Take Me With You (24 page)

Nothing is going to help me right now. Well, one thing could help but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. Her not showing up here, it’s hard not to see it for something more. I don’t think I’m ever going to see her again.

“Some guy force
d himself on her. She had a flashback, something happened with this guy. I saw it and tried to stop it. It was stupid getting involved but you’re always telling me to step out of my comfort zone, right?”

“I have told you that in the past, but I’m sure you realize that I did not mean in it in that way.”

“It doesn’t matter now. It happened. The way he was doing things to her, it was wrong. She’s not…” I stop, not sure how to word what I want to say next. I get the feeling that it wouldn’t even matter what I said, he would still pull it apart. “She’s my girlfriend, not his.”

“What happened next?”

“Kayden and Dillon got involved, stopped it.”

“That’s it?”

“No,” I sigh. “That’s not it. There’s a lot more. Amelia not being here. It’s all my fault.”

“How do you come to that determination?”

“Dillon was the one that got her out of there. Her ex-freaking-boyfriend was the one to save her, stop what Tim wanted to do with her. Not me. I saw them together ya know. Outside. He had his shirt up, showing her his scars or whatever but it looked worse. Then they hugged. It set me off.”

“You were jealous.”

“Yeah, I guess. It pissed me off. I got mad. I wanted to hurt him.”

“Have you ever felt that way before?”

“No. I didn’t know what to do with it. Nothing happened, she stopped anything from happening but the way I reacted, it caused what happened next. I know it.”

“What did happen next?”

“We wanted to be alone, so she took me into the washroom, locked the door. We started kissing, touching…more. Things I’ve never done before.”

“How did it feel, being with Amelia that way?”

I can’t believe he’s asking me this. How does he think it felt? I might be different or whatever, but I’m still a teenage guy. It felt amazing.

“Good, at least at first. Doc, it felt the way it always feels with her.”

“How is that?”

“Amazing. Perfect. One kiss makes me want more than one and then it turns into me wanting even more, things I don’t think I should want.”

“Eric, what you felt with Amelia, it’s completely normal. I know you do not have much experience with it, but wanting what you did, it’s not wrong. It’s natural.”

“Then why did it feel so wrong?”

“I’m not sure, why don’t you tell me what happened next. It might be able to help me understand why you felt it was wrong.”

“I was feeling her, like her skin. I had my hands under her shirt and it felt okay but she pulled away and started undoing my pants.” I stop here, feeling like I’m saying too much, none of the words feeling right. Admitting all of this to him, it’s wrong, dirty even. He doesn’t want to know this.

“Why did you stop?”

“With Amelia or stop talking?”

“Talking. There’s more, I can tell. Why did you stop?”

“It’s too much to admit. It’s private.”

“How did you react to what she did?”

“I stopped her. Pulled her up. She was on her knees…it was too much. I didn’t want that. I still don’t want that, even if wanting it might
make everything right again.”

“You did the right thing, Eric.”

“I know that, but now she’s not here and it doesn’t feel like it.”

“You’re worried about her.”

“Of course I am. You know everything she’s been through just like I do. For some reason she thought that because of the way she was with Dillon, the way I reacted, she had to prove herself to me somehow. She didn’t need to prove a thing.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“I might have. I don’t really remember. I just told her she didn’t have to do it. That I didn’t want it. I pushed her away and she turned on me after that.”

“How so?”

“It was like I was right back at school and the last month didn’t even happen. She called me names, she was so angry and mean, but as much as it hurt hearing the words, I understood it. It wasn’t her talking. It was the past.”

“She went back to the only thing she knew. Her safety.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Reacting that way, seeing what she was doing for what it really was and not the way anyone else would have, it speaks volumes Eric.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A couple of months ago, if that same situation would have happened, what would your response have been?”

“She would have broken me. It would have been like last fall all over again.”

“Exactly my point. You reacting differently this time. Being here now instead of at home, locked away in your room, reliving what took place last fall. You’ve come a very long way in a short period of time. You’re making progress.”

