Lauren purposely puts herself right in the middle of hell. She’s been raped, sodomized, beaten, tortured, hurt in seriously bad ways in order to take out some of those men.
I think she’s fucking crazy for it, but I also know there has to be an underlying reason.
I completely understand wanting a little rough sex. I can wrap my head around the hairpulling, the fast and quick invasion that burns in just the right way. Hell, I can get behind the smacking and bruises and the breath play, but what she does? It’s fucked up. It’s a way to punish herself, but the why will remain a mystery because it’s not my fucking business. I have my own shit to deal with. I don’t need her sad tales of childhood in my head.
“How are you even fucking here, Lauren?” I ask, my tone bored as I drop onto the bed.
I know better than to close my eyes with her around, but I’m a little too tired to keep standing.
She chuckles as if I told a joke, but it’s once again interrupted by a long swig of her drink.
I know she’s smart enough not to get intoxicated around people she can’t trust, and thinking I’m someone who wouldn’t just walk out of this room and leave her to fend for herself is a grave fucking mistake on her part.
“I put an AirTag in your truck.” She smiles over her glass as if she’s the most creative person in the world.
“Crazy bitch,” I mutter, but I find myself smiling, too.
Modern technology is a fucking bitch these days. When I work, I have my older phone and drive my older truck. It doesn’t make tracking impossible, but it makes it harder.
Lauren shrugs as if tracking someone’s car is just an everyday practice, and maybe for her it is.
“Why here? Why not go back to Cerberus. You seemed cozy there.”
She scoffs, her head shaking back and forth, making it very clear she doesn’t have full control over her body. She lists to the side a little before catching herself and straightening back up.
“They already watch me and think I’m crazy for what I do for work.” She shakes her head again, her eyes growing even glassier as she looks at the wall across the room. “I can only imagine what they would think if they found out that Liana was Daddy’s favorite instead of me.”
My heart skips a beat, and when it pumps the next time, my skin is cold, my eyes feeling like branding irons as I stare at her.
I said I didn’t want this. I didn’t want her to spill her secrets. I don’t want to know why she continues to hurt herself in some of the vilest ways, but with her confession, I find I want to know more.
I don’t speak. I won’t open my mouth to ask, but I get the feeling I’m not going to have to. By sunrise tomorrow, I’m going to know all of her pain, her heartache, and the reasons she punishes herself.
“I found her, you know? The day she slit her wrists. I was the only one left alive in the house.”
I swallow, refusing to think about those last couple of hours with my mother, the spread of red, the sunshine, the hammer.
“She was pregnant. At least that’s what my grandmother said after the autopsy came back. That vindictive old lady died, thinking that my dad found out about the pregnancy and that’s what started the fight. She always defended him. Always blamed Liana.”
Tears, ones very similar to the ones she cried when I fucked her, slide down her cheeks. She doesn’t bother to swipe them away. She remains confident even in her pain.
“I never told her the truth. She wouldn’t have believed me. I don’t imagine there are many that would believe that my father was the one to get her pregnant, that they fought because she wanted an abortion and he refused. No one would believe that he’d been hurting her for years. How could they?” she asks, looking in my direction. “I hid her diary before the cops got there.”
I don’t respond to her. I don’t climb off the bed and wrap my arms around her. I don’t promise her that things will get better. I’m a man of my own experiences, and I know time doesn’t do shit to rid you of the fucking demons. Getting control of them is about hard work and dedication, about growing bitter and cold rather than feeding on them until they no longer have the power to hurt you. The monsters are ravenous, hungrier than you can ever satisfy.
I get the feeling that Lauren is very much aware of this, though.
“Years,” she says, her eyes dropping to the liquid in her cup. “He was hurting her for years. I knew he was a violent man. I didn’t always escape his wrath, but he never came to me for that. She was his pick. I didn’t know until after I read her diary that he used that against her. It’s how he controlled her. She took everything he forced on her to protect me. I fucking failed her.”
She takes a deep shuddering breath before continuing.
“The day they argued, I was terrified. I’d never seen her stand up to him that way. He grabbed her by the hair while she was facing him, and from nowhere, she pulled a knife. I think she stabbed him four times before he let go of her hair. I could see the shock in his eyes as she stepped away from him.
“I thought we were finally free. We could run away and start a better life. I didn’t think anything of it when she said she was going to shower, that she’d take care of him after she was done. She was covered in blood, and even at my young age, I thought it was weird. There was no way we’d be able to hide his body without getting more blood on us, but I just nodded, my eyes locked on my father as he bled out on the floor.”
She shakes her head as if she’s trying to throw away the memories, and I hate that I can sympathize with her and what she experienced.
“Her shower took so long, I went to get her. The longer the blood was on the carpet, the harder it would be to clean, but she wasn’t showering. The water that was flowing under the door was tinged pink, and at the time, I thought dang, she had more blood on her than I realized.”