Royal Games (The Royals of Monterra) (13 page)

Slamming the phone down, he came and sat next to me. He pulled me into his lap, murmuring soothing words against my head that actually seemed to help. If I closed my eyes, I could concentrate on the feel of his strong chest and arms and let his delicious scent overwhelm my crazy senses. I almost forgot about how we were going to get smooshed between the walls and then plummet to our death.

“Why are you claustrophobic? I took a psych class at M . . . I mean, at college. Isn’t it usually because of some childhood trauma?”

I barked out a harsh laugh, folding my arms as chills racked my torso. “It is most definitely because of some childhood trauma.”

“Do you want to talk about it? Maybe it would help.”

I never talked about it. But there was something about him filling all of my senses that made me put my guard down. I normally didn’t tell people because I didn’t want to be treated differently. I didn’t want them to pity me or think I was weird. But somehow I knew Rafe wouldn’t feel that way.

“I’ve never told anyone else this. I was raised in a cult.” That was the first time I had ever said those words out loud. “My mother was a bit of a wild child. She’d left the farm in Iowa to become an actress in Hollywood. All of that caught up with her and she got pregnant. She got married, but my father walked out before I was born and he disappeared. And she was so devastated by getting knocked up at such a young age that she did a total one-eighty and got super religious.”

“Which is why you’re named Genesis,” he encouraged me, pressing feathery soft kisses against my temple, giving me strength.

“Yeah. But apparently it wasn’t enough. Nothing was strict enough for her. She wanted a religion she could practice on a daily basis. One that she could devote her whole life to. Obviously it was a little late for her to become a nun, but she kept searching. That’s when John-Paul found her.”

I hadn’t said his name out loud in eleven years, and even now it made me feel a bit like the characters in
Harry Potter
. I almost would have preferred to call him He Who Must Not Be Named. Like saying his name would make him suddenly appear.

“Who is John-Paul?”

Even though I hadn’t seen him in years, I could still picture him perfectly. He had seemed almost like a giant when I was a child, with dark brown hair and dark eyes. He had a charming, toothy smile that masked the devil underneath. “He was the cult leader. He was charismatic and a lying thief. My mom and my aunt had a nice inheritance from their parents, and my mom turned her half of it over to him. When I was a year old, we moved from California to his commune in Washington State.”

“This was the man who taught ‘purity in mind, body, and spirit’?”

I let out a shuddering breath and nodded. “He also believed very strongly in ‘spare the rod, spoil the child.’ Most of our day was spent either in prayer, church services, or doing chores to support our community.”

I forced my eyes shut. I would not cry. I promised myself I would never cry about all of that ever again. “That’s what he’d called it. A community. A family. So that no one would wise up one day and leave when they realized that they were all basically slaves to one man’s desires. So if you didn’t do something perfectly . . .” My voice trailed off.

Rafe’s arms tightened around me. “He hit you?”

“No. Nothing like that. He just locked me in a coal bin. One hour for every year of my life.”

Chapter 13

He let out a string of angry-sounding words in a language I didn’t recognize. Spanish? Italian, maybe? Whatever it was, while it sounded beautiful, I was pretty sure he was swearing.

As if he realized what he was doing, he switched back into English. “And how often did he put you in there?”

“Two or three times,” I said, leaning my head against his shoulder, burying my face into his neck. I hadn’t thought there was a cure for my condition, but it turned out all I needed was one hot man to hold and distract me.

“Total?”

“No, two or three times each day. He told me I was a very wicked child, that God expected me to be more somber and serious. No matter what I did, it was never enough. I was always being punished.”

He swore again, this time in English. His cursing vocabulary was impressive in both range and breadth. “What is his last name? Where is he now?” he demanded.

That made me sit up as terror and panic clawed at my insides. “You can’t go looking for him. You can’t let him find me. He’ll take me back. Promise me. Promise me that you will never go looking for him.”

His eyes flashed angrily, and he let out a deep breath. “I give you my word. I won’t go looking for him. But if you’re so afraid of him, why did you come on a national television show?”

The terror receded, and I shifted myself back into his embrace, letting him cuddle me. “I’m not worried about that. They shun all ‘wicked’ civilization, and they don’t believe in electricity. No computers, no televisions, no movies. They stay on the commune where they grow all their own food, make their own clothes, and build their own homes.” John-Paul would go off on recruiting missions sometimes, and while he didn’t seem to have an issue traveling in cars, he wouldn’t have done something so base as read a newspaper or watch a TV show.

“Where was your mother? Why did she let him do this?”

That was one of the hardest things to deal with. I had loved my mother, but I’d always felt like she never loved me like she loved John-Paul. Like I was a reminder of her sins. “She was one of his wives. I think all the women there were brainwashed. He had conditioned them to put him first and to do whatever he said when he said. Even the wives of other men. She never interfered when I was being punished.”

