“Sixteen. It was… right after school got out for the summer. I was going to camp out of state to be a counselor. He didn’t want me to go. He didn’t want me to leave him. He thought—well, in the end, it didn’t matter what he thought. He was crazy.”
“What happened to him.”
“He slit his wrists with the knife he’d used on me and my family. And when that didn’t go far enough, he took out what turned out to be his father’s gun and shot himself in the head.” She touched her eyelid as it started to twitch. Then rubbed the thing to try to get it to stop flickering. “He thought he’d killed me, and I played like I was dead. He was… utterly distraught. He didn’t want me to live, but he didn’t want me dead, either.”
“Here,” Balthazar said.
Erika glanced at him, and found that he was holding out the sweatshirt she’d given him from her dryer. When she just stared at the thing in confusion, he leaned in and blotted at her face with it.
“Am I crying?” As he nodded, she was surprised. “I don’t cry over this, you know. Ever.”
Well, if that wasn’t a stupid statement, given the tears he was mopping up.
“Can I tell you something I’ve never told anybody before?” she whispered.
“It would be my honor to hold your secret here.” He touched over his heart. “And keep it within me.”
She took her sweatshirt from him and moved up a little higher to a drier place on the sleeve.
“I just stood there.” Erika began to cry openly, the tears streaming down her face and dropping onto the blue bathrobe. “While he killed my mother. I just… fucking stood there as he cut into her and she screamed. She held her arms out to me, her eyes… they locked on me… she called my name…”
And that was when the snap happened.
She just broke in half. It was as if the composure she had maintained was a hard shell, and with enough force exerted on it, it lost its structural integrity—and what was inside, all the horror and regret, the poisonous self-hatred, everything so pressurized, just exploded.
Strong arms wrapped around her, and she went with them as they brought her against a broad chest.
Erika cried so hard, she made no sound, could draw no air, lost track of everything.
Even herself.
But she knew who was holding her. That, she remained clear on.
* * *
All Balthazar could do was hold on to his female. As she released her pain, he reflected that the secrets buried by shame were always the most poisonous ones, and the destruction they wrought was the insidious kind, under the surface and mostly hidden.
And he was honored that he was the one she’d chosen to reveal herself to.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered against her hair as he stroked her back. “Oh, God… I’m so sorry.”
To be that young, that innocent… and to have your childhood ripped away from you by that sort of violence. He had been through a lot in his life, but nothing that came close to what Erika had endured.
That she had gone into homicide made sense. She was trying to do right by others like her family. But he also knew that she never got away from death; it no doubt haunted her at night as well as stalked her during the daylight hours at her job. She had not healed over the last fourteen years; she was stewing in tragedy.
Although could anyone really heal from something like that?
With a push against his pecs, she moved away from him. “Will you excuse me for a minute?”
She was steady on her feet as she walked over to the utility bathroom, and when she closed the door, he rubbed his face with his hands.
There was the sound of water rushing—for a while. Then a toilet flushing. Then more with the water. When she emerged, she carried a pleasant scent with her as she wiped her hands on a paper towel, which she pushed into her robe’s pocket.
He expected her to make a pronouncement that that was done. She wasn’t talking about it ever again. But she didn’t.
She came directly over to him, standing tall and much more composed, even though her face was red and her eyes bloodshot.
Her hands were steady as she went to the tie around her waist, and when she removed the robe from her shoulders, she just let it drop to the floor. The t-shirt underneath was a fresh one of the same kind she’d had on throughout the night, plain, white and loose, the creases from it having been folded while warm from the laundry making a pattern down the front.
She lifted it slowly, the hem going up over her belly, her ribs…
Her breasts were beautiful to him, her nipples peaked from the chill—