Reaper
I get up to take a leak, and when I come back, Anna’s lying under the covers, her hands stroking a purring Priscilla who’s managed to curl up beside her, enjoying every stroke of her fingers. I watch her for a moment, taking advantage of her distraction. I was drunk last night, but I remember every single detail, and I definitely remember asking her to stay.
I just don’t know why I’d asked her. Maybe I was hoping to get laid. Maybe I wanted a distraction. Maybe I just didn’t want to be alone. I never dreamed we’d end up like this, though, her curled up in my bed like she belongs there, petting that fucking cat I never thought I’d have to live with ever again, and me watching from the doorway, loving every fucking minute of it.
She looks up at me, and her soft smile fades a little. “She likes you,” I say, stepping into the room. “Stupid cat never liked anybody but Sharon.”
“She must miss her,” she says, dragging the flat of her palm from the top of the cat’s head, all the way down her body. “You really don’t like this cat, do you?”
I sigh and go to the bed. Sitting on the edge, I stroke down the cat’s back, just behind Anna’s hand. Her eyes close and her purring grows louder. “She belonged to my ex,” I confess. “When she split, she dropped the cat with her mother, and Sharon’s had her ever since.”
“She’s old then,” Anna surmises.
I hadn’t really thought about it, but yeah, I guess she is. Explains why she’s so slow these days. “About eighteen years, I guess.”
“Do you still talk to her? Your ex-wife?”
“No,” I say. Standing and lifting up the covers, I shove Priscilla aside so she lies between us. I lie on my side and face her. “Been tryin’ to find that bitch for days now, tell her to lay off her mother, but she’s good at hidin’ when she doesn’t wanna be found.”
“You said she left you?” My eyes meet hers and I take in her face. I’m a private person and don’t share the skeletons in my closet with anyone, but she looks sincere and curious. I know the feeling. “I’m sorry” she says, tearing her gaze from mine. “It’s none of my business.”
“It’s fine,” I say, looking back to the cat and petting her once more. “Tell you what. I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours.”
Her eyes widen, and I can hear the air filling her lungs as she sucks in a breath. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” I hold her wary stare.
“I’ve only ever told one person my story,” she says, looking back down at the cat, her fingers scratching beneath her chin. “Knox is the only one that knows.”
This confession has me clenching my teeth, and I struggle to fight back the jealousy I feel. “You and Knox were a thing?”
She laughs softly. “Not exactly. Everyone kind of assumed we were, but we were just friends. We got each other, you know?”
I don’t know. I’ve met Knox and he’s a big fucking guy. A man’s man. The type of man that doesn’t take shit from anyone, and I have a hard time believing he could be “just friends” with a woman without fucking her brains out. An image of him fucking Anna from behind flashes through my mind and I have to shove it back and change the subject.
“So, we have a deal?”
Anna’s lip disappears between her teeth. “All right, it’s a deal. On two conditions.” I cock a brow. “One, you don’t tell anyone what I tell you. It stays between us.”
“Same,” I reply.
“And two, you go first.”
This had been my idea, but suddenly, I wish I’d kept my fucking mouth shut. I’ve never been one to share, and I’ve spent years burying my past. I don’t think about it, and I sure as hell don’t talk about it. But I’d started this, and if the reward is finally figuring out who Anna really is, then my mission will be accomplished. I just hope it’s worth it.
“All right,” I say, propping my head on my hand. “I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes version. Met Laurie in high school, fell in love and married her as soon as we were legal, then joined the army. My grandmother was my only family. My dad died in a car accident when I was two, and my mom took off shortly after that. I don’t remember her, and I haven’t heard from her since. Laurie’s family became my family.”
Anna doesn’t move as I speak, her wide eyes showcasing her every emotion as she listens. “Gram didn’t like Laurie. Should have fuckin’ listened to her when she tried to talk me out of marryin’ her. But I was young and impulsive, drunk on pussy and great head.”
