Never Tear Us Apart (Never Tear Us Apart #1)

  “Sarah has her cellphone,” I continued, staring at Daddy, pleading with him with my eyes. I could see his gaze waver, the flicker of hesitation, and I needed to latch onto that quickly. “We’ll check in every hour, I swear.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  Chancing a quick glance at Mom, I could see that she really wasn’t too big on the idea at all. She wasn’t the one I needed to convince, though.

  Daddy was.

  “Please. We can meet every two hours if you want. Get together for lunch. It’s only ten. We can meet at noon, right over there.” I pointed at the nearby food court. “Please, please, please.”

  “We’ll be on our best behavior,” Sarah said solemnly, her expression serious. So serious I almost wanted to laugh.

  But I held it all in. No way would I blow this, not when we were so close.

  “No talking to strangers,” Daddy said, pointing at the both of us. I could tell he was this close to agreeing. He was such a softie. “And no leaving this boardwalk, not even to go to the beach.”

  My heart threatened to burst from excitement. I knew we almost had him.

  “Jim, really.” Mom’s voice was full of disbelief, but I ignored her. Something I’d grown quite good at doing the last few months. We hadn’t been getting along. She was always trying to tell me what to do. I was sick of it. Desperate for independence, wanting to forge my own way, not follow after her. What did she know about my life? Things had changed so much since she was a girl, I knew she couldn’t have a clue.

  “Ah, come on, Liz. She’ll be fine,” Daddy reassured her before he turned his sunny smile on me. “We gotta let her go sometime, right?”

  Mom sighed, and I heard the weariness in her tone. For whatever reason, she’d been stressed out lately. We were on vacation, so why couldn’t she just relax? “Call me at ten thirty and let me know where you’re at.”

  Ten thirty? That was less than thirty minutes away. Talk about controlling. “Fine,” I conceded, acting all put out, but secretly I wanted to hop up and down. From the way Sarah was shifting from one foot to the other as she stood beside me, I could tell she felt the same.

  We were so incredibly in sync with each other, Sarah and I took off running before they could change their minds.

  “Don’t talk to strangers!” Daddy yelled after us, making us laugh.

  “Unless they’re cute,” Sarah muttered, then she laughed even harder.

  I didn’t say anything. My best friend had gone boy crazy right at the end of school and her boyfriend fever hadn’t let up. She wanted one. Bad.

  Me? I didn’t care. None of the boys at school interested me. I’d known pretty much all of them since kindergarten, some even longer because I went to preschool with them. I found most of them irritating. The thought of kissing one of them?

  Yuck.

  “Please don’t wave and flirt with guys all day,” I said because I just . . . I didn’t want to deal with it. Not today. This was our day. Our chance to be by ourselves and ride whatever ride we wanted. Eat whatever we wanted. Do whatever we wanted. We had the neon-green wristbands that got us on every ride all day long for as many times as we could stand it, and we were ready.

  I didn’t want to waste my time flirting with high school boys who’d laugh if they knew we were only twelve. I totally looked twelve, but Sarah didn’t.

  She looked older.

  “Don’t be such a downer.” Sarah had been smart. No sweatshirt for her, only a T-shirt that she was currently taking off, revealing a bright pink bikini top underneath. She had boobs and I was still pretty flat, but I wasn’t jealous. Not really.

  “I’m not. I just . . . I don’t care about boys today. I wanna have fun.” I smiled at her and she smiled in return.

  “We’re definitely going to have fun. And boys are fun. You just haven’t figured that out yet.” She rolled up her T-shirt and shoved it in the purse she’d brought with her. “Now let’s go on the Ferris wheel.”

  I frowned. How lame. “Seriously?”

  “We’ll start out small.” Her devilish smile grew. “And save the big one for later.” She pointed at the giant white roller coaster looming ahead of us. At that particular moment a train of cars went flying by, the passengers all screaming, most of them with their arms in the air, their hair trailing behind them.

  My heart picked up speed just watching them. I couldn’t wait.

