Ruthless (Black Mountain Academy) - Mila Crawford Page 0,54

that the truth was going to be the end of us, forever. In that moment, I knew that there was no one else I would ever love. No one else I would ever want, other than Kyler Sinclair.

“Fuck, Kyler, can you stop touching my damn foot and answer me?” I demanded.

“I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard you swear before,” he said, his eyes finally meeting my own. “I’m not sure if I like it. My little mouse might not be so little after all.”

“I don’t fucking care. Just fuckin’ answer my question,” I shouted, moving directly into his face, my nose barely touching his.

“What is there to say? The person I love the most in the world is the product of the person I hated the most. I should hate you; I should run from you as fast as I can. I should loathe you. But when I am with you, I don’t care about any of it. All I care about is how you make me feel.”

I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I had never known relief as I did in that moment and I never would again.

“It started when I was eight. Nothing sexual at first. He was actually cool, letting me eat candy, and watch movies that my mother was dead set against. Things that made him a cool uncle. He would say inappropriate things, sexual type things, but it was never directed at me, just in general.” He let out a humorless laugh.. It was a cynical laugh, the laugh of someone that had seen darkness and tried to shrug it off, even while being suffocated by it. “It was over a year before he started touching me or asking me to touch him, before any of that shit happened. One of the expensive therapists my parents sent me to called that grooming.”

“Your parents knew?”

“They say they didn’t know who it was until after Pierce died, but I heard my mother once accuse my father of knowing. It’s why my parents act the way they do. Believe it or not, at one time they actually loved each other. But for some reason, my molestation didn’t just destroy me, it destroyed them. My father started working more, much more than normal, and my mother started hitting the old bottle. When I was around ten, that’s when the touching happened.” Kyler turned his face away from me and I felt my heart breaking into a million shattered pieces.

As I listened to him, I felt the bile start to rise from my throat. I was grateful that Pierce Black was dead. If he wasn’t, I was pretty sure I would kill him myself. I hated that his blood was running through my veins. I had no idea how Kyler and my mother could care about me, knowing I had his DNA.

“Don’t cry,” Kyler said, wiping the tears from my cheeks. His touch was so gentle and it gave me hope. Hope that I knew was a mirage but I allowed myself to feel it anyway.

“How can you stand to look at me?” I whimpered through the tears blurring my eyes.

“None of this is your fault,” he said, matter-of-factly. “My love for you, Maddy, trumps all other feelings I have.”

“But you have other feelings?”

“If I told you that all this isn’t fucked up, I’d be lying. You are a casualty Maddy. You aren’t him. If I can see that, even with how fucked up I am, then why can’t you?”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” The moment I asked the question, I regretted it. I knew why he didn’t tell. He was a small child. How could he stand up to someone as powerful as Pierce Black?

“I told him I was going to. After the first time he touched me, I told him I was going to tell. He told me that if I ever breathed a word to anyone, he would kill Tamlin. I couldn’t let that happen. He was the boogieman. I had to be brave and endure so that Tammy was safe.” He looked at his arms, brushing a finger along a scar under the black design of his tattoo. “That’s when I started to cut myself. There was just something about seeing the scars. I kept thinking if I made marks on my body I would disgust him and he wouldn’t want me anymore. Nothing worked, though, until I slashed my