I sigh and flop back onto the bed, unable to meet her gaze for another second. I stare up the ceiling and keep talking. “We were married two years when she found out she was pregnant. That same day, I was told I was being sent on a tour to Bosnia for six months. Laurie wasn’t happy, but I was fuckin’ thrilled. I loved kids, and had always wanted to be a father.”
I turn my head and glance over at Anna. Her eyes are filled with tears, but she gives me a soft, encouraging smile. This next part is the hard part, and whether she knows it or not, I needed that smile to finish.
“I went to Bosnia. That’s a whole other story in itself, but while I was there, I did and saw a lot of shit I can’t ever forget. I finished out my tour, expecting to come home to Laurie and a baby ready to come any day. Instead, I found an empty house, a bank account that had been bled dry, and a bill for her abortion. She’d terminated the pregnancy the day I left the country.” Anna gasps and reaches for my arm, her hand squeezing as a tear rolls down her cheek.
“By the time I came home, she’d started up an affair with one of my buddies and moved in with him. Who knows? Maybe she’d been fuckin’ him all along. I divorced her ass but she fought me, wanting a chunk of the money I got from my tour. Once I proved she’d been fuckin’ around, she lost that battle. I haven’t spoken to her much since, but I’ve stayed close with her parents. Her father died a couple years ago. Bitch didn’t even come to his funeral. I’ve been taking care of her mom since then. Until now.”
Anna
Reaper’s story is heartbreaking. I’ve never even met this Laurie bitch and I want to wring her neck. “She’s an idiot,” I say, unable to imagine walking away from a good life like she had. “There are a lot of men out there, and not all of them are good. Most of us will never find a man like you, and for her to just throw that away proves she’s got a screw loose. Maybe more than one.”
He lets out a low chuckle. “You can say that again.”
“I’m sorry she did that to you.” And I am. Picturing him coming home, expecting to see his pregnant wife after being away to war and finding an empty house, along a bill for an abortion is unfathomable. What kind of person does that?
“Your turn,” he says, not hiding the fact that he needs a subject change. “What’s your story?”
My heart sinks. “I don’t know where to start,” I whisper, unable to meet his eyes.
His hand comes out and catches my chin, tilting my face on the pillow so that I’m staring straight at him. “How about you start with how you got hooked on drugs?” If only it were that simple. If he wants to know about the drugs, he’ll have to hear about the rest, and that’s the part I hate talking about. “How old were you?”
I lower my gaze and stare at my fingers as they run through the fluffy cat’s fur. “Fifteen. I started small. Some weed here and there, just to mellow me out. Make me not so tense.”
“What does a fifteen-year-old have to be so tense about?” His question is more loaded than he knows.
Shame threatens to drown me. “The first joint I ever smoked was given to me by my mother’s boyfriend. He didn’t live with us, but he was there, a lot. And when my mother was working, he sometimes hung around to watch Charlotte and me.” I take a deep breath and force myself to just get it over with.
“The first time he touched me, Charlotte had gone to bed and I was watching a movie in the living room. He sat down on the couch beside me and started to rub my leg.” I feel the tension in the room growing as Reaper realizes where I’m heading with this. “I tried to laugh it off, push his hand away. Carl was a good guy, liked to laugh a lot, but not that night. Every time I pushed him off, he’d push his hand higher up my leg. When I tried to get up, he yanked me back down onto his lap.”
Memories of that night is like watching a movie in my mind as I tell him my story. “I had on an ’NSync T-shirt and a pair of pajama shorts. Before I could stop him, his hand was inside my shorts and he was touching me. I struggled so hard, ya know? But he was just so much stronger than me. I was just a kid.” Tears sting at my eyes, but I ignore them. “He forced his fingers inside me that night, and when he was done, he told me to go clean the blood from my shorts before my mother got home. I went into the bathroom and puked three times before I could even start to sort myself out.”
