Most people applaud, but a couple actually get up and walk out, muttering and shaking their heads. A flash of rage builds in my chest. Why? Are they afraid the stories they’ll hear today won’t be as terrible and gruesome as mine? Are theybored by the suffering of others? Whatever. We’re better off without them.
“Would anyone like to start? We have a microphone that can be passed to you if you’d like to stay in your seat, though you’re welcome to come up here as well. However you’d be more comfortable.”
For a moment, no one moves or speaks. I get the vibe that everyone is too afraid to, but then a young man toward the back raises his hand. “I-I’ll go,” he stammers. “M-My name is K-Karl, I’m nineteen years old. Last y-year my older b-brother—” he glances down to an older woman sitting next to him, who nods her approval and squeezes his hand — “Last year my older b-brother murdered my little s-sister right in f-front of me and hit me over the head so h-hard he gave me a concussion. It’s uh... I have p-post-concussion syndrome now. They h-hope it’ll go away s-soon, but my st-stutter might be p-permanent now.”
Jesus, this was a bad idea. All I want to do is run through this crowd and bear hug him until everything bad he’s ever felt disappears. We’re in a fucking bookstore, we should be somewhere more appropriate for this. AndI’mthe one whois supposed to comfort these people? Whose idea was this?
Come on, Alaina. You know what to do. Very, very few people have ever comforted you, but you know what you wish they’d have done. Just do that. Give them the space to say and feel whatever they need to say and feel.
Taking a deep breath, I smile softly at him. “Thank you for sharing, Karl. I’m sure that wasn’t easy, especially to go first. Do you want to talk about what happened or what you’re feeling now?”
He keeps his eyes downcast as he shakes his head a little. “He got m-mad at her for tattling. He hurt our d-dog first, and she told, and he... he strangled her. I w-walked in w-when he was d-doing it and he t-tried to k-kill me t-too. I should’ve st-stopped him.”
All of a sudden he sits back down, holding his head. Something tells me it’s a combination of the post-concussion syndrome and the weight of what he experienced, and I have no words to make that any better. I’m not a doctor, but I am a human being. “Karl, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we can’t blame ourselves for the actions of other people. You have to forgive yourself for that. Iwas too young to understand what my parents were doing, and too naive to think they were both evil. You’re a victim too, okay? This wasn’t your fault.”
He nods into his hands as he sobs quietly, the woman next to him rubbing his back in support. I wish we all could do that. “Th-Thank you,” he says. “I’m t-trying to r-remember that.”
My stomach twists with sorrow as I struggle to keep things moving. I want to stay with this boy, let him rant, let him rage, let him cry. Hell, I wish I could take it all for him, but he’s not the only one here today. “Good. I won’t lie, you have a long road ahead of you. Survivor’s guilt is no joke. But hopefully you can make some connections here today and find a support system that will help you get through this. There are a couple of pages at the back of my book filled with support groups and other resources, and I’m the only one who runs my social media pages. If you ever need someone, I’m here.”
A lump forms in my throat before I can ask if anyone else would like to share, but I don’t have to. A middle-aged man stands up on his own. “I’m Colin. I don’t really think this is the right place for me, but I’mnot sure where else to go. Five years ago, my wife poisoned me. She put antifreeze in my dinner. It really messed me up, I was in the hospital for days. I know she’s not a serial killer or even a murderer, but people tend to brush me off when I talk about what happened. They think because I’m a man and she’s a woman, it doesn’t count. Like I should’ve been able to defend myself against poison I didn’t know was there. Some people even tell me it’s karma because so many husbands end up hurting their wives, or ask me what I did to deserve it. I never hurt her, ever. I wasn’t the most attentive husband, but I always made sure she was safe and had what she needed.”
Society is the real poison here. Victim blaming has become so rampant in this country that it’s almost become the norm, and that’s fucking awful. The kind of thing that makes me think we need another flood. Again, I have to fight the rage building inside of me at how unfair people can be and carry on, because this man is expecting a response, not a tantrum. “I’m so sorry that you’ve been treated that way. It wasn’t your fault, and it’s not any less horrible that it happened to a man insteadof a woman. Domestic violence against men is horrifically underreported, and this is why. When you try to tell people what happened, they brush you off, tell you you deserved it, or act like it wasn’t that serious. But you didn’t, and it is. Being betrayed by someone we love is never easy to get past, even if the physical scars fade. You’re always welcome here, Colin. Thank you.”
After that, it gets easier to get conversations moving, but harder to listen to. A surviving victim of the Boxcar Butcher stands up on the only leg she has left and goes into gruesome detail about what it was like to be taken from her bed in the middle of the night and partially dismembered in an abandoned train car. An elderly woman tells her own story of a brush with a killer, only she came out on top. It’s arguably the only triumphant story told, because the son of a bitch who broke into her house, tried to rape her, and told her he was going to kill her was the one who left in a body bag. Good for her, I think, but even that messed her up. It’s clear the weight of taking a life — even someone who arguably deserved it — is alittle too much for her to carry. It would likely be too much for any of us.
On and on it goes, until the signing extends a full two hours beyond its original end time. The proprietor let us know that he closed the store for the full day and we could take all the time we needed, but this is rough. More tears have been shed in this room today than I’ve shed my entire life, and I feel a little too raw to keep going. With as many apologies as I can get out, I dismiss everyone with signed copies and a link to a group chat I made. I’m in the middle of packing up the remainder of my things when I hear the bell ring, and while my initial instinct is that someone forgot something and was just coming back to grab it, I find out quickly that I’m very, very wrong.
When I turn back to help them look, I stop dead in my tracks. Every chair is empty except for one, and where I expect to see Colin or Karl or the little old lady, I see the one person I never expected to see again.
Sebastian fucking Kincaid.
Chapter Sixteen:
Forgotten Ghost
Alaina
It shouldn’t hurt this bad seeing him here. It shouldn’t. But that was a tough signing and I’m already feeling just about as raw and vulnerable as a person can, and now he’s here? For what? To rub it in some more than I’m a filthy liar whose only thought is getting dick?
I can’t deal with this right now, but I don’t have an escape, either. Best to face it head on and get it over with.
“Here for an autograph?” I quip, stacking the remaining books back in the box. “Pen’s freshly broken, sorry.”
To hammer it home, I grab the pen I was using and snap it in half.
He drops his gaze to the ink that’s now dripping onto the table and nods his head. “That’s fair. I actually already read it anyway,” he admits as he meets my gaze. “Can we talk somewhere privately?”
There’s a small crowd of younger women hovering near the door who seem to know who he is, and when one of them snaps a photo of us, I realize I don’t really have a choice.
“Come with me.” I don’t know this bookstore well, but they do have a back room that’s only used for storage. I lead him there with my heart somewhere in my boots. “Leave the door open, no one will hear us back here. He closed the store for the signing.”
He starts to push the door closed anyway before thinking better of it, and when he scratches along his jaw nervously, I know he’s going to drag whatever this is out. “So, uh... Hi. How are you?”
Exhausted. Wrung out, stressed out, and basically left for dead.
“How am I?” I repeat. “What exactly are you doing here, Bash?”
He exhales so deeply his shoulders slump. “I came to apologize. I was an ass about the whole thing, and you didn’t deserve that. Even if you were lying you didn’t deserve that.”
