Sanctuary Found_Pelican Bay [Book 2]

by Sloane Kennedy

  I’d sensed Isaac’s need to run. I’d been sensing it for a while. It seemed the closer he and I got, the more tense he grew when I pressed him for even the smallest of details about himself. In truth, I’d expected him to be long gone already, and every day I arrived at the sanctuary to find him working in the office or the barn and every night when I heard his tires crunching over the snow as he arrived at my house, I sent a little thank you heavenward that I hadn’t already lost him.

  I might know it was an inevitable thing, but I’d be damned if I was going to stand by and just let it happen without a fight.

  I heard yelling long before I reached the house.

  From what I could tell, it was Newt and Isaac going at each other.

  “No, I don’t wanna leave!” Newt shouted as I reached the final path that led to the house. It was dark out but the floodlight attached to the house was on, so I had a clear view of things. Isaac was carrying a flailing Newt down the small sidewalk that led to the driveway where Isaac’s car was already running. The back seat looked packed full of stuff, just like it had when he’d arrived.

  “Isaac, no!” Newt screamed.

  “Newt, we have to go!” Isaac responded, his voice thick with tears.

  “Mad!” Newt yelled when he saw me, then he was kicking and squirming in Isaac’s arms until Isaac was forced to put him down. The little boy came barreling at me and I scooped him up when he reached me. His face was wet. “Tell him we can’t go!” Newt cried in my ear.

  Isaac was frozen in place and I could see he was silently crying himself.

  “It’s okay, Newt, just calm down,” I said as I rubbed my hand over his back. I made my way to Isaac, who was pale as a ghost.

  “Isaac, talk to me,” I said as I stopped a few feet from him. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but he looked like he could completely shatter at any moment. He was caught right on that line that said he was about to have a complete meltdown, but I didn’t know what that would look like. He could do something foolish like get in the car and drive away and possibly end up in a wreck, or he could sink to his knees right there in the snow and go completely silent.

  I just didn’t know.

  And I didn’t want to find out.

  His wet eyes met mine and I could tell he’d been crying for at least a little while because his eye makeup was starting to streak just a bit. “They want to buy him Christmas presents,” he whispered.

  “Who? Nolan and Dallas?” I asked as I spied both men standing near the bottom of the steps leading into the house. Nolan was holding onto Loki to keep the wolf hybrid from following Isaac. Dallas had his arm around Nolan.

  “We’re not your family,” Isaac whispered. “We can’t be.”

  “Yes, we can!” Newt cried. “Lightning and Mater and Sally and all the others became a family!” The little boy turned to look at Isaac but refused to release his hold on me. “You said I could tell them my middle name ’cause they care!” he accused. “I don’t wanna leave!”

  Every word Newt lobbed at his brother seemed to tear something open in Isaac and it was scaring me how quiet he’d gone.

  “Newt, buddy, will you go into the house with Nolan and Dallas and Loki so I can talk to Isaac?”

  “You gotta make him let us stay, Mad!” Newt said. He spit into his hand and held it out. “Please, Mad, we gotta spit on it.”

  My heart broke for the little boy and I wrapped my arms around him. “I promise I’ll spit on it just as soon as I talk to Isaac, okay?” As badly as I wanted to tell Newt I’d make it so he could stay, I wouldn’t do that to Isaac.

  Newt let out a sob and nodded against my neck. When I put him down, he turned and ran past Isaac to Nolan and Dallas and Loki. The wide berth he gave Isaac seemed to be the final straw for Isaac because he sank to his ass in the snow and tucked his legs up against his body. His long arms wrapped around his legs and he began rocking back and forth. I was moving toward him when Newt suddenly came barreling back at Isaac and threw his arms around him from behind. The little boy began sobbing again and that seemed to snap Isaac out of his daze because he lifted an arm and curled it around Newt. Newt was in Isaac’s lap by the time I reached them.

  Isaac didn’t say anything as he rocked Newt back and forth over and over. I put my arms around them both and was glad when Dallas came up behind the pair and draped his coat over Isaac’s shoulders. I had to guess Isaac’s coat was in his car. Fortunately, Newt had his parka on. As eager as I was to get both of them off the ground, I wanted them to have this moment. When Newt had calmed, I ran my fingers over his hair and said, “Newt, can you go inside with Dallas and Nolan? Isaac will be along in a little bit.”

  Newt nodded against Isaac’s body. He held onto Isaac for another second and whispered, “I love you, Isaac.”

  “I love you too, buddy.”

  “Are you mad at me?” the little boy asked.

  Isaac let out a choked sob and shook his head. “No, Newt, I’m not mad. I’m not leaving you, okay? Not ever. Do you hear me?”

  Newt nodded and then got up and took Dallas’s proffered hand. Dallas’s eyes met mine and I saw him motion toward the garage. I knew what he was saying and nodded my thanks. I reached down to help Isaac to his feet. I wrapped my hand around his and led him toward the garage. The apartment Sawyer had been using while he’d taken care of the sanctuary during Dallas’s recovery from surgery was above the garage. He’d only recently moved out, so I knew Isaac and I would have the privacy we needed.

