He mumbles in response. I’ve been driving for the past two hours while he slept, and instead of listening to the radio, my mind has spun out of control.
“Shepherd!” I shout.
“Hmm? What? I’m up!” he says as he sits up quickly and looks around, gun in hand. “What happened?”
“Nothing. I just…” What the fuck did I want? What was I going to tell him? “I wanted… to say that… this is a good song,” I say as I turn the radio up, like I can use the noise to drown it all out.
He shifts his narrowed eyes to me. “Excuse me?”
“Do you like this song?” This has to be the stupidest excuse I could have ever thought of.
He smacks the radio off. “Hate it, actually. What did you wake me up for?”
I bite my lip as I think about my response. “What if… I’m not worth saving?”
“What?” He looks at me, showing clear confusion.
“You… you said that I was worth saving, but I don’t think I am. What if I’m worse than the men you just killed?”
“Do you sell drugs to children and people even though you know it’ll ruin their lives?” he asks.
I hesitate. “Well… no.”
“You force women into prostitution?”
“Well… no. But—”
“You beat up people and torture them just for a bit of fun?”
He doesn’t understand. “No… dammit, Shepherd!”
He shrugs. “Then I think you’re worth saving.”
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “But what if I’m not? If I’m not, would you hate me?”
“I guess it depends on what you did. Why do you think you’re not worth it?”
I don’t know if I can say it. My father has forced me again and again to keep quiet and to never say anything. Do I trust Shepherd enough?
So I decide to tell him a small truth.
“When I was fifteen, my father had a woman over at the house. In the middle of the night, I heard a loud noise, and when I went into the hallway, she was lying at the bottom of the stairs, having fallen down them… supposedly. I ran to her, but she was already dead by the time I got there. My father claimed she was just a sex worker, and that… that we had to hide the evidence because if my father was caught, it would ruin everything. He… I was afraid of my father. He had a temper and was never afraid to hit me or yell at me, so when he told me to help… I did. He drove out into the woods and made me dig the hole before we buried her in it. He told me… he told me that he had pictures and videos of me burying her so that if I ever went to the police, he would turn it in. He’d make it look like I did it… he was controlling, Shepherd. He manipulated me and made me do things that I didn’t want to do. But I let my fear and his… bullshit talk me into this.”
“You think he killed her?” Shepherd asks, more curious than anything.
“I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that again and again. I mean… either way it would make sense that my father didn’t want it to get out that a sex worker died in his house. Can you imagine the scandal? That he was cheating on my mother who… to the media’s knowledge, is ill? It would ruin him. To him, she was just a whore that didn’t matter, but Shepherd… Shepherd, the shit that went on in that house…”
“What else?” he asks, and I realize that I’ve said too much.
I shake my head. “I just… I feel like I was blinded. I was stuck in a world ruled by my father, where I was too afraid to do anything.”
“Why do you think what your father did made it so you’re a bad person?” Shepherd asks.
I glance over at him and notice him watching me closely. Quickly, I turn back to the road, finding myself unable to hold his eyes. “I don’t know. I kind of always just felt like I deserved everything. I deserved to be yelled at. I deserved all of it.”
“Why?” he asks.
I glance over at him, wishing I hadn’t started on this topic. “Why… what?”
“Why do you deserve it? Do you think I’d deserve it if someone were to hit me? I’ve done worse shit than you ever will do or have done. My life is filled with