Part 7

Present Day

I left Melody in the care of someone else for the day. I'm sure Anna would have liked to see her again, but I'm not that kind. Melody doesn't need to be here. I don't need to be here, but Anna deserves at least to see me once before she goes away on her little vacation.

I have no plans to ever see her again. It's time we separate our lives. She should get a chance to have her own and be free and clear of staining my life.

When Anna sees me at the front door she seems surprised. I guess that means Cameron didn't feel the need to fill her in on what happened last night. She's already keeping secrets from Anna, that's not a good way to start a trusting friendship.

"What are you doing here?" Anna doesn't sound happy to see me. There's nothing new there.

"I'm going to the clinic with you." I walk past her into the house. "They might need to know who your closest relative is or something."

Anna shuts the door softly. "I could have just given them your number."

"I can leave." I walk back to the door but Anna has remained between me and it. "There are other places I'd rather be and need to be."

"You've always had other places to be." She sounds like she's trying to hurt me. That doesn't hurt me. It's not true.

"You know better than to say that, Anna." She knows a lot better than that. "I was always there for you. I went to the elementary school plays, the band recitals, the tennis matches. I was always there every time you turned around to look." None of that mattered in the end though. She still became a complete fuck up.

My sister has nothing to say. She can't respond to me because she knows I'm right. All she ever had to do was call my name or even think it and I'd be there for her, but she screwed all that up real nicely.

What the hell am I doing here again? I could have found more creative ways to torture myself.

"Maybe part of the problem is what you did so that you could be there," Anna says softly then steps away from the door. She's going to let me walk out and away from her. I'll get to continue my new trend of not being there for her at all.

I put my hand on the door knob but Cameron's voice calls from behind me, "Leaving so soon."

My hand drops from the knob. "I wouldn't think of it." I turn around to face her. The black eye I'd given her isn't looking so black this morning. She must be an expert with make up. "Especially without seeing how you're doing."

Cameron smirks and holds out her hand to me but doesn't bother to move any closer. She wants me to step up to her.

My stride is smooth. I take her hand and give her a real smile. "It's good to see you, Cam."

She appraises my body and lifts her brow when she reaches my knee. It hurts like hell, but she's not going to be able to tell. I won't show her that. I'm wearing jeans so she can't even tell that my knee is wrapped up so tightly that the circulation to my foot stopped a very long time ago.

"It's good to see you too, Gwen. Do you need anything? What something to eat? Some ice perhaps."

Anna steps between us. "What's going on?"

"We're pretending to be friends," I tell her. "I thought that was blatantly obvious." I move away from the both of them.

"I'm sorry, Anna." Cameron apologizes for what to me seems like no reason at all.

"So are we going to do this clinic thing or not?" I'm not about to see a 'moment' develop between the two of them. I actually don't want any moments to happen at all, ever.

Like I told Anna, I'm not a matchmaker.

Anna looks from Cameron to me. "Maybe you shouldn't go. It was a mistake asking you."

I should leave. I'm not going to be involved in Anna's games. "You make a lot of mistakes, Anna."

"And you've probably kept track of them all." Anna steps closer to Cameron. Does she think Cameron can protect her from me? That's not possible.

"Asking me to go with you wasn't one of your mistakes." That throws both of them off. "You should get a chance to say your final goodbyes and tell me how much you hate me."

"What do you mean?" My sister looks worried. What should she be worried about? This is the last of us. She shouldn't be worried about that.

"You're on your own, Anna. I'm not going to come pick you up on your last day, if you make it that far. I'm officially withdrawing from your life and I thought I should do that in person." She doesn't even deserve that amount of respect from me.

Anna's eyes blink rapidly and I think she may have some tears left in her about our doomed relationship. She should have been like me and gotten rid of them a long time ago. "And Melody?"

"You can't just take her daughter away from her." Cameron obviously doesn't know what I can and can't do.

"Melody hasn't been Anna's daughter in a long time." She never was Anna's daughter because Anna never acted like her mother. I was the one that took care of everything. I gave them both everything and Anna still couldn't make it work.