“No wonder you’re claustrophobic,” he said.

I thought of the hours I’d spent in that giant wooden box. Light would filter in sometimes through cracks in the wood, but never enough so I could see. I would beg and plead not to be put in the box, but my cries always fell on deaf ears. I would scratch the lid until my fingers bled and scream until I was hoarse. And I would push against the lid with all my might. It never did any good.

I tried so hard to behave, to be the way he expected me to be. But it didn’t make any difference. Looking back now, I realized the punishments had nothing to do with my actions and were just a part of his brainwashing process, intended to make me totally dependent on him and terrified of him at the same time. I would do whatever John-Paul said just to avoid being put back in the box.

“How did you get out of the cult?”

“My mother got sick. I think it was probably cancer. But they didn’t believe in doctors and planned to heal her with chanting. I was twelve. And John-Paul told my dying mother that the only way to purify me and remove my sins was for me to become one of his wives and take her place. He gave me a new name to signify my change in status. Mary-Pauline. He arranged for the ceremony and had the whole community prepare. To make sure I didn’t run off, he put me in the box for three days, having my mother bring me food and water. The day before the wedding, he stopped by to tell me that I should be grateful to him because after we were married, he wouldn’t put me in the box anymore.” I pulled in a shaky breath. “That if I continued to misbehave, he’d administer my punishment in his bed.”

More swearing from Rafe. “What kind of man wants to marry a child?”

“A manipulative, lying, disgusting megalomaniac like John-Paul. He told me he’d never let me leave him. And that if I somehow managed it, he would always find me. He told me that I belonged to him.” A shudder ran through me as I perfectly recalled his face while he said it, and I remembered knowing that what he said was true. I was scared by the evil I saw in his eyes. I knew that he would hunt me down if I tried to leave him.

Rafe was holding me so tightly that I had a hard time breathing. When I told him as much, he slightly relaxed his arms. “The night before my wedding, my mother opened the box. She told me to be quiet and to follow her. She led me to the cult’s one car, and we pushed it for a long time until we were far enough away. I don’t know how we managed it. That’s how desperate I was to get away.” For the rest of my life, I would never forget the fear in her eyes, the way she shook as she shushed me and helped me climb out of the coal bin.

Now his fingers were kneading my shoulders. “She drove me into town, where Aunt Sylvia was waiting for me. I’d never met her, but she looked just like an older version of my mom. My mother told me that Aunt Sylvia was going to take me to their family farm, and that John-Paul would never find it because my mom had always used her married name, Kim Kristofferson. There would be no connection to a Sylvia Summers or the Summers farm in Iowa. She hugged me goodbye, told me to be good, and said that she loved me. That was the last time I saw her.” My voice broke at the last sentence.

“Why didn’t she leave with you?”

I shrugged in response. I honestly didn’t know. It had all happened so fast—as soon as my mom drove off, Sylvia put me in her rental car and drove us to the airport to exchange it for another car, which she paid cash for and later told me she’d used a fake name and ID to rent. At the airport she gave me an outfit to change into that was nothing like the old-fashioned dresses I had grown up wearing, and had me stuff all of my hair into a knit cap. She hoped that would be enough to stop anyone from following us.

But I’d always wondered why my mom didn’t come with us. Was it because she didn’t want to come? Was she just removing her younger competition? Had she just given up?

Or had it been something nobler? Had she stayed so that I could go? John-Paul considered us his possessions. Like we were dolls or puppets that moved around only at his whim. No one defied him. And he told whatever lie he had to in order to maintain total control. Had she sacrificed herself to give me a chance to get away from him?

Then I explained to Rafe about his lies, how he had told me so many of them about the real world that when I first moved into the farmhouse I was too scared to leave. And I was still terrified that John-Paul would find me. So Aunt Sylvia homeschooled me for three years. She was so patient, and she brought the pastor over to work with me. I immediately distrusted him because of his position. But he was nothing like John-Paul, and he was honest, loving, and kind. He had been a counselor before feeling called to his ministry. He was the one who helped me move on, who had showed me the world wasn’t a scary place, and that John-Paul had been a consummate liar. It’s one of the reasons I did so much volunteering at the church. I needed to give back.

When I got to high school, I was ridiculously awkward and backward, and Whitney was the one who helped me learn to socialize and act normal. She never knew what I had been through and just thought I was weird. I told him how much she meant to me and how I felt like I’d never be able to repay her.

A wave of nausea hit me as the panic set back in, and somehow Rafe must have been able to tell because he went back to saying soft words while rubbing my back. This used to happen in the coal bin, too. I would freak the freak out, and then there would be a period of calm until the fear returned.

