Fuck.
My solution to protect them doesn’t seem as simple anymore.
Because how can something be right when it hurts so much?
5
Katrina
Adam barrels into me with a smile on his face, his head smashing right into my stomach, which is full of coffee and sloshes on impact. I grin down at him as Sasha walks over and hands me his jacket, which he forgot inside the daycare again, just like yesterday.
I mouth “thank you” at her, because there’s nothing worse than driving a four-year-old to school on a crisp morning while they complain that they’re cold every two seconds. “I’m a popsicle. No, an iceberg! No, I’m the South Pole. I wanna be the North Pole by Santa.”
Sasha just gives me a smile and a wave before she disappears back into the facility.
“Guess what? Guess what?” Adam rapid-repeats when he pulls back from our hug.
I stare down at his adorable chubby cheeks and grin. “What?” I ask as I reach out and ruffle his dark brown hair.
“Mom and Dad came to see me!” He giggles in delight. “They said they’re fixing up our house and that I’ll get to go home soon!”
My stomach immediately drops, gets tangled in my shoelaces, and trips. What the fuck? Fear snakes up from my stomach and locks my legs. My eyes glance around the sidewalk, wondering if they’re still here. My hand goes to Adam’s. “When did they say that, buddy?” I keep my voice light, but inside I feel chilled, like someone’s just dumped a big glass of ice water over my heart.
“Today, duh!” he chortles, oblivious to my panic.
I consider asking him more questions to try to narrow it down, but he mixed up “yesterday” and “tomorrow” last week, so I honestly don’t think it will do any good. Instead of focusing on the timeline and whether or not my shithead parents are currently trying to track down our location—which would have been obvious if they’d bothered checking my bank statements—I lead Adam to the car and buckle him into his carseat.
“Want ice cream, buddy?” I ask, because this is ice cream binging bullshit right here.
Why the hell would my parents approach a four-year-old and tell him he’s going home? Why wouldn’t they tell me?
As I slide behind the wheel, the answer hits me like a hammer to the head. I lick my lips as I pull the door shut, trying not to let fury overtake me, not to let hurt overwhelm me. It’s obvious. They want Adam back. But not me.
I’m eighteen and no longer their problem.
I’ve been sliding down a slippery slope with them for a while, being defiant, shoplifting, getting caught with far older men… They think I’m a lost cause.
My parents don’t want me.
I’ve resented them for years, but…that thought, that realization is mind bending.
I’ve read about how a knife can be so sharp that it can slice you open and you won’t immediately feel the pain. There can be a delayed reaction, because it takes your nerves a second to catch up. That’s what those thoughts do to me—they cut so sharply and deeply that it takes a second for the pain to find its way through, but when it does, I can’t help the gasp that escapes my lips or the tears that fill my eyes.
I reach forward and squeeze the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white and my hands ache.
“Katty, are you okay? Did you swallow a fly? We talked about them today… This old lady did it one time, I think,” Adam mumbles from his seat.
“Just got something in my eye,” I lie as I swipe away the tears and yank on my seatbelt so roughly, I end up smashing my finger on the buckle.
Goddammit! I suck on my finger and curse the stupid buckle manufacturer.
I hate those moments—where little wrongs pile on top of big ones, and it feels like the whole fucking universe is against you.
I take a deep breath to steady myself, because a car wreck with Adam in the backseat is not an option. Fuck my parents and their plans. I’m not living separately from Adam. And…I’m not living with them again.
I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do to stop them, but it’ll be something. With a nebulous sense of resolve that has absolutely zero concrete plan to back it up, I start the car and reverse out of my parking space.
Normally, Adam and I go to the grocery store to buy ice cream because I can’t stand the crazy amounts of money people pay for a single scoop of ice cream.
Shut up about the fancy coffee. Logic doesn’t extend to coffee. It’s a sacred substance.
Today isn’t a grocery store day, though. Today, I want eight mix-ins. I want Oreos and graham crackers and sprinkles and gummy worms that get turned so hard by the ice cream, you think you’re eating fingers.
Okay, that was a mental exaggeration. Might have taken it a little too far. Probably going to settle for gummy bears now.
I drive to the ice cream shop and park. Adam immediately gets excited, because we haven’t been here for months.
“Oh, Katty! Can I get three scoops of chocolate with fudge—”
“One scoop,” I tell him as I unbuckle and grab my purse from the passenger seat. I try not to think about the fact that this purse came from Zolroth, who sneakily swapped out my old purse for this sleek, turquoise-blue, leather crossbody one while I was staying with the guys.
I try to keep my mind blank as I shove open my door and then open Adam’s. His whining gives me something else to focus on.
“But one isn’t enough! I can eat three.”
He actually can. But then he’ll puke afterwards. “Bud, we don’t want to repeat the puke-a-thon from last Easter.” Last Easter, my parents had forgotten the holiday because they were mid-trial or something, and I bought Adam the three scoops he wanted so that I’d have enough time to randomly hide candy around the back yard, sans plastic eggs because we didn’t have any.
Adam blows a raspberry in my face. “I’m bigger than last time.”
Damn. What a little debater he is sometimes. I try to take him seriously and not to let a smile take over my face at his argument. “Fine. One and a half scoops.”
“Four.”
“Back to one,” I counter.
“Eight. No, two,” he says, listing off random numbers.
I press my lips together in a tight line because I cannot grin or I’ll lose. Adam knows his numbers, yeah, but sometimes, he forgets what order they’re in. “Okay fine. Two.”
He gives off a cackle that would make Akor proud as we head over to the ice cream shop. And my heart does a little flip to see him so happy.
I’d do almost anything to keep that look on his face constantly.
I know I could ask the demons and they’d help us in a heartbeat. But part of me doesn’t want that. Part of me wants to find a way through this myself. But is that just arrogance? Just pride? Is it foolish?
I wonder about it as I eat my ice cream, as I take Adam for a swim at the hotel pool, as we order room service for dinner and I make him eat his carrots.
When I fall asleep that night, I still haven’t decided whether I’m an idiot or not for wanting to stand on my own two feet.
My dreams don’t seem to lend me any help. When I become aware of my dream, my feet are in the soft clouds, like usual. But I’m not in any garden. I’m not in Hell either. No beautifully scary or wildy random things surround me. There’s just…nothingness. The clouds rise and fall as far as the eye can see, a white smear across the sky. They’re still soft under my feet, they still give a bit of a bounce to my step, but they swirl up and down in peaks. It feels like I’m walking through a giant tray of meringue. Or maybe whipped cream.