She failed again.

Fourteen Years Prior

Gwendolyn never made it to the house. She passed out on the driveway and Anna found her there on her way to school. Anna screamed so loudly that their neighbors from all the way down the block heard her.

"Don't die, Gwenie!" She cried over her sister's body. "Please don't die."

If Gwendolyn had heard her Babygirl's cries maybe that would have been enough to get her to change their life again, but as it was Gwendolyn couldn't hear anything. She had lost a lot of blood and knew nothing of real time.

She missed the ambulance coming and Kacia having to calm down the frantic Anna. She missed the doctors calling her a lost cause and missed the police visit. No one knew what happened. No one had heard gunshots the night before. No one could figure out why Gwendolyn, such a hard working, outstanding young woman would be the victim of such violence.

It took a week for Gwendolyn to wake up. The doctors had predicted she'd never wake. She proved them wrong, even though Anna told everyone that Gwenie would never leave her. Gwenie would never give up.

The police wanted to speak with Gwendolyn immediately, but she wouldn't see them. She told the hospital staff and anyone who bothered to listen that she wouldn't speak to anyone until she got a chance to speak to Anna. Anna always came first.

So the officers went to pick up Anna from school, the only place Kacia thought would be safe for Anna. Kacia knew that Gwendolyn wouldn't end up getting shot in an act of random violence. She wasn't too sure that whoever had done this to Gwendolyn wouldn't come looking for her while she was vulnerable in a hospital bed.

That's why Kacia didn't wait for Anna to show up before she talked to Gwendolyn. She needed to know if the children were in danger. She needed to know if she was in danger.

"They left to pick up Anna," she said from the end of Gwendolyn's hospital bed. "They'll be back soon."

"Why didn't you keep her here?" Gwendolyn pushed herself in a sitting position. She was in pain but she wouldn't show it.

Kacia shrugged. "I didn't know if it was safe. I didn't know what happened to you."

"I got shot in the shoulder," Gwen replied with a grin. "I thought everyone could realize that."

"The night you were shot," Kacia stumbled over her words. "The night you were shot you said you had business to take care of. People don't get shot making videos, Gwen."

She didn't have a story made up and she couldn't tell the truth. Kacia couldn't be trusted with the truth. She wasn't strong enough. "You don't have anything to worry about, Kac. No one will be looking for me." Maybe that's why she'd killed Brandon. She didn't want anyone to come after her. With Brandon dead no one would.

"So what are you going to tell the police?" Kacia couldn't look at Gwendolyn.

"I'll tell them what they want to hear." Dealing with the police was easy. "I was on my way home from a night out when some nameless faces starting harassing me. When I started to fight back they pulled out a gun and shot me. It was too dark to see any of their faces."

Gwendolyn spoke in monotone. Her story had all the right words but lacked all the expected emotion, but Kacia was sure that when it came time for Gwendolyn to put on her little performance that it would be absolutely perfect. All the emotion would be there. All the words would sound perfect. Everything would be exactly like it needed to be.

"The police told me they're having problems verifying your ID." Kacia thought it was information Gwendolyn should know. She might need to come up with a lie for that too.

Gwendolyn nodded and said nothing until Babygirl came running into her hospital room with a great big smile on her face followed closely by Kacia's daughter Lindsey. They both climbed onto Gwendolyn's bed overexcited with being able to see Gwendolyn's brightly shining green eyes. She was alive and that made everything in those two little girls' lives right again.

Looking at the three of them, it wasn't hard for Kacia to decide that she would do everything within her power to make sure that Gwendolyn's lies worked. She had to be Gwendolyn's partner in their life together. She had to support Gwendolyn's lies, because if she didn't then their family would fall apart. Gwendolyn was the center, the glue, the provider, the protector, the everything. Without Gwendolyn, Kacia was sure they wouldn't survive.

"I'm going to go outside and tell the police to wait until you are ready for them," Kacia walked out of the room and took the police officers to get them each a warm cup of coffee. She told them Gwendolyn needed time alone with her family. Didn't she deserve at least that after what she had suffered?

