Page 49 of Safe Word

Salvation always began with suffering, after all. And neither of us had suffered nearly enough.

I stormed out before I could hear another word. The echo of his voice followed me as I pushed through the hospice doors.

His tone held something I hadn’t heard in years – hope.

I needed air. I needed to escape the smothering weight of him, the coldness in his eyes. But the hour-long drive back into the city sneered back at me.

The memories resurfaced, cutting deeper than they had in years. Every mile felt like a knife carving into old wounds that refused to heal.

I considered messaging Scarlett to call it off. The thought lingered as I gripped the wheel, my knuckles pale against the leather. I needed something stronger – alcohol, heavy narcotics, something to drown out the screaming inside my head.

I wasn’t capable of giving her my full attention.

But I didn’t send the message.

I just drove home – every mile plunging a flashback into my chest, the city lights smearing into a dizzying haze. Somewhere between rage and exhaustion, a dark craving took hold – not for solace, but for control. I needed to lose myself in something primal, something that didn’t ask questions about the past.

By the time I stepped into the penthouse, the day pushed against my temples so heavily that I could barely keep my eyes open.

I stripped down and headed straight for the shower, the water scalding as it crashed against my skin. I didn’t adjust the temperature – I let it blister me, try to burn away the filth that clung to me every time I left that place.

Today, it was worse.

The monster was awake.

My father. My abuser.

My victim.

His face, lined with age and softened by decades of stillness, was scorched into my mind. His voice, raspier but still familiar, haunted me. ‘Ah, there’s my boy.’ The words swirled in my head, dragging me back into that room, back to the armchair where I sat stiffly across from him, my body taut like a spring.

He’d talked as if nothing had happened. As if decades of torment, the bruises, the fear, the hatred were fragments of my imagination.

He’d described the last memory his mind could conjure – me, a ten-year-old boy in a little blue Spiderman jacket, snow boots and a matching backpack. His words had painted the scene vividly, every detail laced with an almost loving fondness. He’d spoken about it as if it were his greatest treasure.

That, I couldn’t stomach.

I stood there in the steaming shower, fists clenched at my sides as the water streamed down my face, masking the heat rising to my eyes.

He remembered nothing after that.

No fists, no yelling, no blood on marble tiles. Nothing.

Maybe he’d been lying.

He had to be lying, I told myself, clinging to the truth I’d lived with for years. It was a game – a cruel manipulation to make me feel guilt or compassion for him. It was the way he operated.

But what if he wasn’t lying?

What if the memories truly were gone, wiped clean by time, by trauma, by whatever hell spat him back to life? What did that make him now? What did it make me?

I leaned forward, pressing my forehead against the hard tiles as the hot water pounded at my back. He was just a seventy-odd-year-old man now. Broken. Helpless. A relic of a past he could no longer remember.

But I did.

I remembered it all. It lived on in me: the taste of my own blood. My mother’s cries as she begged him to stop. The way his eyes lit up, not with anger, but with pleasure when he saw fear in mine.

And now he looked at me like a proud father.