I should’ve been reassured by him, comforted by his presence and his promise to listen and support me. But I wasn’t. I was terrified. I believed that once he knew my story, my secrets, he wouldn’t be able to stop judging me.
No one wanted to love something that was broken. When something was broken, you threw it away. You got something else, something better. Something that was still pretty and new.
No one should have to try to love something broken. It was just too hard.
I knew that Levi would stop loving me after he knew the truth. There was no way to get around that. But I also knew that he deserved to know the truth. If he thought he understood me well enough to love me, he just didn’t know me well enough. He didn’t know what he was getting himself into, and he needed to.
Even if I was about to lose the best thing that had ever happened to me, Levi had to know the truth.
“Everything starts and ends with my mom remarrying. Her divorce to my real dad happened while she was still pregnant with me, and while Matt was still young. He doesn’t—didn’t have any memories of our father, and I never met him at all.”
I looked at Levi. There was still time to revise my narrative. I could make something different up. I could omit certain details, lessen the blow of others. He didn’t know my story, so I could tell my story however I liked. I could make myself look better. I could make myself look blameless.
Instead, I knew that I was going to be as painfully honest as possible. I deserved whatever disgust Levi had for me at the end. He hadn’t known what he was trying to save when he was standing inside of that bar in my hometown. If he’d known, there would’ve been no way he’d use his resources to try to help me. Saving him from myself was the kindest thing I could think of—the best way to repay him for his aid.
He deserved much better than me. I would inflict so much more pain on him than I already had if this relationship continued.
So I continued with my truth, the parts where I was a victim, where I was complicit in the horror. I was prepared to tell him everything.
“The guy my mom married—he seemed normal, at first,” I said, looking into Levi’s blue eyes, trying to get lost in them, to make this easier. “Carl was nice. We’d never really had a father figure in the house. He raised us….”
Levi jerked, making me trail off.
“What is it?”
“What was your stepfather’s name?” he asked, his face and voice urgent.
“Carl,” I said, confused. I hadn’t even told him what had happened yet. I hadn’t so much as scratched the surface. “Carl Prentice.”
Levi’s face went ashen. “That’s a name I know.”
“What? How?”
He bit off each syllable of the next few words. “Carl Prentice is the man behind the threat against me. Against you. He knows you’re here.”
Chapter 12
Carl had been acting weird lately. He was always kind of off, but in a lovable way, as my mother was so fond of saying. I thought it was just because of how sick she was. Maybe he was upset. The medical bills were mounting, and she wasn’t working, so I knew that had to be stressful. It was why Matt had dropped out of college and started looking for a job in New York City. It was why I was delaying going to college after my upcoming graduation, and instead combing through the limited job options of this backwater town for an 18-year-old.
I’d begun finding my stepfather lurking outside of the bathroom after I was taking a shower.
“Did you need something?” I asked him, touching the towel wrapped around my hair. “Is Mom sick in the bathroom downstairs? You could’ve knocked. I would’ve hurried up.”
He didn’t say anything, just stepped aside far enough for me to have to brush by him as I walked to my room. I chalked it up to stress about my mother. She was getting sicker, the cancer taking a sudden turn for the worse after years of hope for remission.
I was so distracted by the end of school and my mother’s health that I missed the signs that should’ve helped me understand what kind of person Carl was turning into. I would wake up suddenly in the night to see him leaving my room, the door swinging shut behind him, slicing into the wedge of light from the hallway. He’d been standing over me, watching me sleep, I’d realize later. I convinced myself that he was just checking on me, or trying to decide if it was worth waking me up to tell me that my mother needed to go to the hospital again.
Maybe, if I’d been more vigilant about things back then, I could’ve stopped what was happening. I could’ve alerted my brother, tried to convince my mother that Carl wasn’t good for us anymore, or gotten myself out of the house. Hell, I could’ve even told the police that my stepfather was gradually shedding his human skin and revealing the monster that lived underneath.
But things happened so slowly as to be almost imperceptible. I was rushing to finish coursework for my high school degree, preoccupied with my mother’s alarming decline, with no idea of the threat that was growing inside of my own home.
When I did realize the extent of the threat, it was too late.
I was in my room, poring over a sheaf of applications I’d picked up around town. They were building a new McDonald’s near the interstate access to draw in commuters to our area to spend some cash—all a part of some master plan city leaders were talking about to help boost the flagging economy. As much of a blow to my ego as it was to work at the fast food chain, I’d do anything to help my mother get better care. Our finances were taxed with her frequent hospital stays, not to mention the treatments the doctors told her she so desperately needed. Matt had been sending checks whenever he could afford to get a little behind rent, but it still wasn’t enough. I knew it wasn’t enough from the way the food in our refrigerator dwindled, how the lights around the house wouldn’t turn on sometimes.
I had to help. If I was living here, I had to help. I didn’t think about moving away, even after I graduated high school. If I was paying rent of my own somewhere, that would be less money I could give to battling my mother’s disease. I wanted to stay here and shove as much cash as I could at the problem. It was the only thing I could do. If cancer had been something I could take with my hands and wrestle away from my mother, I would be doing that. But since it wasn’t, I had to have a job.
