7. Mira

7

MIRA

"I've never told anyone any of this before."

My hands are shaking, and I try to slide them under my legs to hide it. But Zane holds them tighter. "Just start at the beginning."

"For me, the beginning is when my mom left. I was little, so I don't remember a lot, but what I do remember… She loved to sing and dance. There was always music playing when she was around. She'd throw open the windows and turn on the radio and we'd dance."

I smile, my mind catching and stuttering on fleeting memories of holding her hands and being twirled around the living room. I'd get dizzy and fall over, giggling into the carpet. Then…

"She left me." I sigh. "I mean, I know she didn't leave me ; she left my dad. But it felt like she left me."

"She should've taken you with her," Zane snarls. "A good mother would've done anything to protect you."

"I never understood that until I met Aiden. I know I'm not his mother, but I'd do anything for him. Including…" I swallow down the knot in my throat. "Including leave him, if I had to. Maybe my mom thought it would make things better. Maybe she thought my dad only yelled at her and, if she left, things would be okay."

Zane shakes his head. "She didn't think that."

I know he's right, but it's hard to think that both of my parents are monsters. I can't let myself go there.

"My dad was probably awful to her. He must have been. Because as soon as she was gone, he turned it all on me." I don't know when I started crying, but I swipe the tears from my cheeks. "He always told me how much I looked like her. I thought it was a good thing, but I was a walking, talking reminder of what he'd lost."

Of what he'd ruined, really.

Deep down, I've always thought my dad loved my mom, but he didn't know how to show it. He could barely even take care of himself. He scared her away and looking at me made him feel guilty.

"When I was thirteen, I cut my hair with kitchen scissors and dyed it pink. I was going through a phase." I tap my nose ring. "That's also about the time I let my friend talk me into piercing my nose in her bathroom. Don't recommend, by the way."

"There go my weekend plans," Zane says with a smirk. The smile doesn't reach his eyes, and I know it's just for me. He's trying to make this easier.

Just the fact that he's here makes it easier.

"My dad came home right after I'd rinsed the dye out, and I thought he'd be happy. Maybe he'd like me more if I didn't look so much like my mom, you know?" I blow out a shuddering breath. "The second he came inside, he could smell the bleach. He came looking for me in the bathroom and his face went redder than I'd ever seen it. I didn't know it at the time, but he'd just lost his job a few days earlier. Instead of going to work, he was drinking the day away at a bar. He was drunk and angry before he'd even walked through the door. He asked who I was trying to impress. He thought I must have a boyfriend. When I told him I didn't, he called me a liar and said I was a whore…"

Just like your fucking mother.

"I tried to get to my room, but he grabbed me by the hair and threw me against my brother's door. Dante usually tried to stay out of it, but that day he opened the door and looked down at me on the floor. I thought he was going to help me. I thought that, now that he was sixteen, he'd stand up for me, y'know? He was almost the same size as our dad by that point." I squeeze my eyes closed, and I can still see the way my brother's lip curled in disgust. The way he looked down at me like I was a pile of rotting garbage at his feet. "Dante spit at me and said they should shave my head to ‘put me in my place.'"

A dangerous growl works out of Zane's chest, and I open my eyes. He's clenching his teeth hard enough that his jaw flexes. "Why wouldn't he protect you?"

"I've asked myself that question so many times." I stroke my thumb over his knuckles, comforting him while he's comforting me. "My dad never went after my brother. Maybe Dante wanted to keep it that way, so he joined his side. Or maybe whatever cruel streak there was in my dad was passed to Dante, too. Genetics, or something."

"You're not cruel." Zane lifts our intertwined hands to his mouth and kisses my fingers. "There's nothing cruel in your DNA, Mira."

The sound of my name—the name I chose myself—on his lips is like a balm over all the old wounds I'm reopening.

I blink away tears. "I like when you call me that."

He frowns. "What else would I call you? You told me that's your name. That's who you are to me."