Hearing for the first time in five years that I’m making progress, I’m getting better, it’s supposed to make me feel happy but it doesn’t. I don’t really care if I’m progressing or not. All I care about right now is her. I need to know where she is and that she’s safe.

I don’t want her hurting herself again.

“Doc, I need help.”

“With what?”

“Her. I’m scared. I can’t think about anything else right now. I know this session is supposed to be about talking about myself, but I can’t do that.”

“What do you want to do, Eric?”

“I want to tell the truth, but not mine. Hers.”

‘Why?”

“Because if we don’t tell someone what we know, I’m afraid that she’s going to hurt herself.”

He knows what Amelia does to cope and it’s him knowing this and the way I’m reacting right now that I hope makes him understand exactly what it is I need him to do. I know that he wants it to come from her, for her to be the one to stand up and admit what her dad’s been doing, but right now, there’s no time for that.

If the way she bolted from the bathroom means anything, there’s no time for anything anymore. Calling me names, doing what she’s been doing for years, that’s her way of going into herself again. Becoming Amy. If she can do that, then the other thing she does when she can’t handle things, it’s not far behind.

We need to call the police. I need to stop her before she hurts herself so bad that it won’t ever heal. Before she does what I tried and failed to do last fall.

Ending it once and for all.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Amelia

I always knew it was going to end here.

It doesn’t matter how far or how fast I run, it will never be far enough. He will always bring me back and this time is no different.

Ringing the doorbell and dancing back and forth on my feet, impatiently waiting for him to get to the door, swing it open and see me standing here, my stomach flips the minute I see the light turn on inside.

As the door opens, light spilling out onto the step, the large shadow from his body completely covering me, I turn and lift my head until my eyes are locked on his. The same blue eyes as mine, ones that when I was little were so soft and safe, but now scare the living hell out of me.

I know what really lies behind them now and there’s nothing safe about them or the person that wears them.

“Amelia! This is a surprise.”

Yeah I bet it is. After ignoring him for weeks, showing up here without so much as a fight has to be a real shock to his system, but one I’m sure he’ll get over quick the minute he lets me inside and shuts the door.

Talking to Ms. Owens in the office, it didn’t do anything for me. Her words mean nothing. All it did, her preventing me from burning myself was force the reminder of who I really am to the surface even more. What I’ll always be. His angel Amelia. The only person in the entire world that can bring him to his knees. .His pleasure stick. His whore.

His period.

“Can I come in?” I ask, shaking what’s left of the fear away so that my words come out clear and don’t give anything away. I don’t want him to know how weak I am right now, it will only make this worse.

“Of course.” He says, immediately stepping back from the door until I make my way inside, shutting the door softly behind me. “I’m glad you’re here.”

The soft way the words come out makes me shiver, a move he catches as he steps forward, my back to him and places his meaty hands on my shoulder, moving them over, rubbing them. A touch so familiar that I shiver again because my body is reacting and I don’t want it to.

I’m not here for this despite the way it looks. I don’t want him touching me, doing what he’s been doing since I was four. The time for that is over. I’ve gotta end it. I’ve gotta take the control back.

Sliding out from under his hands and turning to face him, I slide the zipper completely down on my hoodie, the minute it’s all the way down, pulling it off completely, letting it fall to the floor behind me. It’s a move that true to his way he takes wrong.

“Oh baby girl, you read my mind.” He says huskily, his feet instantly moving toward me.

Taking a step back I lift my arms in the air until he’s got a full view of what he’s done to me, what he knows I do and what I’ve been hiding from the rest of the world for years. He can think I’m taking my clothes off for him all he wants, but he’s dead wrong.

I’m showing him the real monster he’s created.

“You see this, Dad? These scars on my arms, the way some of them are bleeding? When the memories become too much, I pick them open until the blood pours. You see it? This is what you do to me every single time you lay your hands on me.”

I don’t know how it’s happening but my voice, it’s completely even, no wavering, shaking or stammering the way I expect with the way my heart is beating out of control in my chest. For the first time in ages, I think I finally know what being completely numb is.

