Safe Haven Read online

  He was staring at me like he expected me to just open up and spill out all of my secrets like blood on the white tile floor, but that wasn’t going to happen—not now or ever.

  It was CJ who came to my rescue. “Blake, you don’t have to tell us. That’s okay. We won’t pry or force you.”

  Rex grumbled about it, like he didn’t agree with what CJ was saying. Malcolm hadn’t stopped staring at me as if he were trying to figure out my secrets for himself. I wished him luck with that, but I knew he’d never get it.

  “Are you better now?” Rex asked.

  What was his definition of that? When I couldn’t be on my sedatives, I had nightmares. I didn’t sleep well at all, anyway, and I spent most of my life in my rooms. I hadn’t been outside in nearly two decades and the only living thing I had regular physical contact with was my cat, who glared at me all the time. “I’m not suicidal anymore.”

  CJ smiled, but it was obvious to me, even with my very limited understanding of social situations and expressions, that he was faking it. “Well, that’s something.”

  I nodded and stepped back. Normally I could have just gone up to my rooms without an explanation, but I realized that would be rude—even for me—and I could be very rude without even trying to when I needed to get out of a situation in a hurry.

  “I need to get to work,” I said.

  They nodded and went back to their breakfasts. I forced myself to walk slowly back up the stairs instead of bolting like I wanted to do. I had lied, a little. I didn’t actually need to work. There was no pressing thing I absolutely had to do, but I still liked spending some time in my game. It let me talk to other players, since everyone was vocal on chat, and I could see if there were any problems that I needed to take care of.

  I started at level one, but I had my high level character just two clicks away if I found someone that needed to be dealt with immediately by a super-imposing, god-like being in game. I didn’t bring out that character very often, though. Normally I didn’t have to say more than my name and these people knew I was the original creator of Underworlds. That made them respect what I said.

  I loved being in my game and the feeling of being immersed in a world I had thought up then had seen brought to life. I loved the puzzles I’d helped dream up and the riddles that my team had come up with. They changed them often so players didn’t get bored. Sometimes I didn’t even know the answer. I came up to a giant stone raven who had a riddle for me that I needed to solve before I could pass. Thankfully this gateway had some of the easiest riddles. In the harder worlds, I’d actually had to ask my team what the answer to a riddle was—and more than once, too. It had been embarrassing.

  A man has two hundred dollars, and you take away nineteen. How many dollars do you have?

  I wasn’t sure when we started doing math problems, but I answered it, anyway. I had nineteen dollars. The raven lifted its stone wing to let me pass, and my character ran ahead. I soon got lost in the game to the point that it surprised me when I saw the guys eating lunch. I checked the time, and it was nearly one. I’d had a lot of fun being in Underworlds, and, even though I wasn’t really hungry, I still felt good enough to go downstairs.

  CJ made me a sandwich as soon as I landed on the bottom step. I came over and took it from him with a smile, then went to the big French doors that looked out over the backyard to see out. I liked looking out there, but someone had raked up the leaves.

  “It’s nice out,” Malcolm said. “If you wanted to take a walk, we’d go with you to protect you.”

  I didn’t look back at him as I answered. “I don’t go outside.”

  “Are you allergic to something out there?” Rex asked.

  That would be the easy answer. “No.” Maybe I should wish that allergies were the problem.

  “So it’s part of your psychological reasons and why you can’t be touched,” Malcolm reasoned.

  I shouldn’t have come downstairs. My good mood was quickly turning south with all of their questions. I turned over my shoulder to look at CJ. He never really pushed me to share information with him. I liked that a lot about him. But now he was just looking at me sadly. He even shook his head.

  “I wish we knew what you’d been through so we could help you,” CJ said softly. Even though his voice was barely over a whisper, I could easily hear him in the silence of the kitchen.

  I frowned. “Why would you want to?”

  CJ came around the island and started to approach me. I shoved the rest of the sandwich into my mouth and turned around to face him so he wasn’t at my back. “Because the three of us… We care about you. That’s why we ask you if you want to watch movies with us and why we bought you the hoodie you’re wearing. Is that so hard to believe?”

