The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel (53 page)

It wasn’t long before the prisoners started filing in with guards leading them. Some of the visitors squealed with excitement when their prisoner entered the room. Others were silent like me.

I had always wondered if I would ever see Taylor again. I hadn’t planned on it. I had planned to let him rot in jail forever. The desire to see him had never existed until now. I had imagined all the things I would feel if I was faced with him again. The last time I’d been in his presence I had fractured apart before him on the witness stand. I had crumbled at his feet.

But I didn’t feel anything when he was led into the room. He was an old man now. His hair completely gray. His face was lined with wrinkles he hadn’t had before.

“Faye baby?” His voice was the same and I shivered at the sound of my nickname. “You’re really here?” There was disbelief etched in his face. It seemed to be sewn into every inch of him.

“I am.”

The officer attached Taylor’s handcuffs to the table.

I had thought of the things I would say to Taylor too, if I was ever to face him, but now that he sat before me, I couldn’t find the words. The questions. The things I wanted to say. All I could do was stare at him.

He wore an orange jumpsuit. His hands were loosely touching one another on the table between us. They were the same hands that had made me cum over and over. The same hands that hands that had inflicted so much pain.

“I thought I’d never see you again.” His words drew my attention back to his face.

“I never planned to come here.”

“I’m glad you did. I missed you.”

My heart thudded heavily in my chest. It beat against my rib cage like it wanted to burst free and escape my body. I saw the love in his eyes. It was that love that had made me feel alive once. That love had shaped me into the person I was today.

“I am who I am because of you,” I said.

He opened his mouth, but I cut him off.

“Did I make you like this? Did I make you a monster?” Tears pressed at the backs of my eyes.

He frowned. “I’m not a monster, Faye. I love you. That doesn’t make me a monster.”

I shook my head. “You’re a monster. But did I make you that way?” Was it my reflection in his eyes, like in Rhett’s? Was it my poison?

“I’m not a monster, Faye baby. All I ever did was love you.”

“But why?” Two tears slipped out onto my cheek. “Why me?”

“You were different. I could see it from the moment I laid eyes on you. We were meant to be together.” There was sincerity mixed with the love in his eyes. It was so familiar, so normal.

“I’ll never love anyone the way I love you, Faye baby.”

“You promise, daddy?”

“I promise.”

I blinked away the memory. The words. Just a few of many from my childhood when I’d lain in bed with Taylor, his hands all over my body.

“Do you know how fucked up that sounds? I was a little girl.”

“
My
little girl.”

“What is wrong with you?” The words were hateful.

“Nothing is wrong with me.” There was hostility in his blue eyes.

“You fucked a nine year old girl. You took my innocence.” I’d never said the words out loud and as I spoke them, I realized something. “I didn’t make you this way.” I blinked hard, two more tears dripping out onto my face. “I was just a little girl.”

“You were wonderful and perfect. I loved you. The way you looked up at me with the purest love in your eyes.”

I ignored his words. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t make you this monster. I was just a little girl.”

“Do you remember how you would look up at me? How you would beg me for my cock?”

I stared into Taylor’s eyes. The blue eyes I had loved. Mistaken, misplaced love of a little girl who didn’t know any better. He was right when he said it was the purest love. I had heard someone say once that it was possible to fall in love a thousand times in a lifetime, but there would always be one person whose love would stand out more than anyone else’s—not because their love was special or better, but because it came at a time when the person wanted love the most. It was the kind of love that would follow someone around forever and shape the way loved all those for the rest of their life.

I had given Taylor my love before I even knew what love was. I had given him all of me. Every single spec of myself. And then I had let him destroy me with it. Slowly but surely, even before he had started torturing me.

“It’s not my fault.”

I thought of last night, of Rhett. Of the way I came on his cock with the pain, with the hate. But then I thought about the past week, about his kindness, the way we connected like I had never connected with anyone else.

“I’m so sorry, Faye.” For a moment I thought Taylor had spoken, but he hadn’t. They were Rhett’s words in my head. Words he had spoken last night after I’d gone into my hazy place. His lips were pressed against my hair, while he cuddled against me in my bed. “I’m not like him. I’m not. I love you. But not the kind of love he had for you. My love is broken, because that’s all I have to offer. My love is pathetic and fractured, but it’s real. And it’s true. And if you need this, my hate, I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you anything you need because that’s what true love is.”

I sucked in a breath. My fingers trembled in my lap.

“I knew you would come back to me.” Taylor’s voice jerked me out of my thoughts.

“Thank you.” I said the words before I could think about them.

“What?”

I focused on Taylor. On Lover. The man I used to love, the man I used to fear. The man who shaped my life completely. I considered my whole life from the time I was nine years old. I tried to imagine who I would be today if Taylor hadn’t come into my life. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t picture who I would be, because he changed everything.

“I lost my virginity to you.” I squeezed my hands together. “I lost my baby to you.”

“Faye, ba—”

“No!” I hissed, leaning forward. “That little boy.
My
baby. He died. I lost him to you.” I sucked in a deep breath. “I became a prostitute because of you. I fucked hundreds of dirty men for money because of you.”

Taylor clenched his jaw.

“I became a drug addict because of you.” I leaned in closer, almost close enough to touch him. “I’ll never be able to hurt you in all the ways you hurt me. Of all the things I became, the things I lost. I gained something too.” I whispered the last words. Words only he and I would hear in the crowded room.

“What? What did I give you?” He looked hungry, desperate to know the answer.

