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I try not to look in Beth's direction even though we're sharing space. I don't try and confront her or force her to talk to me, and she seems at least accepting that we might be sharing space.
Beck stays right at my side, carrying on a conversation with me as if we're the only two people in the room. I know he's doing it so I feel more comfortable, but I'm also saddened with the way things have turned out where Beth is concerned.
Then again, maybe she has the right idea of rejecting me. The people around me get hurt, and I know that places every person in this room in danger.
I want to cry when I see Gigi's little girl run from the room with a donut held high over her head. Her dad chases after her. I'd be terrified for the devious little girl if he didn't have a huge smile on his face. The man clearly loves his daughter, and I can say I didn't know that was possible until I came here. In my world, daddies want to hurt their little girls, but the men here would lay down their lives for other men's children, not just their own.
I hate that I might be the catalyst that forces them to make that choice.
Chapter 23
Newton
It has been days since Beth refused to speak with Brielle, but I can tell it's still bothering her. She's here, but there's this distance in her eyes that just won't go away.
She hasn't been back in the closet, but I've seen her eye it more than once, and each time I catch her looking in that direction I feel like a failure. My experiences aren't her experiences, but I thought that maybe being bonded in traumatic childhoods, we formed some sort of connection. Right now I can't help but feel like she's biding her time until she can get away from here.
The other day she mentioned feeling like she was a prisoner, even after explaining that Cerberus can take her elsewhere. It just can't be to the shelter, and any other place in Farmington isn't advisable.
It's late evening, and although she's been by my side every night since the first time she climbed into this bed trying to repay me for something she felt was a debt that was owed, I know her mind isn't here with us. It could easily be one of a million places, and I hate the idea of her getting trapped in the past or struggling through memories of pain.
"What are you thinking about?" I urge, pulling her closer to my side.
Her hand is on my bare chest, but she stopped tracing her fingers over my skin over an hour ago.
At first, I liked the way we were able to sit in silence and just be around each other without that internal insistence that we have to fill the quiet with chatter. Now, it feels like a punishment, but deep down I don't think that she's doing it on purpose.
I think she's going to open up to me when she pulls in a deep breath, but it's followed by a heavier silence. Noise from the living room filters in, the periodic raised voice or laughter seeping in on occasion, but it isn't so disruptive that it makes me want to climb out of bed and ask them to be quiet. If anything it's a reminder that we aren't alone. It gives me confidence that there are people out there that would provide another level of protection for us.
I rarely lie in bed without a full set of clothes on. It's something I've never been able to change since I was young. Brielle is the same way. She's fully dressed now while I'm only in a pair of sweats.
When I got back in the room after a quick workout, I grabbed a shower, and she pulled me to the bed before I could get fully dressed. Things didn't turn sexual, and I knew she just needed comfort, something I'd readily provide her anytime she needed it.
Just when I think her silence is her refusal to speak, her whispers begin, and they leave me wishing that maybe I hadn't asked.
"Nathan and Xan hurt me a lot. It started not long after he finalized my adoption."
I tighten my arm around her, knowing full well just how hard it is to say certain things out loud.
"I suspected for a long time that he played a part in my mother's death, an overdose of pain pills, but after years of being on the receiving end of his abuse, it's very possible she killed herself just to escape him."
I know from the dossier that her mother's death was ruled a suicide, but that doesn't mean Nathan Adair wasn't involved. Hell, I'd argue that someone killing themselves to get away from an evil person who hurts them was actually murdered if they saw no other way out.
"Xan hurt me at first because he was forced to," she whispers, and I knew this much from the last time she whispered secrets to me in the darkness. "I was forced to hurt people too."
My heart pounds in my chest. I can't even begin to imagine the position she was in. If she saw Xan getting beaten when he refused to hurt her, I can see how she would hurt someone at Nathan's insistence already knowing what the consequences of refusal would be.
Guilt rolls off her, but I keep my mouth closed. She doesn't need me to explain to her once again that she did all of this under duress.
"Nathan terrifies me. I know what he was capable of doing to his own son, what he was capable of doing to me. Both he and Xan whispered about the women they hurt. I feel helpless not knowing anything. For years, I let myself believe that they were lying, that they just spoke of these things to scare me or to warn me about what happens when I don't obey or comply with their demands."
I want to ask her who they made her hurt and what happened to them, but that feels like a betrayal. It's the information that Kincaid wants me to get, and I squeeze my eyes shut praying she doesn't tell me a single thing that I've promised I'd relay back to my boss.
I shouldn't be torn between possibly finding multiple locations that are rumored to be kept by Nathan Adair for sex-trafficked women and children and keeping her secrets. My job is to protect the innocent, but does the many outweigh the few, or the one in her case?
Misery settles inside of me as she continues to talk because as a well-trained person in deception, I know she's only giving me half-truths. You don't spend years with a man who's trying to train you to be as evil as he is and not be privileged to some of the secrets that could bring him down. It just doesn't happen.
"They'd come home coated in blood, smiles on their faces, and the first time I asked if they slaughtered one of the pigs we had on the ranch property we were staying on at the time. I remember the goosebumps on my arms when they both laughed. It was the most sinister thing I'd ever heard. They said it was a pig, but I could tell by their tones that it wasn't."
