Broken Doll {ManxMan}

CHAPTER 40

"Starting from the beginning might just confuse you too much," I muttered, sitting on one of the couches in the library, "because what happened to me, where I've been, all correlates to what happened to my father that night. In fact... everything that's happened to the world was because of that night."

"Don't tell me you blame yourself," Emyr laughed out on a breath, "Carter you didn't start the war."

"Not directly," I agreed, then bowed my head, hands clinging together, "How do I even start...?"

"Start with where you've been for the past fifteen or sixteen years," Emyr suggested, and I nodded slowly.

"I've been with Bay," I said, lowering my voice as I spoke the next part, "I've been with the Con Rồng."

"I.... that... that's not... that's not possible, Carter."

I lifted my head to see Emyr's reaction, noting the myriad of emotions playing on his face, which had tightened, his eyes gaping at me. He looked tortured, confused, angry... I couldn't blame him.

"I know you were friends with him as well as with me," I tried to comfort, "but try to understand, none of what I'm about to tell you is a lie or fabricated at all. Okay?"

He opened his mouth, but decided to nod instead of speaking, and I continued my explanation.

"Do you remember when his mother died?"

Emyr nodded, "Allison, yea... that was a big deal when it went down."

"After it happened... my dad started drinking heavily. He never used to, he didn't even drink wine, but he lost two wives and was stuck with two sons... his heart had been broken twice over and he had no steady way of supporting the three of us, so he just... hid in liquor. Bay... he started to pull away from me, mentally. He wasn't the same, and for a few months he just... stopped talking completely. I tried to help him, I tried to help them both, but I couldn't... I was just a kid, and... the more I tried to help my father, the drunker he got, like seeing me... made him see my mom... he started hitting me after a while. He started beating me."

"What?" Emyr sounded breathless in disbelief, and my hands curled into the knees of my jeans.

"Please believe me, I'm not making it up-."

"Carter I believe you, but why didn't you tell me?" Emyr demanded desperately, "I could have helped! You and Bay could have come to stay with my mom and I, we could have called the authorities, gotten your dad help!"

"You and your mother were barely getting by as it was, if Bay and I had been thrown into the mix who knows what could have happened to your situation!" I argued back, "Besides, it wasn't just my dad, it was Bay too! He never hit me, he always protected me when my dad got violent, but... he changed too, Emyr. What happened to his mom, he was obsessed with it. He watched slasher movies with graphic rape scenes, researched assault."

"Being curious is natural, healthy even, when a parent dies a certain way."

"Yes, I agree, but raping someone isn't natural at all," I countered, "but that's what Bay did, a few months after her funeral. A boy in our class, you might not remember. The charges were dropped and it never went to trial, but I think he was just too scared to testify, and-and seeing how Bay's personality had changed... I didn't doubt it... what he did."

Emyr looked physically ill, his face tinged yellow, and he swallowed thickly before parting his lips, "Please tell me you're joking. Bay would never... he's a good person, Carter, you're the only one he's ever cared about, he would never do anything to compromise himself if it meant he couldn't still look after you."