  The problem was that yes, it was hard for me to believe that one person would care about me after such a short time of knowing me, let alone three people.

  “Didn’t Robert ever try to help you?”

  I shook my head. He’d left me alone to my own devices whenever possible. He liked me well enough, but he didn’t seem interested in me like these three were.

  “How long have you had your therapist?” CJ continued to pester me. “Isn’t she trying to help you get better?”

  I’d had enough. I kept my back to the wall as I slid along it and headed for the stairs. Unless I wanted to go up them backward, I needed to turn around then, but none of them were fast enough to catch me if I ran up the stairs after that. I’d be in my rooms with the door locked behind me before they’d get halfway up the steps.

  CJ was looking at me like I was making him upset as I moved away, which I didn’t understand, because he was the one who had pushed too far and was making it hard for me to be down there with them. CJ shook his head and walked away from me. As soon as he was close enough, Malcolm put his arm around CJ’s shoulders and hugged him close. “I know you want to help, but, even if you were able to do something for him, it would probably take a lot of time,” I heard Malcolm say to him. CJ nodded, and I turned to Rex. He was staring at me.

  I sighed and turned away from them all to go back upstairs.

  “Blake, wait,” Rex called to me. I turned to find him a few feet closer to me. I raised my eyebrows at him. “If you don’t want us asking questions and you don’t want us trying to help you, then what would you like from us?”

  I sat down heavily on the step and glanced over at CJ. He seemed miserable, and I hated that I’d done that to him. I spread my hands wide. “I have no idea. I don’t do this—any of it—regularly. Before you three, I had Robert, who mostly ignored me, Sophia, who spoke to me to tell me about the ants I would attract into my room if I kept eating in bed and about her family, and my uncle, who leaves me alone, too. And only two of them were ever in the house with me at once—maximum. I’ve never done this before.”

  Rex narrowed his eyes at me. “Did you used to go outside, be social and have friends before whatever fucked up thing happened to you?”

  I nodded. I did all those things, and I’d loved them.

  “So the problem is that everyone has given up on you,” Rex concluded.

  I was about to defend them all, because it wasn’t that they’d given up, it was that I’d fought so hard in the beginning that it hadn’t been safe for me—or good for them—to keep trying. I’d kicked and I’d screamed and the only reason I hadn’t been placed into an institution then drugged out of my mind just to keep me calm, had been because I could be stabilized at home.

  Rex took a few steps closer to me then sat down. “Do you want to have us as friends and get better, or do you want us to leave you alone and give up on you like everyone else has?”

  I shook my head. I did want them as my friends. I just didn’t know how to do that.

  Rex got up on his hands and knees and came closer toward me. “How about if you try touching us more? Or try spending a day down here with us where we can talk? We won’t ask you about what happened to you, but we’ll just talk about normal
stuff. Do you like football?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t into sports.

  And Rex kept crawling toward me. When he was close, I started to move back on the stairs to get to my rooms, but he grabbed my ankle and pulled me down the stairs.

  “Settle down, Blake. I’m not going to hurt you. I need to prove that,” he said.

  But I thrashed against him as he pinned me down and grabbed each of my wrists in his hands.

  “Easy!” he yelled over the sounds of me screaming and kicking against him. But with him between my thighs and holding me down, I couldn’t go anywhere. I did keep whimpering, though, as I shut my eyes tightly and let the panic wash over me.

  “Jesus Christ, Rex!” Malcolm screamed at him.

  “Let him go!” CJ added his yelling to the mix.

  But Rex held onto me. He wasn’t hurting me. Even in my panic, I knew that. But he was holding me tightly enough that I couldn’t get away from him, either, no matter how much I struggled. My screams turned into sobs as I laid my face on the cool tile and continued to keep my eyes tightly closed.

