“You need to tell me about it, Ciaran. If we’re gonna be together, I need to understand what I’m stepping into. You weren’t yourself, you went somewhere, and I can only be what you need by understanding why you need it.”
I take a deep breath and wrap my arms around her tightly. “I won’t let you go. Once you hear this shit, you might not want me, but I won’t let you go.”
“Have you ever hurt a child?”
“No, of course not. I would never. Jesus, Parisa, I’m fucked up, but not that fucked up.”
She nods her head. “Okay. Have you ever hurt an innocent woman or an animal?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. There’s nothing else you could tell me that would make me walk away.”
‘You say that now, but I’m filthy. I’m so fuckin’ disgusting that you might never want to touch me again.”
Her lips touch mine. “I will not think any such thing. Tell me.”
“My parents abandoned Finn and me when we were young. I don’t have a clear idea why they abandoned us. The stories I’ve been told range from them being junkies to young and foolish kids who couldn’t take care of us, so they gave us up. Someone should’ve told them that people rarely adopt kids once they pass preschool. Finn and I were four, so we missed the sweet spot. Apparently, people think a four-year-old is too damaged to be a good kid. The funny part is, my damage was nonexistent until the age of six.”
“Okay.”
My throat tightens. In sixteen years, I’ve never told another person this story. The only ones that know are Finn and Enzo. I never thought I’d have to talk about it all again. “Whatever their reasons were for abandoning us, it doesn’t matter. The story really begins when they put Finn and me into an orphanage in Dublin. It was run by nuns and priests. I caught the eye of one priest, Father O’Neil. Everyone liked and respected him, but he wasn’t a good man. Anyone ever tell you why I like to strangle people? It’s pretty fucked up.”
Parisa doesn’t answer. She just sits there, her hands touching me reassuringly, and waits.
“O’Neil used to touch me. In places where a grown man had no business touching a kid. He also made me touch him. I didn’t like it, but sometimes when he did things to me, I got hard, and I felt like it was my fault. It was confusing, and most days, I just wanted to die so it would all stop. O’Neil apparently felt guilty, too, even though it didn’t stop him from visiting my room every night for years. Whenever the guilt wore him down, he filled the tub, then blessed it before he held my head under the water. Sometimes, I wished he’d hold me down long enough so that I’d die, but just at the last second, he’d pull me out. Killing is a sin for the fuckers, but molesting kids apparently means nothing.”
Anger flashes in Parisa’s eyes, and then she tries to control it. Her hands curl on my biceps, and her nails dig into my flesh. “No, Ciaran. You can’t control the reactions of your body. That fucker was abusing you. I’m gonna find him and fucking slit his throat after I chop him up like the dog he is.”
“He’s already dead. I strangled him with his rosary. He was the first person I ever killed. That was when I decided I wanted to take them all down. Every single one of them, but to do that, I had to work with some shady people, and that’s how we got here.”
Parisa is silent, and I hate it. I just told her my deepest, darkest secret, and she’s sitting here saying nothing.
“My sister was gang-raped. Four perfect Christian boys.”
“Jesus. So that’s why we target the same people.”
She nods and swallows visibly. “When she told my dad, he called her a whore, and told her she better keep her mouth shut before she ruined the reputation of the four boys. The asshole cared more about her rapists than his own daughter. Three months later, I opened the bathroom door and found my sister dead in the bathtub. She slit her wrists. I killed my father a month later. A drop of poison in a bowl of his favorite soup. To this day, I can’t stand chicken noodle. So you see, Ciaran, I’m never going to leave you because I see you, and I hear you. But most of all, I love you. As crazy as it is, in the short time I’ve known you, you’ve wormed your way into my heart. Maybe it’s because my broken and damaged heart recognized yours, but whatever the reason, it’s my truth now.”
I never thought I needed someone to tell me they loved me. I’ve moved through life believing the idea of love to be a foolish lie, but from the moment I saw Parisa, I knew she was mine, and I was hers.