His to Keep by Lydia Goodfellow

Epilogue

The house burned to the ground it stood on. All that remained were burnt pieces of timber, bricks, and ash when we decided it was finally time to go. Some would question why we didn’t run right away. Why we stayed to watch the house crumble brick by brick, the dying amber glow the only thing revealing our transfixed, ghostly stares.

Perhaps we stayed to make sure Father Aaron was truly gone. That he wasn’t about to spring from the debris with melted, charred skin and red eyes—back from the dead to finish us off. Or maybe it was simply reluctance. Callum, who has never known life away from his psychotic family. And me, wondering how I’ll be able to go back to the mundane things in life without glancing nervously over my shoulder every time there’s a bump in the night.

It was the unknown that made us stay so long. Had our hearts beating fast with fear of the future. Either way, when the faint sound of sirens blared in the distance, we got into the car and drove away, knowing it’d be too risky to hang around any longer.

The car ride to nowhere was silent, the only noise the rumble of the engine beneath me. To be in the same car that brought me to the house a year ago was surreal. Overwhelming. Here I was, driving away from it with someone I’d met in that house, who I wouldn’t have laid eyes on, never have met, if I hadn’t been taken there.

As Callum gripped the wheel, his knuckles whitening, I knew he was going through the same uncertain turmoil I was. What next? Where will we go? How will we live?

Like the door, John had left the gates open. Knowing he was still out there made a coldness settle into my stomach. That there was another Father Aaron out there, possibly far worse than the priest himself. A murderer and psychopath who murdered Maisie, and quite possibly Orla too, given the similar brutality of her death. Callum later revealed he’d imagined John would have gone into one of the bigger fenced communities to become a real member of the Brotherhood himself. Whether or not John has told the truth of Father Aaron’s demise and our involvement, remains to be unknown.

We weren’t hunted. Nobody came to avenge Father Aaron—not that we gave them a chance if they were to come. Paranoia set into us quickly, and we were careful with our lives. When you fight to survive like we have there’s no other option. According to the local newspaper, a gas leak had tragically killed Father Aaron and his family, the blaze so destructive, the bodies could only be identified through dental records. There was no police inquiry, even though there should’ve been if the remains of three people, including Maisie’s, had been discovered. It was as if it’d been brushed under the carpet, the case closed for good, the world moving on.

Going back home was the only option we had to figure out what our next move was. Even with the few hundred dollars John had given Callum, it still wasn’t enough to decide what we were going to do. It was hard pulling up outside the gate of Gran and Grandpa’s house. A house that they left to me. The windows were cast in shadow, and it looked like no one had been inside for a while.

Using the spare key under the frog statue outside the back door, we went inside. A blend of emotions washed through me as I looked around, breathing in the scents that I’d long since forgotten, and seeing the furniture placed exactly as before. As if Gran was about to get out of bed and head into the kitchen for her nightly hot milk to help her sleep. But no one came downstairs, and silence surrounded us.

We never left each other’s side that night. We bathed and tended to each other’s wounds with antiseptic and bandages. I put on a pair of leggings and a long jersey shirt and gave Callum an old T-shirt and jogging bottoms that belonged to Grandpa. It was strange seeing us both in normal clothing. It was even stranger having Callum in my bedroom, on my flowery bedsheets. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking as he looked around. My own emotions were stifled, and I felt like a stranger in my own surroundings. A sense of not belonging.

The moment I did feel any comfort was when Callum and I held each other while we slept. Both of our bodies shaking from the aftermath of defeating Father Aaron and getting away. I cried. I think he did too. There we stayed, wrapped in each other’s arms. We didn’t kiss or touch or talk. We slept.

The days that passed after that night were a blur. We stayed inside, surviving off whatever canned food was left in the cupboards. We knew we couldn’t stay here long term, but we needed a plan. After finding my old cell phone, I called the family’s lawyer about the house and selling it. I was still considered a minor until I turned eighteen, so that meant we’d have to wait.

