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The big guy hummed into the shell of my ear, his breath warm and way too comforting. “You want to tell me what that was about?” he asked in a whisper.
“Not really,” I mumbled, clasping my hands in my lap.
He made a tiny scoffing sound but didn’t say anything for a moment until… “You’re sitting on me. I think you owe me.”
I tried to lunge up again, even though I really didn’t want to, but those huge hands clamped down even tighter, that time with his fingers spread wide, covering my kneecaps and part of my thighs.
“Stop it. I’m teasing you,” he commented.
Teasing me? Aiden? Letting my head droop forward, I kept my eyes closed and let a rattled sigh out. “I’m scared of the dark.” Like that wasn’t completely obvious.
He didn’t even let out a single breath. “Yeah, I got that. I would have given you my phone to use as a flashlight but the battery went dead after I talked to you.”
“Oh. Thanks anyway.” I made myself let out another deep breath. “I’m really scared of the dark, like the dark in here when I can’t see anything. I have been since I was a kid,” I explained tensely.
“Why?” he cut in.
“Why what?”
He made that exasperated noise of his. “Why are you scared of the dark?”
I wanted to ask if he really wanted to know, but of course he damn well did. I didn’t necessarily want to tell him—nor had I ever wanted to tell anyone—but he had a point. I was a twenty-six-year-old sitting on his lap after I’d been on the verge of having a panic attack because the lights had gone out. I guess I sort of owed him.
“It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. Okay? When I was five, my sisters” —though I’m pretty sure I would now blame Susie as being the main mastermind behind the incident— “locked me in a closet.”
“That’s why you’re scared?” he had the nerve to scoff before I continued.
“With the lights off for two days,” I finished up.
Aiden’s voice didn’t just react, it seemed like his entire body did too. Inch by inch, what felt like from his toes and up, went rock solid. “Without food or water?”
The fact that he thought about that small detail didn’t escape me. That was the shitty part. At least now, I thought that was the shitty part of the story. “They left me water and candy bars. Chips.” Those bitches, even at seven, eight, and nine, had already been vicious by then. They had planned it. Planned on locking me in there because they didn’t want to watch over me while our mom was gone. They hadn’t wanted to play with me, for God’s sake. They had taunted through the door before leaving me.
I shivered even though I really would rather not have.
“Where was your mother?” he asked in that creepy, calm tone.
I wasn’t sure what it was about all these memories I’d shoved aside for so long suddenly coming back that made me feel like a raw, open wound. I couldn’t control the long breath I let out. “I think she was dating someone back then. It might have been my little brother’s dad. I don’t remember that well. He was in and out of our lives for a few years. All I know for sure was that she wasn’t at home then.” Sometimes she’d disappear for a few days at a time, but that was my burden to bear.
“Who let you out?”
“They did.” They unlocked the door and made fun of me for being a baby and peeing on myself. It had taken me an hour to get myself to crawl out of there.
“What happened after that?” He was still talking in that effortless, patient voice that screamed ‘wrong’ at the top of its lungs.
Shame and anger made me shake. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“No.”
“Did you tell your mom?”
“Of course I told my mom. It was her closet they put me in. I’d peed in there. She had to get the carpet replaced because it smelled so bad.” I’d smelled so bad. My hands had been so messed up from banging on the door, and my voice so hoarse from screaming at them to let me out… or to at least turn on the closet light… or if they couldn’t turn on the closet light to turn on the bedroom light… to no avail. I never knew for sure what they’d done in those two days I was in there, and frankly, I didn’t care at all.
I didn’t. Because kids that young shouldn’t have been left alone to begin with.
His chest started puffing against my back as if his breathing was difficult. “She did nothing to your sisters?”
I wanted to crawl into myself. The tone he was using raked at my nerves, pulling the sides of the stab wound called my childhood wide open for inspection. It made me feel small. “No. She yelled at them, but that was it. I mean, she stayed home for a month or two afterward” —that was one of the times I remembered her being mostly sober— “and I slept with her every night. After that, I moved my things and shared a room with my little brother.” I’d started locking the bedroom door after that as well.
The fingertips on my knees kneaded for a second, but I bet my life it was a subconscious gesture, mostly because his labored breathing hadn’t gone anywhere.
“I have to sleep with a light on,” I admitted to him, feeling his chest huff behind me. Dumb, dumb, dumb. “I don’t know why I just told you that. Don’t make fun of me.”
There was a pause. A hesitation before, “I won’t,” he promised effortlessly. “I wondered why you had so many at your apartment and in your room.”