My heart swells, and I don't know that I've ever been so broken and so hopeful at the same time in my life. My body doesn't know how to hold both things at once.

Which is why I cling onto Zane's hands even tighter.

So we can hold it together.

"Whether my brother was always cruel or our father made him that way, that day was the beginning of the worst years of my life."

"How could things have gotten any worse?" Zane growls. "The P.I. said you had a long history of broken bones and burns and bruises… ligature marks… Your father choked you, Mira."

I nod. "If I didn't stay out of sight when my dad was home, things would get ugly. Especially if he'd been drinking. He threw me against walls, knocked me out of chairs, pinned me to the floor by my neck. It was bad, but there was some relief: when he wasn't home, I was free… until Dante joined in." I chew on my lower lip, biting back a sob. "Big brothers are supposed to protect little sisters. I thought he was my friend. Then, out of nowhere, Dante turned on me. One of them was always at home with me. If it wasn't my dad, it was Dante. If it wasn't Dante, it was my dad. It didn't matter what I wore or how quiet I was or whether I looked at them or kept my eyes on the floor—I was always doing something wrong."

You look nice , Dante would sneer if I ever dared put on a dress or fix my hair. If you think you can convince the world you aren't trash, you're stupider than I thought.

"Somehow, the mental exhaustion of it all was worse than broken bones. I preferred getting kicked around because at least my dad would get bored once I was on the ground. At least it would end. But they never, ever got tired of berating me.

"They broke me down until I didn't think I was worth anything. Even when I turned eighteen and could have left, I didn't think it was possible. How would I ever be able to escape them ? They'd made me believe that I was worthless and hopeless. I didn't think I could do anything right. I thought I needed them." I shake my head. "Sometimes, I don't know who I hate more: the two of them, or myself for letting them get in my head. I hate who I used to be."

Zane quickly grabs my chin, forcing my eyes to his face. "The girl you used to be—Katerina—she survived. Don't forget that, Mira. Katerina did what she had to do to survive so that you could be here. She's a hero as far as I'm concerned."

I slide his hand to my cheek, nuzzling against his warm skin like it might be the last time. Because it might be.

"That's because you don't know the whole story," I sigh.

Zane nods gently, encouraging me to keep going.

It's the only reason I can swallow the lump in my throat and power on. Because more than anyone, Zane deserves to know this. He deserves to know everything about me. It's the only way I'll be able to trust whatever decision he makes next.

"The night everything happened—the night I killed him… It was my birthday. I doubt either of them even realized it," I say through a bitter chuckle. "They'd never celebrated my birthday before. But this was a big one. I was turning twenty-one, and more than I did at eighteen, I felt like an adult. I felt ready to head off on my own and start over. So, that was my plan."

I still remember exactly how it felt for the entire week before. The way I carefully and secretly packed a bag and hid it under my bed so they wouldn't find it. I practiced the speech in my bathroom mirror, whispering what I wanted to say to each of them more times than I could count.

I'm grateful to you, Daddy, for taking care of me and raising me, but it's time for me to take care of myself.

The lies were like slow-acting poison. The more I said them, the angrier I got. By the time my birthday rolled around, I was shaking with rage.

"Dante and my dad were in the living room watching football. Dante didn't live with us anymore, but he was there almost every night, anyway. They'd been drinking all day, and I might have been able to just slip out the back door without them noticing. But… I wanted them to know I was leaving. I wanted to see their faces." I shake my head. "I was so stupid."

Some nights, I dream that I'm walking through that living room. I can feel the threadbare carpet under my feet, barely covering the subfloor in some places. I can hear the low murmur of the television, my father's laugh at something my brother must have said. I can see their heads—one of them balding more than the other—peeking over the back of the twin recliners in front of the television. I walk and walk and walk, but I never make it to them.

I think it's my brain's way of protecting me. Of rewriting what happened that night.

