I stopped mid-step. I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t. If I did, I would break. I would take her into my arms and do everything in my power to take her hurt away. Even at the cost of my own dignity.
“I already guessed that your parents sold you to him.” I triedto keep the anger out of my voice, not wanting her to think it was aimed at her instead of her parents. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her nod. “How old?”
I had to know. I suspected twelve or thirteen, but I had to know.
“Nine.”
The pain that hit me at that word was worse than anything I’d ever felt in my life. When I’d been fifteen, Aloiki, Kayl, and I had been cliff diving. We’d been fearless and reckless, and despite that this wasn’t our first time, we chose a bad day to do it. We hadn’t read the waves, nor had we paid attention to the fact that there was a storm brewing on the horizon. I got swept under the riptide, and it was only sheer dumb luck that had saved me. Didn’t change the fact that I’d busted my arm and shoulder, dislocated my knee, and sprained my ankle. All in all, it could have been a lot worse, but I was still in a lot of pain for several weeks while my body healed.
I would gladly jump off that cliff now to save myself the agony ripping through my soul at the knowledge that Caroline had been fuckingnine years oldwhen her parents had fuckingsoldher to Jones.
Nine.
When I’d been nine, my biggest worry was what homework I could skip that day so I could spend as much time catching waves as possible. My parents had been pieces of shit who were selfish enough to use their own son as a pawn to hurt each other, but they hadn’t fuckingsoldme.
I wanted to ask why. I should have asked so many things, but all I could do was marvel at her strength. She’d endured so much. Nishi’s condition when we found her proved without a doubt the brutality of Jones. Even Ayame, the other woman we’d found in that basement, had not walked away unscathed, though shehadwalked away.
And maybe it was fucked up of me to compare them, but Nishi and Ayame had been adults. It didn’t justify or excuse Jones’ actions. What they’d suffered had been no less terrible, but it did make a glaring difference between their circumstances and Caroline’s. She’d been achild. Did a nine year old even know what sex was? I tried to remember what year I learned. Not just rumors at school or assumptions made by immature minds, but actuallyknowwhat sex was.
Hell, at nine, my balls hadn’t even dropped yet.
I wanted to throw something. Tear something apart. I wanted to rage at the unfairness. Put her in a plastic bubble and declare her safe for eternity.
“Names,” I growled.
Caroline shook her head. “You’ll kill them.”
Good. She didn’t doubt their fate or my brutality. “They deserve to be killed.”
But she still shook her head. “I can’t, Tangaloa. Please don’t ask me to.”
My name on her tongue shouldn’t have had such a visceral effect on me. It sliced through me like a thousand needles, and yet soothed me like nothing else ever had. She didn’t use my name often, even adopting Samantha’s nickname when addressing me to the four year old. So the effect it had on me wasn’t something I was used to, or was prepared for.
I kept my back to her, not wanting her to see the conflicting emotions cascading through me. Why did she not want me to punish her parents?
“Why did you sleep with her?”
The laugh that escaped me was anything but humorous. I stared up at the ceiling, wondering just what the fuck I had done to piss Maui off so much.
I had no answer for her, because I had no answer for myself. Yooko probably thought that I just needed to scratch an itch, takethe edge off whatever was bothering me. In his defense, even I hadn’t realized how tightly wound I was until I’d gotten into Saga’s face. He had no way of knowing the storm brewing inside me.
I’d been…less than kind to the woman in the office. She gave it right back to me, not cowering away from my touch that had been harsh to say the least. And while we both got off, she hadn’t deserved my callous anger.
The more I fucked her, the more Caroline slipped into my thoughts, which had only made me more irritated. I hated myself for fucking a woman while thinking of another, hated myself even more for who that other woman was.
“Did she… I mean, she was willing, right?”
I stiffened. I was used to pain when it came to Caroline, the need to constantly push down my desire and keep myself in check around her. The knowledge that she was within my reach and yet I could never have her.
But the pain that lanced me at her question was so much different. I hadn’t realized how much hope I’d been suppressing inside me that perhaps, maybe someday, therecouldbe something between Caroline and me. That she would see past my old, crusted exterior and see a man she thought worthy of her.
Not until now. Not until that question.
I should have been insulted, but I wasn’t. Sadness filled me, more than the agony of losing someone or hearing bad news. Because I knew in that moment that therewasno future between us. Not now, not ever.
My hand reached for the cool doorknob. I had no idea how my voice was so steady when my chest felt like it had been cracked open, my heart bleeding out for all to see. “If you have to ask me that, then clearly you don’t know me as well as I hoped you did.” I opened the door, and was halfway out of it, when I paused again. Itilted my head to the side, still keeping her out of my periphery. “I’ll be in the barn. Maybe it’ll be best if you go to Saga from now on if you need something.”
Chapter Five