  I led him up the stairs to the apartment, which fortunately wasn’t locked. The heat was turned off so I led Isaac to the little gas fireplace and got it going, then pulled a blanket off the back of the couch. I sat us both down in front of the fire and wrapped the blanket around us as I put Isaac between my legs so he was facing the fire and his back was to my front. For the longest time I just held him, because I knew he’d talk when he was ready. There was no doubt in my mind the incident with Newt had fundamentally changed something for Isaac. The fact that he was still so quiet meant he was trying to process things. It was a testament to how deeply troubled he was, not only by whatever had sparked the whole encounter, but Newt’s and his own reaction to it.

  “We shouldn’t have stayed,” he finally said. “Newt and I were doing fine till now.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed with that statement, but I didn’t even get a chance to say anything because Isaac said, “He didn’t really know what he was missing, you know?” He shivered against me, so I rubbed my hands up and down his arms.

  “Family was just something he saw on TV. He didn’t actually know what it was.”

  “You guys don’t have a family?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “It was us and our mom, mostly. She was young when she got pregnant with me–only eighteen. It was just her and her father and he’d had all these plans for her to go to college but when she got pregnant with me, he kicked her out.”

  “What about your father?” I asked.

  “I don’t know who he is. He was never in the picture.”

  “What did your mom do?”

  “What most young single mothers do, I guess. Worked odd jobs and stuff. But when I was old enough to take care of myself, she went back to college. She was super smart. Like genius-level smart. She actually got accepted into MIT before she got pregnant with me. She reapplied when I was ten and was accepted. Full ride. When she graduated, she started teaching there.”

  “What did she teach?”

  “Math. She loved numbers.”

  He said it with a certain wistfulness that had me asking, “Did you and she get along?”

  He was quiet for a moment before nodding and saying, “I didn’t know there was anything wrong with her, you know? She was just my mom. I thought it was normal when she’d wake me up in the middle of the night and start writing formulas out on the wall while trying to explain all these principles to me. She loved to play loud music and dance at all hours of the night, and sometimes she’d ke
ep me home from school just so we could drive to the beach and go swimming or look for seashells or whatever. Every day was a new adventure. And it made sense to me that after all that, she’d need to sleep, sometimes for days on end.”

  “She was bipolar,” I offered.

  Isaac nodded. “It wasn’t until I was maybe fourteen that I realized she was sick. She’d go on and off her meds all the time. She didn’t even tell me she was pregnant until she was almost six months along. I don’t think she even realized it herself.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “And Newt’s father? Was he around?”

  I felt Isaac stiffen. “Gary. He’d been living with us for almost two years at that point.” Isaac hesitated for a moment and then said, “She had really bad luck with guys. She usually found them when she was manic, so she wasn’t exactly picking winners, if you know what I mean.”

  “Did they hurt her?”

  “Some did,” Isaac admitted.

  “And you?”

  He shrugged. “A few. They’d knock me around here and there, but they usually weren’t around long enough to do any real damage.”

  My heart dropped out at his words. He was just so nonchalant about it…

  “What about Gary?”

  “Gary was different. Smarter. More manipulative. My mom made good money at MIT and despite all her crazy behavior, she didn’t spend a lot of it. So I guess he saw her as a cash cow.”

  “And you?” I asked. “How did Gary treat you?”

  Isaac drew in a deep breath. “Gary was not my biggest fan. Not of the clothes or the makeup or the hair or pretty much anything I did. But he treated my mother decently, even though he was using her. He made sure she stayed on her meds. He was just doing it because he wanted to make sure the money kept coming in, but me… he didn’t mince words with me.”

  “He hurt you?”

  Isaac nodded.

  “Your mother didn’t notice?” I asked as I tried to quell the growing rage inside of me.

  “My mother was a genius, but she wasn’t good at picking up on social cues. She couldn’t really read other people and sometimes even when you told her something, she didn’t necessarily understand it. Numbers were the only things that really made sense to her. But she did her best.”

  I didn’t exactly agree with him, but I didn’t want to argue the point since he was finally talking to me.

  “Sometimes I think Gary got her pregnant on purpose,” Isaac said. “As a way to bind her to him. It wasn’t that he wanted Newt, though. He just wanted something that would guarantee his supply of beer was never-ending and there was always cash in his wallet. I heard him and my mom arguing about the pregnancy when my mom finally did learn she was pregnant–it wasn’t until a doctor at an ER told her after she slipped and twisted her ankle. Like I said, she was really smart, but some of the most basic things about life stumped her.”

  Isaac shifted so he was facing sideways. He snuggled into my arms and rested his head on my chest. “I’d always planned to leave as soon as I graduated high school. I loved my mom, but I couldn’t keep sharing a roof with Gary. Not if I wanted to be myself.”

  I took that to mean that to avoid Gary’s fists, Isaac had been forced to forgo the things that made him so uniquely him. I couldn’t even imagine what that had been like for him.

  “Once Newt came along, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Gary wasn’t interested in taking care of him and my mom was too busy with work or dealing with the occasional manic-depressive episode.”

  “So you raised him,” I said.

