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The whole scene had left me feeling helpless, confused, and terrified. Even hours later, I still ached for Sage.
And that was before Cash had told me about the brutality Sage had been forced to endure as a child.
I understood his helplessness on a bone-deep level. I’d felt the same way as I’d watched my mother be abused by one man after the next. But nothing had compared to losing her in such a violent manner. The rage I’d been feeling had only been outweighed by my inability to do anything about it. Ronan had given me back some of the sense of power that I’d lost, so I understood a little of what Sage was feeling.
And listening to Cash as he’d explained how it was Sage’s choice to give control over to Cash did make sense to me. I’d done the same thing when I’d looked at him in the hotel and silently asked him to make the choice to have me come to Arkansas with them. It’d still been my decision, but I’d given him the power to voice it for me.
I didn’t claim to understand all of it after Cash’s explanation, but some of the uneasiness in my belly had settled.
Well, it had, until Cash had made the comment about nearly killing someone.
“What happened?” I asked.
Cash looked down at Sage for a long time, then began petting him again. It did something funny to my insides. I wanted to do for him what he was doing for Sage.
Touch.
Comfort.
Remind him he wasn’t alone.
I knew I’d hurt him with the comment about Sage needing professional help. It had been a knee-jerk response to what he’d told me and having seen Sage’s behavior for myself. It made me realize how much pressure Cash had to be under all the time to keep Sage together.
“My parents both had a lot of problems. My father suffered from severe depression and my mother was schizophrenic. I spent most of my childhood trying to keep one or both of them going. They were both on disability, so that was where all our money came from. Neither of them could hold an actual job. I’d spend my mornings before school getting them settled for the day… making sure they took their meds, preparing food for them so they’d have something to eat, assuming they even remembered to eat. When I got home, I’d do the household chores and pay the bills. The lady who lived next door to us agreed to do our grocery shopping for us in exchange for me mowing her lawn and stuff. My entire day was about trying to keep their heads above water… my own too, I guess.”
“How old were you?” I asked.
“I was ten when my dad went downhill for the first time. He’d have a few good stretches now and then, but they never lasted. I was fifteen when he died. He hung himself from one of the rafters in the barn behind our house.”
My heart thumped painfully in my chest. I had a feeling he was leaving something out about his father’s death – namely that he’d been the one to find his body. But I didn’t press him on that.
“After he died, my mom started dating a bunch of different guys. She’d usually meet them while she was on her meds. She’d start feeling good so she’d go off them. The guys would knock her around and treat her like shit, but she was too far gone to even care. Eventually the guys would get fed up and leave her and she’d get depressed and I’d be reminded of my dad…”
Cash shook his head. “No matter how many times I promised her I’d always take care of her, she’d go out and find another guy and the cycle would repeat itself. I worked so fucking hard to do everything right… to give her what she needed and it wasn’t...” He fell silent for a moment. “It just wasn’t enough.”
He sounded so defeated that I couldn’t stop myself from closing my fingers over where his were resting on Sage’s upper arm. The touch seemed to snap him out of the daze he’d fallen into. “Anyway, one day I came home from school and this guy she’d been dating was trying to force her to take his gun… he was telling her she should just kill herself because she was such a freak that no one would ever want her. I walked in just in time to hear him say that to her. When she refused to take the gun, he punched her. Then he was on top of her, calling her names and slapping her. I just… I lost it. I dragged him away from her and began hitting him. The cops had to pull me off him. He was in a coma for two weeks. I was put in juvenile detention because I was still only fifteen. The prosecutor agreed not to charge me as an adult as long as I took anger management classes and talked to a shrink. I was in there for a year.”
