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It hurt him to hear that.
“That’s horrible,” I say, not turning away from the canvas. He might only be able to talk about this if he’s not looking at me. I know how hard that was for Leo.
“Yes. It was.”
“He was always like that?”
“Maybe not so much when I was very young. I don’t remember most of those years.”
I add depth to the curve of a wave, connections blooming between my memories of Emerson. All the things he’s told me. How he was in the cave. I saw his panic. He admitted that his father was a bastard. The closet—it’s the closet he hid for the longest time.
“How long—” My heart aches. I blend some white into the deepest blue on my palette. “How long did he keep you in there?”
“I think the shortest period was eight hours. But sometimes it would be days.”
“Days?” I clear my throat of my shocked whisper. What the fuck? There wouldn’t have been any light. No air to breathe. It would have been inhuman. It would have been torture. “For what?”
“His motivations varied. The more difficult thing was that he made it dangerous to be outside. When he opened the door, it came with a cost.”
My heart drops to the floor and breaks apart like that paperweight. It’s all I can do to keep painting. Even my father had his better moments. His small kindnesses. He was mainly a bastard, but he never put us in closets. We never went hungry. Jesus.
“And that’s when—”
“When it became harder to tolerate open spaces. And it never got easier.”
“In the cave you talked about a door.” He mentioned a specific image, actually. Traced it with his hand in the air. “The light around the doorframe.”
“It never meant anything good. It made me anxious to see it. On the one hand, it would mean there was hope of escape. On the other, it meant there was a threat on the other side. It was impossible to judge how angry he’d be when the door opened.”
“Were you always alone?”
“There were times it was the three of us. It was better in some ways. Worse in others. In general, I was alone.”
Of course he needs to control his life. Of course his mind responds to the outside world with abject panic.
“The closet,” Emerson says, “was the only safe place.”
I bite my lip until I can’t take the pressure anymore. There. No tears.
“I started having the attacks early on. Elementary school, maybe. It would start ramping up when I saw the light go on outside. He usually let us out at night, so there was always that shape. And when he opened the door, there was no stopping it. I thought I could get used to a beating, but I never did. Which was unfortunate, because he never stopped.”
“Your brothers—”
“They had the opposite reaction. They always thought it was safer to be free. Sin thought so. Will thought so. The beating was just the cost of doing business, I guess. I could never convince my mind not to overreact.”
“I don’t think that’s an overreaction.”
It’s officially too difficult to paint, so I put down the brush and turn to him.
Emerson looks back, and his nerves are on the surface. Palpable. But he’s not worried for himself. He’s worried that this might be too much for me to take. That it might break me somehow. Erase the happiness from yesterday.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” I tell him, and his expression turns questioning. “You’re not going to upset me. I mean, obviously I’m upset. I hate—” I whisk unshed tears from my eyes with my knuckle. “I don’t want for this to have happened to you.”
“What happened to you, little painter?”
He’s not the only one who’s been keeping secrets. It’s time, I think. I don’t want to have to say this to him, but we’re in this together now. It’s both of us. He can’t be the only one with his past on the line. Honestly, I’m glad that he watches me so much. I’m glad he sees everything. Because he already knows that something did happen.
He’s known since the night we met.
