Afterglow

glacial

A deep breath, and then his hand clenched into a fist with my hands still drawing caressed whispers across his skin.  I didn't let him interrupt me, though.  This was a story that I needed to get out, and I didn't know how badly I needed to say the words out loud until the details came pouring out of me.

"He found out that she gave me up for adoption after he left her when she got pregnant and when she wouldn't tell him what family I'd been given to, he killed her.  Shot her in the head.  He didn't go to prison though, the police never caught him."

I didn't dare meet his eyes.  I had to force it all out, otherwise it would be stuck in my throat forever. 

"I didn't even realize what I was doing until it was too late," I said, tears constricting my throat so that it was harder and harder to speak. 

"I reached out to my first cousin, her name was Marina.  She was gorgeous, and so sweet.  She said I looked just like my birth mother.  But my mistake was reaching out to the other cousins, the ones on my biological father's side.  He'd been searching for me since I was put up for adoption and-"

I cut myself off as a choking sob wound its way up from my chest, the glacial turmoil wrapped in organs and blood freezing off everything else from the rest of my body.  I was an iceberg in the middle of a drifting, frozen lake surrounded by jagged peaks and frigid landmarks. 

I did the only thing I could, then, taking my phone out and scrolling to the latest messages that were the usual variety of threatening and handed it to him, watching as his eyes grew wide at first and then blazing with an anger that I'd never seen reflected back at me as he gaped, going front he phone screen to back at me and then back to the phone screen once more.

"What the fuck is this, Kat?!"

"My biological father."

Understanding dawned across his features just as a sympathetic pain flashed, and for a moment I was dreading the pity that I knew would inevitably come, but instead we had bonded over this unique brand of pain- pain inflicted by our 'fathers' as I recalled our previous conversation about his dad and the abuse that came with him.

"You have to go to the police, to your parents, to-"

"The police didn't stop him the first time when he-"

I almost said when he raped my birth mother, but I wasn't quite ready to disclose that information just yet, if ever. 

"When he murdered my birth mother.  My parents are aware of him, that's why Sloane overheard them on the phone saying that I wouldn't be leaving New York at all, especially not to go to California.  They know.  He was the one who...who caused Ian's wreck."

Understanding dawned on his features. 

"He sent me a message just after Alyssa told me the news that day at school."

"That was why you were so upset, more than I would have assumed you would have acted if something like that had happened before.  It was because you thought it was your fault."

I yanked my hands away from his that had still been tracing patterns on his skin. 

"Because it was my fault, it is.  If it weren't for being involved with me, Ian wouldn't have almost died, and that girl wouldn't have actually died."

"Kat, you can't assume the faults of a psychopath.  It was your biological father's fault, not yours."

"Maybe not, but anyone who gets hurt from here on out is on me."