The Contradiction of Solitude(49)

I wanted to touch him. To absorb him through my fingertips.

“I don’t understand myself.” It was almost a shriek.

Scratching. Groaning. What was that noise?

“Why are you here?”

Elian rubbed at his temple. His hair was too long. It hung in his face. I couldn’t see his dancing green eyes.

“I think I know why you didn’t tell me about your father.”

I waited. I wouldn’t offer anything.

I waited.

“It can’t be easy having that follow you around your entire life.”

I didn’t nod. I didn’t deny. I did nothing.

I waited.

“I freaked out. I know that. Maybe that wasn’t fair to you.”

Not fair to me.

He asked me to wait in the car. Why couldn’t I do as he asked? I always listened. I was his good girl. He loved me best.

He promised he’d find me a star.

Where was it?

I wanted my star.

“I just don’t understand why you have all of…those reminders. Why would you keep anything that had to do with such an awful person?” Elian rubbed his temple harder. His voice shook. He was struggling.

“Why do you keep that? It’s…it’s morbid, Layna.”

“Do you think I’m like him?” I asked. Quiet. Whispered. Barely heard.

Elian stopped rubbing his temple and stared at me. And I could see his eyes. Finally.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know what to think. This is a lot, Layna. Do you know what he did to Amelia—?”

I gently laid my hand over his mouth, pressing down lightly with my fingers.

“If the words hurt. Don’t say them. Don’t give them that power, Elian.”

“What does all that mean? The articles? Why do you keep them? Why in the hell would you want to? Make me understand, Layna. Please.” He was so, so broken.

So, so sad.

How could I explain to him why? How could I split myself open and let him see the ugly, ugly parts of me?

The parts that were slowly eating me alive?

“Please, Layna,” he begged. He pleaded. He was asking for things I wasn’t sure I could ever, ever give him.

“He’s my father, Elian,” I said, as though that would explain anything. Everything.

Elian shook his head, hatred deep and raw flared to life in his dancing green eyes. Hate. Hate.

Loathing.

I shivered. Intense and overwhelming.

I felt it.

I squeezed my injured hand. I felt the blood pumping, oozing heat coating my palm.

“He’s a monster, Layna. He’s not a father. He’s the f*cking devil!” he spat out. Revulsion, disgust, falling to the floor. We left them there. With the dirt and dust and other things to throw away.

“He’s my father, Elian,” I repeated, a bit more emphatically. Understand. Don’t make me say it.

Elian gripped his head in his hands and looked as though he were going to be sick. I was making him sick. My father, who he was, what he had done, was making him sick.

I felt him so strongly in that moment.

My father.

He was there in the empty beating of my ravaged heart.

Thump. Thump.

Daddy.

Stories and stars and rides to nowhere. Things I couldn’t stand to remember and things I would never let myself forget.

Daddy.

I shivered again.

“Blood is thicker than all things. It’s syrup and strings and tattoos and nightmares. Elian, he’s all I have. All I’ve ever had. Don’t you get that?” I asked, becoming frustrated. Understand. Don’t make me say it.

“That’s bullshit, Layna. Are you saying you don’t blame him—?”

“I blame him, Elian. I blame him for all of it! All. Of. It! He is a horrible, horrible person. He did horrible, horrible things. I know that!” My voice rose. I couldn’t control it. I was being driven to the brink. I wasn’t ready.

I wanted him to know.

But I didn’t want him to see.

Some things were unavoidable. And even as I fought to hold on to the secrets, I wanted him to have some of my truth.

Incontrollable. Inconsolable.

“I feel it, in here,” I patted my chest. Just over my thumping, thumping heart.

“The monster. My father. It’s all here…” my voice drifted off, landing somewhere out there. In the dark. Where it was safe.

Not safe enough.

“What are you saying?” Elian asked, bones broken, hushed silence.

I looked at him. Stared hard. Deep inside. I wanted to reach in and pull out his guts and let them drip between my fingers. To keep it always. For me. Mine.

“I’m his daughter. He’s my father. We are one and the same. The compulsions—the need to…hurt—it’s there. I’m not sure how to fight it. If I want to fight it.”

I felt panicked. I couldn’t breathe. The room was closing in around me.

The pounding of my heart calmed me.

It devastated me.

I was destroyed.

Elian deserved more than that.

Elian deserved exactly what I wanted to give him.

I was ripped in half. The devil and the girl. Both fighting, kicking and screaming, for supremacy.

Elian grabbed my hands and wrapped them in his, lifting them up to his mouth.