“You think you can stop me?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she shrugs. “I can’t imagine you’d put your hands on me, so, yeah, I do.”
I growl, wanting to put my fist through a wall. “Fucking move,” I bellow, the veins on my neck straining enough that I can feel them protruding from my skin, bulging thick and blue, ready to burst.
She doesn’t react. Not a flinch, barely a blink. “Where are you going?” she repeats, and I grab my hair, ripping at it roughly. My control is slipping with every second that she stands in the way of what I need right now.
Pain.
“Where the fuck do you think I’m going?” I seethe, pacing in front of her like a wild animal, caged against my will. “I’m going to fight. I need to fight.”
“No, you don’t. You want to. There’s a difference.”
I inhale, my muscles aching with the need to be used. To be pushed. To be punished. My entire body is shaking. My emotions bubbling under the surface in an energy I need to disperse.
“You should get this,” I snarl, pointing a finger at her in accusation “More than anyone. You should get my need to do this.”
“Okay.” She steps away from the door. “But if you walk out, think about how you’d feel if this situation was reversed. Think about how you’d feel knowing I felt like slicing my thigh open with your razor blade. I will. I’ll cope with my past with pain instead of talking to you about it. Instead of punching a bag or two to find my power.”
I step forward, hand on the door handle, twitching in indecision. I open it, the corridor mocking me in a way that makes me hate myself. Because I’m considering it. I’m considering walking out and not giving two fucking shits about the fact that she carves open her skin for relief.
“What do you want?” I slam the door, stalking toward her. “What the fuck do you want?” I roar. “You want to know that I need someone to beat the fucking shit out of me because it’s what I deserve.”
It’s then that she flinches at the agony my words are laced in.
“I searched my whole life for her. And not because I fucking cared about her, but because she just fucking up and disappeared and I had no idea if she had the kid or not. I had no idea if a piece of me was out in this world without me. And now I find out I failed not just one of them, but two of them. Twins. I have fucking twins, Camryn, and I’m such a giant fuck up, I couldn’t save them.” I want to vomit. Empty the entirety of my insides in the hope that it’ll offer me even a sliver of relief. “Me. Their dad. The one person that should always be around to protect them failed them.”
“You didn’t know where they were.”
I laugh. A sarcastic bubble of hate slicing between us. “It’s not good enough, Camryn. They’re sixteen. They’ve gone their whole life without feeling safe and that’s on me. They’ve been living on the fucking street.” I don’t even bother wiping away the tears that fall from my eyes.
She frowns, meeting my step backward with a forward one of her own. “Rocco, you need to stop blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong around you. The burden of the world isn’t on your shoulders, stop taking responsibility for its failures.”
My back hitting the wall, I slide down it, my legs refusing to hold me up any longer. Knees bent, I drop my head between them. A complete and utter image of despondence.
“Talk to me, Rocco. Fucking lean on someone for once in your life.”
She kneels in front of me, the palms of her hands pressed on my knees.
“They’re why I fight,” I confess.
“I know,” she soothes.
“Kendall and I weren’t in love. We were two messed up kids fucking around to make ourselves feel alive. I met her after my mom died. She was everything I was; broken and angry and full of hate. When we were together, it’s one of only a few times in my life that I didn’t feel so alone.”
“I remember her clearly. Maybe more so than I do my own mother. Maybe it was my need to find her that never let me forget her face. The ghostly white skin, the brown eyes that sat bitterly in her face. She was pretty, sure, but she was sad. Happily so. She didn’t want to better her life. She was content in being miserable, in blaming the world for her shortcomings.
“She rocked up at my place a few months after we started fucking. She was so messed up.” I remember it with such clarity. The way her tears reddened her skin, making it blotchy with grief. The panic in her eyes. “Crying and ranting about me being another stupid fucking mistake.”
“She was pregnant.”
I nod, my head dropping back against the wall.
“You asked her to abort your baby?”
I shake my head. “Not like that. I asked her what she wanted to do. Fuck, Cami, I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t ready to be a dad. I’d lost my mom; I was lost and hateful and vengeful. Kendall sure as shit wasn’t ready to be a mom either. I put the ball in her court and she took that as me tellin’ her I didn’t want the baby.”
“What happened?”
“Kane came outside to see what was going on. She got scared and ran. I told him what had happened and he beat the shit outta me for being so stupid. Broke three of my ribs and split open my eye socket. I spent the night in the emergency room and I never saw Kendall again.”
I’ve always hated sympathy. Despised the look of pity that crossed people’s faces. It’s always made me feel weak. But not with Camryn. There’s a tenderness to the way she calls me out. An affinity in the way she listens.
“Do you think…” She trails off, too scared to vocalize what I now already know.
“That my father called his sick-son-of-a-bitch right-hand and demanded he deal with my off the rails booty-call? Yeah, I’m thinking that’s exactly what happened. I just don’t know why he didn’t kill her straight away? Why keep her alive to have to raise her kid?”
“Knowledge is power, Rocco. He had something over you, whether you knew it or not. It made him feel like a King.”
“I’d kill him,” I vow, knowing it’s all in vain. “If I could bring him back to life, I’d kill him. I’d make him pay, make sure he felt everything.”
“The kids were the something that left you,” she surmises. “Not Kendall. The kids.”
She’s thinking about our conversation in the bathroom. The one that stripped us bare and solidified a connection we’re now sewn together by.
“I didn’t realize they were a plural. But yeah, I’ve been searchin’ for Kendall with the sole purpose of findin’ my kid.”
I clear my throat, happy that Camryn still hasn’t removed her hands from my knees. The warmth of her touch is grounding me. In a time when I thought all I needed was pain and violence, she became my beacon.
“I’m sad for Kendall,” I tell her honestly. “But I hate her too, Cami. I fucking despise her. I’m so fucking furious that she let them live that life…”
Unwanted thoughts flood my mind as they’ve done for years. Only now I know they’re not fears, they’re real. My kids weren’t thriving. They weren’t loved and cared for. They weren’t protected. They, like me, like Parker, have had to learn how to survive. When life should’ve been easy and carefree, they were fighting. They’ve struggled. They’ve had no one to lean on, save one another.