  “He has to know that even if we touch him, we’re not going to hurt him. He needs to be able to trust us and know we’re here to protect him. That won’t happen if he’s scared of us all the time,” Rex said over the sounds of my loud cries. “See, Blake? I have you pinned down. I’m stronger than you. If I wanted to hurt you, I could. Right?”

  I nodded and stopped thrashing as hard, too exhausted to continue.

  “But the three of us… We’re not going to hurt you. Not ever. We’re here to protect you and keep you safe. You can trust us. I’m going to let you go now and you’ll know that you’re safe with us. Right?”

  I didn’t give him another nod. Instead, as soon as he’d moved far enough away that I was no longer trapped, I bolted up the stairs and slammed the door behind me. I’d barely managed to get to the bathroom before I’d puked up my lunch. Crying for a few hours followed that episode and, by the time I finished, I felt weak. But I did need a shower. I was disgusting. And the hot steam helped clear away some of my thoughts.

  Rex had probably gone too far too soon, but maybe he had also helped. No one had pinned me down before, not even when playing a game as a child. I’d only felt so absolutely helpless one other time in my life. And Rex had been right. He was bigger and stronger than me. He could have killed me if he’d wanted to, but he hadn’t. And he’d promised he wouldn’t.

  That gave me a lot to think about. I put on my Star Wars lounge pants. Sophia had washed them for me, and they were my favorites. Then I went to my computer. On the monitor I saw CJ and Rex arguing.

  “You’re a real fucking genius,” CJ was saying. “How in the hell are we supposed to fix what you did?”

  I couldn’t believe that they were still arguing about what had happened. It had been at least three hours, if not four, since Rex had been on top of me.

  Rex was shaking his head. “I didn’t think it would backfire that badly. I thought he’d see reason, realize that we aren’t out to hurt him, then want to be friends with us.”

  But CJ wasn’t nearly done with him. “You took a traumatized person who has never wanted any of us near him, and you held him down! We don’t know what was done to him. We don’t know what you might have triggered. We know absolutely nothing, and you went and made it much worse because you had to force the issue!” he screamed.

  I muted them as I thought. I didn’t need to hear that argument. I needed to decide what I planned to do. But CJ was right. None of them knew what had been done to me and what I’d gone through. And up until now, it hadn’t mattered. No one had tried to touch me or be friends with me or be anything more to me than the absolute most that I was willing to let them be, which, honestly, wasn’t very much. I wanted people existing around me because then I felt safe or my laundry got done, but as far as actually coming into my world, no one was really allowed to do that. Even Uncle Phin hadn’t really been close to me in years. He’d given up, just as Rex had said. They all had.

  That realization decided things. I went to my wall safe and pulled it open to reveal a thick manila envelope. It wasn’t in there because it was important to me. I’d kept it locked away so that Sophia wouldn’t find it and discover my secrets while cleaning out my office. I was exhausted from the crying and the puking and the panicked state that I’d been in, so I grabbed my blanket to wrap myself up in as I trudged down the stairs to the living room where the three of them were. CJ and Rex were still yelling at each other.

  They went silent when I came into the room and put the file down in front of them. Then I went over to the empty couch by the window and wrapped myself up in my blanket that covered my whole body. I even put it over my head. Then I waited for them to learn all of my secrets, because it was about damn time that someone besides my therapist and Uncle Phin knew why the hell I was so absolutely abnormal.

  Only none of the guys moved to get it.

  “Read it,” I said.

  CJ shook his head. “Are you okay?”

  I sighed and shrank a bit more under my blankets. I really wished that I’d taken even half an extra sedative before coming down, then I wouldn’t feel so sick with worry and panic as I waited for them to start reading. That little bit of extra medication wouldn’t have hurt me at all, but it would have made this far easier.

