It was shame that drove me out of the house. Shame for falling apart, letting my boys down when I should have been present. For letting Jess down, when she should never have been brought into this mess in the first place.
I’d let her see me lose control. I never did that, but of course when I finally broke, she had to be there to witness it.
Violence was like an infection inside me that I couldn’t dig out. I couldn’t fight something that was in my blood, seared into my brain through years of repeated exposure. I couldn’t change the mold I’d been formed by, and failure felt inevitable.
The dirt road in front of our house led either to Route 15, or to a dead end. It was the dead end I walked toward, my boots kicking up dust as I went. I slipped past the metal barrier at the end of the road and into the trees, the path overgrown with weeds. The way still felt familiar, even though it had been a few years since I’d gone back here.
Places held memories, and most of mine were bad. This quiet spot back in the trees used to be where I came for peace, but over the years, it had come to feel more like a place to hide. Somewhere I could run away to when I couldn’t face reality.
Coward. Fucking pussy. Running away like a pathetic little bitch.
I sat down, my knees drawn up as I rested my arms on them. My own inner voice sounded like him. Like he could never fucking leave me alone. Even when he was dead and gone, his voice would still be there.
My tongue felt thick, my mouth too dry as I swallowed hard anyway. I’d been selfish. I’d wanted Jess so damn badly. I’d wanted another chance, as if a second opportunity would allow me to prove to her that she belonged with me. With us.
I’d allowed myself to forget that Jess was surrounded by privilege, by safety. That by inserting myself into her life, I’d dragged all my problems along with me.
My father had seen her. He’d fucking seen her with us. It was a violation just to have his eyes on her. It was violent for him to merely know her name. Nothing was off-limits in his mind, not even her. And I’d exposed her to that. It was my own damn fault.
A dark, coiled knot of anxiety crawled around in my chest. It gripped my lungs with sharp claws and stuffed its ugliness into my throat, making my hands shake. It made sure that no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t really have any control in the end.
I jumped to my feet, the sound of a twig snapping nearby sending my hand flying to my back pocket and the knife I kept there. But it wasn’t my father who came walking through the trees.
“Jess?” I cleared my throat, my voice barely audible. Her eyes were wide as she looked around, taking in the trees, the chirping birds, the soft grass beneath her shoes. But when her gaze fell on me, the worry in her eyes made me feel like a literal piece of shit.
I was scaring her; I was probably scaring all of them. They deserved better from me, but I couldn’t function enough to be that person. Not now.
“How did you find me?” She came closer, looking me over as if searching for any more injuries. My hand ached from punching the wall, but it was a well-deserved pain, and I wished I’d broken my damn fingers.
“Lucas,” she said. “He’s back on the road. He’s worried about you.”
Unable to keep eye contact with her any longer, I said, “You should go home, Jess. Tell Lucas…tell him I’m fine. Have him drive you home.”
Did I sound confident? Strong? Determined? Or did I sound fucking weak, like a coward, a man who couldn’t face the world?
She inhaled deeply, lifting her chin in that familiarly defiant way that made my entire chest clench up. “I’m not leaving you alone out here.”
“Don’t worry about me.” I wanted to hold her, but I didn’t dare. If I couldn’t even manage to explain myself, why did I deserve to touch her? I managed something like a smile, but the look on her face told me it was weak. “I’m okay. I just need some time alone.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “Look, you gave me a rule about communicating. You told me to always be honest, to speak openly. If you’re not ready to talk yet, that’s okay. But I’m not leaving. I’m not mad, I promise. You haven’t —”
“You should be.”
She stopped, frowning at me. “What?”
“You should be mad.” I sat back down, leaning against the tree behind me as I gripped my knees, wishing the pressure would relieve some of the tension inside me.
She sat beside me, leaving a gap between us. But she reached over and laid her hand on top of mine, and the words spilled out before I could stop them.
“You should be mad, because you shouldn’t have to see that. You shouldn’t have some guy throwing his fists around like he can’t control himself. Raising his voice like a child. It’s not right. It’s not safe.”
She shouldn’t have to see what I’d grown up seeing. The adult tantrums, fists thrown into walls; plates, cups, and valuables broken. Using violence as strength, as intimidation. It made me sick to see it come out of me, leaking like an infected wound. But that was all my dad had left me with: festering wounds that refused to heal.
“I’m safe with you, Manson,” she said firmly. “There isn’t a single doubt in my mind that I’m safe with you. You got angry. Everyone does. That’s okay.”
