SORROW WOODS (34 page)

Whoever she is, she can really move quickly. I’ve never seen anyone run as fast as Serena, but

this woman is coming a close second. There’s no way I can match her pace and I’m not going to be

able to run all night, especially considering I’m suffering from lack of sleep
and
a hangover.

“Wait!” I call.

One minute she’s running ahead of me and the next, she disappears. I keep blinking as I run to

make sure I haven’t just imagined it, but when I finally get to the rack of staked sun-beds where I last saw her, there’s no sign of her at all. There are a few dark green bushes that sway in the gentle breeze, but she couldn’t be hiding in there.

I start to panic. All of the worries about who she was and where she could have gone are

swimming around in my head, but my body doesn’t respond. I don’t breathe heavily or feel my heart pumping in my chest; I feel nothing. I can’t help but think that she was there to try and get Serena. I know I might be paranoid about someone taking her since she was snatched when she was younger,

but I can’t think of any other reason why this woman was there in Serena’s garden. It was just too much of a coincidence.

I feel in my pocket for my mobile phone and search through my contacts for Auden and

Angela’s number. I put the phone to my ear and hear it ring once before something heavy bangs into the side of my head. My phone slips from my hand as my legs give way. The resonating vibration of whatever it was that’s just struck my head rings through my ears. I feel sick as my body crashes

down onto the ground. I blink a few times as my face rolls into the sand and I see a pair of feet slowly approach me.

“You took something of mine that didn’t belong to you,” I hear a female voice say.

For a minute I’m confused, but it slowly registers in my head that she’s talking to me. I haven’t stolen anything for a long time so I have no idea what she’s talking about. I give her my standard response to anyone that accuses me of doing something: “Fuck you.”

“I wouldn’t let you fuck me if you were the last man on the planet, Kaiden Matthews. Do you

want to know why?”

I try to get up but she steps forward and presses the heel of her shoe into my voice box.

“Get off,” I manage to strain out.

She laughs and presses her foot harder into the base of my throat. “I wouldn’t fuck you,

Kaiden, because I know exactly where you’ve been. I’ve been watching you.”

I must be stronger than her, I think. I’m a guy. I play on the soccer team and I’m not exactly

small. I wiggle until her foot dislodges enough for me to speak again. “What do you want?”

She leans down and breathes her rancid breath all over my face. It takes all that I have to not

puke the contents of my stomach all over her feet. “I want you to stay the fuck away from my

daughter.”

I feel myself frown. I try to think back to all of the girls that I’ve been with, but I can’t

remember any of them having a mental mother. Because of the darkness and the headache that has

started to pound around in my head, I can’t quite make out her face.

“Just tell me who she is. I wouldn’t go anywhere near a girl with a Mother as crazy as you!”

She pulls her hand back and slaps me across the face.

It stings. It really stings. “Ouch. Shit, that hurt.”

“My daughter is Serena and when I say stay away from her, I mean it,” she growls.

Not possible. I saw the police file. I was there when they visited Serena and told her that

they’d arrested the woman that had stolen her.

“No,” I say, the disbelief clear in my voice. “They arrested you.”

She leans down further and brushes her skinny hand across my face. “They got the wrong

one.” She cackles and leans right down in my face. “Do you really think I’d let them catch me after all this time?”

I blink up at her in shock and shake my head. How could they have gotten the wrong one?

Surely it’s not possible. The police officer talked about DNA. How could they have arrested the

wrong person if they’ve got DNA?

“Can you see it now, Kaiden? Do you see how I have the perfect opportunity to escape

forever? They have already arrested me, or someone who they think is me, which means they won’t

even be looking for me.”

“I’ll tell them,” I promise. I stare at her and feel my eyes narrowing. “I’ll tell them who you are and what you’ve said.”

“Do you really think I’m gonna leave you in a position where you’ll be able to utter a single

word to anyone ever again?” she asks threateningly.

I stare at her. She’s joking. She must be.

