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“What’s wrong with her, then?”
Fuck, he’s really going for my feelings tonight. How am I meant to resist him if he keeps asking questions like he truly cares?
“She’s…ill.” He stays silent, and I don’t wait for him to ask the question I know he’s thinking. “She has severe depression. She’s on meds but always stops them, making her worse. Every time I see her, it’s a gamble. Is she going to be herself today? Will she be so depressed she doesn’t want to see her own kid? Emma doesn’t even bother. She says it hurts her too much. I just…I can’t leave her alone, you know? What if something happens one day, and no one has been to see her? What if I go just to find her…I don’t know. Dead. What she really needs is to be in a psychiatric hospital so they can help her. But we can’t afford that shit.”
He wordlessly takes it all in, his hand on my back becoming more and more reassuring.
“What does it feel like? To have a mom with depression?”
Tears build at the back of my eyes. I can feel them trying to force their way through. I scratch my throat, swallow them, and admit the truth no one ever bothered asking for.
“It feels like I’m deeply hurt, and yet, no one hurt me. Like there’s no one to blame for your trauma, and you just keep going around in circles wondering how to heal yourself. I know my mom did her best. I know it’s a sickness. A black poison that infected her mind. Sometimes I want to hate her. Sometimes I wonder if I love her out of guilt for wanting to hate her.”
After a beat, he drops a kiss to my hairline. “That’s very sad, Billie.”
“We live on the North Shore. We all have sad stories.”
“I guess, yeah,” he confirms.
“What about you? Where’s your mom? I’ve never seen or heard of her.” I remember clearly what he said to his dad when he was drunk. That he abuses his women because that’s what his dad did.
He shrugs as if he’s about to say something he doesn’t care about. “My mom escaped my dad as soon as she could. He was an abusive fuck, so good for her that she left.”
I raise my head, trying to gaze into his eyes despite the darkness around us. “Do you ever hear from her?”
He shakes his head, his stare on mine. “She left in the middle of the night so he wouldn’t catch her.”
My heart breaks, my brain trying to understand how she could leave them behind, knowing his dad was dangerous. “But…didn’t she want to take you and Kay with her?”
He looks away and presses the back of my head so I lay down on him again. It’s like he can’t even say it to my face. “She didn’t want kids.”
“A lot of women end up with kids accidentally. It doesn’t mean she didn’t love you.”
“That’s not what I meant. She didn’t want the process of having kids. My dad just forced her.”
“You mean, he…” Realizing what he’s saying chills me to the bone. He doesn’t stutter, either. Doesn’t hesitate. It’s just a fact to him.
“I’m not sure about Kay. Maybe my mom hadn’t realized he was abusive back then. I don’t know. But I do know she was deep into the abuse when he wanted another kid. I know he raped her to have me.”
His entire body has stilled. I wrap my arms around him, my forearms crushed between him and the mattress. This doesn’t excuse or explain anything he has done to me.
So why do I suddenly feel like it explains everything about him?
What must it be like to grow up knowing your existence happened only because your mother was raped?
“I’m sorry, Caden,” I murmur against his chest.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he says with a chilling voice. “I feel fine.”
Of course he does. Because he has been made utterly emotionless about sexual assault. When he thinks about it, there is nothing but a cold, calm feeling.
We stay silent for a while. I don’t even know how long passes, but I feel his breathing becoming even.
At some point, he startles, as if waking up from a dream.
“Are you scared of me?” he asks with a groggy voice. I can feel his heart kicking against his chest.
“Yes.”