I’m living it.

“Stop talking like that. What we have, it’s not ugly.”

No he’s right. It’s not ugly. It’s disgusting, gross and wrong, but not ugly. I’m the ugly one for keeping it a secret as long as I did. I’m the ugly one for liking it, but right now, I’m the ugly one that’s gonna end it once and for all.

He’s never going to hurt me again.

Sliding my hand into my pants, keeping my eyes trained on him in case he takes another step forward, I pull it out of my pocket, and flipping it up, I watch as his eyes go wide.

If he was surprised when I showed up on his doorstep a few minutes ago, he’s gonna be even more so now.

“Amelia, what are you doing? Why are you holding that?”

That is a Swiss Army knife, something he gave me a few days before my thirteenth birthday. For protection he said. I never understood it at the time, my mind so screwed up at that point that there wasn’t a whole lot that made any sense to me, but I get it now.

He gave me something to use as protection against him and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

“We’ll get to that. Why Tim, Dad?”

His face as he registers what I’m asking, realizing that I know, remember even, it’s a way I’ve never seen him. I don’t think he ever intended for me to remember anything about my time with Tim.  All the years that have gone by since it happened, I’m pretty sure he was relieved that I didn’t because he would never have to answer for it.

Too bad. I’m gonna make him answer it now. Before I do what I came here to do.

“Tell me, you sick bastard!”

His eyes lower to the floor and I feel nothing. I just want fucking answers. I want to know how he found Tim and turned him into a monster like him.

“His dad owed me a favor.” He whispers and my stomach turns. The way he’s making it sound is that Tim is innocent and I damn well know that’s not true. Tim isn’t innocent, he wanted what happened. I remember his face, the moans.

“And?”

“It’s amazing how easy it is to get a kid to agree to something when he’s as neglected as Timothy was. He had no problem agreeing. He wanted it even more than I did.”

Dangerously close to throwing up, but not wanting to give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing me break any more than I already have, I accept his explanation and move forward to what has to come next.

The real reason I’m here.

Lifting my left arm up until it’s completely spread out wrist up in front of me, I smile, the knowledge of what I’m about to do making me happy for the first time since I woke up to Eric’s present this morning.

A flash of the boy I love comes into my mind, the way he looks when he’s laughing and it warms me inside but hurts at the same time. What I’m here to do, it’s going to hurt him, I know that, but there’s no other way out. If I want this to stop forever, it has to happen this way, even if I hurt the most beautiful guy I’ve ever known in the process.

In a few minutes, how he feels won’t matter anyway, but when he gets my note, he’ll understand. I hope he does anyway. I didn’t want to leave him, but there’s no denying that when I do, he’ll be better off.

For the first time since he moved here, he’ll be safe. We both will.

Taking the blade and placing it against my skin, lifting my head and letting the sick pervert standing in front of me see the grin that’s taking up my whole face, I slide it across my skin, starting at my wrist and making a straight line all the way up my arm, only shifting my head downward when I see the first traces of my blood start to break through.

Moving to blade to my other hand, catching him moving toward me, I repeat the same action, this time slicing deeper, feeling the stinging pain as I make quick work of my arm before he reaches me and snatches the blade from my hand.

Feeling him gripping onto me, this time not in the way he’s done before, but something different; foreign, I hear the blade make contact with the ground, the clattering sound rising right up until it’s the only sound I can hear besides the steady drum beat in my head as my blood pumps harder, thicker and brighter through the gashes in my arms.

“Amelia, what the fuck are you doing!” I hear him screaming, but it’s hazier than before. Everything going blurry around me, I let my eyes close but not before saying the words I came here to say, the ones that no one but him needs to hear.

“I’ll see you in hell—you sick bastard.”

Eric

It didn’t take much convincing to get what I wanted. Dr. Thompson stood up and left the room pretty much right after I told him what I needed to do and with him out the room, I called the only other person on the planet that I trusted enough to help me.

My mom.

When she picked up, hearing my voice shaking while I just started rambling everything off, I could tell I was scaring her. It’s only when she raised her voice, screaming my name at me that I finally settled enough to listen.

