34. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Declan

The sun can heal and harm you. Get too close and get burned. Don’t get enough and you’ll fall ill from lack of vitamin D. Cas calls her Sunshine because Noelle is a warmth he’s never known.

Snow is pure. It covers the dead like a blanket for them to bloom into something beautiful. Lorne’s nickname for her because Noelle provides him with hope.

Eve, the woman Adam loved so much that he betrayed God to see her happy. I call her Eve because I fear I’ll abandon it all and burn in all eternity just to have her close.

She has an easy way about her with Cas and Lorne, but with me, it’s like a brick wall is between us. She can barely look at me, her eyes cast down, staring at the apple tart she’s taken a bite of, two of at most.

We’ve been sitting here for an hour and other than “hello” there have been no words exchanged between us.

My instincts rage at me to flip her over the table and fuck her senseless while the entire restaurant watches. But I don’t want to do more damage than I’ve already done. When I told her to run that night, I meant it, but I didn’t know the void and self-destruction it would propel within me.

I grip Lorne’s leg. He turns to me and nods before he rises from his chair and I take his place beside her. Lorne’s comforting. He knows what I need before I even ask. He’s the first person who offered me a sense of safety.

I gaze at Cas. He saved me. I’ll never be able to thank him for the five years he sacrificed in jail for protecting me. He’s what I needed because I was too weak then. I’m probably just as debilitated now. The worst part is that out of everyone, I’ve hurt him the most. Kept him at arm’s length and made him feel like the outsider looking in. Yet no matter what I’ve done to him, how I’ve shoved him away, he’s always been there. A rock I can lean on no matter what.

“I have trust issues with women. You’re the first woman I’ve ever been with.”

Her fork clangs loudly as it hits her plate. She turns her stunned face to me.

I raise a finger, needing to get everything out before she speaks. “The night I told you to run is the biggest regret of my life, and I have many. It all started with my mother and grew stronger under the guardianship of her sister. My mom came from a middle-class family. Her mother was a nurse, and my grandfather was a teacher. A regular family. Nothing special or extraordinary. Then my mother fell in love with the wrong guy. He had three things; good looks, danger, and he made my grandparents crazy. She took one look at my father, burned her average family to the ground, and ran off with him. He quickly got her addicted to drugs and then knocked her up. I was the product.”

I flinch as her hand covers mine. She quickly goes to remove it, but I grab it, intertwining my fingers with hers. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to work on this, and I don’t want to hurt you. It’s a woman’s touch. I don’t have any good examples of it.”

She nods and offers me a sweet smile.

“I spent the first three years of my life surrounded by drug addicts, prostitutes, and criminals. They didn’t sexually abuse me, and they weren’t violent, but they were neglectful. But in all honesty, my first three years with them, sitting in my shit for days on end, was better than the hell it would force me into for the next fifteen years.”

I glance at the empty tables surrounding us, grateful that Lorne bought out the whole place for the night. This is a conversation I did not want to have with wandering eyes and ears. “I’ve said none of this out loud before. So I’m not sure what to say or even how to say it.”

Noelle glances at Cas and Lorne.

“My parents died of a heroin overdose when I was three. Social services took me in, and it turned out my mother had one living relative, her older sister, who had become a nun. I’m not sure why my aunt took me in. But she tried to exercise my demons out of me.”

Noelle gasps, and her hand shoots up to her mouth. “What did she do to you?”

“My aunt considered me a sinner, and sinners needed to be punished in order to be saved. She worked tirelessly to cast my demons out.”

A tear slips from her eye. “Three-year-olds don’t have demons. They’re innocent.”

I sigh because my dick is hard. Her showing me sympathy makes me want to hurt her. I did the right thing when I told her to run. I’m doing the selfish thing now, forcing her to stay. But I don’t care anymore. The three months without her were hell. I’ve never known pain so intense in my life, and I’d rather forsake God than forsake her.

“Children aren’t born innocent. We are all sinners, Eve. My aunt didn’t view me as a regular child. I represented an abomination, the spawn of Satan, because my father didn’t just steal her sister. That one union between my parents caused my grandmother to kill herself and my grandfather to become an alcoholic. To my aunt, a living byproduct of all the tests God had put her through, correcting me meant she’d done God’s work.”

Noelle pushes off her chair and whips her hands away from me. Her entire body shakes, and she balls her hands into fists. “Fuck that. You were a baby. You were an innocent baby forced into the world to incompetent pieces of shit. Did she show you how to hurt yourself, Declan? Was she the useless monster who taught a child how to whip himself because he was unfortunate enough to be born into a cruel world?”

“She tried to do the best she could.”

China jumps as Cas slams his fist on the table. “Fuck you, Dec. Fuck you for still making excuses for that cunt after all these years. I was there, Declan. I was there when my father was talking to that perverted priest that your bitch of an aunt worshiped. She knew. She must have. All those boys they traded, all the abuse. I’ll never forget that day. The sound of the whip cracking on your back. How you screamed in agony. That was the first time I thought someone had it worse than me. Imagine that. I was getting fucked by almost anyone who would give my piece of shit a buck or two, and I felt like you had it worse.”

Cas gets up and lifts his shirt, revealing the scars on his body. “Dec, I always knew my father didn’t love me, that I was a bargaining chip, a piece of meat. I knew it every time he or someone he let fuck me would carve the memory on my flesh. But that day, the way she made me believe you were the bad one, the evil one and how she was good, helping you, I realized that no matter what kind of garbage my father was, he was honest about it. But that bitch was a piece of work. She’s burning in your non-existent hell, not saving you from it.”