Where and how we were going to live were the least of my worries. It started with a violent headache that got worse each day. The pain so blinding, I knew there was something wrong when painkillers did nothing to ease the pain. When I collapsed, Callum bundled me into the car and drove me to the nearest hospital. After running tests, they discovered that I had a severe concussion. Which meant I had to stay in the hospital for observation in case any clots formed on my brain.

That’s when the questions began. Doctors were unhappy with my malnourished appearance, the three whip scars on my back, including the many cuts and bruises covering my skin that were still healing. I said nothing, though it was obvious I’d suffered physical abuse.

Callum kept his mouth shut when they questioned him, though I could tell their probing affected him, especially when they asked how I’d gotten scars on my back. They wanted to call the police, but somehow, maybe dumb luck, we managed to talk them out of it if I came in for regular check-ups.

“You’re better off without me,” Callum said when I was discharged, and we went home. “I can’t even look after you, never mind what I did to you.”

“Callum, stop. I’ll be worse without you.”

By then, word had spread through town that Agatha Harrod’s wayward granddaughter had returned. Everywhere I went, even to shops, people stared. They ogled even more when Callum came into town with me to buy new clothes. The stunning black-haired man holding my hand possessively, scowling when any other man happened to look my way. That’s when I bumped into Adam.

He did a double take as Callum and I walked down the street. Tanned and brimming with light, he greeted me cheerfully.

“Ava! Long time no see? Not since the day—” Maybe it was the look on my face that stopped him, or the way Callum shifted to protect me, picking up on my uneasiness. Knowing he was about to say since you drove away with Father Aaron. “How are you? Sorry about your grandmother.”

“Oh, thank you.” I cleared my throat. “I’m okay. This is—”

“Her boyfriend.” Callum held out his hand, and he and Adam shook hands while my face burned. Boyfriend. I had a boyfriend. How strange but so ordinary to label us.

Adam then revealed he was in a relationship with Vanessa, and they were both moving to California in the Spring. After chatting a little more, he waved goodbye and went on his way. It was strange watching him walk away. Because he didn’t know how much he’d influenced the series of events that happened by trying to be my friend. Sometimes people never know the impact they have on others, and I’m not willing to ever tell him.

After that, Callum was too moody to shop anymore, so we went home to have dinner.

He was distant after that day, convinced I should be with Adam and not him because he had nothing to offer me. We should’ve known life would never be simple. I’m not sure happily ever after exists. It’s just two people trying their best to do life together. It wasn’t easy, and those few months that we stayed in Little Willow were the worst. We needed to leave, or we wouldn’t survive.

But Callum left without me. In the dead of night, he drove away, leaving me a note that said he was going to do what he needed to give me the best life, but would understand if waiting for him was too much.

My heart shattered into thousands of tiny pieces, and I wept for days. He left me, and I couldn’t believe it. After choosing him, he abandoned me.

The enormity of how my life had changed hit me, and I fell into a deep depression.

Scouring the house, I ended up searching Gran’s bedroom, going through all her things, laughing at the fear that still flowed through my veins for intruding on a dead person. I even imagined her cursing me from her grave and cursed her back when I found things that day. Secrets.

She’d been hiding her cancer for an entire year before I was taken, and I found letters of her refusing chemotherapy treatment. I also found receipts from Momma for child support that she paid every month since the time they took me into their care, even though Gran told me my parents, especially Momma, didn’t pay a dollar. She’d been transferring the money straight into Church donations. I couldn’t believe it. She made me think they really didn’t care about me while she was stealing my money and lining Father Aaron’s pocket.

But then I discovered something that made me run into the bathroom and throw up. Copies of school transcripts, report cards and grades from St. Bridget’s. All forged and fake, so no questions were raised by authorities about my whereabouts.

If Father Aaron could forge being a priest, then he could make it seem like I was in school when I wasn’t.

