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He lifted his hand, put it on her face, left clay behind on her skin and it felt like a metaphor. For the fact that she was marked by this even if he didn’t want her to be. Marked by him. “I don’t think you would turn away from me on purpose. That isn’t who you are. But it would change the way that you saw me. I don’t want that. I like being your hero.”

“I don’t need you to be my hero. I need you to be you. I need you to trust me.”

“But can you trust me that what I’m dealing with is dark enough that this isn’t going to be simple?”

“I do trust you. But when have I ever needed things to be simple? If I wanted simple, I would’ve gone and slept with a different man. If I wanted simple… I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about the baby right away. I was hurt. Because I loved you then, you idiot. And hoping that maybe you loved me back and you wanted a future with me and then having you send me away was devastating. You promised that you would stay with me. You promised that you wouldn’t abandon me.”

“And I won’t. I swear to you,” he said, his heart beating so hard that he felt sick with it. “But you may not want me, and I feel like…”

“There’s no chance of that.”

He looked away, and he tried to fight the demons that were rising up inside of him, memories, images. Things that he tried so hard not to think about, but that plagued him all the same.

“Esme, my father trafficked me when I was a child.”

She didn’t look shocked. She didn’t look horrified. And she didn’t move away. She leaned into him, her eyes never leaving his. She said nothing. She simply waited.

“I don’t remember when it started. I don’t have clear, well-ordered memories of it. It’s just impressions. Physical impressions. Pain and fear. Because that’s what it is. People who hurt children like that, it’s…it’s a terrible thing. And there’s nothing you can do when you’re in a situation like that. You just have to hope that you survive. So that’s what I did. I learned how to go deep inside myself and to try… I did a good job at that, but it still… I can’t escape it. It is the foundation of my life. What I learned very early is that you cannot trust anyone. That you’re never safe. That there are monsters everywhere. There was no rule, no order. Nothing but pain and fear.”

“How did you escape?”

“I got old enough that I was not worth quite as much money.”

“That’s horrifying. That’s… I don’t understand, I just…”

“You know that the world is dark. You know that these things happen. This is part of the world we live in. These things don’t just happen to other people. It happened to me.”

“Of course. I… I just think it’s awful.”

“Yes. But there was a point where I began to fight, and I simply wasn’t worth enough to try and subdue. I think if he had still been able to fetch a high price for me he would’ve kept me drugged. Locked away. But you know, parts of my life were quite normal then. And I think that is the insidious thing. I went to school. I had a new backpack every year. With whatever cartoon I liked on it. No one knew. They never would have. It wasn’t shadowy figures that were hurting me, it was people in our own neighborhood. It was facilitated by my own father. It wasn’t a stranger taking me out of my yard and forcing me into a terrible life. It was a terrible life with normalcy laid over the top of it, and…”

“And then you ran away.”

“There was something honest about that at least. I finally felt like what I was. A child who didn’t really have a family. One who was on his own in terms of survival. That was when it finally felt honest.”

“This isn’t your shame.”

“I know. I do know that. But…when you are a victim, you worry that that is all anyone will ever see.”

“That’s not what I see.”

She was quiet for a long moment. “Is this why it hurt you so badly to find out you were having a son?”

He looked away, pressure invading his chest. “The most foundational relationship in my life was twisted from the first moment. I have never been loved. And I’ve never felt like I loved anyone. Not until I met you and Alex. You felt like something I could love. And in some ways I thought maybe I left parts of my past behind because of that. I proved to myself that I could care about another person. So I thought to myself maybe I could take that and be a good father. But it is building so much anger inside of me. Because we’re going to have a son. And seeing him in the sonogram like that, how tiny, how helpless, and he will come into this world entirely dependent on us. How could he do that to me?” It was like everything he had ever held back was crashing in on him now. Pushing him to a place that he had always been afraid to go. He was feeling it all. The unfairness of it. The pain of it. He had locked it away, kept it in a vault all this time. He had let it make him angry; he had let it make him focused. He had let it make him protected.

He had never let it make him wounded. But he was now. Because knowing that he was having a son had changed his perspective.

Had really made him see how small and helpless he was. Betrayed.

He was angry, with a fresh, renewed anger, but he was devastated as well. He did not cry. He had learned very early on that the people who liked to hurt you could make pleasure out of your tears, and he had refused to give them.

But now the sorrow that he felt for the boy he had been was almost debilitating.

They sat there, in silence for a moment, and he felt everything. All of this pain, all of this anger, and with Esme right there. He was afraid to hope.

Afraid to look at her.

She lifted her hand and touched his chin, turned his head toward her. “It doesn’t change how I see you. I see the same man that I have always seen. But I understand more why you keep so many things locked away. Why they feel too big. I can understand why you don’t want to talk about it. And we don’t have to go over and over everything. But anything that keeps you from living… I want you to be able to put it in a place that lets you have everything you deserve. I don’t need your trauma. I just need your heart. I want to be able to get to it.”