Present Day

Cameron and I are sitting alone in her car outside of the clinic. Anna has been self-checked in and I'm still trying to figure out what the hell it is that I'm doing here. Anna didn't say a word to me after we got into Cameron's car and left her house. She didn't even say goodbye when she was being led down that long hallway into recovery.

She said her goodbyes to Cameron but pretended that I didn't even exist. I was a ghost in that room but that doesn't really bother me. I'm a ghost to a lot of people, why should it be different with Anna?

"She really wanted me to come, did she?" I'm staring straight ahead not bothering to visually acknowledge the woman sitting next to me.

"I don't think she was expecting for you to tell her that you're taking her daughter out of her life." Cameron starts up the car probably wishing that I hadn't gotten back in with her once we left the clinic.

"Anna's the one responsible for taking her daughter out of her life, not me." I'm not the big evil sister that flew in from Hell to ruin lives.

Cameron hasn't put the car in gear yet. Maybe she wants to have a long conversation in front of a drug clinic in a car about children. I'm up for talking about her son too. "But you choose to do it now? When she needs her family most?"

"Her family was always there for her, Mendoza. She just turned her back on them one too many times."

Cameron's hands fall from the steering wheel and she turns her body towards me. Her movements aren't as smooth as they should be. She's sore from last night. That's good. The woman deserves some pain. "Don't you mean that she turned her back on you one too many times?"

"It'd be easy to think that wouldn't it?" I grin because Cameron doesn't know anything. She may have heard the stories but the stories leave out so much of the truth. I've done so much damage control that the only people who know the truth are those that were directly involved. The only people who know are the people that lived it.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"I'm not her only family, Mendoza." I'm just the one that bothered to still answer her phone calls and pay her bills and make sure she had at least something in this world to live in besides a box. I'm the one that stayed around.

"She didn't mention anyone else."

"Why would she?" Those stories couldn't possibly make her look good. "You're an addict, Mendoza. You know what your kind are capable of. What makes you think that Anna was immune to addictive behavior?"

Mendoza can't answer me. The minute Anna became hooked on the drugs she wasn't Anna anymore. She was the Addict Anna. She was the Big Double A. She was no longer my sister. That's why those bastards who got her hooked did it. They wanted me to repeatedly lose the one person in my life I cared about and unfortunately death is nothing like watching an addict's life.

"Anna doesn't deserve what she was handed." Is that the only thing Cameron can come up with? Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. No one really deserves what they get, no one, not even me.

"How do you know that? For all we know she's paying for some karma from way back when. Maybe she was Hitler, who knows?" With how things turned out, maybe she was Gandhi back to solve another world problem but got lost along the way. There're so many things Anna could have been or could have done. So many things that she could have been great at other than being a fuck up. She's been excellent at being a fuck up.

"Why did you even come here?" Cameron's hands go back to the steering wheel and my heart gets this fluttery feeling like we might actually go somewhere. "Why not spread your hatred somewhere else?"

"My hatred?" I can do nothing but laugh. "You can't possibly grasp what my hatred is." Suddenly I'm very serious. "You've never seen it."

Cameron and I sit in her car looking not at each other but directly ahead of us. All those poor stupid souls walking around us, don't realize who they're in the presence of. All they see is two women sitting in a car in front of some rehab clinic, where they probably dropped off a loved one.

"I saw what you did to Aaron's guys," Cam puts the car in gear and pulls away from the clinic. "I've seen your handiwork, Eris."

She's using my other name. That's so sweet of her. "So why did you stop, Cam?" A smile appears on my face again. "Were you tired of looking at people like Anna and realizing that you were responsible for it? What did you tell yourself when you saw all the people whose lives were ruined because you and your boss wanted more money?"

She doesn't answer me. "How does it feel to have a life with a son, a beautiful house, booming career, lots of money, and sunshiny days knowing what you did?"

Her hands grip the steering wheel tighter. "I could ask you the same thing."

"You and me," I finally turn to her, "we're not the same. My girls know if they get mixed up with drugs then they're gone."

