The Contradiction of Solitude Read online

  But you won’t see me

  Hands out

  Begging you

  Stay

  You

  Won’t.

  I hadn’t realized I was crying. The ink blotted on the paper. Smearing.

  I was crying.

  I was crying.

  I never cried.

  I was.

  Falling.

  Back.

  Together.

  My phone rang, interrupting empty dreams.

  “Hello?”

  “Layna.”

  “Elian.” I gripped the phone tight in my hand.

  “Can I come over?”

  Can he come over?

  “Yes.”

  He hung up.

  I got out of bed and put on my robe, walking out to the living room. The ticking clock said it was three in the morning. The darkness was thick around me. I didn’t turn on lights.

  I opened the blinds and stood in front of the window. Waiting for him.

  He was going to want answers.

  Did I want to give them to him?

  Did he deserve the secrets of my soul?

  Remember. Just remember.

  As if I could forget. The details, the minute facts are what I struggled with.

  Blank faces. Blurred images. My mind was reeling with unknown torments.

  The panic, the distress, it was bittersweet on my tongue and I swallowed it down like honey.

  Sitting alone in the darkened car. I was cold. So cold. I couldn’t feel my extremities. My toes were blocks of ice. I didn’t know how long I had been there only that I wasn’t supposed to move. Minutes. Hours maybe.

  But I had to stay where I was. I was supposed to listen.

  But I didn’t listen. I opened the door. I took a step out into the freezing night. Darkness pressed around me like a vise and I couldn’t breathe.

  The blackness.

  The emptiness.

  I couldn’t remember.

  Or couldn’t I?

  I stared out of my living room window, waiting for him. For Elian. Hoping and dreading the moment when he’d pull up in front of my apartment. I was torn with twisted contradictions.

  Loving and hating.

  Soft and hard.

  Relaxed and rigid.

  I dug my fingers into the window sash, nails breaking against wood. Blood wet on my skin.

  Remember.

  As if I could forget…

  Memories were fiends. They kept me trapped. They would set me free. But I didn’t trust the raging beast inside with the truth.

  It devoured honesty. It lived on guile. It thrived on wicked deception.

  My head ached as my mind reeled. Too much. Not enough. I wasn’t here.

  I was there.

  Always there…

  The house sat off in the distance. A tomb…waiting. The grass, heavy with frost, scrapped my ankles. Wrapping harsh, unyielding hands around vulnerable flesh.

  “Stay here, Layna.” His voice rang with clear intent only minutes earlier just before he left me alone. In the car. To wait. His stern words brooked no argument.

  I never defied him. So why was I now throwing self-preservation to the wind?

  The house beckoned.

  The blackness.

  The emptiness.

  I couldn’t remember.

  My head was heavy. And then I saw it. Headlights in the distance, and I knew it was him. Elian. My heartbeat became a waltz in my chest. Pitter. Patter. Rat-a-tat-tat.

  I dug bloodied fingers into my palm. My nails tattered and ruined. Elian was almost here.

  I was falling…

  The car parked and I could see him outside the window in the cold, dark night. I knew Dancing Green Eyes, my Elian, was searching. Always searching.

  For me.

  But I wasn’t here. I was gone. Somewhere else.

  Waiting..…

  I approached the house and the first thing I noticed was the noise.

  Scratching and clawing. Breathy, aching silence punctuated by frantic movements.

  I grabbed the doorknob and froze, scared to go inside. Because when I did, everything would change. There would be no going back.

  Scratch. Scratch. Groan.

  The sounds were icepicks to my eardrums.

  The blackness.

  The emptiness.

  I couldn’t remember.

  I couldn’t forget.

  I watched Elian get out of his car and for the briefest of moments I smiled. True and genuine. My heart wanted to dance right out of my chest and into his arms.

  Remember.

  I can’t forget.

  My bloodied fingers, curled into fists, and smashed through the window. Glass splintering. Raining on my feet. Pain. Agony. Relief.

  And all I saw was the blood.

  Always the blood.

  Elian looked up at the noise. The shattering glass echoing in the air.

  I was a little girl lost. And he was desperately searching for me. He didn’t realize that he should be terrified of finding what he was looking for.

  Or did he?

  I was beginning to think that Elian saw more than I wanted him to.

  That he knew more.

  My door opened and slammed shut. “Layna!”

  Then he was there, beside me, taking my injured hand in his.

  “What did you do?” he demanded. So stern. So worried.

  Sticky, warm, drying on my skin. I pulled my hand away and held it against my chest. The blood smearing on my shirt, dripping on the floor.

  “Let me look. You may need to go the hospital,” Elian exclaimed, taking my hand again. I let him this time.

  He pulled me into the kitchen and turned on the lights. I squinted and blinked, wishing I could shield my eyes. The faucet ran with cold water and he washed the blood away.

  “There aren’t any cuts on your wrists or arms. You’re lucky, Layna. You could have done some serious damage!”

  I watched as he patted me dry and examined my wounds. “Some of these are pretty deep. You might need stitches.”

  “No.”

  “Layna—”

  “No,” I said more firmly.

