Page 83 of Carnal Wagers

I brushed her hand away. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know more than you think.”

Her sigh rankled my nerves. It was oppressive and foreboding, a warning that flashed at me to kick her out of my bed and life before she uttered another word. It battled against the feel of her weight against me, against the rawness of her words, and against this crawling desire to hammer through her cracks and watch more truths seep out.

“I doubt that.”

Her lips grazed my chest, and every nerve fired, begging for attention.

“I can see the pain in your eyes,” she said. “It’s obvious from the way they drift the moment you don’t have to pay attention. It’s in your posture too. I’ve watched you sit on the edge of your bed every morning before leaving and at the end of your day, staring at nothing at all. Something is bubbling and churning beneath your surface. You keep pushing it down, and it keeps fighting you. I get it. I’ve lived it too.”

“Lies.”

She snickered with derision. “You’re not the only one hiding a sob story. Did you know when I was eleven, two of my brothers were kidnapped and tortured for a month?”

“What the fuck do I care?” I snapped.

She laid on her back and stared at the ceiling, ignoring my outburst.

“Everyone always worries about the survivors and victims, and they should. What my brothers went through…nobody should ever have to live through that.”

“I fail to see how this applies to you.”

“Shut up and listen.” The need for validation practically oozed out of her, but she didn’t look at me to seek it out. If anything, it was like she expected the opposite. “I wasn’t abducted or hurt like my brothers, but I was still only eleven years old when it happened. I wasn’t just a spectator watching a film of what happened. I existed through its chaos and the aftermath. Every night they were missing, I cried. Every time I was left alone, I worried that the next one taken would be me. Night terrors woke me every time I tried to sleep. So most nights, I stayed up watching the door in case someone broke in. I hid at every loud noise. Anytime something planned went even a little off track, I retreated or shut down. I started constantly second-guessing if something new was good or bad and carried knives everywhere I went, just in case.

“And then my brothers came home. Every day, for hours, they screamed in pain. They screamed in fear. They sat staring at the walls for hours. They didn’t want me around them anymore. Not for company, not to help, not to play. Neither did my parents. And somewhere along the line, my preteen brain assumed the problem was me.

“No one noticed how I started flinching at every odd sound, or how I’d fall into a panic whenever new people were introduced, or when there were sudden changes around us. Everyone was too busy with my brothers and my youngest siblings. Nobody noticed that I, too, was suffering.”

Alice shrugged and shook her head as a glint of wetness flowed down her cheek.

“What right did I have to suffer? The trauma wasn’t mine. I was simply background noise to the main event. My fears were worth less because nothing actually happened to me. To my parents, I took advantage of my brothers’ pain to beg for attention. If that’s the truth, it wasn’t intentional.

“No one sees the collateral damage to trauma. Or maybe it’s not that no one sees it, but that they don’t want to. It’s not jagged and obvious or easily justified to the world. Or maybe my sort of pain was deemed unworthy because it wasn’t shocking enough. Mine couldn’t exist while my brothers’ did. Mine needed to be undermined so theirs could be addressed. They got counseling, psychologists, and psychiatrists, while I got scoldings. They got love and care, while I got pushed to the sidelines. It became the new normal, and no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, that stigma never left me until that car accident. It made me wonder if I’d been abducted, too, would my parents still love me? Would they visit my grave if I died?”

Her pain was real. Beautiful. It seeped into my pores and caressed my skin like an old friend. We were both side characters to the validated victims in our stories, condemned to suffer in silence, with no redemption in sight.

“That’s when my panic attacks started, but they were never acceptable until after Lea’s death. She had to die for my parents to take notice and accept that I needed help. But it was never about the mess I was on the inside. It was because of the trouble I’d caused that they’d had to clean up and sweep under the rug. One of the best people I knew died, and all they saw it as was a cry for attention.”

Her agony lit up the dark room like a beacon. It was so blinding it hurt. It dug into my chest with claws so sharp I couldn’t escape its clutches.

“You can laugh now,” she said, her gaze locked straight above.

“Why would I laugh at that? You don’t need to justify your pain to anyone. Least of all me.”

I understood hers better than most. I was never the victim in my story, always the collateral damage. Survivor’s guilt was a bitch, especially for someone in my line of work.

Silence stretched between us until she muttered something to herself and shuffled away, tugging at the sheets.

“I shouldn’t have told you that. Forget I said anything. I have to go.”

“No, you don’t.” I dragged her back to me and twisted a hand in her hair. If I was suffering, so was she. “Look at me.”

“Don’t.” She covered her face under an elbow. “My makeup is probably a mess.”

“I couldn’t give a rat’s arse.”

She tried to pull away, but I yanked her back to me, her ass smacking my groin as she struggled. Sparks flared at the contact. They throbbed with growing intensity the longer I held her close. Stinging, then aching, and finally leaving a satisfying twinge of pain that made my heart race with ecstasy. Two days ago, with her in my bed, hadn’t been a fluke.