I was filling in my personal information when the door to my bedroom creaked open. I glanced up to see Carl standing there, motionless, watching me.
“What’s up, Carl?” I asked. I’d never gotten in the swing of calling him “Dad,” and it had never really been encouraged. My mother had been honest with Matt and me as we grew up about our biological father and about the reasons he wasn’t here for us, and how Carl was here for us, but my brain had never made that connection that Carl was my new father. It was easier to call him Carl, anyway, because that’s what my mother called him.
Carl remained silent. He was silent more often than not these days—worried, I assumed, about my mother. I was worried about her, too, but I could open my mouth and speak to people, if I had to.
“Is Mom okay?” I asked, trying again. I felt a sudden stab of fear that something dire had happened and Carl was maybe too shocked to tell me. I shoved all of the papers off of my lap and made a move to launch myself off the bed and down the stairs to check for myself, when he finally spoke.
“Touch yourself.”
It was so odd, so out of character, that I wasn’t sure what I’d heard. Carl was the opposite of sexual. He was balding and only about as tall as I was—and I was of decidedly average height for a woman. I could never be sure what my mother saw in him besides the fact that he was dependable, that he stuck around in the times when she needed someone the most.
He’d been around for my entire childhood, friendly but always a little detached. We didn’t hug, really. If I was told to thank him for a Christmas or birthday present, he would lean down and I’d peck him on the cheek, or pat his hand awkwardly.
So when I heard something overtly sexual drop out of his mout
h, I didn’t even understand it in a sexual context. Confused, I lifted one finger and deliberately touched it to the back of my hand.
“Like this?” I asked, frowning and cocking my head at him. “Carl, tell me what’s going on. What do you want?”
“I want you to touch yourself,” he said patiently, “and I want to watch.”
Like an idiot, I lifted my finger and touched the back of my hand again. And again.
“I don’t really have the time to joke around with you,” I said, still too puzzled to understand what was really going on. I’d never joked around with Carl. He wasn’t that kind of person. I had no idea why he’d start now.
“It’s not a joke,” he said. “You’re all grown up now, and I want to watch you touch yourself. Now.”
It was the “all grown up” part that made me realize what was actually happening. My stepfather, the man who’d been around for just about my entire life, having a hand in raising me and watching me grow, was propositioning me.
“You’re disgusting,” I sneered at him. “How dare you? My mom is just downstairs, sick with cancer, and all you can think of is getting off? What kind of person are you? Get out of here. Leave me alone.”
“You’ll do as I say,” he said, unperturbed by my outburst.
“No, I won’t,” I said. “I’m telling my mom just what kind of person you are. And then you’ll have to leave.”
I made a move to walk by him, regretting what I was about to do even as I was horrified and appalled at him. My mother didn’t need this kind of stress right now. She was so sick. I hated to imagine what telling her this would do to her. I would hesitate to tell her, if she were healthy, that the man she’d slept beside for all these years had just propositioned her daughter. It might really harm her, but I had to do something. I couldn’t just ignore what was happening, not when it was Carl, standing right here in my room, being a creepy pervert. I had to protect my mother, absolutely, but I also had to protect myself. There was no one else here to do it.
“If you don’t do exactly as I say, I’ll kill your mother.”
It was a concept so bizarrely horrible that I almost laughed at him, but Carl’s face was too serious to allow for that, and it stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t know what to do, or what to say. All I could do was stare at him, my brain running through possible responses, possible solutions, examining and rejecting one after the other, each one more implausible than the next.
Just as implausible as what was happening right now.
“You don’t think I’m being serious.” I’d never dreaded the idea of Carl until this moment, never realized just how grating that overly calm voice was. How terrifying it was.
“You wouldn’t hurt my mom because you love her,” I said, my voice sounding small, childish.
“I would hurt her to get what I want.” It was so matter of fact—that statement. How could someone be so sure of the desire to hurt another human being, one that he’d professed his love for? Carl was helping take care of my mom, for God’s sake. How could he want to cause her harm?
“I don’t believe you.” It felt selfish and horrible, but I was so horrified by what he wanted me to do that I was willing to, abstractly, put my own mother at risk for my pride.
“Your mother was vomiting last night,” he said.
“I remember.” She’d been terribly sick from the treatments. I’d heard her, late, and went to help her, even if she was beyond help. All I could do was keep her waning hair out of her face and mop her forehead with a cool cloth. The illusion of comfort was the only thing I could provide.
“It didn’t have anything to do with the treatments. All I gave her was an extra little pill with the rest of them. She didn’t even notice. That’s how easy it is to sabotage her health. I have access to everything I need at the hospital.”
“Why would you do something like that?” She had been so sick, heaving until there wasn’t anything else to purge, continuing to cough and spit over the toilet for what had seemed like ages. I’d done everything I could think of to make her stop. She couldn’t even manage to stomach the water I brought her to rinse her mouth out.