"Do you honestly believe that 'your girls' lives aren't ruined by what you have them do? You don't think a fifteen year old girl having sex with a man who is older than their father isn't a wee bit traumatic?" We've hit a traffic light and Cameron eases to a stop then turns to me. "Or how about the ones that have to fulfill all your client's desires no matter how perverse, and all this because you want more money?"

She has no idea what she's talking about. She's listening to rumors that exist only so that other girls will be turned off from seeking me out. It's a very competitive business. "Take me downtown," I'll show her that she is worse than me. "You'll have a tour."

Fourteen Years Prior

Once again, Gwendolyn had fixed everything. Her family was safe again. The police were looking for three young men who were roaming the streets on the unfortunate night that a young woman got shot. Gwendolyn had been asked her questions and she had answered them as the perfect victimized victim.

The hospital had released her with a warning to care for her arm and everything was back to normal. The girls were back in school, Kacia was back to her part time job and Gwendolyn was at home taking a leave of absence from work. She told Kacia she couldn't hold a camera properly without both hands.

Anna was ecstatic that her big sister would now be the one picking her up from school and taking her in every morning. She was even happier that Gwendolyn would come eat lunch with her during the day. All of Anna's classmates loved Gwendolyn and even Anna's teacher was happy to have Gwendolyn stick around during class time, when she could. It never hurt to have a little extra help, especially from someone who was incredibly good with children. Somehow, Gwendolyn hadn't forgotten the language of the young as she reached adulthood.

At least that's what everyone else saw. They saw what they wanted to see. They failed to ask some of the obvious questions that only seem to come to the minds of the dispassionate observer. They didn't ask why it was that Gwendolyn was so much more comfortable interacting with children rather than people her own age. They didn't ask Gwendolyn how it was she could smile at the children and why it was she glowed around them but glowed around no one else. They never asked her how it was she knew so much but never kept up with any of the current events going on around the globe.

No one asked her anything. No one demanded she give any answers for anything. Perhaps, it was because of something that happened innately in meeting the young woman. Perhaps, that when everyone got in front of her they lost something to her-the woman that was so great with the children.

"Gwenie can you help me with this problem?" Babygirl asked her face scrunched up in her confusion. It was the shapes she was having a problem with again. She couldn't quite remember how many sides a hexagon had.

Immediately Anna's voice tore Gwendolyn away from the attention she had been giving another student. "I'll be right there, Babygirl." Briefly her attention went back to the other student who she patted lightly on the back then stood up and walked over to Babygirl.

"This is hard," Anna whined.

"It's not hard," Gwenie quickly answered as she bent down. "It only seems hard because you're just now learning it."

Gwenie put her finger to the problem she knew Anna was having difficulty with and opened her mouth to explain the difference between a pentagon and hexagon again but was interrupted with the teacher re-entering the classroom with a younger woman in tow.

The official teacher of the first grade class garnered the attention of the class and introduced the woman at her side. Her name was Allison and she was working on getting licensed to teach. She was going to help out for a while and sometimes teach the class.

"What about Gwenie?" Zach, a small for his age, boy asked as he raised his hand to get permission to speak. He didn't like the idea of someone new coming to their class because that might mean that Gwenie would have to leave and he thought he spoke for all the students in his fear of losing the best big person friend they had ever had.

"Zach, eventually Gwendolyn will have to leave and return to her own work." The official teacher answered the boy with not quite enough reproach in her voice to be charged with being condescending.

"And I'm sure until that happens Gwendolyn will help me get to know all of you better," the teacher in training spoke for the first time.

Gwendolyn didn't stand from her kneeling position next to Anna but her voice filled the room just as clearly as the other two 'adults' in the room. "I'll do whatever I can to help." She smiled but it wasn't genuine; it wasn't as genuine as the one she had given the small boy who she had left to go to Anna.

Allison hadn't seen the smile Gwendolyn had given to the boy but she felt there was something wrong about the smile Gwendolyn gave her now. It felt different somehow, and if asked to explain how it was different she couldn't give any kind of comprehensible response. She might venture to say that there was something wrong about Gwendolyn's smile but that was hardly an explanation at all.