  Isaac nodded. “It wasn’t a hardship,” he added. “I fell in love with him the first time I held him.” There was a long pause and then Isaac said, “I did everything for him. Fed him, changed him, played with him, took care of him when he was sick, made sure he got regular checkups. All of it. After our mom died when Newt was two, I thought for sure Gary would take off and just leave me and Newt alone.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No,” Isaac said with a shake of his head. “I tried to take Newt and leave one day, but he told me I could go, but Newt wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t understand why at first.”

  “But you found out?”

  “Yeah, he wanted Newt because my mom left behind a life insurance policy naming Newt as the primary beneficiary. She and Gary were never married. Since my mom understood numbers, she calculated that Newt would need the majority of the money, since he was only two. I was over eighteen, so she saw that as me being able to earn my own income. Gary too. So Newt pretty much got all the money. I told you, my mom understood numbers.”

  My heart broke for him as I considered what that must have felt like. To know his mother had made plans for Newt to be financially taken care of, but not him.

  “I’m sorry, Isaac.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t about me,” he said firmly. “Since Newt was underage, he needed a guardian. Gary was his father, so he got custody. But the money was in a trust, so he could only use a set amount every month and it was meant to care for Newt. There was even a trustee overseeing the account. It was a lot of money. Almost two million dollars. So the monthly amount was pretty sizeable.”

  “I’m assuming very little, if any, of the money went to caring for Newt?” I said.

  “Enough just to satisfy the trustee. The trustee would occasionally make random visits to check on Newt’s welfare.”

  “So Gary wouldn’t let you just leave and take Newt with you,” I guessed. Before Isaac even confirmed my statement with a nod, I knew what all this was leading up to. “You kidnapped him, didn’t you?”

  Isaac didn’t respond at first. When he did, it was just with a simple nod.

  “Why?”

  When he didn’t answer, I turned his face so he was forced to look at me. “Why did you take him, Isaac? I know it had to be for a good reason.”

  He tugged free of my hold and pressed his head back against my chest. Clearly, it was easier for him to talk to me without actually looking at me.

  “Gary never hurt Newt like he did me, so I thought it was safe to leave him alone with Gary every once in a while at night. I was taking college courses to try to get a degree in computers. One night I got a call that Newt was in the ER. When I got there, he was being treated for a head injury. Gary told the doctor Newt had fallen down the stairs.”

  “You didn’t believe him,” I said.

  “No, I didn’t. The injury was on the side of Newt’s head by his temple.” Isaac pointed to his own head. “I got the same kind of injury when Gary slammed my head into a wall when I was sixteen. Before I could tell anyone, Gary threatened me… said if I said anything, he’d make it so I never saw Newt again. He had custody and I was just a twenty-year-old unemployed college student. I knew they’d believe him over me.”

  “What happened with Newt?”

  “He was treated for a week in the hospital and made a complete recovery. Then the seizures started. The doctor said it could either be from the head injury or he could just be epileptic. There was no way to be sure. Gary didn’t really care, as long as it didn’t affect the money from the trust. About a month after he got out of the hospital, I finally got Newt to admit Gary had hurt him, and it hadn’t been the first time. I took him that night.”

  “Where did you go?” I asked.

  “All over. Any big city I thought we could get lost in. We’d only stay for a month or two at the most. Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles. Then came San Francisco.”

  “That’s where you met Nolan’s ex.”

  Isaac nodded. “When I took Newt, I tried to get a regular job, but the money just wasn’t there. Newt’s anti-seizure medicine was really expensive because I had to buy it illegally… I knew Gary or the cops would find us if I ever tried to get him a prescription for it. I just couldn’t make ends meet. One of the guys I approached about selling me the medication told me I could make a lot of money escorting… said I had ‘the right l
ook.’”

  Isaac dragged in a deep breath. “When I told him there was no way I could do that, he offered me the drugs for free if I let him fuck me. Those pills cost almost three hundred dollars for just a month’s supply. So I did it. I hated it, but it was so damn easy. When we moved to the next city and our car suddenly died and I was running out of the medication, I thought about what he’d said. So I started looking at online ads, then I placed my own. I made more letting one guy fuck me than I’d made in a week washing dishes. There was no looking back after that.”

  “And Trey?” I asked.

  “I met Trey through an ad. He was different, or so I thought. A lot of my tricks would sweet-talk me, but I learned pretty quickly it was all part of the act. But Trey was better at it. He’d bring me flowers and presents whenever we’d meet. He’d show an interest in my personal life, and it didn’t take me long to fall for his bullshit that he wanted to take care of me. He was into some really kinky shit, which I hated, but he was so sweet afterwards that in my mind, he became two different people. Trey, the trick and Trey, my boyfriend. And I was willing to do a lot for Trey, my boyfriend.”

  “The violin,” I said.

  Another nod from Isaac. “I fell for his story that Nolan had stolen the Stradivarius from him hook, line and sinker. He painted Nolan out to be just the most horrible person and that Trey was the victim. And the amount of money he offered me to go to Nolan’s apartment and take the violin was more than I’d make in a week turning tricks. Between the money and wanting to help my boyfriend out, I did it.”