  “And then what happened?”

  The reporter’s voice knocks me from my thoughts. I’d become lost in them, after not having visited those particular memories in so long. Everyone always focuses on the bad stuff, including myself. What he did to me. How long he kept me. Where he kept me. How he chained me like a dog and blindfolded me and I couldn’t see anything and I was so incredibly scared that I peed my pants when he peeled the blindfold away from my eyes that first time. I knew by the determined look on his face what he was going to do to me.

  But I didn’t really know because my sexual education wasn’t much beyond a few YA books I’d read with very tame sex scenes and those awful movies they show at school about getting your period and hormones and stuff.

  “I had fun that morning,” I say, my tongue thick in my mouth because I did have fun that morning and there’s a hint of bittersweet in those memories. Sarah and I were laughing and being silly, which should make me smile. But it’s so painful to remember the good moments of that day. They’re completely overshadowed by the bad. “We met my parents for lunch at the food court, just like we promised. I had a corn dog.”

  The details are still there, a little hazy, but the more I talk, the clearer they become. I remember the seagulls that divebombed the tables as we ate. How I dropped the last bite of my corn dog on the ground and the white-and-gray bird swooped in, stealing it before I could even snatch it back.

  Not like I would’ve eaten it, but still.

  The reporter smiles, trying to put me at ease I’m sure. “It was a nice day with your family and your best friend.”

  “Yes.” I nod, thinking of Sarah. How we grew apart after everything that happened. How she didn’t like to be around me because I made her uncomfortable. She told me that once, both of us crying and not understanding why we couldn’t get back to that place we’d been before, when we were best friends. She’d blurted it out, clamping her lips shut the moment the words were said. She looked like she wanted to take them back.

  But she couldn’t. It was too late. She felt guilty, she said. She hadn’t protected me, and I thought that sounded like a crock of crap but I didn’t argue with her.

  By high school we were strangers. She wouldn’t even look at me when we passed by each other in the hallway between classes, and I heard rumors that she said bad things about me. I don’t know if any of it was true.

  After I left, I never saw her again.

  “Do you still talk to Sarah?” the reporter asks, as if she can reach into my brain and know exactly what I’m thinking. I’d heard that she’s incredibly intuitive and I should be on guard. She knows just how to get information out of people before they even know they’re offering it.

  “No.” I shake my head, hating how the word comes out like a rasp of breath. The loss of her friendship was the second hardest thing to take, behind my losing my father’s affection. Mom and I grew closer. Unbelievably, Brenna became my best friend and closest confidante. She still is.

  But that’s because I have no friends. I let no one new in. And my old friends abandoned me. Or I abandoned them.

  I’m not sure which happened first.

  “Maybe she felt too much guilt, after what happened. Do you think she felt responsible for your disappearance?”

  “No. I don’t know.” The words rush out of me and I sound defensive. Young. I swore I would remain cool and composed and the reporter—her name is Lisa—promised she wouldn’t ask me uncomfortable questions. She would wait for me to volunteer information.

  But I bet she thought the uncomfortable stuff would deal with Aar
on William Monroe. Not my long-lost best friend.

  Lisa’s staring at me right now, trying to pick apart my brain, and I shutter it closed, pressing my lips together so no unwanted words escape. I’ve created all sorts of defense mechanisms over the years and this is one of them.

  “Tell me what happened after lunch,” Lisa says.

  I take a deep breath and hold it, wondering what I should say first.

  This is where it gets harder.

  I hear someone else say her name for the first time in years and it stops me cold.

  Turning, I glance at the TV where it hangs on the wall of my narrow living room, squinting at the screen. I don’t have my glasses on and I scramble for them in my haste, finding them on the counter mere inches from where I stand in the kitchen, and I shove them on my face.

  Everything comes into focus and my mouth drops open.

  “This week on News in Current with Lisa Swanson, kidnapping survivor Katherine Watts speaks for the first time in eight years about her harrowing ordeal.”

