Page 100 of Claimed By the Villain
I let it all out: childhood moments, family memories. And I realized the most constant memory of all was of him, with him.
Lucifer, the boy who was abused, unloved, unwanted, but whom my heart had chosen for me all along.
I remembered the conversation we once had in the old apartment, when he told me he could still recall the smell of my mother’s cooking. I pieced that together with what Beau told me: that after escaping the pedophiles, Lucifer had unknowingly run to the house of his abuser for shelter.
I cried in shame and pain. I cried with remorse and rage at my father, for being a vile trafficker of children.
I cried for my brother, who came back only to be lost within hours, because now I’m certain it was Martin who was trying to kill Lucifer, and that, he will never forgive.
I cried with Amber’s arms around me, and I listened as she told me she’d been raised in a sect of pedophiles and that one of her daughters had been saved from there.
I was nauseated by what Beau said my father did, but until Amber spoke to me, pedophilia was just a technical term for a heinous crime I vaguely read about in newspapers or heard in the news.
But when she revealed graphic details, testimony from the trial of one of the pedophiles from the sect her father led, I finally understood the kind of monster the man who gave me life had been. I felt relieved he was dead.
“You should be sleeping,” he says because even without seeing each other’s faces, he knows I’m looking at him.
We’ve alwaysfelteach other, and that bond doesn’t need light.
Our love, scarred, riddled with pain and secrets, still carries all the light in the world.
“I didn’t want to sleep before you came. Come here.”
He shakes his head. “I just wanted to see you. Sleep. We have a lot to talk about tomorrow.”
At another time, I’d have stepped back, thinking he was rejecting me. But now, I know he’s only trying to shield his own feelings. Lucifer thinks I despise him.
I get up and walk to him. I pull him inside the room and close the door.
“We have a lifetime to talk. I’ll listen. I’ll hear everything you want to tell me. But right now, I just need you to hold me, Lucifer.”
Chapter 52
I spent the entire trip to New Orleans thinking about how to start telling her everything I needed to reveal.
In my mind, I’d have to beg Jackie to listen to me. And I would. I’d send my pride straight to hell and get on my knees before her, because even knowing the chances of her forgiving me were slim, I couldn’t stand to live with the hatred of the woman who is my world.
Her contempt, yes. Losing her love . . . I’d have to accept that too. But her hate . . . not that.
I’m hated by most people. In the regular world, the role of villain fits me like a glove. But to be hated by Jackie—the reason I breathe and get out of bed every morning—that would turn my existence into nothing.
I never expected, not even in my most optimistic dreams, that she’d receive me the way she did.
After what she told me, she pushed me onto the bed.
I didn’t want to go. I’m a methodical, organized, clean man, at least on the outside.
Today, more than ever, I felt filthy inside and out in her presence, and still, I obeyed.
She lay on top of me, arms locked around my neck, and for a long time, maybe hours, we just felt each other.
And then she asked me to tell her everything.
I tried to recount only the dark parts, the ones where I killed her father and her brother.
She didn’t allow it. She demanded from the very beginning of my childhood. Anything I could remember.
Jackie wanted to see my soul, though I doubted I even had one. Now, though, I know I have a heart, and as she once told me, it belongs to her.