  My hand stilled on the doorknob. I could hear him inside. His voice low. Rumbling through the walls.

  He was inside. I wanted to know what he was doing. Who he was talking to.

  Scratching. Terrified.

  I shouldn’t go in.

  I had to.

  “Layna, please, let me take you to the hospital.” He wrapped my hand in a towel. The white already turning red.

  “No.”

  Elian sighed. He looked so tired. Like he hadn’t slept in months. He reeked of cigarettes and exhaustion.

  Had I done that to him?

  I smiled as he wrapped the towel tighter.

  “Do you have bandages at least?”

  “In the bathroom. Bottom shelf of the vanity.”

  He was gone. Off to get the things he needed to take care of me.

  He came back with a box of Band-Aids and antiseptic cream. His shirt stained with the blood of my deception.

  I smiled wider.

  I watched him as he tended to my cuts. When he was finished, he tossed the towel into the sink and washed his hands. Ridding himself of all traces of me on his skin.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked.

  “Why did I break the window?” I needed clarification. There were so many different answers to that particular question.

  “Yeah.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  His jaw tensed as he looked at me. “You hurt yourself.”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t understand you.” He was so bewildered.

  I wanted to touch him. To absorb him through my fingertips.

  “I don’t understand myself.” It was almost a shriek.

  Scratching. Groaning. What was that noise?

  “Why are you here?”

  Elian rubbed at his temple. His hair w
as too long. It hung in his face. I couldn’t see his dancing green eyes.

  “I think I know why you didn’t tell me about your father.”

  I waited. I wouldn’t offer anything.

  I waited.

  “It can’t be easy having that follow you around your entire life.”

  I didn’t nod. I didn’t deny. I did nothing.

  I waited.

  “I freaked out. I know that. Maybe that wasn’t fair to you.”

  Not fair to me.

  He asked me to wait in the car. Why couldn’t I do as he asked? I always listened. I was his good girl. He loved me best.

  He promised he’d find me a star.

  Where was it?

  I wanted my star.

  “I just don’t understand why you have all of…those reminders. Why would you keep anything that had to do with such an awful person?” Elian rubbed his temple harder. His voice shook. He was struggling.

  “Why do you keep that? It’s…it’s morbid, Layna.”

  “Do you think I’m like him?” I asked. Quiet. Whispered. Barely heard.

  Elian stopped rubbing his temple and stared at me. And I could see his eyes. Finally.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know what to think. This is a lot, Layna. Do you know what he did to Amelia—?”

  I gently laid my hand over his mouth, pressing down lightly with my fingers.

  “If the words hurt. Don’t say them. Don’t give them that power, Elian.”

  “What does all that mean? The articles? Why do you keep them? Why in the hell would you want to? Make me understand, Layna. Please.” He was so, so broken.

  So, so sad.

  How could I explain to him why? How could I split myself open and let him see the ugly, ugly parts of me?

  The parts that were slowly eating me alive?

  “Please, Layna,” he begged. He pleaded. He was asking for things I wasn’t sure I could ever, ever give him.

  “He’s my father, Elian,” I said, as though that would explain anything. Everything.

  Elian shook his head, hatred deep and raw flared to life in his dancing green eyes. Hate. Hate.

  Loathing.

  I shivered. Intense and overwhelming.

  I felt it.

  I squeezed my injured hand. I felt the blood pumping, oozing heat coating my palm.

  “He’s a monster, Layna. He’s not a father. He’s the fucking devil!” he spat out. Revulsion, disgust, falling to the floor. We left them there. With the dirt and dust and other things to throw away.

  “He’s my father, Elian,” I repeated, a bit more emphatically. Understand. Don’t make me say it.

  Elian gripped his head in his hands and looked as though he were going to be sick. I was making him sick. My father, who he was, what he had done, was making him sick.

  I felt him so strongly in that moment.

  My father.

  He was there in the empty beating of my ravaged heart.

  Thump. Thump.

  Daddy.

  Stories and stars and rides to nowhere. Things I couldn’t stand to remember and things I would never let myself forget.

  Daddy.

  I shivered again.

  “Blood is thicker than all things. It’s syrup and strings and tattoos and nightmares. Elian, he’s all I have. All I’ve ever had. Don’t you get that?” I asked, becoming frustrated. Understand. Don’t make me say it.

  “That’s bullshit, Layna. Are you saying you don’t blame him—?”

  “I blame him, Elian. I blame him for all of it! All. Of. It! He is a horrible, horrible person. He did horrible, horrible things. I know that!” My voice rose. I couldn’t control it. I was being driven to the brink. I wasn’t ready.

  I wanted him to know.

  But I didn’t want him to see.

  Some things were unavoidable. And even as I fought to hold on to the secrets, I wanted him to have some of my truth.

  Incontrollable. Inconsolable.

  “I feel it, in here,” I patted my chest. Just over my thumping, thumping heart.

  “The monster. My father. It’s all here…” my voice drifted off, landing somewhere out there. In the dark. Where it was safe.

  Not safe enough.

  “What are you saying?” Elian asked, bones broken, hushed silence.

