“Years went by and we heard nothing from him, life became normal again and the fear of him turning up went away. Bee didn't know much about Dad, we told her he had left us when she was a baby and, with two big brothers around helping Mom raise her, she didn't want for anything. She was happy, at least for a while.”
He began shaking again. I sat up and took his face in my hands. “Tudor you don’t need to keep going, it’s okay,” I reassured and I moved in to kiss his forehead.
He pulled away. “No, I want you to know, I need you to know. No more secrets, Sunshine. Never again.”
I sat back and he stared off, not looking at anything in particular, eyes unfocused. “A few years back, I got my big break – you know how, I told you before – and I moved to LA to be closer to the studios. I’d been there a few months when I got a call from Henry saying that Dad had been back in touch. It just brought all these fears and feelings back, and I didn’t know how to deal with this new career and the fact that… that… that monster was trying to weasel his way back in our lives after everything he’d put us through.
“In LA, if you’re known, everything is available to you, so I turned to alcohol and tried to drink my problems away. You know the drill: I slept around and drank for nearly a year before my mom called and told me to stop being stupid and to come home. So I did. My dad had stopped calling, finally getting the message that he wasn’t welcome, and things were looking better again.”
He rubbed his hand across his face and his eyes once again welled up with tears. I used my thumb to rub them away and waited for him to finish the story.
“Bee was twelve when he showed up. He knocked on the front door, as brazen as all hell, like he had every right to be there. She answered and, having never seen him before, not even a picture, let him in. He claimed he was a family friend. I arrived home half an hour later, I’d forgotten a script that I was supposed to be reading for producers in downtown Vancouver, and walked in to find my father assaulting my baby sister on the living room floor. He didn't manage to rape her, but if I hadn't got there when I did...”
He let out a strangled moan and I held him tighter in my arms.
He tucked his face into my hair. “I saw red, Tash. I pulled him off her and began laying into him; I was well into bodybuilding by then and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds and could have easily beaten him to a pulp. It wasn't long before Henry came home and dragged me off him and in all the commotion, the bastard managed to get away. The police have been searching for him for over three years. God knows where he was hidden but could we hell find him. Bee took it badly and was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder; she struggled to go out of the house and would get night terrors and such high anxiety that she had to be sedated on more than one occasion. I couldn’t believe it was happening. We spent over a year trying to make her better. Half the problem was that he was still out there and she just couldn’t move on. The doctors advised a change of scenery. I wanted to help her, so we moved here, the last place anyone would expect and hopefully the last place he would think to come looking.
“From that moment on, I purposely fell off the radar. I kept working on my films but all social engagements and interviews were cancelled. I had the worst job in the world for coping with this type of situation, any social media post or gossip site could give away where we lived at any moment. There are thousands of pages out there solely about me and several of them only exist to track my every move. It’s beyond f**ked up to have fans acting as a personal GPS, especially when you have a father who is trying everything to seek you out and destroy your family. Anyway, the money from my films has helped us buy the best lawyers, private eyes and security, but my job has also made it easy for him to threaten us too.
“On movie sets, or when I’ve been on location – all public knowledge of course – he would send notes through the runners telling me that he would find us and finish what he started and that he blamed me for everything, for stopping him and his right to have his own daughter. My fault! All the police and specialists on the case warned me about involving other people and to not risk telling anyone but family about our situation, and I didn’t for years.
“He was spotted a few times around Canada, but he always managed to evade the police just in time. The notes became more threatening as time went on and he made it clear that if he got the chance he would ruin my life, in any and every way that he could. He described explicitly what he would do to my girlfriend if I ever I got one, if I loved anyone as much as he ‘loved’ Bee – he’s a sick bastard! I knew I could never get into a relationship until he was caught. I didn’t want to, I honestly thought that relationships just seemed to destroy people, rip them apart.”
He pulled back and made me look into his eyes before letting out a snort of light laughter. “And then you came along and blindsided me. When you barreled into the restaurant that night I couldn’t look away. I was hooked from the get-go. I fought our attraction for so long, put you through hell and never once told you why. In the end, I was weak and selfish and I couldn't not have you in my life. That coffee date with Gage pushed me over the edge.
“I told my mother and brother about what was happening, what I was resisting and they told me that I shouldn't – no – couldn't live like that: miserable and on my own forever because of him, because then he would win. So I gave in, and you completely changed my life, I finally lowered my guard to someone.”