Bait

But she’s wrong. She’s fucking wrong. The business isn’t on its fucking knees, not anymore. Not after twelve months of blood, sweat and pain. So much fucking pain.

And it was an accident. It has to have been a fucking accident.

My soul can’t fucking take it. Not any fucking more of it.

“What’s the obvious?” I ask her, even though I don’t want to. My voice is weak. Hell, I feel fucking weak.

“The obvious is that you aren’t over any of it, Leo. Not even close. The obvious is that you’re using all these problems as a crutch to stop you facing your own grief. The business… Cam… me...”

There’s a lump in my throat that I struggle to choke back down. “Cam needs me to be this way. He’s been through too much…”

Tears track down her face. She shakes her head. And I don’t want to hear whatever she’s about to tell me, but I can’t walk away.

“He can talk,” she whispers. “I hear him when he’s alone. I hear him through the door when he thinks I’m not listening…”

“It must be the TV…” I interrupt, but her head is still shaking.

“It’s him, Leo. You think I’d make this up? You think I’d have any doubt before I said this aloud? He can speak, I swear.”

“No–” I protest, but she cuts me off.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m sorry, Leo, but yes…”

“But the speech therapists…” I argue. “Why would he?” But I know it. I know it too. It sucker punches me, right in the fucking pit of me. I don’t know how I keep my footing. I force some tiny scrap of composure. “Why bring this up now? Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“Because I needed to be sure…”

“And you’re suddenly sure, are you? After inviting Jake round for the first fucking time last night?”

“It’s not the first time…” she admits, and I let out a choked laugh at how this keeps getting better and better.

“Jake’s seen Cam, has he? He’s seen my boy?”

“Mariana’s boy too, Leo. He loves Cam. Cam loves him.”

And how it breaks my fucking heart.

I stalk the room like a fucking beast, my pulse in my ears as I struggle for composure.

My voice is a spit and hiss. “And Cameron speaks to Jake, does he? Does he call him fucking Daddy as well?”

She rushes forward but I hold up my hands. She stands with wide eyes, shaking her head. “No! Of course not! Of course he doesn’t! That’s not what I meant!”

My eyes are daggers, right on hers. “You think it, though, don’t you? You think Cam is his. Is that what Jake thinks too? Is that why he comes here?”

She chokes for words.

“That’s what you think, isn’t it?!” I bark. She points at the kitchen puts a finger over her lips and I curse myself. I lower my voice. “Tell me the fucking truth. Please just tell me the fucking truth.”

She shrugs and still the tears fall. “I’m saying none of us know, Cam. Not you, not me. Mariana’s gone, and Jake…”

My demons are playing inside me and they are vile. The darkness is behind my eyes and no amount of running, or early mornings at the office, or choosing my son’s TV channels has the power to quash any of it.

“You’re leaving,” I tell her. “Today. You’ll be gone from here by the time I get back from the park with Cam.”

Her wide eyes are like saucers. “What?! No! Leo, no! You can’t!”

But I can.

I don’t want to recognise the woman in my living room. I don’t want to know the sister who kept so many cards this close to her chest.

“Go live with your other brother,” I whisper. “You can see him all you want. I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”

And she cries. Oh how she cries.

“You don’t mean that!” she sobs, throwing her hands in the air. “Leo, you can’t mean that!”

But I do.

I do mean it.

I choke it all down, just like I always have. Force my demons back in their little cages.

All apart from the one that escaped last night.

The one Abigail coaxed from me.

I let that one stay free.

“Cam will be done with his breakfast,” I say, as though it’s just a normal day. “You’d better start packing your things.”

I leave her sobbing, her heart breaking as she cries.

But I don’t feel a fucking thing.ThirteenIt’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

Lewis CarrollAbigailFor the first time ever, after years of waiting… hoping… the monster catches me in my dreams.

He catches me and hoists me off my feet… and his cock is thick and studded with metal…

And then he kisses me…

The monster kisses me and I want it.

I’ve always wanted it…

And then I wake.

The room is empty. The sunlight making patterns on the wall through the drapes, just like always.