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back, giving her more time to recover. He sensed that she was gathering up her courage and strength to talk to him and he didn’t want to force anything.
    She looks like she’s been forced in too many ways in her life already.
    Finally, Katie pulled back and looked at Adam. He gazed down at her, his face open and surprisingly sweet. He didn’t say anything.
    “I… I don’t know where to start.”
    He searched her eyes. “You don’t have to tell me anything, Katie.”
    “I want to, though. I… I need to talk.”
    “OK.”
    She ran her fingers over his bicep, tracing the tattoo there, over and over again. “When I was five, my Dad died. In a plane crash. I was with him.”
    Adam touched her face. “You poor thing.”
    “My Mom didn’t – didn’t do so well on her own. She remarried fast, within a year of Dad dying. The guy she married, my stepfather, was a… a monster.”
    Adam sucked in his breath, already knowing her whole story. The burns on her thighs were screaming witnesses to what had happened to her.
    “He hurt my mother, badly. He controlled her with violence and no matter how angry I still am at her for what she let happen under her roof, I do know that. She – she should have done things differently, but I understand why she didn’t.”
    “I’m sorry, Katie.”
    It was as if she didn’t hear him. “The abuse started almost immediately – he beat me and my brother. Locked us in the closet for days on end. Starved us. It went on like this until I was eleven and Ryan was thirteen, I guess, and then it… changed for me. It became more… sexual.”
    Adam closed his eyes, dreading what she was going to say next. He tightened his arms around her, as if somehow he could stop what was coming.
    “The first time he – he…” She fell silent.
    “Baby, you don’t have to talk about this. I know what he did to you.”
    Her eyes were unfocused. “I was twelve when he first raped me in my own bed. That was also the first time he burned me.” She gestured down at her thighs. “He told me it was because I was a dirty whore and every time I looked at that burn, I was to remember that. He said… he said that he wanted that knowledge literally burned in to me.”
    Adam shook with the effort of not getting to his feet and running in to the night to find this guy. How are these people created? Where the fuck do they come from?
    “I could never figure out why he’d burn me afterwards sometimes and not at other times. I began to think that… the burns were extra punishment. Like, I’d done something really bad that day, something that meant that I deserved extra pain.”
    Adam was horrified. “Oh, God, Katie. Do you still think that?”
    She looked up at him. “Sometimes. Sometimes I do.”
    “No. You did nothing – nothing – to deserve any of what he did to you.” He ran his fingers over her cheek, noticing how cold she was. He wrapped a blanket around her and pulled her back in to his arms.
    “Better?”
    “Yes.” She smiled at him, a real smile that reached her eyes. “Thanks, Adam.”
    “Did you hear what I said? About you doing nothing to deserve what happened?”
    “I did.”
    “You do know that it’s not your fault, right?”
    “Sometimes I know that. Sometimes I forget.”
    They sat quietly for a few minutes, both lost in thought.
    “Katie? Can I ask you something?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where we’re going… to the man who’s so sick. The man who’s going to die…”
    She looked at him and the steel and hatred in her eyes took him aback. “It’s him. That bastard is finally dying, Adam, and I want to be there to watch him take his last breath. I have to be sure he’s really gone. Then maybe I’ll be free to start again.”
    **
    They were lying down together on top of the sleeping bag, tucked under the blankets. Katie’s head was on Adam’s shoulder and she was relaxed. Her fingers were lightly tracing the muscles on his huge chest, liking how it felt to touch him. That