Page 70 of Spring Break Fling

“Marcus saved me,” he said abruptly, like the words had been sitting there, waiting for the right moment to come out.

“Saved you?” I asked, my burger paused halfway to my mouth.

“Yeah.” He looked out over the balcony, his jaw tightening. “When I was a teenager, I was heading nowhere fast. My dad—he didn’t give a shit about me. Beer and blow were the only things he cared about. And my mom? She bailed when I was too young to remember her.”

I swallowed hard, my heart squeezing for him. “That sucks.”

He shrugged, but there was no casualness in it. “It is what it is. Marcus found me when I was about sixteen. He saw me doodling in the back of a diner and asked if I’d ever thought about tattoos. Taught me everything I know. Without him…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I don’t even want to think about where I’d be.”

“You probably would’ve figured it out on your own,” I said softly.

“Maybe,” he said, popping a fry into his mouth. “But I doubt it. He gave me direction when no one else cared enough to. I wasn’t really doing well. Yeah, Marcus was there, but when I wasn’t around him, I was up to no good. All it would have taken was one time for me to get caught. If I would have landed in jail, I wouldn’t be here today. I mean, I’d be alive, maybe, assuming I didn’t get shivved in lockup, but I wouldn’t be doing what I do. I wouldn’t have what I have.”

I sat with that for a moment, marveling at the fact that Nikko had managed to become this talented, funny, deeply complicated man despite everything stacked against him. It made my own struggles feel small by comparison.

“What about you?” he asked suddenly, breaking the silence.

“What about me?”

He smirked, grabbing another fry. “What was your childhood like?”

I shook my head. I did not want to talk about myself. I never did. I preferred to keep those chapters closed.

“Not nearly as exciting as your childhood,” I said.

“Let me guess—mom and dad made every Christmas magical, the Tooth Fairy always showed up to collect, and you hated your chores? Oh, and I bet your mom always had fresh chocolate chip cookies waiting for you after school.”

I laughed, but it was more out of discomfort than humor. “Um, not really.”

His grin faded immediately. “Oh, shit. I’m an ass. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said quickly. And it was. But as I stared down at my half-eaten burger, something in me shifted. I’d always kept my past neatly locked away, but for some reason, sitting here with Nikko, I felt like I could open that door just a crack. He opened up to me. I could tell him a little about me.

“I grew up on a farm,” I said finally. “With my mom and dad. They were free spirits, I guess you’d call them. Hippies, really. Everything was about nature, simplicity, living off the land. We got our lunch fresh from the garden. If we wanted a snack, we walked outside and picked an apple or some raspberries.”

I found myself smiling at the memories. “My mom took our stuff to the local farmer’s market. Me and my sister got in trouble for eating a bunch of strawberries before market day. But my dad said we could have done a lot worse.”

“Sounds nice,” Nikko said, but there was a question in his tone.

“It was,” I admitted. “In a messy, chaotic sort of way. My sister and I were always outside with the animals, our clothes were dirty, our hair was a mess. Looking back, I would say we were feral. We were home-schooled, so we didn’t have to answer to anyone. Except…”

“Except?” he prompted, leaning forward.

“My grandparents,” I said, my voice dropping. “My mom’s parents. They hated everything about how we lived. Every time they visited, they’d ask if we were happy, but it wasn’t because they cared. They just wanted an excuse to criticize my parents. They hated that we didn’t have a bunch of structure. We slept in if we wanted to and stayed up late, especially if it was harvest season and my parents were working hard. My grandparents always said we needed a schedule. We needed to have more discipline. It became a real issue.”

Nikko’s brows furrowed. “What did they do?”

“They took us away,” I said, my throat tightening. “My sister and me. When I was ten. They decided they could do better, and my parents let them.”

Nikko stared at me, his burger forgotten. “They what?”

“We spent a year living with my grandparents,” I said, my voice shaking. “They put us in school, forced us to leave our pets behind, told us everything about us was wrong. The way we talked, the way we dressed, even the way we thought. It was a nightmare.”

“Why only a year?” Nikko asked gently. “What happened?”

I hesitated, the words catching in my throat. But when I looked into his eyes, I saw nothing but patience and understanding. I couldn’t believe I was telling him all of this. I hadn’t intended to. It just spilled out. I took a deep breath. “My parents didn’t come for us. They thought my grandparents would eventually bring us back, but one month turned into two, then six, then a year. And by then, my grandparents were done trying to ‘fix’ us and sent us back. They declared we were unfixable. They were too late. I remembered wondering what they meant by that. I kept thinking, they were too late for what? I wondered if we were going to die. One of the chickens died on the farm when I was young. My mom picked it up and was so gentle with her. She said we were too late. The chicken was alive but barely. And then it died in my mom’s arms. My sister was crying and asked why we couldn’t save her with medicine. Mom said it was too late.”

“Shit. That’s fucked up.”