Chapter 37

                                    

                                          
KATHLEENS POV~
                          
My eyes crack open. The room is dark with the early hour, silence being the only thing to fill the void. I sit up slowly, wincing at the pain in my back. 
                          
Three days in captivity. Three days of training. My Mom thought it'd be a fun idea to get back into the good old days. And yet somehow in the instances of using a punching bag till my fists bled, using dumbbells until my veins burst, or holding my hand above a burner until I could feel my flesh dripping off, never once did her flip switch. 
                          
Never once did she raise her voice. Never once did she hit me. She just held me close, in her inescapable grasp, and whispered her lies into my ears. 
                          
Never once, until yesterday. 
                          
In all of her psychotic mess, I can only be thankful she hasn't made Maddox attempt to do any of her stunts. Instead she'll make him watch. Him and Oliver. That's the boys name. 
                          
And yesterday as I beat my already broken hands against the plastic of a bag, a bag I've never been trained to use, I gave up. But giving up was not on her bucket list. So as I turned around she swung a bat at my back. 
                          
I'd fallen to the ground with a crack, and after her thoroughly painful examination she confirmed I had a cracked rib. Nothing that won't heal within the next week or so. That was her logic. 
                          
Yet, as I've done all her training and bent myself backwards, all I could wonder was how the hell Dean does this daily with no effort?
                          
I mean, my knuckles were red within the first ten minutes, meanwhile he can workout for almost three hours and turn out A-okay. 
                          
How? 
                          
I stand up from bed and walk silently out the door. The past three nights I've always woken around the same time and gone out to explore the house. I've been working on a map. A map with all the secret passageways and rooms. 
                          
The panic room located in my Mothers closet with its code written on the paper. The bomb shelter in the backyard. The hallways that connect it to all the underground rooms we can access through a trap door in our bedrooms. All of this written on papers I've put in a folder, all labelled with my name. Precaution. That's what I'm calling it. 
                          
All of my training has been done in the garage out back, but never once have I set foot in the basement. In fact, I haven't investigated the entire backside of the house. It was always off limits and I wanted to get my bearings with the familiar side first. 
                          
I enter the living room, stepping carefully along the wooden boards until I reach a back door in the kitchen, which to my understanding, leads to another hallway. 
                          
Crossing my fingers I push the door open, and it cracks into darkness. Pitch nothingness lies before me and no matter how long I stare into the abyss I can't make out a single shape. 
                          
A creak sounds from behind me and I whip around. The rush of air sends the illusion of being grabbed from behind floating through me. Like invisible claws coming out to grasp me. My heart beats out of my chest as I swing the door shut and rush to the island. Just as I touch the cabinet my Mother walks into the room. 
                          
She wears a white tee shirt that stretches halfway down her thighs and sits half off her one shoulder. She rubs her eyes, her hair sitting limply along her shoulders. Over the past five years the length hasn't differed a bit. 
                          
I bite my lip in anticipation but as she lowers her hands she just smiles. 
                          
"Late night glass of water?" she asks. I giggle breathlessly and nod. 
                          
"Remember how we used to always do that together?" she asks. "We'd always meet in the kitchen. I'd catch you eating a Cooke behind the counter."
                          
I laugh a little louder this time. "Yeah, yeah I remember..."
                          
"What happened to that?" Her tone is innocent, and if anything that angers me more than anything possibly could. 
                          
"You left," I whisper, grabbing a glass and filling it with water. 
                          
"Yeah... I left," she whispers. 
                          
We fall into silence as I finish my drink and place it in the sink. 
                          
"If I'd come back sooner," she blurts. "If I made it to you before you'd left the state, would you have come with me?"
                          
I ponder this for a moment and shrug. "Probably, but only because I'd felt bad about turning you in for six months after I did so." 
                          
She smirks, lowering her gaze to the floor. 
                          
"What about... two years ago?"
                          
I chuckle dryly and narrow my eyes at her. "Only to get out of Texas."
                          
She laughs as well, although hers seems more forced. "And last year?"
                          
"Last year I had been with the McPhersons for at least a few months. Maddox had already found out the truth and I was finally beginning to become happy again. Out of everywhere I'd been they were the only people in my entire life that acted like a real family."
                          
Her smiles drops with her expression as she looks me in the eyes. "They will never be your family, Katy. They can never live up to what you truly have."
                          
"What I truly have?" I whisper, "is two nonexistent parents."
                          
Her nostrils flare as she takes a few steps towards me. 
                          
"With the McPhersons I feel safe. They say they love me and I know they actually mean it. I have fun, and I have siblings, siblings who care and are there for me-"
                          
"Like Maddox? Kathy, these people aren't your flesh and blood. Not the McPhersons, not the bozos in that house I saved you from."
                          
"Saved me? You think kidnapping me from my only real friends since I was five was saving me? All of them, every single one, is more of a family member than you could ever be. Then you've ever been. I love them. I love them all. They may be annoying sometimes, and they may get on my nerves, but that is family. Family doesn't hurt you." 
                          
Out of nowhere she slaps me. My face whips to the side but I only sigh and turn back to her with a smile. "Proving my point," I utter. 
                          
"You love them. You really think so?"
                          
"Yes. Yes I do," I say, and the truth I feel in my heart is overwhelming. 
                          
"Even the people who don't know the real you? How will they feel when they find out?"
                          
My face drops and she chuckles. "Exactly. You may think you love them Kathy, but it's just your mind being desperate. None of these people know the real you. None of them know your real capabilities. Not Maddox. Not Dean. Your little lover boy."
                          
"You don't know a thing," I drawl with malice, my nostrils flaring. 
                          
"The boy who holds you," she jokes. 
                          
"Shut up."
                          
"The boy who "saved" you."
                          
"Shut up! You don't get to say shit about Dean."
                          
"Why? Do you still think he can save you?"
                          
I nod slowly, and she laughs. 
                          
"Baby, he won't. Don't get your hopes up. And in the mean time, I guess I'll just have to think of some more complex skills to teach you."
                          
"The FBI will figure you out. They'll find us. And I will never, never join you. You can do whatever you want to me, but you don't own me. I'm not yours." I look her in the eyes and give her a disdainful expression. "I don't want your legacy." 
                          
Her face falls flat, no expression visibly readable. 
                          
"Dean will find me, and I will go with him. You know how I know?"
                          
She stays silent, and I know my words have reached her in a way that she'll actually hear them. 
                          
"Because Dean would do anything," I say. 
                          
"Everything."