  I stare¸ completely frozen, as Katherine’s image fills my TV screen. Her hair is a little darker, but still that same honey-golden blond. She looks older—which makes sense because come the fuck on, it’s been eight years, just like the announcer said, and we’ve all changed a lot in the past eight years.

  A lot.

  “I had fun that morning,” she says, her soft, sweet voice filling the room, filling my head, making it spin. She sounds the same yet different. Older.

  Fun that morning. I’m sure she did. The boardwalk is a fun place to be when you’re twelve. I loved it, too. Still do.

  But I don’t have bad memories that taint the place like she does.

  “He was so nice at first,” she continues, her voice fading as she drops her head and sinks her teeth into her lower lip. I recognize that look. I guess she hasn’t changed that much in eight years, or at least her tells haven’t.

  She’s feeling unsure. Hesitant.

  Electricity buzzes through my veins as I watch her, listen to her, savor the sound of her familiar yet different voice. She sounds so composed, so articulate, her words measured, the tone strong. She looks good, too. Pretty with the long blond hair, the big blue eyes, the mouth . . .

  I close my eyes for a brief moment and swallow hard. All the memories come at me, one after another, blazing over me like wildfire, and I grip the edge of the counter. The memories are unwanted. I’d banished them from my mind, fought those demons long ago and won. They represent an old part of my life, another part I try my best to forget even happened.

  Yet just like that, seeing her, hearing her, I’m the old me again, cracked so wide open it makes my heart hurt.

  “Seemingly harmless?” Lisa asks in that no-nonsense tone of hers that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I’ve had that voice directed at me more than once. When I was a kid and scared out of my mind and I didn’t know what to say.

  I hate Lisa Swanson.

  A new image appears on the screen. Katherine at the time she was found, her tear-filled gaze aimed directly at the camera, distress written all over her young face. She’s wearing baggy sweats and her hair is in a sloppy ponytail. A uniformed policeman and woman stand on either side of her, escorting her into the hospital.

  Katie. When I see her like that, it all comes rushing back at me, memory upon memory, word after word, promise after promise. My legs feel weak and I grip the edge of the countertop.

  You can’t be scared, Katie. You have to be brave. You have to come with me.

  What if he finds us? What will he do?

  He won’t do anything to you. I won’t let him.

  You promise?

  I promise.

  “Has he ever tried to reach out to you?”

  Lisa’s back on the screen, her eyes narrowed, head tilted like she’s concentrating hard. Like she cares.

  Snorting out loud, I shake my head. She cares all right. About her ratings and her money and the next big interview she can snag.

  I can’t believe Katherine is talking to her.

  Katie.

  My Katie.

  It’s been so long since I referenced her like that it sounds foreign. But she was mine. For a tiny bit of time I took care of her, was responsible for her safety. She called me her guardian angel and though I denied it, deep down inside, it felt good, her calling me that. Thinking of me in a good way. A positive way.

  Without hesitation I did what was right. I had to. I couldn’t let him keep her. He would’ve . . .

  I can’t even imagine what he would have done to her.

  Not only was I her guardian angel, she called me her hero. She said that to me right before we approached the police station. I can hear her voice, clear as day, ringing in my head.

  You saved me from him. You’re my hero. Like an angel from heaven.

  I didn’t believe in God and angels but at that moment, I wanted to. Badly.

  “Contact me? No,” Katherine says vehemently, shaking her head. “Never.”

  “Really?” Lisa arches a brow. Yet another image flashes on the screen, a photo of a letter. I recognize that handwriting, and my fingers curl so tight around the counter’s edge I feel like it could crumble in my hands.

  The next shot is of Katherine, lips parting, eyes going wide. Whatever the fuck Lisa just showed her can’t be good.

  I know it.

  And then his face is there. A photo in black and white, his jaw jutting out stubbornly, mouth drawn into a thin line, eyes blank and dark. His expression is cold, his hair shorn to nothing, and I swear there’s a giant tattoo on the side of his neck. Of course.