This new information pulled me into a dark hole my father walked in on one random day. Discovering me lying on the floor, lost in despair, having not eaten or drunk or even washed. He hospitalized me because he didn’t know how to handle his own teenage daughter. Though, I guess I would’ve died if he hadn’t come. He’d told me after he had received a random call telling him to check on the house, and didn’t know I’d even be there and asked what happened.

It was the perfect opportunity to unleash hell on him. Tell him everything I’d been through. But the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I never told him how much he failed me. How could I? He was a stranger to me as much as I was to him and it didn’t matter.

It took a while to get better. I stayed in the hospital for a couple of months, and Momma was called. She persuaded me to move to the city for a fresh start, where I enrolled back in school. But I felt like a fraud. On the exterior I was the picture of health. I’d had a haircut and put the weight I lost back on. I even got new, cute, city-girl clothes. But on the inside, black rotted my insides. My heart having not healed, my loneliness crippling me without Callum.

No one knew the true horrors that plagued me. That kept me awake at night where I relived everything. The hole in my chest refusing to heal no matter how much I got angry, cursed him, and hated him, I still loved him. I still wanted him.

When school started, I made friends with a few girls who loved talking about themselves and never asked me about me. Before I knew it, I was going on Starbucks trips, cinema dates, and shopping at the mall with them. I was asked out by a few boys, but I couldn’t stomach them even looking at me, never mind going on a date with them.

That was my life for a while. I’d go to school, and in the evening, I’d have dinner with Momma and her new boyfriend, Jacob. A real-life artist from Austin. His drawings were okay, but he was nowhere near as talented as Callum was. Momma and I tried to have a relationship, though she overcompensated by trying to buy me instead of trying to gain my trust again.

When I turned eighteen and graduated school, I sold Gran and Grandpa’s house. After getting my license, I got a cheap car, and went on the road without telling anyone where I was going. I ended up in Callum’s hometown, Viewmont. I wasn’t sure why, of all places, that I went there. Maybe because a part of it felt like a bad nightmare I had, and I wanted to find information about the people who had ruined my life.

It was a sleepy town, similar to Little Willow. Probably why Father Aaron chose to live there, because he knew it’d be easier to get away with things. After researching news clippings on the library computer, I came across a missing person report of a nineteen-year-old girl. Her name, Orla Gibbons. She was classed as being a runaway, and her family was desperate for any information. It tugged on my heartstrings, but how could I go and tell them about her? About how much she suffered in the end? But then, could I live with myself if I didn’t?

I called from a phone booth, and they wanted to see me straight away, giving me their address. I was so nervous, my stomach twisted into several knots. Orla’s mother answered the door when I rang the doorbell, tears brimming in her eyes.

“Ava?” I nodded, and she stepped aside, ushering me in. “Please, please, come in.”

Stepping into their house was horrible. It was a nice place—a home. Not just walls and doors. There wasn’t any wonder they never believed their daughter ran away if she grew up here. It reeked of nurturing love, and knowing I was going to be the bearer of bad news was hard to swallow. Going into the living room, I sat, and she disappeared to get tea. When she came back, a tall, reluctant man followed her.

“This is Travis, my husband,” Orla’s mother said. “Pardon his unusual behavior, he—”

“Is sick of hearing fake news about my daughter.” He was angry. Not at me, just in general. His wife flushed as she handed me tea. They both sat opposite of me, and I thought maybe I’d made a mistake coming here. I shouldn’t have come and wanted to run. “If you’ve come to tell me she’s hooked on drugs in some brothel, you can leave right now.” He said it so coldly, even I shivered. But I couldn’t blame him.

“I’m not here to tell you that,” I said, bowing my head. Where to begin? How? I’d not said a word to anyone since I got out of that house. “I’m…I’m sorry. This is difficult for me to talk about.”

“Take your time,” Orla’s mother said kindly.