“I’m on my way to get you now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes or less. Do not leave the office until I get there.”

“Please hurry.”

“I will but Eric, please just breathe. Calm yourself. We’ll find her and make sure she’s alright. I promise you.”

How she managed to understand a word I said when I was just rambling everything out in one gigantic run on sentence, not even bothering to take a breath in between, I’ll never know but I was glad she did.

When she showed up ten minutes later, I had my backpack on and I ran out the door toward her. Throwing my arms around her tightly, I did the one thing I hadn’t done since I got out of school earlier, I let the tears come, no longer caring who was around to see or hear me. Let the rest of the world think what they want right now. I needed to get this out before it ate me alive.

“Shhhh. It’s okay baby. It’s all gonna be okay.” She strokes the top of my hair, the way she’s done so many times before when I’m in the middle of a complete shut down and even though it doesn’t stop it completely, it helps. My heart slows just a little and my breathing starts to even out.

“Let’s go. We’ll try her house first.”

The drive seems to take forever and by the time we pull up in front of Amelia’s house, I’m beyond ready to get out of the confines of the car, feeling more closed in than ever. Flinging the door open, I run over the grass until I’m banging on her door. When that gets no response, I repeatedly push the doorbell until finally, I hear the crack and the door comes swinging open.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the woman that greets me yells and not wanting to waste a second, I push past her, heading straight for the stairs, ones I hope will take me to her room. I’ve never been inside of her house before, but since my bedroom is upstairs, I gotta think hers is too.

It’s completely rude and I know I’m probably going to get in trouble for it later, but I need to find her. I need to stop her before she uses the lighter on herself again or something worse.

“Which one is hers?” I scream downstairs even though at the same time screaming at myself, the frustration I have at seeing so many doors and not a lot of time pushing me even further.

“Right in front of you.” The voice calls up and I move forward, pushing the door open until it’s all the way back against the wall. Stepping inside, I see her bed, completely put together, looking like it hasn’t even been touched since she left and scanning around the room, looking for something that will stick out and tell me that she’s been here, my eyes land on the small envelope on her desk.

Moving to the desk, I pick it up and pause. This could be absolutely nothing and opening it up and reading it, I could be invading her privacy. I don’t know how good I feel about doing that so I let it linger in my hand until I hear the scraping at the door.

“Open it.”

Where I’m expecting to see my mom, I come face to face with the lady that opened the door
, the same one I saw at school. Amelia’s mother. The one that couldn’t get out of the school fast enough.

“Where is she?”

“She has an appointment with her doctor. Have you checked there?”

I can’t believe this. Amelia’s mother is standing in the doorway, her face so frozen in place, fake that there’s a part of me that wants to take a chisel to her to see if she’s completely made of stone. She doesn’t seem real and her voice is as robotic as her daughters was earlier.

“I just came from there. Where else would she be?”

“With Timothy or Charlotte.”

“She’s not there either.” I don’t know that for sure, but after what happened with Tim today, I’m pretty sure going to see him would be the last place she’d be and Charlotte isn’t much better.

I need to think like Amelia, not Amy. It’s obvious that her mom only knows the monster side of her and not the real daughter she has, the one that needs help that’s buried underneath. She has no idea who the girl I know is.

Sliding my fingers over the envelope, I see that it’s not sealed, so sliding my hand all the way in, I pull it out and unfold it, my fingers shaking so badly, afraid of what I’m going to read that I have to catch it twice when I almost dropped it.

I’m going to make this stop. I can’t take it anymore. I’m tired.

I want to go to sleep forever, but not before I do the one thing I should have done a long time ago.

Eric, I’m so sorry. What happened today never should’ve happened. It wasn’t you, it was me. The names I called you, I didn’t mean them. You’re my rain and you always will be. I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t be the person you needed and deserved.

He took all of that away from me fourteen years ago, but I swear, I’m going to take it back. Before all of this ends, I’m gonna take the control back. He’s not going to hurt me or anyone else I love anymore….