Chained (Caged #2)(6)

She stared at the certificate, avoiding my eyes, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Her beautiful face captured me, the softness of her serene blue eyes held me hostage, and the way her bottom lip disappeared behind her top teeth when she sucked on it ruthlessly made my cock hard.

Throughout my life I had fought for everything. To breathe, to stop the pain, to have hope. But this, Kloe, was my biggest fight yet. She ruled the battle I had with myself daily. She stabbed my heart over and over with her compassion and her gentleness. But I had only one choice. I had to ruin her. It was the only way for me to finally move forward.

“Oh, it’s not the original, unfortunately. It’s a copy.”

Then placing the next paper down next to the certificate, I watched the sadness seep into her pretty eyes. “A newspaper clipping about my disappearance.”

She swallowed but nodded slowly, still her gaze anywhere but on me.

And then I placed another clipping down at the very right-hand edge of the table, leaving a long gap between both articles. “And a random newspaper piece when I was found in Hank and Mary’s basement.”

Kloe took a breath and then a large mouthful of the whisky, her gulp loud in the quiet room. Slowly she nodded again. “And the in-between?”

Rolling my eyes dramatically, I tutted. “You of all people should know there is no evidence of an in-between. I have nothing, only memories. Horrific and bloody memories to fill that gap, Kloe.”

Her eyes finally snapped to mine. “Anderson…”

“But,” I held a finger up to shush her, “I needed to fill that gap with something other than random and broken memories, Kloe. That nothing would forever haunt me, choke me, chew up my mind with all the lies and cruel thoughts that never leave.”

She lifted her hand, leaving it stuttering in the air between us before she sighed and lowered it back to her lap. I had to gulp back the need to take her offered hand. But her touch wouldn’t make this any easier. Far from it.

“So,” I continued as I poured us more alcohol, “I started to dig into my past to find anything, any hope that I had once been a normal little boy. With a family who loved me. Maybe a big hairy dog that would have been my best friend. Hell, even maybe a sister who I could hunt out. Anything. Any tiny - little - thing.” Taking another gulp of whisky, I tipped my head and watched her. “Do you know what I found?”

Eagerness took root in her expression. Her lips parted to accommodate a small suck of air, her excitement to hear my discovery bright in her eyes. “What did you find?”

I scoffed, tipping back more alcohol. “Nothing.”

The excitement in her gaze vanished, and in its place a shimmer of water blurred her eyes. “I…”

“Nothing. I was wiped from the earth so easily, Kloe. No one cared that Judd Asher had just vanished. He died that day. My life just… suddenly hadn’t been. No one mourned me. No one bothered to look too hard. Judd Asher melted into the background, and the nothing took him.”

She downed her drink and picked up the bottle that sat on the table, filling her glass to the top.

“So, I needed something, anything, to fill that gap.” Her eyes snapped back to mine again. “And that’s where you came in.”

“Me?”

“Mmm. If I couldn’t fill it with my life, then maybe I could fill it with yours. I needed to fill that gaping chasm with anything, just to make my existence real. To know that life still went on while mine stopped.”

“I don’t understand.” Her voice was quiet, her confusion evident in her narrow eyes.

“The world could have blown up. Aliens could have taken every living person on this cruel f*cking planet, and I wouldn’t have had a clue while I rotted away in there. Twenty years is a long time, Kloe. So long that you begin to think that maybe the nothing took over everything else.” Another drink. “And maybe if I filled that nothing with your life, then maybe mine wasn’t as unimportant to the world. That my existence had a meaning after all.”

I could see she still didn’t comprehend what I was saying. Maybe it didn’t make sense for me to fill the gap in my life with someone else’s, but to me it made perfect sense. A story to scribe on the blank pages of twenty-one years. Lyrics to accompany the piece of music that didn’t otherwise flow fluidly from the orchestra. A life to fill a life.

Pushing my birth certificate slightly to the right, I placed hers down before mine.

“Is that my birth certificate?”

“It is,” I answered without glancing at her. “You were born two years before me so, of course, you go first.”

She sat, stunned into silence, as she watched me place the next paper down at the side of Judd’s disappearance article.

“You were seven when your mother, Josie Rowan, married Brian Smith.”

Pain flickered over her face when she looked at the marriage certificate. I hated it, the sorrow that seeped from her, so quickly lowering my eyes again, I placed the next item down.

“Where did you get that?” Her voice was choked, horror cloaking her soft voice as she started to shake beside me.

“It’s best not to ask that,” I answered, giving her a quick grin.

The medical record of Samantha Rowan mocked us both. Mocked her lies and her childhood.

“You were such a sweet little thing,” I murmured as I flipped open the file. “I couldn’t quite push myself to read it. Although I admit I’ve had it a while. But when you told me what my… father,” I spat out the word, making her flinch, “had done to you, I made myself look.”