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Blair
“He should’ve been back by now. Or called,” I tell Aden as I pace in front of the television he’s pretending to watch in the hotel living room. “Can we please go now?”
It’s seven a.m. and Brede’s been gone for eight hours. Eight. Fucking. Hours. “Something’s wrong,” I say. Again. Looking down at Roger’s phone that’s about to die, I check to see if there are any new messages. None. And we’re gonna need a phone charger soon.
“Brede said to stay,” Aden replies coolly. “So sit your ass down and stay.”
“I’m not a dog!” I exclaim indignantly. Aden is in just as shitty a mood as I am, based on the way he’s been mumbling to himself and chomping on his fingernails. “Okay. Fine. I’ll stay here if you’ll go to the house and check on everyone.”
“No.”
“Fuck this,” I mutter before I start for the door. I only get halfway there before my feet come off the floor, and then Aden’s hauling me back to the sofa where he throws me down and practically sits on top of me.
“You know I’m just as worried, but here you’re safe, which is what Brede wanted.”
“What if he’s not safe?” I ask, trying to squirm free of his grip.
“We don’t have a car, so we would have to steal one in broad daylight again, which is risky. I’m low on money, so that rules out a cab or an Uber. So, we’ll sit and wait.”
“Dammit!”
“You sure do swear a lot for a girl who didn’t talk a few days ago,” Aden mutters, finally letting go of my arms and putting some space between us.
“I’ve got years of curses built up,” I tell him. “And I think this situation calls for a few swear words.”
“If I take you out, and something happens to you, Brede would lose his shit,” he tells me.
“Ugh!” I groan before jumping up and walking back toward the curtain to peek out the window. The street below looks calm and quiet, nothing like the complete and utter turmoil I currently feel inside.
“Stop worrying, Brede can take care of himself. He’s a murderer, or did you forget that unpleasant little tidbit about him?” Aden asks.
“He only kills horrible people,” I tell him. Rejoining him on the sofa, I fold one of my legs underneath me so that I can sit facing him straight on. “You know, men who hurt and kill innocent people? Bad guys.” Aden stares blankly at me. “What? You really think he’s a heartless killer?”
“He was gonna kill you,” he points out, sounding skeptical of his brother’s morality.
“That’s because he needed the money for Paula. Besides, he couldn’t go through with it.”
“Look, he’s my brother, and I’ll love him through thick and thin, no matter what kind of monster he is. God knows, I’m one too.”
“No, you’re not. Neither of you is a monster. You’re good and decent men, just like your father.”
“Now that we can agree on,” Aden replies with a nod. “Our dad is as honest and decent as they come, and look where that got him.”
“We’re gonna get him out,” I promise.
“I know we are. So while we’re waiting on Brede, let’s be productive,” Aden suggests. “Wanna do your interview?”
“What? Like right now?” I ask him.
“Sure, I’ll record you on my phone.”
“Okay,” I reply before I take a deep breath to try and relax. There’s no way to avoid the shitty memories this will dredge up, but it needs to be done. Hopefully I’ll feel less guilty afterward, laying it all out there, officially.
Aden pulls out his phone and taps a few buttons before he asks, “Ready?”
“Yeah,” I tell him with a nod, smoothing my hair behind each ear.
“All right. Start by saying your name, and then tell me everything that happened from the beginning.”
“My name is Blair Elizabeth Lockhart. My mother was Valerie Lockhart, and my father is Trevor Lockhart.” Aden nods when I pause, so I continue on. “On the day she was killed, my mother had been out with Ben Rawls on his motorcycle,” I smile at the memory of seeing them so happy together in that brief moment. “They loved each other. After Ben had dropped her off, my mother told me that she was going to pack our things because it would be the last night we spent there at the house with my father. She said we were moving in with Ben and that I would have two brothers.” Aden smiles sadly at that and then gestures with his hand for me to keep going. “Later that night when my mother was making dinner, my father came home. He was always angry at her, but that night he was upset because dinner wasn’t ready. He wanted to know what she had been doing all day. I...I stupidly mentioned that my mom got to ride on a motorcycle. I had no idea the consequences of those words at the time, and I regret saying them. That’s what set everything else into motion.” I pause to take a deep breath and try to blink away the tears. “My father called her a slut. She told him we were leaving, and he got even more upset and slapped her. He told her she wasn’t going to leave him. My father then grabbed a knife, one of the big ones from the block on the kitchen counter and chased her before holding it to my mother’s neck. She...she pleaded with him, begged him not to hurt her. I think she was telling him she was pregnant. He said he knew it wasn’t his, and then he...he plunged the knife into her stomach. But he didn’t stop there.” In my mind, I can still hear her screaming in terror, and I try to shake it off so that I can keep going. “He stabbed her with the knife over and over again until she collapsed to the floor in a pool of blood, her eyes still open.”
“She was dead?” Aden asked.
I nod as tears race down both my cheeks. “I kept hearing screams, so I thought she wasn’t...but they were my screams until my father shook me and yelled at me to shut up. He had her blood all over his shirt and hands. To make me stop screaming, he slapped me and put the bloody knife to my throat, threatening to hurt me with it like he hurt her. Once I stopped, he told me to take my dress off that had blood on it, and to hide it in my dollhouse. So, I ran to my room and changed, hiding it as he told me. Then I hid in the closet, terrified of what he was gonna do.”
“And the blue dress we found the other day in your dollhouse was the same one?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“What happened from there?” Aden prompts.
“A few minutes later, he opened the closet door dressed in a clean suit. He told me the police were coming and that I had to tell them it was Ben and to not say a word about anything else that happened. That I should say Ben attacked her after an argument before he came home from work and found her lying there.”
“So, is that what you did?”