It was excruciating saying Father Aaron’s name out loud. Maybe it was the crack in my voice and how I visibly trembled in front of them that had Travis reach for his wife’s hand. They knew I spoke the truth, about a pretend priest’s obsession with virgin girls. So much so, that he believed it his calling to take them away from the world and cage them in his. I told them I hadn’t known her, and they seemed confused by this, and so I had to explain that she’d fought to the end, but it hadn’t helped her. That after I was taken, she was murdered, and as a punishment for something I did wrong, I saw her body. And she was dead.

It surprised me that they wanted details, unable to imagine their pain at hearing this. I struggled to tell them how she’d been violently whipped to death, that there wasn’t a bit of her skin left untouched. Orla’s mother sobbed, and Travis had tears in his eyes.

“We have to go to the police,” he said, and my heart dropped.

“W-what?”

He stood up, and I flinched, because it reminded me suddenly of Father Aaron. “You’ll have to come down to the station and tell the police everything. We’ve heard of these extremist cults kidnapping girls from their lives. There are quite a few of them scattered throughout the country. And you’re a survivor, Ava. You can be the voice of all these girls who have lost their lives. We can get that man charged for kidnap and murder—”

“You can’t,” I said, placing my teacup down on the table and standing. “He’s dead. This was a mistake, I’m sorry. I have to go.”

Talking to the police about anything could implicate Callum. And nothing can happen to him, or I might not survive. I’d been careful not to mention him even now, but know detectives are trained to get information.

“Travis,” Orla’s mother said when he grabbed my arm to stop me from leaving. “Let go of her, for god’s sake!”

“She knows what happened to our Orla, Marsha. We can finally get justice.” Snatching my arm from his grip, I turned to leave with my heart in my throat. But he was on my heels, bringing on a wave of terror. “Think about it, Ava. You could be the voice for those girls who are out there suffering.”

My head shook, my chest tightening. Was I having a panic attack? “L-leave me alone.”

“Let her go, Travis. You’re acting crazy.”

Realizing this, and the fear in my expression, he stepped back from me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” were my last words as I opened their door and ran down their porch steps. As soon as I dived into my car, I slammed my foot on the accelerator and peeled out of their drive before he could take down my car registration.

When I was a safe distance away, I broke down crying. I cried so hard that I had to pull over. What was I thinking going there and telling them about their daughter? Of course, they would have wanted to go to the police right away to give a statement. I was so stupid. And to think they were aware of the Brotherhood had chills running down my back. They didn’t know what they were messing with. I didn’t even know, just what I’d been told by Callum. Becoming the voice of survivors would get me killed.

Exhausted, I booked myself into a B&B on the outskirts of town. The owner was a kind lady, but I could tell she was curious why an eighteen-year-old girl was traveling alone with tear-smudged cheeks. Assuring her that I was okay, I went up to the room.

After showering and changing into my pajamas, I sat on the bed for a while staring at nothing. Just as I was about to lie down and suffer another night of nightmares, a thump outside my door made me violently jump.

It’s them, I thought. They’re coming to get me.

A shadow appeared on the landing outside my door, and then a key jiggled in the lock. That sound alone had a horrendous fear punching me in the stomach. I couldn’t breathe or speak or scream as the handle turned and the door opened.

And there he was. Dressed in a black suit with his hair styled in way I’d never seen before, was Callum. My Callum.

Though, was he?

Still as handsome as ever, even more so in a jaw-dropping way, he stepped into the room and closed the door. My head shook, unable to believe he was here. This had to be a trick of my mind. “You’re not real.”

Ignoring me, his eyes drank me in. “Look at you.”

Lifting my hands, I rubbed my eyes, thinking that if I did, he’d disappear. There was no way it could be that easy. Coming to Callum’s old town and him showing up. Things didn’t happen like this. But when I opened my eyes, he was still there. Real, in my room at a tiny B&B. And like a tidal wave had washed through me, every bit of hurt, anger and despair came flooding back.