“To prove to you that I was serious about what I’m prepared to do to make you cooperate.”
I just couldn’t bring myself to believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. I considered myself to be pretty practical, well equipped to sniff out bullshit. It was true—my mom had been sick last night. Really sick. But it could’ve been any number of things. There might’ve been an interaction with another medication, or the last vestiges of the sickness her treatment caused. Maybe there was something we had at dinner that hadn’t agreed with her, or just a stray mote of a virus or bacteria that one of us had carried back from our last trip to the hospital that had landed on a random surface somewhere in the house that she had come in contact with.
There were too many variables to know for certain that Carl was telling the awful truth.
“You’re a bright girl, Meagan, as well as beautiful,” he said, seeming to have read my mind. “Let me prove it to you.”
“I don’t want you to make my mom sick.” I recoiled even as I doubted him, afraid of the extent of his abilities, the depth of his blossoming madness.
“And I won’t, starting tomorrow, as long as you do what I say.” Carl checked his watch as casually as if I’d asked him for the time. “It’s been an hour since she took her medication. I gave her another of the vomit-inducing pills, same as the night before. About an hour is all it takes.”
I opened my mouth to say something, anything. I didn’t even know what was going to come out of my own mind, but then I stopped, dumbfounded. Sure enough, even from all the way downstairs, I could hear my mother in her bathroom, throwing up everything she’d eaten at dinner, including whatever proper medication remained in her belly. She was vomiting so violently that it sounded loud even up here.
Horrified and hyperventilating, I made a mad dash out of my room, but Carl grabbed a hold of my arm, squeezing and stopping just short of bruising force.
“Who do you think she’s going to believe?” he asked, his voice still so even, so calm. “Who do you think anyone would believe? You tell her, you tell anyone, you disappoint me…I’ll end her, Meagan. Don’t test me. If she dies, it’s all on you.”
There wasn’t a choice. I didn’t have a choice. I had to protect my mother. And to protect her, I had to sacrifice myself to whatever whims Carl had in mind.
I nodded quickly, then pulled my arm free, rushing to help my mother.
Chapter 13
“Smile for the camera.”
I was far away, in the place I went when I couldn’t be in the place I actually was. It sounded confusing, but I found it easier and easier to get there. Easier, and more necessary than not.
“Smile, Meagan.”
He didn’t like repeating himself. When I didn’t listen, or do as he said, or was too far gone in that faraway place to understand what he was saying, his voice changed a little — just a little bit — to remind me just what was at stake if I refused him.
I had to do what he said. I had to do everything he said. If I didn’t, my mother would die. He’d already proven he could make her sick just by mixing up her medications. She trusted him completely, didn’t suspect him at all.
And I suspected that even if I was able to somehow let her know just what kind of monster the man she loved was, it would probably kill her without any mixup of medications. He’d been a part of her life for so long. She relied on him to help her through her illness, to support her in ways that only a man could support a woman. I wished that I could be enough for my mother, but she needed Carl. Loved him. Thought she knew him so well.
He had everyone fooled. Everyone except me. He’d revealed the monster that wore his skin to me because I had something he wanted.
He wanted all of me.
“Meagan.”
I smiled as best I could, the corners of my mouth yanking upward, unnatural
, but a smile by definition.
“Touch yourself.”
It had been hard the first time, but each time he demanded it of me, it got easier. At least there was that. It got easier and easier to comply with something I used to not be able to even comprehend, easier to perform.
Easier to find that place in my brain I could flee to.
And if I went away — really away — I could even convince myself that I liked it, that I liked the way the camera looked at me, the way Carl looked at me, the way I felt, my hand against myself.
And when I came, it would be all over. Carl would leave me alone until the next time he got the urge, and I could start trying to pretend it never happened, and would never happen again.
Which was ridiculous, of course. It happened all the time. It would happen tomorrow. It would happen the next day, and the next. I couldn’t stop it, because I had to protect my mother. Nothing was more important than her.
Chapter 14
Time slowed down when terrible things happened. I didn’t know why. I would’ve thought that life would take pity on a person and speed them through it, just to go on and get it over with, whatever the terrible thing happened to be.
Perhaps life was just trying to give the person a chance to examine the terrible thing and decide either to run away from it or face it head on.
Levi and I stared at each other. Somehow, in some completely fucked up way, Carl Prentice, my abusive and toxic stepfather, knew that I was in New York City. More specifically, he knew I was spending time with or was in contact with Levi because he had threatened Levi.
I felt watched, claustrophobic, horrified, and sick overall. Why was this happening? How could it even be happening?
I stared at Levi until I couldn’t stomach it anymore, and then I went to the bathroom and emptied my stomach of its contents. It wasn't much, and I did more dry heaving than actually vomiting. I hadn’t had dinner after dropping in on the sex addiction group meeting. The only appetite I’d had after attending that was for sex, and I’d come home for Levi.
LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance Page 108
