Page 50 of The Last Time You Break Me

“It all starts with pain, baby. That’s just what builds us and makes this shitty ol’ world go round. The world can be saved by the right kind of darkness and lucky for you, I am that fucking darkness. You hurt what I protect, what I love, so you know what comes next right?”my mother hushed in that same low and lethal tone that I used. My breath halted, trapped in my lungs as my chest constricted.“You die.”

Reggie turned the phone and I could see my father dressed in blue denim jeans, leather boots and a leather jacket leaning up against a brick wall. He had a cigarette hanging loose betweenhis fingers as he stared back at my mother with utter love and devotion bright in his eyes, a sweet smile of declaration on his lips. He watched my mother as she stood tall and regal over a beaten and bloody man on the ground. She held something in her hand and when I looked closer, it looked like one of those banana cutter things that circulated on social media.

“You crossed the line when you took one, single, impure, look at my daughter. And now you’ll pay for it.”

“Damn, Dom. You got yourself a wild one. You better treat her right,”Reggie chuckled in a tone that was so full of comfort and familiarity.

“Oh I will, I love the fuck out of this woman. Besides, she’d kill me if I gave her anything less than she deserved. Isn’t that right, baby?”my father had asked as he pushed from the wall and stalked to her side. He pulled her into him and kissed her hard. The passion was like an entity that bled into the night around them.

“Alright, alright. We have brats to return home to, remember?”Reggie groused as he feigned disgust and discomfort. But I could hear the joy in his voice.

They were a family.

I hadn’t really understood the depths of the fact that he had lost her too. That we all had.

I mean, I knew. Of course I did. My brothers would have suffered the same, but it was so easy to get caught up in your own turmoil that it was almost impossible to see it in others.

He shut down the phone and placed it back in his pocket and he looked down at me with sorrow and grief in his gray eyes. “She never would have been disappointed in you, Lara. Because you’re exactly like her. She would have been fucking proud, baby. I knew you wouldn’t believe me so I needed you to believe her.”

I was lost for words, trying to formulate what I knew in my mind. “But-”

“She was the sweetest woman you could ever meet. Wore her heart on her sleeve, but she embraced that darkness too. As soon as she needed it.”

“Who was that man?”

“A local pedophile -”

“- Did he?”

“- No. He took photos of you at the park once when you were seven. When I investigated, I found he had many more, of many children. Your mother took care of it.”

“By…?”

“You don’t want to know. I could never finish that video. Mainly because I couldn’t stomach watching her do it.” He chuckled softly and I huffed a small laugh.

“Thank you,” I whispered as I reached up and placed a soft kiss on his lips.

“Anything for you. Your burdens are mine, love. Share them with me. You’re never alone in this world, you never have been. I’m just sorry I couldn’t be the man you needed me to be before this moment.” I could hear the truth of those anguish-filled words. They were like a jaded knife to my heart.

“Nobody ever aged in history, Reggie. Let it go because it is very much my intention to grow old with you.”

He smiled down at me, the dimples in his cheeks, so scarcely seen, dented and the sight brought a huge grin to my face. “You’re beautiful when you smile like that. When you look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like the end of the world wouldn’t matter if you still stared into my eyes.”

“Because it wouldn’t. I don’t fear death, Reg. I fear never living. All the moments we miss,” I told him honestly as Ifluttered my lashes and stepped forward to close the distance between us and settled my head onto his chest.

He held me tight, in an unrelenting grip that enclosed around me and lifted me higher than the clouds in the sky. “Get dressed, pretty girl,” he ordered softly as he stepped back and created space between us. “Wear something special.”

“Why?” I asked as I stared at him warily and half turned my hip to head toward my dressier clothes.

“Because we aren’t missing any more moments, meet me in the foyer in thirty minutes.” He jolted forward quickly as he pulled me in for a kiss, then retreated as he left me alone in my panic room which just so happened to be where I kept my best clothes.

I pulled a dress from the rail. One made of utter beauty and spent the next half an hour getting ready. I felt so unlike myself. I left behind the faux leather and risqué bralettes in favor of a dress that was once my mother’s.

Skin-colored meshing clung to my chest and arms. Black, webbed vines spiraled from my wrists, across my chest and down my torso. It gathered around my breasts scarcely and the design was so intricate that it covered everything, but still left skin colored parts of me to bleed through the fabric. The vines reminded me of tree branches. Glittered in a subtle rose gold that feathered down into a gown of the same design, the black was just a little more widespread.

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