“You left me,” I said, teeth clenched as I stood. “You abandoned me.”

He nodded. “I did.”

“Why?” I demanded. “Where did you go? Why did you leave me in Little Willow by myself? I trusted you, and you walked out on me.” Sighing softly, he walked toward me, but I stepped back. “No! You don’t get to come here and expect me to forgive and forget.”

“I don’t expect that, and don’t forgive me. Leaving you was the hardest thing I ever had to do.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because I wanted to be able to offer you a proper life. I had things I needed to do to make sure you’d be safe with me. I wasn’t willing to risk your life again. I sent your dad to you and I—”

“My dad?”

“I had to make sure someone was there to take care of you while I was away. I went to Brother Joseph to confess. To the Brotherhood.”

My eyes bugged. “You did what?”

“Why wait for John to rat us out if I could go to the source? I confessed, and I was punished. I did it for you, to protect you. And then when I was set free, I bought a house for us and got a job as an artist to provide for us. If you still want me. If you haven’t met someone else—”

What? I was so confused. Callum had a house. A job?

“If I met someone else, why would I be here?”

“Then you do want to be with me.”

“I-I don’t know. How did you even know I was here?”

“I’ve been tracking your whereabouts for months,” he explained, which shocked me. How was he able to do that? He could know where I was, but I couldn’t know where he was? “Ava.” He looked worried now, and my stomach twisted. “If you feel nothing for me. If you truly don’t want anything to do with me, I’ll go now. You won’t see me ever again, I swear. I just want you to be happy.”

“You’re the only one who made me happy. Until you left me,” I whispered. I hadn’t realized he’d been closing the gap between us all that time, until he lifted his hand and touched the side of my face. His touch was fire, and I melted right there on the spot. I grabbed his hand, my heart physically hurting. After all this time, how can he come back into my life and flare these feelings within me again? “How do I know you won’t leave me again?”

“I won’t.” He stepped even closer, and I breathed in his scent. “I love you. There’s no one else.” The electricity that sparked between us was so intense, I couldn’t help it. Gripping onto the lapels of his jacket, I kissed him, weak for him. He kissed me back, instantly picking me up and putting me down on the bed.

Pushing his jacket down his arms, he grabbed the hem of my pajama top and pulled it over my head. Eyes dropping, his lips parted. “So fucking beautiful. Stunning. You don’t know how much I’ve missed you.”

My breathing hitched, because looking at him staring down at me like he was, had my body throbbing in ways it never had before. He stripped me bare, drowning my body in hot kisses that had me moaning. Between my legs was slick with arousal and his salvia, and I’d never wanted something so bad in my entire life.

“Callum,” I pleaded.

Lifting himself up, lips red and swollen, he pulled his shirt over his head. I gasped at the scars still healing there. Burn marks that made my eyes water with tears.

“It’s okay, baby,” he said, kissing my eyelids. “It wasn’t as bad as it looks.”

“They burned you?”

“Let’s not talk about it now, okay?” Leaning up, I kissed each and every mark they left on his body. His breathing quivered each time my lips rested on a would. “Ava. I can’t hold back anymore.”

Reaching up, I undid the buttons of his pants and pulled them and his boxers down. Spreading my legs, he entered me, and I gasped from how good it felt. He held me close, whispering how much he missed me, how he was never going to leave me ever again. And I believed him because I wasn’t ever going to let him leave me again.

Our love wasn’t normal, and never would be. He wasn’t my boyfriend—he was my lifeline. Even the time spent away from him, he haunted my entire existence. My year spent in captivity with him created a bond I’m sure doctors have many terms for. But even with our future uncertain, if we’d ever be able to lead normal lives, and the secrets we’ll take to the grave, I couldn’t imagine doing it with anybody else.

Because he has my broken soul, and I have his.

“You’re mine,” he said, rocking into me until a light sheen of sweat covered us both.

“And you’re mine.”

I was his to keep. Always and forever.