“I can see that,” I breathed out, wondering how to break through him.
Silence enveloped us again. A sigh escaped my lips. He could scarcely look at me. I wasn’t surprised; I knew he felt a kind of second-hand shame every time the man came down to “play with me,” as he put it.
I was grateful for the drugged food, numbing my senses as he intruded upon my body.
“Please say something,” I pleaded, desperate to see that fire in his eyes again. The brokenness that cloaked him was disheartening. All my life, he had been strong and tough, never backing down.
But now, he was a shell of who he used to be.
Now, more than ever, I needed that fierce and angry Caiden.
“What do you want me to say? There’s nothing left. I’m done,” he spoke dully, a monotone rasp barely audible.
“Come on, Caiden. I need you to wake the hell up,” I snapped at him fiercely. “You kept telling me that I shouldn’t give up, so I’m doing the same for you. We have to cling to whatever tiny bit of sanity and clarity we have left, for our own sakes. I have a bad feeling that our time is running out.”
“You’re probably right.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything more.
“And? What will you do about it? If there’s any tiny bit of humanity left in you, then be a man for once in your life and work with me here.”
My words aimed to push him, and they did.
“I am a fucking man. I’ve survived a lot of tough shit. My father, the military, being kicked out of my home because my girlfriend didn’t want anything to do with my drunk ass anymore,” he yelled, angry, though I could see that he was angrier with himself.
Surprise washed over me. He had a girlfriend? That must have been what he and Shane talked about when Shane asked if he needed a place to stay.
The thought of Caiden being loving and affectionate wasdisturbing, almost surreal, a complete contradiction to his usual demeanor.
A sliver of doubt remained; I couldn’t fully grasp that he was capable of such a thing. But my mind didn’t linger on that topic for long.
“Exactly. You’re stronger than you know. So, get angry. Get energized. Take all that frustration about how hard life has been and let it fuel you. That’s what I’m trying to do. But I can’t do it by myself.” I took a breath and poured out my next sentence. “Youoweme this. After everything you’ve put me through. After impregnating my sister, leading to her suicide, you owe me.”
His head snapped upwards, nostrils flaring, eyes burning.
That was the Caiden I remembered.
“That was not my fault. Yeah, I had sex with her, but I was fucking depressed that night and needed somebody. I didn’t push her to kill herself. But you know what the sickest thing about that was?”
His voice was stone and flames.
I remained silent.
He continued.
“I wanted it to be you. I had a passing thought while I was with her. She looked so much like you in the face, and that tiny part of me that craved you? I wished it had been you instead,” he screamed, his eyes wide and bloodshot, a snarl twisting his lips.
“Don’t say such things.”
His words crashed down on me, and I could only whisper back, feeling utterly helpless and small.
I should have felt flattered by the praise, but instead, a hollow feeling resided deep within. The ache in my heart intensified, a dull throb mirroring the emptiness I felt.
“I can’t keep holding all this in, dammit. It’s eating me from the inside out. I never meant to impregnate her. When you told me about it, I wanted to push it aside and pretend it didn’t happen. I’m a fucking coward, Amelia. It’s all I will be because of my alcoholic father. He molded me into who I am, and I wish I could strangle him for it.” His words tumbled out in a torrent, cascading over me like a waterfall. He paced within his small cage, fistsclenched, his shouts echoing off the cold walls. He was a furious madman coming undone.
Perhaps I had pushed him too far.
His confession of “craving me” hung in the air still, threaded with lament and shock.
