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“You were a baby!” I choke out, wrapping my hand around my mouth to keep my words, my reaction in, but it’s no use. “You were innocent, Ro. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know,” he agrees. “It took me a long time to realize that, but I know it now. I didn’t deserve the punishments or lessons. That didn’t stop them from happening, though, and it didn’t save me from the scars.”
The scars.
Scars.
The word triggers another memory in my chaotic mind. One of my mom’s journal entries where she mentioned seeing scars on Ro when he was a teenager. I think back, trying to remember the date, the details, but it’s all so hazy, the words bleeding together with the rest of what we saw.
“Where?” I whisper. “How didn’t I know?”
His head tilts to the side, and he gives me a look like he’s pleading with me to fill in the gaps so he doesn’t have to.
My eyes flutter closed as I breathe through it all, sorting through our childhood, the years we spent together before everything fell apart.
But it was already broken.
He never came outside to swim with us. Never took his shirt off. Never left his bedroom or that damn window seat. He hid in plain sight and Isaac…Isaac got to live while Roman was forced to merely exist. He had to stay tucked away, pretending his world wasn’t a mess of ash and darkness while we, while I, got to dance in the sunlight.
And that night…the night we fell into each other for comfort, for escape, for love, I didn’t touch him. I didn’t get a chance before he pinned my hands above my head as he made love to me. Now his back is covered in dark tattoos, obscuring everything beneath them.
Before I can say anything, he goes on.
He tells me about how the abuse accelerated. How Isaac used the cat-o-nine tails on him while he made him recite different prayers, asking God for forgiveness. He tells me how the abuse stopped for a short time when we moved in, but started up again when Roman began to act out.
He tells me he used to light fires. Nothing crazy, nothing big or too destructive, but just enough so he didn’t constantly feel like he was burning up inside, waiting to disappear once and for all.
He tells me how when he felt that way and couldn’t burn things, he asked me to read with him.
Every word, every admission, kills me a little more, until I feel like I’m the one ready to explode, to disappear.
“I’m so sor—”
He reaches up and presses a finger to my lips, silencing me. “I know,” he says again, choking on a quiet sob he never lets out. “I know you are, baby.”
My lungs are constricting, my heart breaking and my soul—my fucking soul is shattering for him.
“Isaac does this to people, Eve,” he rasps. “He breaks things. He cuts and hits and destroys. He forces others into a box, makes them become what he wants, what he needs, until they break so hard, they can never be put back together. And then, he puts a bandaid on the hurt and calls it God.”
The power of those words hits me like a wrecking ball. The truth behind them, the reality of them. It’s just so hard to wrap my mind around it all, even now.
It’s like Isaac is two people. The one who held my hand while I broke over Mama’s death, who protected me from the world and loved me through my heartache. And the one who caused the tears. The one who broke my heart. The one who offered me a world of his creation, molded and shaped to his specifications, and then took it all away before I could even look around.
Roman must sense my confusion, the way my head is frantically trying to wrap around this new reality that’s been thrown at me, at us, because he brushes the new waves of tears off my cheeks and gives me a soft smile through his own sadness.
“But—” I bite my cheek, begging a God I don’t believe in to make all of this go away. To make it all some sort of sick dream. “But why?”
“He’s a narcissist, Goldie,” he whispers. “A sociopath and a narcissist. There’s no explaining or rationalizing his behavior. He uses people, he abuses people, he breaks people. There is no other way around it.”
“I should have seen it,” I try again, guilt consuming me. “I could have, should have—” I let him go, my hands flailing through the air. Mama was hurting, was being raped and abused, and I didn’t see it. Roman was being tortured, destroyed by the man I thought I loved, and I didn’t stop it.
I didn’t stop it.
I…
“Oh my God!” I cry, my body shaking so hard, my teeth start to clack together. I think I’m going to be sick again. I slept with him. “Roman!” I meet his eyes, so utterly disgusted with myself I can’t even think straight. “You were there! You saw what I was doing. You knew I was with him after everything he did to you and you—”
“I’m so fucking sorry, Eve.” He breaks through my frantic spiral and his apology has my jaw snapping shut. Roman wipes his tears away. “I’m so sorry I didn’t stop it. I swear on my life, I never would have left if I ever thought there was a chance he’d hurt you. He was always so fucking sweet to you, to Jane, to the entire goddamned town. It was always just me. Only me that he hated. I didn’t think he’d hurt you or I would have forced you to leave with me.”
