Close Your Eyes: Book Four

Chapter Twelve

I'm moving out of my childhood home tomorrow and I won't have internet until Saturday so I'm not sure how it's going to work with the updates. I'll post something from my phone lol, but please be patient

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Liam pulls me into the kitchen where the entire family is waiting, and they all start looking at me nervously.

"Well?" Sofie asks. "Are we going into hiding or not?"

"We're not," I shake my head.

"I hate to ask, but how do you know for sure?" Noah asks. "Are you one hundred percent sure?"

"I spoke to them," I say. "They're just normal people."

"Did Damien seem normal? They could be, like, another level of psychotic," Sofie asks. "Just curious. If you're not ready to talk, that's fine. But this puts everyone at risk, right? Your kids and Noah's?"

And honestly, even though I just spoke to Damien's parents, I don't feel messed up. I don't feel like I did last time.

"The first time I met Damien, he locked me in my bedroom for three days and slid bread under the door so I didn't starve," I tell her. "When he finally let me out, he told me if I tried to escape, he was going to kill me. If I tried to make a phone call, he would kill me. If I went through his stuff, he would hurt me, and on, and on, and on. Damien was psychotic, literally psychotic, and he wasn't on any medication. Now that I know that, if I gave him his pills to help him calm the hell down, I honestly think he would have either killed me out of panic when he realized what he had done, or he would have let me go."

The kitchen is silent.

"When I met his parents, they put a shotgun to the back of my head because I broke into their house."

"You broke into their house?" Sofie asks slowly. "Seriously? How did you get in?"

"I picked the lock. Anyways, I went through their house and all the medications I could find are normal medications. They don't even have anti-depressants. It was one in the morning, they were asleep, and I accidentally dropped a bottle of pills into the bathroom sink. I tried to get out, but they cocked the gun behind me. They obviously thought I was a murderer or something. When I told them who I was, they put the gun down. Damien? He probably would have either shot me in the shoulder or somewhere that could make me suffer but not kill me, or he would have thrown me into the basement after beating the living hell out of me. They didn't, okay? He put the gun down, and they apologized. They told me they were disgusted to have him as a child. I promise you, I know what fucked up looks like. I lived with fucked up for six years. These people..." I shake my head. "They were normal people and they gave birth to a child with a very, very messed up mind. What happened to me was just as much their fault as it was mine."

They're all dead silent as I open up the refrigerator and grab a bottle of water.

"Damien starved you?" Mom asks finally.

I'm still mad at her for telling Liam's Mom where we live, but I shrug my shoulders.

"I mean, he did it a couple times, but for the most part, no. He needed me alive to get money off of me."

They're all quiet and I find myself feeling insecure.

This is why I don't talk about it in front of them. None of them can handle the truth.

They act like it's such a surprise that I was miserable there.

Like, just because I got to read books doesn't mean my life was amazing. That was torture.