I knew this. Although seeing with my own eyes feels like a slap to the face, and waking up to a reality I didn’t want to believe in. I can’t even begin to describe the hopelessness that sets in. Knowing how far-gone Rex is. Understanding that anything I say right now is just a waste of my own breath.
A sick feeling hits my stomach as I realize only one of us may be leaving this place alive, and the chance of that being me is almost impossible. I clench and unclench my fingers as fear begins to spike inside me.
I stare into Rex’s dark eyes and with a shaky, but mostly steady voice I ask, “Why did you bring me here?”
As if being snapped out of a dream he peers around at our surroundings and then back to me. Rex’s face relaxes, tight lips soften and for the first time today I spot the Rex from my teenage years. The boy who helped me with my school work. The friend who taught me how to draw. My first love.
“You and I, Dell, we’re meant to be. But now, everything’s fucked up. I was gonna make you happy. I got more family, important people in the world. I’ve taken over what my father did for them and I was gonna give you everything you never had.” Rex bends at the knees and fists his hands, his veins popping on and around the track marks on his arms. “I had plans for us,” he grinds out. “Plans that went to fucking shit the moment I found out that it was you who killed my father and not fucking Slater. You.”
Rex curls his arms up in the air, they tense as if he wants to grab and shake me mercilessly.
As I hold my hands out ready to defend myself, I scan the area frantically.
Rex. Woods. Train tracks. Road.
My breaths come hard and fast and my heart cracks wide open, because what Rex and I could have had didn’t end the day he found out I killed his father. We died the day his father raped me. There would never be a single moment in my life in which I could bear the intimate touch from my rapist’s son.
It’s not Rex’s fault his father turned into a predator, but I could never lie next to Rex and not see his father holding me down. Bruising me. Prying my legs apart. Slapping me until I was almost unconscious. No part of me can ever separate the two. That’s a place I can’t keep going back to for the rest of my life.
Lowering my arms and straightening my back, I pull strength from inside myself and with quivering chin, I whisper, “I loved you.” Rex frowns and he stares back at me with anguish in his eyes. “You were my whole world, the only boy I’d ever thought would have my heart. You led the way and I followed. I whole-heartily trusted everything about you.” Tears begin to flow freely now and Rex’s form blurs. “I’ve had to survive all my life. I only got through my childhood because it’s what I thought was normal. I didn’t know regular beatings weren’t what all other children were going through. I thought all parents and families were the same. Then I lost my sister and had to sit back and watch my brothers suffer every day so they could watch out for me… look after me, eat less than me, sleep less than me, steal for me, deal drugs for me.” I take in a shaky breath and continue, “Your father took the last shred of spirit I had left in me, Rex, and also the last of my humanity when I suddenly looked down at my hands and saw blood on them. I had seen the light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel when I was with you, and then your father took that away from me. He destroyed my light just as easily as putting his hand up in front of the sun. You and I died that day, Rex, before we ever truly began.”
Quickly I wipe the tears aside and stare at Rex with sincerity and honesty. “I’m sorry I took your father away from you and Lana. I am apologetic that I didn’t have the strength to tell you it was me. For the rest of my life, I will have the