Haven … yeah, Haven never got over what happened to her. I saw it in her haunted face every single fuckin’ day. She’d find the drugs no matter how much I tried to stop it. She was desperate to have them and she’d do anything to get them. The drugs were her escape, I guess, and she kept getting fucked up. Five times I took her to the hospital for overdosing. I’d have to get her out of there the moment she was well enough before social services picked us up. The last time … I was in the waiting room an hour before the doctor came out and told me she was gone. I didn’t believe him. She hadn’t been that bad. She’d been fucked up way worse before. Why would she die this time? I freaked out. They had to sedate me and when I woke up I was in children’s aid care.
“There was no funeral for Haven. I tried to find out where she was buried, but they had no record of her. Just another dead kid lost in the system. A few months later, I was lucky to be fostered by Crisis’ parents.” Ream looked at me, his eyes still unemotional as if he had to be that way in order to tell me all this. “You see, Kat, I am a piece shit, and you were right to get out while you could.”
“Ream, I was angry. I don’t … Ream I didn’t mean what I said.”
He huffed. “Sure you did, beautiful. I just needed to hear it to remember.”
“Ream, no.” Oh God. No. No matter what I saw, what broke us apart, he wasn’t undeserving. He protected his sister, let his body be used instead of hers. He tried to get her out of that life. I understood why he was crazy protective of me. Possessive. Maybe I understood it about him all along. I accepted it without even knowing this part of him. I didn’t need to know because I’d loved him anyway.
“Women have always meant nothing to me. Even when I escaped that life, being with a woman made me ill. I felt soiled and disgusted by the way they fawned all over me. Even now, being in the band … the women treat me like an object, something to brag about to their friends.”
I was desperate to say no, but it was true. To them he was an object, a rock star. I wanted to hold him in my arms, but I stood silent and still, listening to his haunting words.
“Until you.”
I met his eyes and had to look away or I knew I’d falter.
“You never groveled over me or made me feel like I was being used.” He sighed and put his head down. “The first woman I slept with who I wanted to curl up with and wake up next to in the morning.”
I choked back the sob that clogged my throat. I couldn’t listen to him anymore. I didn’t want to hear this. Where was the anger? I wanted it back. I needed to lock the tears away again and be strong. I had to remember despite his horrific story, he still cheated on me.
“No child should ever have to live what you and your sister did. I wish …” What? That I could erase that from him? Maybe the pain and hurt, but not who it made him. But the worst was that no matter how much I wanted to forgive him, I couldn’t. “I can’t forgive you, Ream.”
His voice was hard as he said, “Never asked you to.”
I flinched and then started for the bedroom door. I needed to leave before I did something stupid as fall back into his arms. “Did you love me?”
Ream’s head jerked in my direction and his face tightened. “It’s over, Kat. And I don’t ever want your pity.”
I nodded. “Yeah.” I understood that better than anyone. And then I walked out.
***
I was numb to it now. My body separated from my mind.
I could go off into another place where no one could touch me.
He didn’t like it.
He made me ask for mercy. I did, just to please him.
I had to please him or it would be worse. He could always make it worse.
I was a toy.
Unfeeling. Cold. Indifferent.
And broken.
It was another two days before I saw him again. Deck had told me or rather ordered me to take his car back home while he stayed with Ream. I stayed locked to my easel and painted away my emotions.
Deck’s words continued to haunt me. That cheating wasn’t in Ream’s makeup. That what you see is not always what it is. I wanted so badly to believe that he didn’t cheat and I kept running the scene over and over in my head but every time it broke me down a little more.
I couldn’t let it go. I even asked Crisis if Ream had ever been so drunk that he didn’t remember what he did the night before. Crisis said no.
Then I went back further. What happened that night? Ream had gone into the back of the bar to talk to Brett … to threaten him. It made sense why he did it. How that guy used to watch his sister all the time. The guy who ended up raping her at the first opportunity. I saw the haunted look in his eyes when he told me. Brett wasn’t some low-life drug dealer, but Ream was vigilant and he had every right to be. He needed to make sure he never made the same mistake, and if it took warning Brett to stay away from me, then he’d do it.
When Ream walked into the house a week later, his eyes were dark and sunken like he wasn’t sleeping, but behind the restlessness I saw the same cold darkness I’d seen at the cottage. Maybe Deck was right and he wouldn’t come back from this, and that terrified me because I saw who Ream could be and that man I missed like hell.