The students accepted the adults' reassurances and were encouraged to continue on with their schoolwork. It was getting close to reading time and math had to be done first. Gwendolyn finished helping her sister then stepped out into the hallway. She walked out of school building, through the back doors that exited into the playground. She sat down on a bench and looked over the vacant play equipment.

"I don't know what you do Gwendolyn, but maybe you should have become a teacher instead," Allison had followed Gwendolyn because she had a desire to understand Gwendolyn's smile. "All the children love you. I've never seen a classroom so engaged."

Gwendolyn smiled another smile Allison couldn't easily identify. "Maybe in another life I could have been a teacher."

Allison took a seat next to Gwendolyn, making sure to keep a good distance between them. "You're still young. You can still do it in this life."

"You're optimistic," this time Gwendolyn laughed. "That's a good quality for teacher's to have."

When Allison had arrived at the elementary school the entire staff was gossiping about a person named 'Gwendolyn'. They talked about how the young woman was shot and how well she was doing. They offered up amateur psychological analyses of Gwendolyn's state of mind. Everyone thought she was so strong to get through her ordeal, her horrible ordeal.

Gwendolyn rubbed at her shoulder. It usually started getting to her after a couple of hours at the school. The doctors had prescribed her pain medication, but she refused to take it. She was used to pain.

"Is your shoulder bothering you?" Allison felt the need to reach out and caress the younger woman's shoulder, but she never thought to ever give into the feeling.

"Not as much as it has before." Gwendolyn's hand dropped from her still healing shoulder. "I wouldn't recommend ever getting shot, though."

Allison gave a casual nod, unsure whether it was safe to ask Gwendolyn about her ordeal. Despite Gwendolyn's casual attitude about it, the new teacher didn't feel completely safe with broaching the topic. She actually didn't feel entirely safe around Gwendolyn either.

"Shouldn't you be learning how to teach?" Gwendolyn smiled once again. "That is what you choice to do with your life, isn't it?"

This time Allison couldn't help but smile back, despite her internal reservations about the young woman sitting next to her. Every nerve in her body was telling Allison to be careful around this much-loved 'big sister' but at the same time there was also a part of her that couldn't help but be partially drawn in by Gwendolyn. The young woman was beautifully captivating and that was a major part of the reason Allison had bothered to follow Gwendolyn out of the school building. "I wanted to make sure you were okay," Allison lifted her hand like she was going to place it somewhere on Gwendolyn's body but it dropped again as soon as she realized what it was she was doing.

Gwendolyn's brow rose, "Really?" She laughed lightly. "Here I thought no one could see my pain. I thought I was doing a good job at hiding it."

Allison knew Gwendolyn was talking about her shoulder, but as she looked deeply into Gwendolyn's entrancing green eyes she wasn't so sure that Gwendolyn was talking about something else entirely.

"Sometimes these things leak through our defenses, Gwendolyn." Allison made sure to keep her tone light. She didn't want to appear to be reading more into Gwendolyn's words than the other woman meant.

"You'll make a good teacher, Allison." Gwendolyn sat up straighter on the small bench. "My only recommendation is that you give yourself a better chance by actually being in the classroom." Like Allison, Gwendolyn made sure to keep her tone light. She knew she attracted Allison's attention and she was sure that she didn't want to keep it. There was something about the way Allison smiled and the tone when she spoke that made Gwendolyn slightly uncomfortable, unsettled. Allison was the type of person Gwendolyn definitely didn't want to be around. She was the type of person that made Gwendolyn feel unveiled.

Present Day

Cameron has miraculously followed my commands and now we're downtown. "I'm doing this against my better judgment," she says as she shuts off the car's engine.

"Really now? I would have never guessed that." I unlock the doors and then turn my attention to Cameron. "I feel I should tell you before you decide to get out of this car that if what you see here doesn't stay between the two of us then I'll kill you."

She focuses on me with a smirk on her face. "I'm starting to get tired of you threatening me."

"Good," I force a smile to my face, "because I'm already more than pissed off that I've become acquainted with you."

