Page 19 of Fighting Shadows
Noah
I think I’m going to be sick.
I don’t know if it’s from the concussion that is making my temple throb or the horrifying realization that my dad is a literal psycho.
“How old is she?” I ask, my eyes fixated on the girl on the bed above me.
“Eighteen.”
Horror dawns over me as I do the mental math. My dad is forty-four, and he’s been obsessed with her since she was nine.
My hand curls into a fist, flexing as the metal shackles feel like a dead weight around my wrist.
I need to get her out of here and back to the people who no doubt love her and have no clue where she is.
I know I should’ve kept my cool, but I was so angry seeing her shackled to that bed, her eyes fluttering under her eyelids as sweat clung to her practically translucent skin.
“She was a child when you became obsessed with her?”
“I didn’t become obsessed. We fell in love,” he says so matter-of-factly that I can feel bile rising in my throat.
“That’s crazy. You know that, right? How do an adult and a child fall in love with one another?” I shout at him, not caring if it makes him angry.
Charlie’s face turns molten while his jaw ticks, and a vein throbs in his forehead.
“It is love. You don’t get an opinion on what she is to me; you are only here to fix her,” he screams in my face, his finger poking me harshly in the chest as he looms over me, spittle flying from his mouth.
Shaking my head in disgust, I can’t wrap my head around that this man is my dad after everything he’s done to her.
He told me stories about her and how they met, and even though he was with another woman, he couldn’t get his mind off of her. That when you meet the love of your life, you know.
He made it all sound so romantic, making me believe in it, but now I realize it was all a lie.
That it was him being amonster.
Tearing my gaze away from him, I look over to her and try to see how sick she is, but from the angle I’m at, all I can see is her clammy legs that are covered in bruises.
“I’ll need to get closer to her to find out what’s wrong,” I say to him, hoping he sees reason enough to undo this shackle and let me at least tend to her.
“I won’t let you out of that thing until I know you won’t try to take her from me. So tell me what to do, and how can I help her?”
Fuck.
Sighing because I see no way out of this right now, I tell him to grab my bag, which he willingly does.
“I need you to find the bottle that says penicillin and the syringe. It’s a fast-acting antibiotic that should help her for now until I can see what’s going on.”
“This will save her?” my dad asks me, his tone much more vulnerable now.
If I hadn’t seen the chains with my own eyes, I would have thought he loved her, but this is an obsession.
I’m piss your pants terrified, but I have to have some hope that my dad wouldn’t hurt me over a girl.
I’m just chained here to help her, and maybe I can convince him that I believe that they genuinely love one another, so he lets me go. Then, I can get her help, contact the police, and bring her home to her family.
“It’ll help Dad,” I tell him, “Just insert the syringe into the vial and pull the plunger back to fill the barrel.”
He focuses intently on his movements as he does as I tell him to, a slight tremor in his hands.