No. No, it wasn’t. She was wrong. I flinched when she touched my cheek, turning my face toward her. That tightness in my chest was swelling to a breaking point. But she held my face there, and I couldn’t look at her and lie. She disarmed me so completely that it didn’t matter how ashamed I was to be like this.
She deserved to hear the truth. All of it.
“I saw the way my mom looked at him,” I said. “I saw how afraid she was every time he spoke, every time he moved. And I —” My voice broke, and I hated how it sounded. Hated the way my own mind berated me for it. “Every second of every day I spent in that house, I was afraid. I was never safe there. He couldn’t control himself. He didn’t care. He wanted to cause pain. It made him feel powerful. And you know what really fucking sucks? I loved him. Mom loved him. What do you do when you love someone so goddamn much that you’ll let them hurt you and even let them destroy you? Just hoping they’ll love you back? Hoping you’ll earn it?”
The tightness had broken. I felt so raw I shuddered, and Jess’s fingers swiped gently at my cheeks. Well, fuck, the tears were coming and they weren’t going to stop.
“How am I any better?” The words tasted bitter in my mouth. “How am I any fucking better than him? It’s like he infected me, Jess, his genes are a fucking cancer. The way we play…even though we call it a game…I hurt you and I like it. I like the way you sound, the way you look when I do it. I crave seeing you suffer for me. How the fuck is that okay?”
I was spiraling, and I saw no way out. The darkness around me was only growing, and I swore it would suffocate me.
I wanted to speak, but I hated my own words. I wanted someone to understand, but I also didn’t want anyone to know. These weren’t things that were easy to admit. They were dark, panicked thoughts that lurked at the back of my brain, packed away right next to tightly sealed memories of my childhood. I could try to lock them away, but I couldn’t hide them when they lived in the same house, when they echoed in the walls, specters of pain lurking in every corner.
“I’m broken, Jess.” I took her hands in mine, enfolding her fingers and kissing them.
I could smell Lucas on her, and it reminded me of all the times when it was only him and I. When he’d meet me out here in the dark, or I’d pick him up in the Bronco and drive around until we found somewhere to sleep. All the breakdowns neither of us knew how to handle, because we’d only been kids trying to figure out how to grow up alone. Holding each other through tears and rages, hoping that if we clung tightly enough, we wouldn’t lose each other.
I clung to her hands the same way, with words I couldn’t say. I’d lose her because I wasn’t good enough, because I was too broken, too fucked in the head.
“I told myself I’d never be like him,” I said, staring down at her small hands in mine. “I don’t want to hurt people, I don’t. But sometimes I feel so angry, I don’t even know who I am. I could destroy everything I touch, even things I love. Even myself.”
“Manson, you are nothing like your father.”
Her voice was so fierce. She held my hands like she could squeeze the words into them, but that wasn’t enough. She put her arms around me, pulling me against her. I was frozen, stiff and shaking with the effort to hold myself together.
“I was awful to you and you never hurt me back,” she said, her voice soft against my ear. “You showed me what it meant to be taken care of, did you know that? No one had ever bothered to talk about a safeword with me. No one had even bothered to ask what I’m into. You won a silly bet at a party and you didn’t do anything I didn’t want you to. You cared, Manson. You’ve always cared.”
My brain screamed that her words weren’t true. She was lying, she pitied me, she hated me. There was no way I could ever be good enough for her. But she didn’t let me go, and as fierce as she sounded, her words were thick as she said, “I trust you, Manson. Lucas trusts you, and he doesn’t trust anyone. Vincent and Jason trust you. They’d follow you to the ends of the earth. You’re not some evil, awful person. You’re strong and kind, and you take care of people. But you can’t only take care of other people all the time and have no one take care of you too.”
Her chest swelled with a long, deep breath, and I lifted my head. She kept her arms around me as she kissed me, and the ugly darkness inside me died a little more.
“I’m here because I want to be,” she said, leaning her forehead against mine. “Because I chose to be. And I really don’t know what the hell is going to happen or how any of this will work out in the end. But the only things I’m scared of are the same things you make me forget.”
“Fuck.” Somehow, blessedly, the pressure released from behind my ribs. I could breathe again. I could think. Panic still ached in me, but it was manageable now. It wasn’t the same raging storm as before.
Some things went beyond words, and we held each other until those things felt clear.
Lucas was sitting on the metal barrier when Jess and I came back. He stood abruptly when he heard us coming, stubbing out the half-smoked cigarette in his fingers and shifting from foot to foot until we’d reached him.
Then, he threw his arms around me and held onto me so damn tight he practically crushed the air right out of my lungs.
