Page 104 of Tormented

“Of course,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Here.” I stand, offering her a hand up.

She accepts and takes my hand in hers. Part of me doesn’t want to let go. The other part says I should, given the uneasy look on her face.

“How are we going to do this, then?” Abbey wipes her hands on the ass of her shorts and steps over Cash’s legs to look around the room. “Are we searching the place for anything in particular?”

I nod. “Knowin’ how his mind worked, he probably has a fuckin’ treasure box full of his conquests’ purses somewhere, or some shit.”

“Creepy.”

I shrug. What can I say? Criticizing Cash’s methods would be pretty two-faced of me. “I’ll start in the bedroom.” No need for Abbey to find anything fucking perverted in there.

She stands, staring at me with the smallest frown pinching her brow.

“What?”

“Can I stick with you?”

Only now do I realize she trembles. “You all right, girl?”

“Not really.” She smiles, but that shit is as forced as most of my day-to-day interactions.

“Talk to me.” I jerk my head toward the bedroom and start walking. Tuck’s guys should be here soon to raze the place to the ground. Best we get this fuckin’ show on the road.

“Watching you, seeing what he did to those girls . . . .” She shrugs, stepping aside to let me in the bedroom first. “It reminded me of things.”

“Like what?” I look around the room that houses a bed with sheets so dirty I can’t pick what color they were originally. Food containers are scattered around the place, a cockroach making a fine house in a noodle box that’s tipped on its side.

“I don’t remember a lot from when I was little.” She stares at a pile of dirty washing, but her focus is elsewhere. “I think I blocked half of it out, you know?”

Not really. Wish I knew how to do that.

As if I’d let you forget. The devil in my mind reaches across and slips in an old home movie, staring wistfully at the grainy images playing out before him.

I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to make his fucking reel skip.

“What happened before Apex found you, girl? I know you don’t want to say, but the more time I spend with you, the more unavoidable it is.”

She pushes a porn magazine aside and sits on the only semiclean section of the bed. “Nothing great. Not for the most part anyway.”

“Your parents,” I ask, settling a shoulder against the wall as I cross my legs at the ankles, thumbs hooked in my jean pockets. “They alive?”

She shrugs. “Dad isn’t. But Mom . . . .”

“She left you?”

“I left her.”

The silence that shrouds the room is fucking poignant. What the hell can you say to that? From what I know about Abbey, Apex picked her up when she was around six or seven years old. She grew up in the club, a part of the place since well before I decided to join simply to fuck off the old man.

“I didn’t have much choice,” she states with a resigned sigh. “Nothing could have kept me in that hellhole a day longer.” She rises from the bed, absently pushing things on the bureau aside. “Not even Momma.”

I could push for more; the glimpse she’s given me has me intrigued.

Me also . . . .

But I also know that look in her eye. I can respect it for what it is: her need to shut things down before her bullshit memories get too real. Self-preservation. Fight or flight instinct. It’s her mind pushing back and forcing her to blank out the pain.

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