Edison (The Henchmen MC 10)

I did all that.

It was me who should have been with her when she went.

For her, because I had always been there for her, because she would have wanted me there for her in the end.

And for me.

Because I needed that closure.

I needed to be able to let go, to say goodbye.

Maybe it was selfish to keep her suspended like I did.

Naive even.

I just wanted to make sure.

I couldn't think of a worse thing in the world than unplugging her just before she was going to make a turn for the better.

"This was hers?" he asked, touching the cup, too delicate and girly against his wide hand.

"Yeah. She loved tea parties."

"And took ballet?" he asked gesturing toward the music box.

"She was really good too," I told him. "She taught classes on the weekends just for fun."

"Is this her diary?"

"Don't," I snapped grabbing it out of his hand, pulling it to my chest.

"I wasn't going to read it, love," he said, shaking his head as he moved to sit beside the mess of me on the floor.

"She usually told me everything," I heard myself say.

"Usually?"

"She told me about him," I agreed, needing to tell it, needing to share it. It had been threatening to break me for half a year. "She was so excited because he was mature and settled, not some fuckboy like the rest of the guys her age." His hand moved to my hip, gently stroking up and down my thigh. "She told me about where he took her, what his family was like, how much Jake - her dad - liked him. She didn't tell me about all the other shit."

"What other shit?"

"The shit that she knew would make me drive over to his place, and cut off his balls with a very dull butter knife."

Thin as she was, he called her fat, he demanded she lose weight, or he would leave her.

He made her approve her outings with her friends and - apparently - me.

He criticized her housework, her career path, her clothing, her makeup, her hair, her style in bed.

And that was just in the first three months.

The diary entries took a turn toward the dark around then as well, though whenever she saw me, all I saw was my usual Letha. If there was even a hint of the self-loathing that was inside her diary, I would have known, I would have demanded to know what was going on. And once I did, I would have handled it.Nothing I do pleases him. It seems like the more I try, the angrier he gets.He jumped off of me, grabbed me by my hair - hard enough that I found a chunk of it on the floor after - and forced me down on my knees, telling me that if I couldn't fuck him right, then he was just going to fuck my mouth instead. I'd never had a man do what he did to me before. He yanked back my head, then thrust into my mouth, his cock gagging me until spit and cum were coming out my nose, until my throat was raw and swollen from the assault, until tears were streaming down my cheeks. Only then was it over. Then he stroked my cheek and told me how good I was, how much he loved that I loved his cock in my mouth.He slapped me today. He swore it would never happen again. It happened again, but I shrank his favorite football jersey.The blame just kept getting more and more intense as her self-worth dropped.

"She actually claimed that she thought she deserved it when he split her lip because she had been talking too much."

"Fucking asshole," Edison growled, sounding somehow as angry about it as I felt when I learned it.Nothing I ever do is good enough. I guess I will never be good enough. Why do I even keep trying?"That was her last entry. A suicide note of sorts."A 'swan dive' sounds so peaceful, doesn't it?"That's why she was in a coma," Edison concluded. "She jumped."

My stomach dropped at the memory of that call, the words that made absolutely no sense.

I had seen her three days before.

She had forced me to take a selfie with her, smiling as big as ever, knowing how much I hated selfies.

My sister would never have wanted to kill herself.

Except she did.

She did, and I didn't know.

You never usually do.

That was what the shrink at the hospital tried to tell me.

People, women especially, are really good at hiding their depression. They don't want to burden anyone else.

She didn't want to burden me.

"It wasn't your fault, Lenny," Edison said, seeming to read the train of my thoughts.

"I should have seen the..."

"Sometimes there are no signs. Sometimes people are really good at hiding them. Or were never low enough to do it until right before they do it. You couldn't have known. Even if you had, that doesn't mean you could have stopped it."