  He is in prison after all. He’s had to adapt to the prisoner lifestyle as much as possible or they’d string him up by his dick. Child molester. Rapist. Killer.

  My father.

  “Get in here.”

  I went still at the sound of his voice bellowing from his bedroom, the threatening edge to it. He was drunk. Again. He was always drunk lately and most of the time he ignored me, but not tonight.

  Fuck.

  I shuffled into his bedroom, my nose wrinkling in disgust at the smell that hit me. I couldn’t describe it, not fully. Musty. Stale. Sweat. Booze. Sex.

  “Where have you been?” he asked when I stopped in front of his bed. He was laid out on it in his grungy white boxer briefs and nothing else, his skin pale, the hair on his chest stark against the white of his flesh. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was wild, sticking up all around his head.

  He looked fucking crazy.

  “School,” I said, looking anywhere but at him. He was hard to look at, this shell of a man who used to be something big, someone important. At least, that was what he told me.

  I never saw him like that, but what do I know? I was only fifteen. Ignorant and stupid. Again, things he’d told me.

  “Fucking liar,” he spat out. “Tell me the truth.”

  “That’s where I was,” I insisted. “School. I had football practice.” I focused on sports and school so I wouldn’t have to come home. So I wouldn’t have to deal with him. Most of the time he could give a shit where I was or what I did. I couldn’t get why he was acting like this.

  Foreboding crept over me, chilling my skin.

  He wanted something from me. I didn’t know what.

  “In the summer? ‘Football practice,’ ” he mimicked, his voice in this high whine that made him sound like he was imitating a girl. Or me with a girly voice. Asshole. “Thinking you’re a big stud, playing football and basketball and every other fucking sport out there? Trying to get all the girls with that ugly mug of yours?”

  I clamped my mouth shut, saying nothing. What the hell did he know? If I said the wrong thing, he’d backhand me. He might’ve looked like a lazy sloth sprawled across his bed, but the man could move fast when he had to.

  I should know. I’d been smacked out of nowhere before.

  “I have a new girlfriend,” he said, completely changing the su
bject. “I want you to meet her.”

  My gaze finally met his and I didn’t like what I saw. Amusement burned in his dark-as-the-devil eyes and his lips were curled in a shitty smile. “When?” I asked warily.

  “Now,” he announced, and at that exact moment, the connecting bathroom door swung open and a woman wearing nothing but a black bra and panties strode out, stopping just in front of me with her hands on her hips.

  I stared at her, noted the faint lines around her thin mouth, the hardness in her gaze, just like my dad’s. Her hair was an orangey blond and looked fried on the ends. Her skin was pale and ashy in color.

  She looked dead.

  “Hi.” Her voice was rough, like she’d smoked a million cigarettes already in her lifetime, and she probably had. I could smell the faint traces of smoke on her, a smell I recognized since I snuck more than a few cigarettes a day myself.

  My one and only vice.

  “I’m Sammy.” She stuck her hand out, her pink dagger-like nails pointed at me like a weapon. “You must be Willy.”

  I glared at my dad, hating that fucking nickname so much I wanted to scream. “Will,” I corrected her, shaking her hand quickly before I let it go like it was covered in disease. It might’ve been. “Can I go now?” I asked Dad.

  “No.” He smiled and patted the spot beside him on the mattress. “Come here, Cookie.”

  He called all his girlfriends Cookie. I wondered if stupid Sammy realized that. By the little giggle she gave and the eager way she hopped over to the bed, I’d assumed that would be a no.

  “You like my new Cookie, Willy?” he asked, squeezing her close and making her giggle even more. “Isn’t she sweet?”

  No. I hated her. She looked like an old whore off the street. They all did. She was probably addicted to meth or crack or whatever the fuck they liked to do and he was feeding her habit. He liked meth and crack and all that other shit, too. Sometimes. Other times he’d clean up his act and look good. My dad was a great-looking guy when he took a shower, brushed his hair, shaved his face, and dressed like a normal human being.