Her smirk fades. "I'm not so happy that you've weaseled yourself into my life either. Just being around you puts me and my son in danger."

If I wasn't in such a good mood right now from knowing that she's still hurting from last night, then I'd hit her. "Just being around you, Cammie, ensures your son a life of looking over his shoulder. Please, do us both a favor and don't act as stupid as you look."

By the look on Cameron's face it seems like I've hit a sore spot with her. "Get the fuck out of my car." She's got her hand back on the key in the ignition.

"Why?" This time my smile is genuine. "You have a problem with me telling the truth?"

"Get the fuck out of my car." She sounds really angry. I thought she was going to be better at keeping her cool than that.

"How did you ever make it as a drug dealer, Cammie?" My knee is all the sudden starting to feel a lot better now as I look at her crumbling façade. "It must have been the drugs you were taking that kept you going, because with this attitude of yours I know you couldn't have made it otherwise."

She starts her engine and I can only hope she's not stupid enough to think that doing that is going to suddenly make me get out. "Do you even remember half of the shit you did back then or were you too high all the time to remember?" I laugh. "I'm sure you have quite a few blank spots in the thing you call a brain."

Cameron's hands quickly fall from the stealing wheel and within moments her whole body is launched towards me. Her hands are trying to grab hold of my throat but I'm blocking their progress with my forearms. "You're kind of sensitive, aren't you?" I manage to say despite our struggle in this small space.

Her body presses harshly against mine and my head hits the window. My vision blacks out for a moment and when I get my bearings again the fingers of her left hand have found their way around my throat. "Say something now!" She yells from only centimeters in front of me. "Say something! Go ahead!"

I swallow despite the difficulty. "Your tone says I shouldn't," I struggle to say but make sure to finish with a smile.

Her fingers tighten around my throat. "Shut up!"

I do my best to laugh. "You are as stupid as you look."

The fingers get even tighter. I don't say anything else, but only because I can't and not because I don't want to. She pushes against me again and my vision is starting to blur from lack of oxygen. Our gazes lock and stay that way for a moment before she pushes against me once more then lets her hand drop from my throat. She moves away from me and I'm intent on not giving her the satisfaction of seeing me rub at my injured throat.

"You really have gotten soft, Cameron," My voice is raspy and every word hurts to say. "Once upon a time you would have actually killed me."

"You're a piece of shit," she replies but her eyes have dropped away from me and she's looking at her own hands like she can't believe what she just did.

I shrug. "I already know that."

My statement gets her attention and she's looking at me again. "Get the fuck out of my car," she whispers.

This time I nod at her command. "I'll see you around." I open the car door and carefully step out. I'm still feeling a little light headed and I don't want to end up falling on my face. As soon as I close the car door Cameron's driving away.

I smile as I watch her go because I know that she'll be the one renew our relationship. I can almost guarantee now that she'll lose some sleep over what I've just done to her. It's hard to get the people who show you a part of yourself you want to bury out of your head. So, Cameron will come to me. She'll come.

Fourteen Years Prior

"I don't even know what I'm doing here," Gwendolyn ran her hands through her hair in a rare show of nervousness. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

Allison moved over to her couch and sat down next to the overly nervous Gwendolyn. "It's just dinner." Allison's hand made contact with Gwendolyn's shoulder. "You don't have to be so nervous."

"You're Babygirl's teacher," Gwendolyn protested weakly.

"No I'm not, Gwen, not really." It had taken Allison months to talk Gwendolyn into coming to her small one bedroom apartment. Ever since the first day they had met Allison had slowly developed an odd fascination with Gwendolyn. Her interest was peaked even more when she realized that Gwendolyn trying to avoid her. For some reason Allison wanted to know Gwendolyn and she wanted to know why Gwendolyn's smiles unsettled her so much.

Gwendolyn's dark green eyes focused intently on Allison's hazel gaze. "I should go."

