“Do you want to finish your story?” he asked.
I nodded again. But I didn’t lie back down as I said, “I was standing there and he was walking to me, his arms open. I was…I was actually excited that he wanted to hug me. He never really had when I was a kid. It took everything in me not to cry when he put his arms around me and told me everything would be better now.” I shook my head. “I didn’t even feel it at first…there was just this pressure in my stomach and then this weird tugging feeling. And then everything got really hot and then really cold all at the same time.”
I felt Ethan’s fingers on my cheek, but I couldn’t look at him. I was staring at my stomach, watching the long blade being pulled out of my body. “Twelve times,” I murmured. “He stabbed me twelve times as I was lying on the kitchen floor before I managed to turn over so I could try to crawl away. I thought he’d just let me go because there was no way I was going to make it very far.” I shook my head. “But no, he had to make it fifteen.”
“Cain,” I heard Ethan whisper brokenly.
“He kept telling me he was sorry, but that it was better this way. That he couldn’t share her anymore…he loved her too much.” I lifted my eyes to see tears streaming down Ethan’s face. “I let him too close to me…I trusted him, even though I knew deep down that something was off.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Ethan said.
I nodded because he was right. I hadn’t known that kind of evil existed, and certainly not within the man who’d given me life.
“I woke up in the hospital a month later. The blood loss led to a coma. I was partially paralyzed from the knife hitting some nerves near my spine.”
“Your brothers and sisters?”
“After I’d left for school, he’d kept the other kids home. They found Hailey in the bathroom…it looked like she’d tried to lock herself in there. Daniel was on the floor in his room. Justin was next to him. Amanda was still in her crib.”
Ethan let out a muffled sob and then he was pushing into my arms. He felt so good there that I ignored the reflexive need to check his hands and just held onto him. “Your mom?” he asked.
“She was the one who found us. The others had been gone a while…long before he even came and got me from school. No one knows how I managed to hang on after having lost so much blood. I was in the hospital for three months. Physical therapy helped with the paralysis. I went to live with my grandmother in Indiana when they discharged me.”
Ethan pulled back from me and wiped at his face. He wiped at mine too which made me wonder if I’d been crying. I hadn’t felt any tears, but then again, I was so numb I wasn’t sure what I was feeling anymore.
“What about your mom?”
I shook my head. “When she refused to accept that my father had been the one who’d done it, my grandmother sued for custody of me.”
Ethan shook his head in disbelief. “She didn’t believe you?”
“No. Even after I woke up from the coma and told her what had happened, she insisted I was confused. That it was a stranger who’d done it.”
“What happened to your father?”
“He was arrested, but they couldn’t hold him on anything until I woke up and told them who’d attacked me. When I did, he took off. My mother helped him escape.”
“But they caught him, right?”
I shook my head. “He’s still out there somewhere.”
“And…and your mother?”
“She still lives in the same house…waiting for him, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Jesus, I’m so sorry, Cain,” he whispered and then he was hugging me again. “Is this okay?” he asked.
I nodded and pulled back so I could brush my lips over his. “It’s good,” I reassured him.
Really good, but I kept that fact to myself.
“Doyou think we should try to go to the hospital I went to after…”
When Ethan’s voice dropped off, I shifted so I could press a kiss to his temple. We were lying in bed much like we’d done the day before when I’d asked him to let me hold him. His back was to my front and his fingers were roaming over the ones I had resting on his chest. We’d slept in the position all night long, though I hadn’t slept much because I’d been struggling with the implications of what was happening to me.
After telling Ethan my story the night before, we’d lain there in silence for a while before I’d had to get up and check in with Ronan. Ethan had used the time to shower. Ronan and I hadn’t really discussed strategy since, in truth, we didn’t have one beyond trying to get Lucy’s phone fixed so we could pull the video off it. Ronan was making arrangements for Ethan and I to meet a guy who had the skills needed to repair the damaged phone, but until he tracked him down, Ethan and I were rudderless.
Which was fine by me because I had no problem spending some down time with him. We’d have to find a different hotel today if I didn’t hear back from Ronan, but otherwise it would just be me and Ethan laying low.