Jess stepped away, giving us a moment with each other. His heart was hammering, his chest swelling with every deep breath.
“Lucas —” I started slowly, but he wasn’t about to let me apologize.
“Don’t you fucking say you’re sorry,” he said. “Just don’t…don’t leave like that again. Please.” He lowered his voice even more, barely above a whisper, but the pain in his words was impossibly loud. “I can’t watch you walk out the door on me, Manson. I don’t care what you have to do to stay. I’ll listen to you yell all damn day if you need to. Just don’t walk out on me.”
I nodded against him, knotting my hands into the back of his shirt. It had hurt him, frightened him, probably far more than he’d ever say. “I won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”
He cleared his throat as we parted, hurriedly scrubbing his hand over his face so nothing remained but his usual stony expression. He nodded abruptly, reaching his arm out for Jess and slipped it around her shoulders as she took my hand again.
Jason was sitting on the porch when we returned, chewing his thumbnail down to nothing. Bo was beside him, and I expected him to bark at me again, but he wagged his tail and licked my hand when I scratched his head.
“Sorry, buddy,” I said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Glad to see they dragged you back,” Jason said, embracing me as he got up from the porch. “I was about to go after you myself if you didn’t show up in the next five minutes.”
I clapped his shoulder, finally allowing myself a little laugh. “I didn’t flee the country; I just walked down the street.”
“Yeah, well, you went by yourself.” Jason frowned. “That’s not supposed to happen. If you’re going to flee anywhere, you better damn well take us with you.”
I’d shed enough tears for one day; I wasn’t about to have him getting me in my feelings again. So I didn’t say how much that meant to me. I couldn’t find the words to tell them that they’d proven wrong every awful thing my brain wanted to believe. But if I couldn’t say it, then I’d find a way to show it.
If I wanted to keep being here for them like they were for me, I needed to face my demons.
“Breakfast is coming up!” Vincent called from the kitchen as we came back inside. I could smell bacon and hash browns, and when I looked into the kitchen, there were multiple bowls on the counter and pans on the stove. He glanced over his shoulder at me with a grin, his long hair messily tied up as he added another pancake to the stack in front of him.
“God, Vince…you didn’t have to…” He held up his hand.
“Don’t. I don’t want to hear a word unless it’s wow, Vincent, you’re the best cook ever and so unbearably charming and attractive.” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Jess slipped around my side and wrapped her arms around Vince, saying, “Ooh, wow, Chef Vincent, you’re so charming and attractive I might swoon.”
I snickered as Vincent looked at me pointedly. “See? She knows how to do it.”
Jojo had come to sit by my feet, leaning heavily against my legs as she looked up at me and her tail thumped on the ground. No fear, no hatred, no anger. Just her big, goofy smile as I scratched behind her ears.
I don’t know where I’d be without all of them. I wouldn’t have survived this long; I knew that much. No matter what had happened through the years, I’d always had someone to pull me back from the brink, someone to hold on to me when I thought there was nothing left to keep trying for.
When I’d met Lucas, he’d understood me better than anyone I’d ever met. He was a mirror of my own pain and rage in more ways than I’d been prepared for. But he’d been strong when I wasn’t. He’d been there every time I needed him without hesitation, even when it meant facing his own fears to risk being close to me.
And Vincent? God, if he hadn’t been there to bring a never-ending sense of optimism about the shit-show that was my life, I would have wallowed in misery forever. He had the kind of close, loving family I’d always longed for, but that didn’t make him naïve. It made him caring, fiercely protective, willing to do anything and everything for the people he loved.
When we’d met Jason, I’d thought the quiet kid with his nice respectable family couldn’t possibly want to be around losers like us. But I’d watched his entire life be torn into pieces so he could live authentically, all because he dared to stray from the life his parents had forced on him. He’d endured their rejection, all the pain of being abandoned, and not once did I see him falter. He’d been so damn determined to claim his life, to live as he wanted, that it had kept me going too.
And now Jess, whose presence in my life had felt like both an aspiration and a warning. This wasn’t only a game, regardless of whatever silly rules we made or excuses we came up with. Jess had given me something to strive for, but it was more than that.
Her presence here was proof I was better than where I’d come from. I was stronger than the violence and the pain that had formed me. She felt safe here, safe with me — and that meant the world. That was what I’d always wanted for myself and my boys — safety, peace, somewhere we could exist without constant judgment, without fear.
I watched her with them and knew they would protect her as fiercely as they protected me. Whatever the fuck my father tried to do — if anything — we would never let him touch her.
Never.