"If you really want to, I won't stop you." Allison really wanted to tell Gwendolyn that she would hold onto Gwendolyn as tightly as she could so that the younger woman couldn't leave. She was desperately afraid that if Gwendolyn walked away from her in that moment then she would never see the woman again. She was sure that she had finally pushed Gwendolyn further than Gwendolyn wanted to be pushed.

"Why is this so important to you?" Some of her nervousness was fading and Gwendolyn finally found the words to the question she had wanted to ask Allison ever since the to-be school teacher had started to try and get to know her. "Why can't you just let me go?"

Allison blinked a few times then refocused her gaze on Gwendolyn hoping that the other woman could read her sincerity. "I'm afraid that if I let you go then you'll be lost forever." She chuckled nervously. "It sounds stupid, I know, really I know how stupid it sounds but…I can't help feeling that way."

Gwendolyn's body fell into itself and while holding Allison's gaze a single tear started to trail its way down from her left eye. "I don't need your help right now."

Allison placed her hand on Gwendolyn's thigh. "Is it already too late?"

For some reason Gwendolyn started to feel dizzy. She told herself it was because she hadn't been getting a lot of sleep. She'd been so busy watching over Anna sleep making sure that her sister's dreams remained happy ones. She was afraid that Anna would start having nightmares about the night Gwendolyn was shot, and Gwendolyn never wanted to be the cause of Anna's nightmares. It was important that Anna understood that Gwendolyn was still alive and that she would never leave, not even the threat of death could tear her away.

"I have to be strong for Anna." Anna always came first. Gwendolyn always made sure everyone knew that.

"She's not here right now, Gwen."

"Why?" Gwendolyn rasped.

"You're one of the most amazing and one of the saddest people I've ever met," Allison moved her hand back to her own body. She didn't want to scare Gwendolyn away by touching her too much. "I don't know why I care so much, almost everything inside of me tells me I should just let you go, that I should walk away before something bad happens…but I can't just walk away from you."

Gwendolyn closed her eyes tightly and moved slightly closer to Allison. It took a few long moments before she found the strength to open her eyes again. "I don't know why I killed him," she whispered. "I didn't have to kill him."

Of everything Allison was prepared to hear, Gwendolyn's actual confession wasn't one of them. She bit down on her surprise and instead put all the sympathy she could muster into her eyes hoping that Gwendolyn would continue talking without being prompted to do so.

"But it had to happen, didn't it? I chose to do this."

Allison wasn't entirely sure which one of them Gwendolyn was talking to but she was glad that Gwendolyn was at least talking. She had no idea what exactly Gwendolyn was talking about, but she understood its importance.

"I had to make this happen for Anna, so that I could care for Babygirl like I promised I would. I don't break my promises to her."

It took most of the night but bit by small jagged bit Gwendolyn confessed everything to Allison while Allison sat in horrified silence. Gwendolyn worked her way backwards, starting with how she killed Brandon and ending with how her mother married a man who beat her for a good portion of her life. She mentioned her Babygirl and the promises she had made more than once, because they were the most important things.

Gwendolyn's words only stopped when she was finally fully ensconced in Allison's arms crying more tears than she had ever bothered to shed in her life. As Allison held Gwendolyn she realized that she wasn't technically holding a young woman in her arms but was holding a young girl. A seventeen year old girl who had recently had a birthday but didn't celebrate it because stepfather had long ago figured out a way to ruin Gwendolyn's birthdays. It was better for the girl now to pretend like the day didn't even exist.

"You can't keep this up, Gwen," Allison said as gently as she could. "You can't give up your soul for Anna. We can figure something else out."

"I don't know how," Gwendolyn sobbed. "They'll take her away from me if I'm not strong enough, if I'm not powerful enough."

"I know," Allison reluctantly agreed. "There has to be a better way."

What Gwendolyn understood that Allison didn't was that Allison had indeed come into Gwendolyn's life a little too late. There wasn't anything she could change now; Gwendolyn was already too far in. She had killed two men and she was sure that the day would come when she would be faced with killing more. But what Gwendolyn hadn't quite figured out yet was that she wasn't the person she thought she was. Behind her cool façade was someone who desperately wanted there to be a better way


Continued...