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“Jesus Christ, how many people did your parents kill?” Jerry asks, going back toyourparents.
“Mom killed my second nanny because she gave her a regular soda instead of a diet one time. I’m not joking.”
The more I hear about these parents, the more grossly concerned I am. I’m not sure how they birthed either of these women. I wouldn’t tell a soul, but Jerry got emotional about Zach killing a moth the other week.
People, on the other hand, are a little bit of a different story to her.
“Go there. I’ll meet you,”
She hangs up.
THIRTY-ONE
SYDNEY
The killing fields.
It’s what I started calling that place after I left. After I ran away. It was my one place of peace growing up. How screwed up is that.
Thirty minutes out of the way, Ronan and Iborrowedsomeone’s car, an inconspicuous little piece of shit that’ll get us there. We don’t need speed for this. No one is going to be looking for us around there.
Ronan grabs my hand to stop my shaking, and I instantly feel a tranquility wash over me.
“Are you doing okay?” he asks, but he knows the answer to that.
“I want him dead.”
Ronan nods. “I do, too.”
Running his thumb over my fingers, he squeezes my hand three times before lacing his fingers through mine.
“After this is all over, I want you to move in with me. Get rid of that apartment. Come live at the complex.”
At first the thought didn’t sound great to me. Why would you want to live with a bunch of other people? But it’s a bunch of people who have no family of their own. Who are on their own. Who have made a family for themselves.
And I like that.
I’ve live in a house of horrors for most of my life, hiding from parents who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot someone dead for simply looking at them wrong. I was careful. I tried to do everything right.
Most of all, I was never protected. I was a kid, and I wasn’t protected by the people who were supposed to protect me.
But at the compound, I hear that door open, and Elena is home, laughing about something she saw on social media. And a little later, Brandon is trying to sneak into her room, pretending to ask for a book. I’ve never once seen that man read in the time I’ve been there. I have, however, heard him ask to borrow a book numerous times, only to disappear into her room.
Or Zach cooking up something random in the kitchen to eat when he’s high.
And then Jerry would come inside from her walk with Maverick, talking to him about her day. “I didn’t do too much today, but I’m glad everyone here is doing well,” she said one time.
Despite having a heart of steel, Jerry cares a lot. She’s just selective.
And finally, Ronan.
The thought of leaving him makes my heart skip. All I want to do is curl up in his arms, safe and sound.
I want to be at his side no matter what. Whether it be a mission, at the grocery store, or even picking out our burial plots. I can’t imagine a single other person next to me.
“I think I’d like that,” I tell him finally, folding my shaking hands in my lap as I look out the window.
“Hey, eyes on me,” he says, reaching for my chin.