My lips curled into that smile, the one that said I could two shits about him. “Nothing. You gave me nothing. I survived, Taylor.” It felt good to say his name. “I made it out alive. I went to college. I graduated multiple times.” I smile pressed at my cheeks. “And I fell in love.” Rhett’s face popped into my head, his body lying inches away from mine on the courthouse lawn looking up into the sparkling lights above us. The sound of his feet on the hard wood floor as he chased me through his house. The way he looked next to my pots and pans. They were stupid insignificant moments. Things that would mean nothing to anyone else. But they meant everything to me.

“I thanked you earlier, but I didn’t mean that. I’m not thankful for you, or to you.” I stared into those blue eyes and vowed to myself it would be for the very last time. “I’m thankful for myself. You helped me prove that I could survive hell and come out fully intact.” I stood up and gave him my back.

“Faye, baby, wait, no don’t go.”

I turned back around at his plea. But I didn’t see the love that was in his eyes this time. I saw a sick, old man. “I’m in love with Rhett, Taylor. And this will be the last time you ever see me.”

Throughout my life, I thought I would never be able to hurt Taylor. He was indefinable as a man, someone untouchable. Someone who had hurt me over and over and never suffered pain, at least not any I had been able to witness. But I saw it then, when I spoke Rhett’s name. Visceral, disparaging pain cut across his features. It was the look I would always remember. The image of his heart breaking on his face. I would carry it with me always.

I smiled as I left the room, my flip-flops slapping against the concrete floor with Taylor’s yells echoing against the dank walls. He called out to me, his Faye baby. But I didn’t come back, not this time. And I never would again.

EIGHTEEN

The cemetery wasn’t far from the prison. In fact, it seemed too perfect that my mother and Taylor would be so close together, one in jail and one in death. I hadn’t been there since her funeral. There was no reason to visit.

But today was different. Today, it seemed, I was making peace with myself. And I couldn’t do that without seeing the two people who had hurt me the most. A sense of nervousness came over me as I stepped out of my car. The grass was green. Greener than I remembered. It was soft against my feet, smooth, like flecks of butter.

Close to a decade ago I would have thought this place was too good for her, and perhaps it still was. Maybe I was just feeling nostalgic because she was dead. Because she had been dead for so long and for so long I hadn’t cared. Of all the things that had haunted me, my mother was absent. Though I knew why, deep down.

I had forgiven her that night in the car. The drive home from Taylor’s house after the funeral when our song came on. The Journey song we used to sing when we cleaned house. The song we would dance around to and belt out the lyrics like they were the last one’s we would ever sing.

“She was happy you got away.”
Rhett’s words from that night echoed in my head. I could remember the joy, the happiness that had flooded my heart when he spoke those words. They weren’t an apology from my dead mother, they weren’t a confession to all the horrible things she let Taylor do to me. For the jealousy she let eat her alive, the jealousy that turned to hate and pleasure when she watched him torture me. The words didn’t make all of those things better, they didn’t make them go away. But they were enough for me.

I stopped in front of her headstone. Jessica Turner Hale. Her name read across the top. I dropped to my knees. I reached out and ran my fingers across the words etched in stone. My aunts and uncles never made excuses for my mom while I lived with them, they never said they were sorry for the things she let Taylor do to me. But they did say that my mom had always been a broken woman in search of something to fulfill her life. She had looked for those things in men.

I almost laughed as I thought about it. Perhaps in some ways her and I weren’t so different.

“You looked for all the wrong things. You let it destroy everything.” My heart seemed on the verge of bursting. I pressed my fingers harder against her name until they ached. “You let him ruin me. You let it happen. You were happy when it did. You were never sorry, not until I was long gone and you were dying.” I didn’t know when I started sobbing but I was now. Tears dripped down my face onto the grass. “But I forgive you. I forgave you all those years ago when I sang our song, hoping it reached you wherever you ended up. And I still forgive you now.” I collapsed on the grass, my hand still pressed against her name. “I still forgive you. I still do. And I love you, even if you never really loved me.” I whispered the words in between sobs. The grass smelled so clean as I sucked in breaths pulling them deep into my lungs. Breaths of life. My life. The life I had. The one that belonged to me and no one else.

Taylor had tried to take it from me. My mother had let him. But I was the one who came out victorious. I was the one left with a life worth living.

I don’t know how long I laid there on that perfectly manicured grass crying, but it was late in the day when strong arms wrapped around me. I would have screamed or been surprised, but I wasn’t. I knew this time he would come for me. And I knew, this time, I would let him have me.

“You came,” I whispered the words as he carried me out of the cemetery. The same one where he’d pinned me to the ground all those years ago and told me what a selfish little bitch I was.

Rhett looked down at me. My Rhett. The man I had been in love with for years. “I’ll always come back for you, Faye.”

It was those words that brought me back to life. It was Rhett. I’d spent all my life as a lonely, lost little girl. And I always had been until now. Until Rhett found me.

“Why didn’t you come for me the day I left? Why didn’t you look for me?” I whispered as he carried me.

“I gave you what you needed, Faye. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I set you free.”

His words made me cry harder, harder than I’d cried all day. The tears flowed out of me like rivers, drenching me. I clung to him. I gripped his shirt in fear that if I didn’t he would float away.

He drove me to his home. And I listened while told me he was sorry. The sound didn’t make my skin crawl. The words. I let him say them because I knew he meant them, I knew he needed to say them. But he didn’t have to, because I knew he wasn’t his father. Taylor Hale had never once been sorry for the things he had done to me. Taylor Hale had never truly loved me, because love was about giving and taking. Love was about sacrifice. Love was about giving everything to one person and them accepting that love, flaws and all.