“I hope you said goodbye to Serena before you snuck out of her bedroom.”

It suddenly clicks. She’s going to try and take Serena away again. But she can’t. Not again.

Angela and Auden will be heartbroken. I have to do something.

“And while we’re talking about you being in my daughter’s bedroom,” she continues, “I think I

owe you something.”

“You owe me nothing, and it’s none of your fucking business what Serena does or who she’s

with,” I spit. “Now, get off me.”

My throat is free. I sit up and watch her drag her foot down my chest. I force my arms to move

so I can scramble up, but before I can get away, she pulls her leg back and kicks me as hard as she can between my legs.

I hear a noise, but it sounds so strange and animalistic that it doesn’t actually sound like it’s coming from me. Shit. Shit. Shiiiittttt!!! The pain is excruciating and takes my breath away. A

stabbing pain flies straight up from my groin, wraps itself around my frozen insides, and creeps into my throat. I think I’m going to be sick. My balls feel like they’re stuck in my stomach and I can’t think of anything except how to get them out of there. I can’t breathe. All the blood is rushing to my head, making my eyes do strange things. I place my hands over my bits and slump back down onto the

sand.

“I hope to God you didn’t touch my daughter with your sleazy, dirty hands. At least now you

won’t be able to touch her with anything else
but
your hands.”

I groan. “You’re a bitch,” I mumble through gritted teeth.

“I might be a bitch, Kaiden, but I have Serena’s best interests at heart. Can you honestly say

that this whole time you’ve been thinking of anyone but yourself?”

“Yes,” I huff, “you don’t know the half of what I’ve done for her.”

“I don’t give a shit what you’ve done and from what Serena was saying earlier, I doubt she

gives a shit either.” She squats down in front of me and pats my hands that cover my man bits.

“You can go back to your shitty, boring life and your shitty, boring girlfriend now. I’m taking

Serena with me and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it. She wants to come with me, so she must not think much of you.”

I need to speak to Serena. I can’t let her leave with the things the way they are between us. If I get a chance to speak to her again, then I can tell her how I really feel and maybe she won’t go. She needs to understand that I don’t care what she thinks of me, I love her anyway. I need to tell her that. I need to at least let her know that she has options.

I hate that she’s probably opened up her doors by now and saw that I’ve left. What must she

be thinking now?

“You can’t,” I eventually spit, shuffling away from her touch, “she’s not your real daughter.”

“I’ve been her Mother for all of these years. Do you think she’s stopped loving me just

because she knows I didn’t give birth to her?”

I can’t believe she actually believes what she’s saying is true. This woman is seriously messed

up in the head.

“You’re not her Mother. You abducted her. All I did was to take her from the thief that stole

her and give her back to her real parents,” I tell her.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” she says.

I try to think about how I can fight her off and get to a phone so I can call the police, but the pain in my balls has numbed me completely. I look around but realise there’s nothing here to tie her up with, and I’m not sure I could keep up with her if she tried to run again.

“My wrong trumped yours though,” I say, trying to buy time while I figure out what to do.

“You’ve lost her and I think you should just accept that and leave her alone. She doesn’t need or want you anymore. Look at what she’s got now and the things that she can experience.”

“Experience?” she says, raising her eyebrows at me. “Would you be including yourself in

that?”

I stare her dead in the eye. “Yes.”

She laughs cruelly and before I can think of anything except what an unnervingly awful

sound that is, she brings a beam of wood crashing down onto the top of my skull.

Serena

I pull the front door shut as quietly as I can. Angela and Auden are still fast asleep, and I don’t want them to wake up and ask me where I’m going because I don’t want to lie. As I walk around the side of my house, the sun beats down hard against the back of my neck, reminding me of how hot the

sun used to feel when we were in the woods. I miss the woods, but I’m glad I’m here now where I

belong. It feels right.

“Good morning, Serena,” smiles my Mother as I round the corner onto the beach. “Have you

got a hangover?”