“No, I was too scared to talk to the policemen. They took me to see a woman they said was a doctor, and she kept asking me questions. I was crying and too upset to say anything. She asked me if I could write it down so I wrote one word, Ben’s name, but I couldn’t write anymore.”
“So you never actually told them what happened, the truth or the lie?” Aden asks.
“No. I never said another word after that. I stopped eating and drinking. I never slept either because of the nightmares. They put me in the hospital, and I remember having an IV in my arm. After that, I started sleeping all the time. And before I knew it, years had passed. My father never visited, not that I wanted to see him. But no one came to see me. Only doctors and nurses. Eventually, they stopped talking to me, trying to get me to communicate with them.”
“And you’ve been locked away in a mental institute since you were eight?”
“Yes. They thought I was suicidal because I wouldn’t eat, so even after I turned eighteen, they refused to release me because I couldn’t verbally tell them that I wouldn’t try to kill myself.”
Aden presses a button on his phone and then sets it down before reaching out and folding me in his arms when I fall apart. I want to hug him back, but I can’t because he can’t stand to be touched. So I keep my hands in my lap, and that makes me cry even harder.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him through the tears that fall steadily onto his t-shirt covered chest.
“It’s not your fault,” he says, his hand stroking over the back of my hair. “The three of us were all victims of our parents’ decisions. They decided to have an affair. And no, your mother didn’t deserve to die for it, and my dad didn’t deserve a life prison sentence, but all of that rests solely on your father’s shoulders. Not yours.”
I think I’m finally starting to realize that and let go of some of the guilt, especially after remembering more of the conversation and what happened the day everything went to hell. The words my mother said about being pregnant. Sure, my words may have instigated everything, but she had planned on telling my father she was leaving him. It would’ve likely had the same outcome, only she would’ve probably waited until I went to bed to break the news to him. Either way, my father would have been angry. He was always angry. Despite how my mother broke the news to him, he would’ve probably killed her before letting her leave him. And because of that single decision on his part, I was locked away for ten years, Aden was abused by his foster parents, and Brede became a trained killer probably because he thought his father was a murderer. But now, the three of us can begin to live our lives, knowing the truth. And hopefully, Ben Rawls will be released from prison soon and reunited with his sons to start making up for lost time.
“I’m sorry for how I treated you,” Aden says. “Yes, I was angry at you, but that anger should’ve been directed at your father. It’s just...there are lots of victims that refuse to say the words needed to convict the bad guys. In the case against my foster father, I told them everything he did, but my foster brother and sister held back. I get that they were afraid or ashamed to admit what happened to them, but because of their silence, they protected him, even though it was inadvertently to protect themselves. He’ll be released from prison in just a few years.”
“God, that’s horrible, Aden,” I tell him. “It’s not easy to open up, and we have a long road ahead when it comes time for me to do it in court, but I’m strong enough to do that now, thanks to you and Brede...”
“You don’t have to be nice and throw me in there,” he says as he pulls back and releases me from his embrace. “It’s Brede who’s saved you and cares about you. I was angry at you and just using you.”
“I deserve it for what you went through. But don’t give up, Aden. You should be cared for and loved, and now your family is going to be reunited. It won’t be easy, but you can overcome all the horrible things done to you. Keep putting away bad guys. That helps, right?” I ask him.
“Yes, but I don’t know if I can ever let anyone touch me again. Not for the reason you may think,” he says when I open my mouth to counter that statement. “I know you wouldn’t hurt me. That’s not the real problem. Honestly, I just don’t feel like I’m worthy of your touch or anyone else’s. I’m disgusting, Blair.”
“No, you’re not. Those things, whatever they did were not your fault just like my father’s actions weren’t mine,” I say.
“You don’t understand,” he replies with a shake of his head. “When I was finally able to run away, it wasn’t easy, and I didn’t have anything but the clothes I was wearing.”
“I didn’t either,” I remind him.
“Well, I’m not proud of the things I did those first few weeks.”
“Hell, Aden. Neither am I. I went into an old woman’s house and stole money from her purse and took her car. Do you know how horrible I felt about that?” I ask.
He frowns at me before he responds. “That’s nothing compared to what I did, baby girl.”
“Oh,” I mutter. “But we both just did what we had to do to survive. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Yeah, there is. The things I did...those are the decisions I made. No one made them for me.”
“It can’t be that bad,” I tell him, wishing I could reach for his hand or stroke his arm to comfort him.
“Oh, but it is. And if you knew, you would regret ever letting me touch you.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” I tell him. “I liked how you touched me, how you restrained me. That was hot, Aden.”
“It won’t happen again,” he says.
“You mean, you don’t want to...be with me?” I ask in confusion.
“Not anymore. I took what I wanted from you the other night. And that morning in the hotel room, when you were on your knees? That helped remind me of everything I’ve tried to forget.”
“So you just wanted my virginity?” I ask, my cheeks warming with embarrassment that I gave that to him instead of Brede. And now he’s telling me that’s the only reason he ever touched me. To take, not to give.
“I’m sorry, Blair. I really am. But I’m also fucked up in the head more than you know.” He scrubs his palm over his face. “I wanted to take you before Brede because I was angry at you and envious of him, and virgins are a fetish to me. That’s all I want, to be the person who a girl never forgets. She won’t be able to forget her first time, just like I’ll never forget mine.”
“Wow,” I mutter as his harsh words filter into my head.
“I wish I wanted more from you. And the thought of your lips around my cock does get me hard, but I can’t...I don’t want anything like that from you again.”
My stomach flips at the realization that I mean absolutely nothing to him. Right now, I could be pregnant with his baby, not Brede’s because I thought he cared about me, that he wanted more with me. I was so wrong. And while part of me is relieved that he doesn’t want a physical relationship with me...the other part of me is devastated.