  Malcolm was the first to pick it up, and I saw him shaking his head as he went through it. “You were seven.” I nodded. Seven years, four months, and two days old. “Shit. Blake…”

  Rex took the file from him next and I saw him skimming through it as well. I didn’t mind that they didn’t read the little details. There was a lot of in-between stuff. The beginning was that my parents and I had been at a park when we’d been grabbed by two men. There’d never been any demands. Two weeks later, my parents were dead, and so was the guy that had orchestrated the whole thing. He’d killed himself because he’d thought the police were coming. They’d found me a week later, in a dog crate, in the same hole he’d kept us in and that he’d died in. The accomplice had already been in prison for something else by then, where he’d died shortly after I’d been found.

  Rex looked over at me. “You didn’t even get to see your parents be buried.”

  I shook my head. I’d been under constant psychiatric supervision at that point. No one had been allowed to see me, and I’d spent most of the day and night screaming.

  Out of the three of them, CJ was the only one who actually read the whole file. He looked sick while he did it, but he still read every word. I could tell because I was watching his eyes. When he was done, he closed up the file and laid it back down on the coffee table so that it was turned in my direction. He was offering it back to me so that I could take it whenever I wanted to.

  Then CJ got up and went into the bathroom. A few minutes later, I heard him puking. Then there was the sound of water running, and it sounded like he might have been brushing his teeth. When he came back into the living room, none of us had said a word. He came over to stand next to me.

  “Can I sit?” he asked.

  I nodded and moved myself and my big blanket over to the other side of the couch from him. He sat down and made himself comfortable. He put his arm over the back of the couch.

  “Is this okay?”

  I knew that Rex and Malcolm were watching us intently from across the room as I lay down and rested my head on top of CJ’s thigh. I was scared—and nervous—but I wanted this too. I had to try at least. I had my blanket open and away from my feet so that if I had to run, I wouldn’t trip on it. Then I took a deep breath and tried to relax.

  When CJ brought his hand gently down onto my shoulder, I froze, but I didn’t fight him. And after a minute or two, breathing became easier. He ran his fingers through my hair, and I closed my eyes.

  “You’re okay,” CJ whispered to me. “You’re safe with us.”

  I wanted to believe that so badly. I needed to be able to believe him.

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nbsp; One of them turned on the TV again and they went back to watching a movie. I forced myself to breathe evenly and to just be comfortable. This would have been so much easier with an extra dose of sedatives in my system, but I wasn’t going to think about that now. I just needed to be able to calm down.

  CJ’s touch was light against my scalp and I covered my face with my blanket so that only my hair was sticking out. Then I cried as quietly as I could. I’d missed this so much. Being touched, touching someone else, just being around other people and feeling as if my world wasn’t crashing in around me or ready to blow up at any second.

  No one said anything to me, for which I was grateful, because I couldn’t have spoken, anyway. I just needed to breathe and stay calm. Forcing myself to do that took more energy than I was used to using. But I managed it as CJ kept stroking my head.

  When the movie was over, CJ slipped off of the couch and I pulled the blanket down in time to see them all standing up. “It’s late,” CJ said as he knelt next to me. Bandit quickly jumped up to take his place on the couch. “Do you want me to walk you to your door?”

  I shook my head. I would make it up there on my own.

  CJ smiled at me. “Okay. See you tomorrow then.” He touched my hair again. “You were so brave tonight. Thank you.” He leaned forward and kissed me on top of my head, and I blushed so much that I pulled the blanket back over my face. Rex chuckled, and I smiled into my blanket where none of them could see me. CJ had kissed me…and I wasn’t screaming.

  They left me alone after that, and I lay there in the living room with Bandit by my head and the light from one of the lamps they’d left on washing over me. I just stayed there for a while as I listened to the sounds of my old house and the men getting ready for bed in it. I probably should have gone upstairs to sleep in my own bed, which would have been appropriate, but being on the couch felt nice, too. This had been my father’s couch, where he’d had his morning coffee and read the newspaper while I’d sat beside him. I could see the kitchen from where I was, and I remembered watching my mom make breakfast for us from the couch while she and my dad talked about the weather and what baseball game would be on the TV that afternoon. My dad had loved baseball, my mom had loved gardening and they’d loved each other deeply.