Never The Same

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I almost fell asleep when I heard the creek of the door. My heart pounded and my last bit of hope went away. He unchained me and brought me back into a different room in the basement. I had no idea there were so many rooms in this place; perhaps it was always apart of his plan and this change of location wasn't.

He pushed me into the bedroom and locked the door, then proceeded to put the keys around his neck. I got into bed and he did too. I could hear my heart beating out of my chest so hard that I became worried he could hear it as well. But he didn't say anything. I closed my eyes to fall asleep but all of a sudden it seemed impossible, so I just laid there thinking about everything. Then I heard a weeping sound and decided to say something.

"Carter?"

He didn't respond to me, but I knew that it was him. I thought that I shouldn't bother him because he's caused too much harm to me and Asher already, but every time it got louder and I couldn't help but think of what my mom advised me to do when someone's hurt.

"Hey, are you alright?"

He stopped his pathetic cry in attempt to fool me that he wasn't. "Go to bed El."

"What's wrong?" I hated that I had to let my motherly figure out.

"You don't want to know."

"You're right, I don't."

I turned over on my left shoulder and waited for a response. He wasn't crying anymore but I could feel somehow that he was hurting still. After a couple minutes I closed my eyes, begging myself to fall asleep. But I was terrified to do it, so I stopped trying. As soon as I felt my eyes getting heavy, a cold hand touched my arm above the elbow.

"El, can we talk," he whispered.

I moved to lay on my back. "Only if you stop calling me El."

"Yeah, okay," he laughed. He stopped a second later. "What was your childhood like?"

"You were there for a while, don't you remember?"

"Yeah, but I mean with Emma. We didn't know her."

"Oh," I said. The question almost stung as he said it, but he was calm and I feared he would get angry if I didn't answer. "Our parents kept us in two school districts and we got used to having different friends. Every once in a while we'd switch to play with each other's friends. I guess that's how you found out."

He nodded his head. "Did you hate them for that?"

"No, not at all."

"Did your parents fight?"

I started getting used to the questions and it no longer felt like I was talking to Carter. It was nice to talk about this because for a while I forgot what my old life was like. Especially with Emma. It's funny how some things can change so quickly and all of a sudden it's like you're so used to the present that you don't even remember how it was to live in California with a sister and parents that weren't divorced.

"Yeah, a lot actually. The only reason they stayed together was for Emma and I. And eventually they couldn't take it anymore, especially with the...you know."

"Yeah," He paused. "I'm sorry to hear about that."

"It was bound to happen eventually I think, but I still wonder if they would've made it."

The moment took me back to the hospital where I laid with Luke and told him everything. About Emma. About Asher. He seemed to listen when I never even asked him too and now laying here with Carter makes me wonder if I've been making the same mistakes. I was never scared of other guys who were as nice as Asher was in the beginning, but now I can't help but think that I ought to be. The sudden distrust of everything and everyone I once knew.

"My parents fought a lot too," he said after a while.

"I'm sorry." I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"When I was eleven I watched my dad murder my mom. They were fighting and I walked down the stairs to see my dad holding my gun at her."

"Carter, I..."

"I screamed at my dad, but I must have scared him because as he turned to look at me, his finger gripped the trigger and then next thing I saw was blood coming from behind the kitchen island. I stood there in pure horror. I killed my mom, but he pulled the trigger."

"What did you do?"

"I continued standing there. I felt so guilty, I loved my mom more than anything in the world. My dad walked towards me and I backed against the wall. I was terrified of him, more than any super villain I could imagine at that age. He put the gun on the table and came over to hug me, but I didn't want to do it. After he told me that he needed me to do him the biggest favor in the world. 'I need you to say you shot mommy, son. You don't want to lose me too, do you?' I didn't know what I wanted, but I thought he'd kill me too if I said no, so I told the police I did it. And part of me feels like I actually did it."

I didn't say anything because there's nothing to say in this kind of situation. He sounded tired and I didn't want to keep him awake, but he continued on his own.

"I had to see a psychiatrist twice a week after that. I hated going, but I never told them the truth because after a while my dad started to believe it was me who shot my mom. He never said anything about him shooting her after that. He was always asked what it was like to raise a child with psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies, and he just said it was hard. Not 'It was an accident' or 'He was practicing and he missed'. It was just hard to raise a kid with sociopathic tendencies. I didn't even know what that word meant when I was eleven. No one would would believe now that I didn't shoot her."

"I believe you," I said impulsively.

He reached out and grabbed my hand. I froze, but I didn't want him to notice so I went back to breathing normally as quickly as I could. Our fingers interlocked and his thumb stroked my hand.

"You can only be called a sociopath so many times before you start to believe it yourself. I never forgave my dad for making me take the blame. And I'll never forgive myself for not telling the police what actually happened. The only good thing that guy ever did for me after that was not letting child services take me away and I'd hardly call that good."

"Wow, I'm really sorry. I don't know what else to say," I told him.

"It's alright don't say anything. You ought to get some rest anyways."

He squeezed my hand but he didn't let go. I closed my eyes and nothing else was said for the rest of the night. I thought about Asher laying on the cold cement with a broken rib and about Carter who watched his mother die. I thought about my mom then too and her relationship with my dad and how he was doing overseas. Did he know yet? Is he even alive to know? I couldn't stop thinking about everything and eventually I was able to escape it all when I finally fell asleep.