Chapter Fifteen
Kane
Eleven Years Ago
Helene crawled up behind me and curled her body around mine. Her skin felt warm, and her lips trembled against the back of my neck. She draped her arm over my body, clutching my hand tightly in hers.
“We’re going to be okay,” she whispered. “We’re going to be okay.” She kept repeating it, and I closed my eyes, waiting for it to end. It wasn’t going to be okay. It was fucking not going to be okay.
I could hear the man nearby. It was the sound of a zipper again, a belt buckle being latched. Helene’s entire body trembled, and I pulled her hand up to my mouth, breathing against her palm. It was cold. The floor was hard. And every part of me hurt and seared with burning pain.
The man nudged us with his foot and shoved the mop bucket that usually sat in the corner toward us. It sloshed brown water over our feet, and Helene scurried to sit up.
“Clean up this mess you made and get dressed. Make it fast.”
The man sat on a stool near the breakroom door, lounging back casually as he watched us. I crawled to my feet, and he threw Helene a bottle of bleach water and some paper towel. She crouched down, wiping the shelf that was covered in my blood. It was only then I remembered the gash in my side. But I ignored it and focused on the blood and cum I was smearing across the floor with the mop instead.
I diluted the mess over and over again, sponging it up until there was nothing left but a damp floor. In ten minutes time every visible trace of what had happened to us was gone as though it had never been.
“Get dressed.” The man threw our clothes at our feet, and he shoved the mop bucket back into the corner as Helene and I scrambled to dress. I glanced at her, and she was shaking violently, tears streaming down her cheeks. She was falling apart. Of course she was. Her body was doing everything mine needed to do.
I brushed a tear angrily from my cheek, fury burning through me at the sight of her. I could recall crying only one other time in my entire recollection. It was when my grandmother passed away and I was nine. Not even alone did I cry. I’d just never had any reason to—no reason compelling enough at least. But every damn second of this night was reason to, and I was.
When we were dressed, the man stared at us. He was holding Helene’s purse in his hand. “This yours, sweetheart?” He cocked his head to the side as he watched her.
She nodded her head rigidly.
“Well, how about you take it, and get lost.”
She shook her head. It was a spastic movement nearly like a twitch. “I’m not leaving him.”
The man smiled at her almost kindly, sympathetically. “I’m not asking you to.” He glanced at me. “Both of you. Get lost.”
We stood frozen for a moment. The gun was sitting rested in his lap. I had to tug on Helene’s hand to get her to follow me. Her eyes were glued to the gun. But she stumbled after me, and the thirty seconds it took us to walk out the back door, reach my truck, get in, and start it were the longest of my life. I waited for the gun to go off, knowing it would be too fast for my dead brain to even register, but I listened for it still.
But it didn’t come.
My bald tires spun out as I slammed on the gas, and the man stood casually in the back door, holding a hand up as though waving to us. I’d picked Helene up on my way to work that afternoon, and now, there were no other cars in the parking lot. I sped down the highway toward town, and when we reached the Sleepaway Inn a half a mile down the road, I slowed down, contemplating pulling in and asking for help. But it was deserted and quiet. There were no cars in the lot, the lights in the office were out, and only one room had a dimly lit light on inside, likely left on by the last occupant.
When she saw me looking toward the motel, she whined. “Please, Kane. I just wanna go home. Please… Please take me home. I don’t want to be here anymore.” She gasped, sucking in one breath after another as though she couldn’t get enough. “Please…”
I reached for her hand, and I kept on driving. She curled up next to me, and she was silent.