As the anxious feelings again abated, he spoke. “But you use the last name Kelley.”

“I probably should have changed my last name to Summers, but Kelley was my mother’s stage name. Aunt Sylvia asked me what last name I wanted to use, and I chose it after the stories she’d told me about my mom wanting to be an actress. It made me feel connected to her, and to her hopes and dreams. And it was all I had left of my mom. That and the red hair.”

He paused, thinking. “The night we met, you told me that your mother died. How do you know for sure?”

When I was younger, some part of me used to imagine that she had beat her sickness, outsmarted John-Paul again, and was coming to find me. Even though I knew it wasn’t true. “One of the sister wives that my mother had been closest to sent Aunt Sylvia an email. It was my mother’s last request, and she risked a lot to let us know. I’ll always be grateful for that.”

“So you’ve never even been to your mother’s grave.”

Hot, burning tears filled my eyes. I choked them back, not wanting to sob. I had promised myself a long time ago that I would never cry about my childhood ever again. “No, I haven’t,” I finally managed. “I don’t even know where she’s buried.”

“That’s terrible,” he said, hugging me closer. “So it was just you and your aunt?”

“For a few years. Then she met Richard Parker at a fundraising event in Iowa City. Aunt Sylvia fell hard and fast for him. They got married two months after they first met. She’d never been married before, and I was so excited to have what felt like a real family and for her to have someone she loved. I was worried about her being alone because I was about to go off to college. Then three weeks after the wedding, he cleaned out all of their joint banking accounts, including her inheritance money, and skipped town. He left us dead broke. That’s why I had to sell Marigold. A month after that, Sylvia was diagnosed with MS.” The doctors had thought the extreme stress of her situation had led to her first flare-up.

I tilted my head back to look up at him. There was so much concern, affection, and tenderness in his gaze that I sighed. “The sheriff did some digging and found out that his real name was Richard Owens. He had pulled the same scam a bunch of times before.” It had bankrupted us. We never had any issue taking care of the farm before, but after that everything became a struggle. Aunt Sylvia’s flare-ups prevented her from trying to find a full-time job because we never knew when the next one would happen. We sold off everything we could, and I went to work. We constantly struggled.

“Did they ever catch him?”

“No. As far as the authorities know, he hasn’t struck again in the United States. Their guess is that he’s in some non-extradition country living off of all the money he stole.”

“Hmm.” It was an odd sound for him to make, and I wondered what he was thinking. “That’s a lot of hardship, and yet you still stay positive.”

“I’m not the only person in the world who’s suffered. I do think happiness is a choice. I don’t mean for people who suffer from depression or something. But for most people, it’s a choice. We get to decide how we feel. And I choose to be happy.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. I brushed my fingers against the side of his face, and he gave me a hint of a smile. “I’m sorry you’re scared and anxious right now, and I’m even more sorry for what you’ve been through. And this probably isn’t the time, but I want to let you know that you make me happy. Happier than I thought possible. And it’s been a really long time since I’ve felt truly happy.”

His sincerity was evident. Now my heart was racing for a reason other than terror. It felt like he was saying something more, something deeper, about his feelings without actually saying it. He wasn’t doing this for cameras or because someone expected him to. He really meant it. I wondered what had happened that had made him sad. I hoped he would tell me when he was ready.

“Back at ya,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “Present circumstances not included.”

At that he threw his head back and laughed. The sound was contagious, and I laughed along with him.

As the laughter tapered off, his eyes were bright with merriment. He was going to kiss me again, and I very much wanted him to.

But there was something else I needed to tell him, now that he knew everything. I put my hand to his chest to stop him. “Given what I just told you, I want you to know that I can’t tolerate lying. Of any degree or any kind. I know that’s a little heavy-handed, but after living through two horrible men who manipulated, stole, and lied to get what they wanted, it’s a deal-breaker for me. I won’t go through it again. I don’t think I’d ever get over it.”

That light in his gaze dimmed and then died altogether. It was a warning I gave to all the guys I dated, but without the accompanying backstory. I hadn’t found one yet who managed to be totally honest. I hoped Rafe could be. He turned his head right as the elevator started back up. He stood, still not making eye contact with me, and I wondered whether it was my imagination or if he was hiding something from me as he helped me to my feet.

Now I knew why he didn’t say anything, because he had been lying to me on that elevator like a Lying McLiar. I sat there, opening myself up to him completely, telling him how important it was for him to be honest, and he didn’t tell me the truth. In those moments I had been so vulnerable and shaken up that I think if he had come clean and just told me that he had an identical twin brother, and that they were both pretending to be the same person as a twist for the show, and that he was a prince, I probably would have forgiven him. I could have accepted it and moved on.