She looks so much different here than when we were in the woods. She’s drastically aged. I

shake my head.

“I feel fine.” She smiles and squeezes my hand when I finally get close enough for her to touch

me. I stare at her big white sunglasses and head scarf and frown. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“Because I don’t want anyone to recognise me.” She sighs and pulls on my arm. “Shall we go

to the diner? I know you like it there.”

The diner reminds me of Kaiden, but how does my Mother know that I like it there? “Okay.”

We walk silently for the few minutes that it takes us to reach the small little hut that sits in

the middle of the sands. As we step onto the wooden path that leads from the diner to the sea, my eyes fall onto a dark stain that snakes downwards before disappearing under my feet. I step around it, wondering what it could be.

“I saw that boy who took you from me last night.”

I glance up at her and feel my eyes narrow in response to the brightness of the sun.

“Kaiden?”

She carries on looking forward and nods. “It’s a shame that he found you and dragged you

away from me and then decided that he didn’t like you, isn’t it?”

I take a deep breath. What happened between us last night was wonderful, but I don’t

understand why he just left like that. Was it because we’d argued? When I think about it I want to cry.

“How do you know he’s decided that he doesn’t like me?” I ask, curious.

She smiles. “He told me so himself.”

Oh. I hate the fact that he told my Mother what he thought. Why couldn’t he have the guts

to actually tell me? He kissed me and then told me that he thought I was beautiful. Was it because he’d been drinking? Did the alcohol make him think he liked me more than he actually did?

“Yeah, I guess,” I sigh, “it’s a shame.”

She nods again and kicks her feet against the wooden walkway to shake the sand off. “Are

you eating while we’re here?”

“Yes, please. I’m really hungry.”

She clicks her tongue. “I have no money for you. I only have enough for myself.”

Why did she ask me if I was eating if she doesn’t want me to? I push my hand into my pocket

and pull out a few notes. “I have money. What do you wanna eat?”

“Sausages,” she says, “and bacon and eggs.”

I frown, wondering how she already knows that she likes those types of food but remember

that she’s lived somewhere other than the woods before. “Okay.”

“You go in,” she says, nodding towards the door. “We’re going to sit outside at these tables

and eat.”

I glance at the table that I sat at with Kaiden whilst I ate a salad and feel the ache in my chest bury itself that little bit deeper. “Okay. See you in a minute.”

I walk into the diner feeling deflated. I want Kaiden. I need Kaiden. There’s something about

him that makes me want to explore the world, and whatever it is that I imagine myself doing, Kaiden is always there with me, smiling and encouraging me. I don’t want to leave with my Mother, but I

can’t see how he and I are going to sort our problems out.

I like him. I have flutters in my belly and chest when I see or think about him. He makes me

smile. He makes me laugh. He talks to me like we’ve been friends for years and doesn’t treat me like I’m a freak. He’s always the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think of before I go to sleep. He consumes my every waking moment. I know that I can’t live my life without him being in it, even if it’s just as friends. I need him.

After giving my order and picking up the cutlery and condiments, I head back outside and

find my Mother with her head slumped down against the table. I clear my throat and place the stuff onto the table.

“What took you so long?” she snaps. “You’ve left me sitting here ages.”

I sit down and pull myself underneath the table. “There was a bit of a line.”

She huffs and folds her arms across her chest. “I don’t know why we’re even sitting here,

Serena.”

I blink at her. It was her idea to get breakfast in the first place. “I thought we were talking?”

“What is there to talk about? You’re coming home with me,” she says matter-of-factly.

She’s clearly not listened to anything that I’ve said to her the last few times that we’ve met.

“I’m not going anywhere, Mother. This is my home now,” I tell her.

I can’t see her eyes because of the huge sunglasses that cover half of her face, but I know

she’s scowling at me. “We’ll talk about that after I’ve eaten. You’ll ruin my appetite if we talk about it now.”