  I looked at him. Stared hard. Deep inside. I wanted to reach in and pull out his guts and let them drip between my fingers. To keep it always. For me. Mine.

  “I’m his daughter. He’s my father. We are one and the same. The compulsions—the need to…hurt—it’s there. I’m not sure how to fight it. If I want to fight it.”

  I felt panicked. I couldn’t breathe. The room was closing in around me.

  The pounding of my heart calmed me.

  It devastated me.

  I was destroyed.

  Elian deserved more than that.

  Elian deserved exactly what I wanted to give him.

  I was ripped in half. The devil and the girl. Both fighting, kicking and screaming, for supremacy.

  Elian grabbed my hands and wrapped them in his, lifting them up to his mouth.

  He kissed each knuckle. One. At. A. Time.

  “Don’t say that. You’re nothing like that. You’re soft. You’re gentle. You’re sweet and light. You are nothing like that darkness. Nothing.”

  I wanted to have his confidence. I wished I could look at the woman I had become and feel anything like hope.

  Delusions. Fantasies. Madness.

  He kissed my hands. Delirious. “Don’t let me drown, Layna. And I’ll keep you out of that dark, dark place. I promise. I won’t let you down. We owe each other the chance to have the best we can give. Just please don’t let me slide under the water. Don’t let me suffocate. I need the air. I need you.” His eyes beseeched. His lips moved over his words. A prayer. A demand.

  “I need you.”

  He needed me.

  I needed him.

  The Nautical Killer.

  Cain Langley.

  The man responsible for every bad, awful thing in my life was also the man responsible for my only happiness.

  Layna. Beautiful, enigmatic Layna was the daughter of the man who killed my sister.

  Amelia James.

  “Stretch your fingers, Elian. Like this.” I watched my older sister as she easily moved her fingers along the fret board. Music flying from the tips. Melody filled my ears.

  I loved listening to her play. She was someone else when she picked up a guitar. She wasn’t so mean. She didn’t yell or scream. She didn’t tell my parents that she hated them. She didn’t cry and say she wished she were dead.

  And she didn’t scare me with her threats to leave.

  All of the tumultuous, angry things disappeared when she sat the guitar in her lap and played.

  And when she played for me and tried to teach me the notes that to her were as natural as breathing, we could pretend we were content with the lives we had been given.

  “I’m trying, but I don’t have freakishly long fingers,” I threw back at her, no sting.

  Amelia rolled her eyes and ignored me. Forgetting to teach me. Lost in her own world.

  And I was happy to let her go.

  This time.

  She was pulling farther and farther away. One day she’d be so far gone I would never be able to reach her.

  But for now, she was here, playing her music. This moment was all we had.

  I hadn’t played a guitar since I was twelve. Not a note. But I made them for her.

  For Amelia.

  Slashed throat.

  Missing hands.

  A face barely recognizable after weeks of decomposition.

  Amelia had been left—alone—out in a field. Far, far away from our home.

  On the outskirts of a tiny town in Maryland. I couldn’t remember the name.

  A piece of hair. That was it.

  That’s all it took to link my sister’s murder to the man who had terrorized a nation.<
br />
  The Nautical Killer.

  Her name was added to a list. Just another lost woman he was accused of killing.

  His face, impassive, unconcerned in that courtroom, never registering the name of the girl that had broken my family’s heart.

  She wasn’t a name. She wasn’t a person.

  Not to him.

  She was body parts severed.

  She was blood spilled.

  She was easy prey.

  To Cain Langley she was nothing.

  To me she was everything.

  I didn’t want to remember.

  But my mind wouldn’t let me forget.

  I had seen him.

  Not so much his face.

  But the tattoo.

  And the car that he had driven that day. The day he had taken my sister.

  Far.

  Far.

  Away.

  The star. Etched on my brain.

  A part of me.

  I wanted to forget.

  I had to.

  That’s why I ran.

  Away.

  But not far enough.

  Fuck the universe.

  Fuck fate.

  Fuck whatever gods threw that beautiful, beautiful woman in my path and made me love her. She was everything I longed for. She was everything I had ever desired. She was complicated. She was a mystery. She was depth and intensity behind coal black eyes. I was drawn to her from that first day.

  Of course I was.

  She was the type I had always made sure to stay away from.

  The type of woman I had always known, instinctually, would obliterate me. And obliterate me she had. Smashed, cracked pieces and twisted, shredded promises. She was my all.

  She. Was. My. All.

  But she could never belong to me. How could I lay claim to a soul that was connected to him?

  My head was too full, and my heart was too empty. Fading. Fading. Falling away. I was losing Elian Beyer. He was slipping into the mire, and I couldn’t catch him.

  Gone. Going. Lost.

  How could I be with her knowing what I did?

  How could I stay away?

  Knowing what I did.

  I had left Layna’s house last night with no answers. No idea of how we were going to deal with this hand we were dealt. No answers. No clues.

  How could I stay?

  How could I leave?

  The call came late as expected. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. How could I tell her about what had happened? How could I ever explain the mess I had gotten myself into? She’d be so disappointed. She’d be angry and disgusted. But I also knew that maybe, just maybe, she’d understand.