Where would I be if I'd just left? Where would my father be?

"I had a whole speech planned," I continue, my voice as soft as a whisper, "but as soon as I saw them, I just blurted it out. ‘ I'm leaving.' Just like that."

"Where are you going?" my father asked, bloodshot eyes sloshing over me. "I don't want you waking me up when you come back home."

As if he wouldn't be blacked out by then, anyway.

"You look like shit," Dante mumbled, not even bothering to look at me to confirm.

My father laughed. He laughed at my brother's cruelty the way he had a thousand times before, but I snapped. Everything I'd wanted to tell them for twenty-one years came pouring out of me.

"Then be grateful you won't have to look at me anymore," I spat. " I won't wake you when I come back because I'm never coming back. This house is hell on Earth and I hope you both burn here for eternity like the demonic assholes you are. I'm doing what Mama did years ago—what I should've done years ago. I'm leaving."

Zane whistles, and I blink out of the memory. My heart is racing, but I'm here . I'm not back in that house.

I'm with Zane.

I'm safe.

"I bet they took that really well," he says.

I don't want to go back into the memory. I've spent the last seven years repressing the hell out of it for a reason: it sucks.

But I trudge back into it, every word like walking through quicksand.

"It happened so fast. My dad was in his chair one second. The next, there was a crash and I was soaking wet. He was standing in front of me, and I couldn't figure out what happened. Until I heard Dante. What the fuck did you just do? It was the first time I'd ever heard Dante question our dad. It was also the first time I'd ever been stabbed." I wrap an arm around my stomach as a phantom pain ripples through me. "He shattered his beer bottle and stabbed me with it. He didn't even say anything. He just… stabbed me."

His face was cold. Flat.

"I dropped to my knees, and he looked down at me like I was a stranger. Whatever humanity I thought my dad might be clinging to, it was gone. He walked past me into the kitchen and Dante followed him. While blood was pooling in my hands, Dante followed our father."

"What are we going to tell people?" Dante screamed. "She can't go to the fucking hospital again. She'll tell them what happened!"

There was a pause—and then: "She can't tell them if she's dead."

"They were going to kill me," I explain. "I could hear them planning it in the kitchen. My dad had taken things too far and they knew I wouldn't lie for them. So I grabbed the beer bottle. It was my only weapon."

Zane smooths his hands up and down my arms. "You're shaking."

He's right. I'm trembling all over.

"You don't have to do this," he adds. "You don't need to?—"

"I do." I pull his hands away, putting some space between us. "You need to know that I didn't flinch. As soon as my father walked in the room, I aimed for his face. His eyes. I was ready to gouge his eyes out, Zane. I was prepared to peel his skin from his skull if that's what it would take to kill him. But my aim was bad and I hit his neck. His carotid."

Some nightmares are just red. A sea of blood. That's what it felt like that night. Like I was drowning in blood. In the metallic smell of it and the slickness of it between my fingers.

"He dropped instantly. He didn't stand a chance," I whisper. "If I hadn't been wounded, I would've gone after Dante, too. But I was bleeding out and weak. When Dante stopped to help our dad, I knew I needed to leave. I was already in my car and pulling out of the drive when Dante came to the door. He told me he'd get revenge. And that's what he's been trying to do for the last seven years."

I feel lighter. Like I shucked off some weights I've been carrying for way too long.

But I'm still exhausted.

Getting all of this off of my chest has to be good, but there's going to be long-term damage. I'll never be back to "normal." I'll carry the scars of all of it with me for the rest of my life. I'll always remember what my family did to me, but I also have to remember what I'm capable of.

Zane sits back in his chair. "Is that all of it?"

I pinch my lower lip between my teeth. "Yeah. That's all of it."

Without another word, Zane stands up and walks to the door.

"Where are you going?" I breathe.

Slowly, he bends down and grabs my bag from the floor. Then he holds out a hand to me. " We are going home."