And I Love You the Most (This Love Hurts 3)

“I didn’t mean to be here,” I confess to him as his eyes widen with unspoken questions. I do my best not to wake her as I creep out of bed and turn away from him. His weight shifts at the door, causing the floorboards to creak.

“Just get her to her sister.”

Cody nods in agreement and I walk past him, neither of us saying another word as I leave him to save her from this nightmare in a way I never can escape.

Delilah

“I’m begging you.” My sister’s voice is strained as I sit in her office. The faint bruise on my left arm is barely there anymore. I’ve traced it idly this past week. It’s the last remaining reminder of what happened. Physically speaking, that is.

“Cody begged you, and now I’m begging.” The mention of Cody’s name does something to me. There’s a place inside my chest that’s felt empty for days. I can barely look at him. I know he wants me still, and he blames himself when he shouldn’t. I told him he shouldn’t. My sister told him to give me time. But time isn’t going to change any of this.

Her voice is thick with embitterment when she says, “For Christ’s sake, do you want me to get down on my knees?”

“Is this because I asked to meet you here instead of your apartment?” I know damn well she’s not pushing the issue just because I don’t want to go back to her apartment. Still, it’s a defense. The reason she wants me to go into therapy is multifaceted but she understands I didn’t want to go back to her place, and have this conversation in the place I was abducted.

I’ll be fine if I never go back there again.

My sister starts in again. “You didn’t go to mom’s funeral. You aren’t sleeping.”

“And how would you know that?” I question snidely, even though she’s right.

“You look like hell, Delilah.” I scoff at her comment. “And you should,” she stresses, almost as if an apology.

“You went through hell, so it makes sense that you’d look like it.”

“Well, thanks for that,” I say and pull my purse into my lap, sitting stiffly on a very comfortable sofa draped in deep blue velvet. The clock above my sister’s desk ticks away as she sighs, both frustrated and saddened. “You need to talk so someone. It doesn’t have to be me.”

Playing with the thin necklace that drapes across my décolleté, I do my best to consider what she’s asking me to do. She wants me to tell all my secrets to someone like her. A man or a woman who supposedly won’t judge me, yet they’ll have the option to give me pills if they deem them fit.

Isn’t that a part of judgment? Sighing to myself, I ask her, “Do you really think it’s going to help me?”

I know what would help me, but he’s not answering me. I have no way to see him, no way to make any of this better.

“I’m seeing someone,” my sister says and leans forward, “after mom …” She leaves the word dying unspoken, leaning back in her seat. The leather groans as she continues, “And what happened with our father.”

I can’t bear the mention of our father. Staring past my sister’s cream blouse, I focus on the textured wallpaper that lines her office. It’s a simple damask pattern in a pale blue and cream colorway.

“Don’t bring up Dad, please.” Cadence’s shoulders sag slightly, her brow raising in condolence. I didn’t realize how much she loathed him until I saw her reaction to the news that our father was a serial killer.

Beyond a moment of surprise, she believed every word to be true without hesitation.

I still don’t know what I believe.

He took the fall for all those murders. Some of those murders, though, really were his handiwork. Without a doubt, I know he must’ve killed them. I remember the names of some of those women. They news was peppered with them when I was younger. A series of young girls going missing, each time happening closer to home, and a public outcry for their bodies to be found.

I remember the way my mother stared at the television, demanding my sister and I never stay out late and always check in even though we were so much younger than the victims. There’s no way she knew my father committed those murders. At least not then, but somehow, I think she found out. Or maybe she only suspected.

I wish she were alive so I could ask her. I wish I knew what she was thinking and why she stayed with him if she thought he’d killed them.

“You know he did it, don’t you?” My sister’s question brings me back to the here and now, and the faint memories of childhood vanish. “Did you read the articles?”