twenty Three

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