I lose my battle with my tears and just let them fall. “The next time he tried to touch me, I was ready for him. He hadn’t even gotten his hands on me before I kneed him in the balls and threatened to tell my mom. He backed off after that, but he was always an asshole to me when nobody else was around. I tried to tell my mom, but she didn’t believe me. Said I was just jealous because she’d finally found someone she liked and I wanted to ruin it for her. Told me to stop flaunting myself by wearing shorts and skirts around him. They were fucking Mickey Mouse shorts. She made it seem like I was strutting around in lingerie.
“For a long time, I started staying out as much as possible. Most of the time, I was just wandering around town, looking for something to do—anything, as long as I didn’t have to be at home with him. Then one night I came home and found him standing in Charlotte’s bedroom doorway. He was touching himself, watching her while she slept. She was only twelve at the time.”
“Jesus,” Reaper mutters. His strong arms come out and yank me toward him, wrapping me up in them and pressing me to his chest. Priscilla lets out a squawk and she wiggles out from between us and jumps to the floor.
“I told him to leave my sister alone, but he just laughed. He told me that nobody would believe me. And he was right. I’d already tried to tell my mother. That was the night he took my virginity.” Reaper’s arms tighten around me. “After that, every time I tried to tell him no, he told me he’d just go get it from Charlotte, so I gave in. I hated myself. I was always so jumpy, and when he fucked me, I cried the whole time. That’s when he started giving me weed to relax me.”
“Does your sister know about this?” he asks, his voice hard and shaking with anger.
I shake my head. “No. She knew about the drugs, but not where I got them or why I did them. I never wanted her to know what I did, what he did.”
“She needs to know, Anna. She’s your sister. Isn’t that what sisters are for? Sharin’ and shit?”
“Charlotte’s kind and soft. She wouldn’t be able to handle knowing what I did to protect her. It would eat her up inside. I can’t live with that.”
“So you’d rather it eat you up instead?”
“I can handle it,” I whisper. “Anyway, Mom and Carl were together for almost two years before she finally kicked him to the curb. He was a freeloader and she got sick of it. By then, I was seventeen, was being raped three times a week by my mother’s boyfriend, and had moved on to any type of drug I could get my hands on. I lied and cheated and stole for everything I had because it was the only way I knew how to deal with what I’d become.”
“Fuck, babe.” Reaper presses his lips to my hair.
“My mom and I fought all the time. She was so disappointed in me. She was diagnosed with cancer just after I turned twenty. I raided her pain meds all the time. By then, I just hated myself. I didn’t care if I lived or died. All I cared about was getting high and forgetting. After she died, Charlotte and I stuck together, but she ended up being the one taking care of me. I was so fucking high all the time, I didn’t even realize how low I’d gotten.”
“And that’s how you met Krueger and the Devil’s Rejects,” he says.
I pull away from him and sit up on the bed, folding my legs and covering my naked body with the sheet. “I never meant for Charlotte to get caught up in that. I never thought it would get so out of control. Those guys were scary. They turned me into their whore and I let them because they kept me higher than I’d ever been. But when Krueger became interested in Charlotte, that was it.” My voice shakes with every word of my confession. “He beat the hell out of me when I refused to introduce him to her, and when I owed him money, he threatened to kill me. Said if I didn’t pay him back, he’d take her himself. I agreed, then we ran.” I look up and meet his eyes. “You know the rest.”
“Babe,” he whispers, coming to sit in front of me. “Jesus. Thank you for telling me.” All I can do is nod. Telling him my truth has exhausted me, just as it had when I’d told it to Knox. No matter how hard you try to bury your past, it never really stays buried, and the scars it leaves can re-open with just a simple uttering of their origins.
Reaper pulls me into his arms and hugs me to him, lending me his strength and showing me more support than I’d expected to get from anyone, let alone this man. He lies back on the pillow, dragging me down with him, and he doesn’t let me go, even after we drift off to sleep.