Page 126 of My Unfinished Heart

“If it’s about you then it does have something to do with me.”

“You won’t understand.”

When I let go of my hold on him, he sits up and faces me. “Explain it to me then. Explain it like I’m seven years younger than you.”

“I’m done talking.” With that, I get up from the bed.

“Can I say something before you walk out?” he asks.

“What?”

“Is this about your mother?”

“I said I don’t want to talk.”

“I knew her. Remember?”

“You knew Connor’s mom. It’s different,” I say.

“You don’t know that,” he states sharply. “Archer, please just talk to me.”

I stare hard at Tristan, wondering what he’ll think about me if he knows how far my mother really went, and how I managed to survive it. I bite down on my back teeth. I see him getting more and more upset with every rock I put into my stonewall, but I can’t help it. He still strikes me as so innocent. Someone I should be protecting from the harsher realities of the world—the truth about the darkness of hearts.

My muscles tense with anger I can barely contain. I’ve been angry since we left Helen’s, and I know it’s out of context, but sometimes anger is the only way—it makes a good shield.

“You wanna know the truth about me and my mom?”

He nods, looking genuinely afraid for the first time since I’ve known him.

“I’ll tell you, but you have to drop it when I’m done. If you can’t promise that, then I’m okay if you leave.”

His expression falters. “Never mind. I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me. I don’t want to go or make you upset.”

“That ship sailed. I’m already upset. You’re gonna listen now. But only if you promise you will never ever tell Connor what I’m about to tell you. This is my life. Not yours. I get to decide who hears about it. Can you promise me that?”

He grips the edge of the mattress and nods.

I don’t give him a chance to change his mind. “My first memory is waking up with a pillow over my face. I was five years old. I couldn’t breathe. I kicked so hard, she let go long enough for me to see who was holding the pillow. I remember I wasn’t surprised. She was pissed I kicked her, but I was more pissed. She didn’t leave, though. She took me to the emergency room. Whatever she told the doctor got me diagnosed with a severe sleep disorder. Insomnia versus narcolepsy. The narcolepsy part was because I couldn’t keep my eyes open in school. The insomnia was because I couldn’t sleep at home, but that was because she kept me awake all night. Every night. I don’t know how long she’d been doing it, but from what she said to the doctor, I remember thinking she’d been doing it to me my whole life. Because I was so fucking tired.”

“Archer—”

“No, no.” I hold up my hand to stop him from commenting. “You wanted to know, remember?”

He keeps quiet.

“So, they started doing sleep studies. For nights in a row, I’d have to sleep in some weird sleep lab. But I couldn’t sleep during those either because she was drugging me. I don’t know if she was using caffeine or pseudoephedrine or fucking cocaine. But it was all the time. She’d grind up pills and put them in my food and watch me eat, but that wasn’t good enough, either. The doctors started prescribing longer acting drugs to keep me awake when I was away from her. Amphetamines, I’m guessing. At night, she’d let me fall asleep for like a minute, and I’d wake up because she was holding my nose shut or music was playing so loud it hurt my head.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tristan whispers. But I’ll give him this. He hasn’t flinched. He hasn’t looked away.

“When I was seven, I got diagnosed with autism because I started refusing to speak. I was in and out of doctor’s offices and child psychiatry offices multiple times a week. She was always with me, so even if I wanted to, I couldn’t talk. At the time, I didn’t want to because they believed every lie she told—she got them to feel sorry for her. She got me to fucking feel sorry for her and what she had to go through to live with me, and so they kept medicating me. I was scared to be awake and scared to fall asleep. All of it was wrong. Anything I did, I had to go back to the doctor for. I had to spend more time with her while she pretended she was the fucking victim, and people bought it.”

Tristan unfolds his hands, bends his head, and covers his face. He doesn’t look surprised, only resigned.

“By the time I turned eight, I wanted to kill myself. I thought the only way out of it was to die. That I should just let her kill me. It would have been better than losing my mind. Because I was losing my fucking mind.” Fuck. I close my eyes and make myself breathe.

Tristan waits for me to continue without saying anything, but I don’t know if I can do it. It’s the emotional equivalent of castration. It’s so fucking degrading.

I can’t.