Chained (Caged #2)(28)

“Anderson.” My voice was choked, raspy and quiet, and I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me. “Anderson.” It took effort to squeeze his hand, but putting all my strength into it, I felt him jerk.

He gasped. “Kloe?”

“I can’t see, Anderson.” Sensing his hesitation instead of seeing it, my chest heaved with panic. “Anderson! I can’t see!”

“Hey, hey,” he soothed. His voice was soft, the softest I’d heard it since we had been trapped in his room at Seven Oaks, his request to kiss me taking his courage and making his voice low and cautious. “It will be okay. It’s just your mind needing a reprieve.”

I knew he didn’t believe that as much as I didn’t and I screwed up my face in frustration. When his hand settled on my cheek, I pressed against his touch. “What if it isn’t?”

“There’s no point worrying about something we’re not certain of yet. Give it time. How are you feeling otherwise?”

It was one of the most stupid questions I’d ever been asked, and I huffed. “Hunky-dory!”

Clicking his tongue, I felt him tense beside me. But then, as if catching himself, he relaxed again. “Our baby is still alive.”

Every part of me froze in shock. I daren’t hope. I daren’t. Anderson could be cruel, and although I felt every bit of his kindness radiating around me, I also knew his words could have been a sadistic joke.

“Kloe?” he pressed when I didn’t answer him.

I wanted to see the truth in his eyes, determine the lie in the vivid green of his eyes. But I couldn’t. Frustration grew and I shifted angrily. “Please don’t lie to me, Anderson. Not about this. Please.”

“What?”

“You’ve lied to me over so many things. I can’t see you. I can’t see the facts in your eyes. I can’t establish what’s real and what isn’t with you if I can’t f*cking see you!”

His hand tightened in mine and I tensed when I felt him close in on me. His breath tickled my cheek and then drifted over my ear. “It’s the truth. Our baby is still alive. You were carrying twins, and unfortunately, one was lost. But the other, he’s fit and strong, Kloe. His heart beats as hard as yours and mine.”

Something broke inside me and a wail reflected the turmoil that had been disturbing me. “I thought… I thought because I wanted to… to kill my own child that… that…”

Anderson’s arms came around me and he smothered me to his chest. His fingers cupped my head and his thumb twirled a short length of my hair. “That’s just silly. Nothing you did makes this your fault. It’s all on me. It’s all because I was too f*cking stuck on revenge to accept the truth.”

“The truth?” I asked as my tears soaked his t-shirt.

“That none of this is your fault. It never was. I was wrong, Kloe. I admit I was wrong. All my life I’ve never understood how my parents could do such a thing. There had to be a reason. And I looked for a reason nearly all my life. And then there you were, and it was so easy to put that blame on you. Blaming you helped me to make sense of it all. It helped me to free the guilt. But it also made me believe a lie. A lie I wasn’t willing to trust but couldn’t seem to find another explanation to make that stupid one go away. I had to have something, anything, to blame. And I blamed you. I was wrong.”

I couldn’t begin to translate his statement. I was tired and his declaration deserved more than a quick thought and a half-hearted argument on my side. “Okay. I’m tired, Anderson, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to talk about this more.”

“I know. I just needed to say it before…”

He clammed up and I tilted my head, listening to the change in his breathing. “Before what?”

“Before I can’t.”

Well that didn’t make any sense, but before I could react to his puzzling words, he slipped his thumb against my lip, telling me he needed my silence. “Terry is waiting for you.”

Fear, just with his name, settled into my bones, and I sucked in a breath as my head shook from side to side. “Waiting for me?”

Quickly, Anderson realising his mistake, said. “No, not like that. I have him. He’s in the basement. Waiting for your vengeance.”

Visions of the last week flooded me and I winced. “I didn’t let him in, Anderson.”

After a short silence, he asked, “What do you mean?”

“He wanted my sanity. But I wouldn’t let him have it. I tried so hard to keep him out, and I think if you hadn’t turned up when you did, then he would have forced his way in.”

“You have no idea how strong you are,” he whispered.

“You. That’s all I could think of. Throughout it all, everything he did to me, I kept telling myself that I couldn’t let him win. I couldn’t fail you. I know he did what he did to me to hurt you, so I wouldn’t let him. Physical pain I can handle, but I refused him the mental torture he tried to put on me. I pushed him out, I closed off to him.” I turned my head, looking at him without seeing him. “You think I forced this blindness on myself?”

His sigh was heavy. “Maybe. Maybe it helped you. If you couldn’t see, then you wouldn’t visualise the horror for the rest of your life. Like you say, physical pain heals, but mental pain burns itself to us for a very long time.”