Her eyes meet mine. “I can’t stay …”
I cut her off. “You can.”
When she begins to argue again, I stop her by getting out of the truck. She hurries after me.
“Rage, my past always has a way of finding me. Trust me, you don’t want it to find me here.”
I rip the yellow tape off the door and push it open; the smell instantly assaults me. Serenity cups her hand over her nose.
“I’m not afraid of your past or mine. Sometimes you have to face things head on,” I tell her, stepping inside.
“Trust me, I have.”
“No, you haven’t. All you’ve been doing is running.” I turn the lights on.
I walk over and begin thumbing through piles of unopened mail on the counter. Serenity stands quietly beside me.
“At least it looks like she paid the bills,” she says, picking up Janet’s electricity bill.
“She didn’t.”
I move on to the fridge and find it packed with all the food I recently had delivered. Almost all of it is uneaten.
Serenity opens a cupboard, finding a hoard of food inside. The expression on her face morphs before my eyes. Her gaze snaps back to the bills on the counter. “Rage, did you pay your mother’s bills?” She looks back to the cupboard. “And did you have groceries sent here?”
I close the fridge, kicking an unopened package of electrolyte drinks on the floor. “Yeah, a lot of good it did. She obviously didn’t give any of it to Mila.”
When we get to the first bedroom, it’s filled with everything I had sent here for her. You can’t even walk into the room. It’s piled high. I reach in and pull out a box of unopened diapers. It makes me chuckle and not in a happy way. I’m going to have to drop Serenity off at the house and then go to the Cage by myself. I need to hit something.
She grabs my arm to steady herself, and she fishes out a little girl’s dress with the tags still on it. Serenity looks at me. “We should donate all of this. Everything is new.”
“The clothes will smell like smoke.”
“I’ll wash them,” she says quickly.
“I’ll have the guys come out here and pack up this room. There’s a shed we can store it in at the house. You can go through it there. I don’t want you here any longer than you have to be.”
Her gaze softens. “Rage, none of this surprises me. Well, I mean, this surprises me. The way you loved them despite her unwillingness to accept it.”
“I didn’t love her. Everything I did was for Mila.”
She bites her lip between her teeth.
I don’t care if she believes me or not. “Just show me where you found her. I don’t need to go deep diving into any more of Janet’s shit.” I lean against the wall, waiting for her to lead the way.
Hesitantly, she does. “It was in here,” she says, stopping in front of the main bedroom. “She was in the crib.”
Before she can say any more, I immediately step over the threshold, practicing what I preach.
I face things head on.
Chapter Fifteen
Serenity
Rage braces his arms against the crib, his head falling between his shoulders as he takes in the state of her bed. The one place she was supposed to feel safe while she slept. Not trapped. Not dirty.
I wonder what must be going through his mind. Is it the same thing that runs through mine? How long had she been here? When was the last time she had been let out?