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He scoffed. “She’s an atheist.”
“She’s still a person.”
Trevor lifted his hand dismissively “Haven’t seen you in church these last few weeks. I hear your friend’s back in town. Working here, too. There a reason you ain’t mentioned that to me yet?”
Gray shrugged and opened the cash register.
“You sure he ain’t here now?” Trevor asked, taking a step forward.
Gray shook his head. “Was there something you wanted? Because we close in ten minutes and I need to count down the registers.” Gray’s voice was shaking. As much as I wanted to crawl under that desk and hide, my childhood tormentor had set his target on the man I loved, and it struck up a white-hot flame of rage inside of me.
“He been bothering you?” Trevor said.
“Who?”
“You know exactly who I mean. The faggot.”
“Don’t call him that,” Gray said, turning around and taking a step toward his brother.
“Momma called me the other day. Said she was getting worried again.”
I racked my brain for a reason Trevor might bring Esther up. I couldn’t think of anything so troubling that she’d task her oldest son with stomping into the Pick-n-Save to raise holy hell on her behalf.
“If he lays a finger on you, I’ll finish what I started. I let him go before. Let him go ‘cause you begged me to. I won’t be as forgiving this time.”
“I don’t know why the heck you care. He hasn’t ever done anything to you.”
“He tried to make a mockery out of our family. Tried to make a mockery out of you.”
“He didn’t do anything I didn’t ask him to. You know that. I’ve told you over and over.”
“And that’s why he’s still breathing. If he so much as looks at you funny, that won’t be the case for long. What he did was sick, luring you into his filth.”
The picture of Gray and his mother sat at the top of his opened desk drawer. Desperate to escape the horror show transpiring below, I picked it up and stared down at his grinning face. As I held it, I noticed that two of the tabs on the back were pried open, and a corner of the cardboard was loose. I turned it around, intending on closing the clasps, but I caught sight of something behind the bent backing; a folded edge on the picture underneath. My heart raced as I pulled the other tabs open. With the cardboard pulled away, everything went silent around me.
There, hidden away from prying eyes, was my face. I pulled the picture out, setting the frame on Gray’s desk before unfolding the paper. The crease was so deep the picture was barely intact. It had been folded and unfolded so many times that Gray had stuck strip after strip of scotch tape on the back just to keep it held together. All that time I’d thought he cut me out—out of the picture, and out of his life—but there I was. Standing right by his side. My face locked on him, pouring my love into him like a spotlight. He’d kept me there. Tucked away. Protected. Just for him. They stole twenty years from us, but the entire time I’d been losing him, he’d had me.
“Oh, Gray.” I stroked his face in the photo, my heart swelling as I drank in a vision of the boy I once knew. The boy who loved me with the entirety of his heart.
There was a folded-up piece of paper inside the frame, but I didn’t have to open it to know what it was. Before Trevor found us that night, I’d practically memorized Gray’s list word for word. I’d drawn a heart on the outside with our initials and everything.
“So, you’re going to do it?” Trevor said, pulling me out of my trance.
“I said I would. You need to go, though. I have to close down. She’ll be mad if I’m late.” Fear was coating his voice. When I looked up at the security monitors, Trevor’s hand was dangerously close to Gray’s throat. It slowly rose, as if he was planning on choking him into submission.
Enough.
It was enough.
In his truck, I’d told Gray that I had him. That he was safe again. Trevor didn’t get to put his grubby little fingers anywhere near Gray’s porcelain skin. Not anymore.
Time slowed to a snail’s pace, and numbness washed over me as I lifted the picture frame above my chest. Every trace of fear faded from me as it crashed against the floor. Something happened in those tiny, fragile moments. A finality of sorts. A realization that I had been running all of my adult life. The second I smashed that frame was the moment I chose to fight back. To make my presence known. To take the shattered glass with me, and tell Trevor Collins that I was whole. That he’d broken me once, but even broken pieces have their place. That broken doesn’t mean weak. And to tell him that no one—not Trevor, not even God himself—was going to lay a finger on Gray.
I remembered every touch from that night. Every hit. Every kick. The sting of the gasoline, the dread as he struck each match. I reached down, taking a shard of glass and clutching it in my smock pocket before descending the stairs.
“Trevor,” I said as I took the final step down and exited the safety of Gray’s office.
Trevor eyed me up and down as the corner of his mouth twitched. “I knew it. I knew you were here.”
