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“And that went on as often as he could find an opportunity until I started dating Mitchel. That was my high school boyfriend. I don’t remember if I told you his name. Anyway, once I was seeing Mitch, I got meaner at home because I was protective of my relationship. AJ would try his old tricks, but they wouldn’t work, I’d tell him no and not care if he called me a little bitch or told my mom I had an attitude problem. And for a little while, that worked, too. But then he got tired of hearing no. One night, he’d been drinking when I came home from hanging out with Mitch, and he was on the couch waiting when I got back. I was wearing a short skirt, so he told me I looked like a whore, that I’d started dressing like a whore ever since I started dating Mitch.” I glance at Killian. “Before I started seeing Mitch, I mostly wore baggy, ugly clothes that wouldn’t draw unwanted attention from AJ.” Getting back to that night, I say, “But that night, I wore a skirt. And apparently seeing that much leg emboldened him. He… pounced on me and threw me down on the couch, and he was going to rape me, but then I started having a panic attack. It freaked him out, and he put his tiny dick away, and he went upstairs. I knew I couldn’t live with him anymore, so as much as I dreaded it, I told my mother the next day. I told her everything, about how he’d touched me in my bedroom years earlier, about how weird it felt when he asked me to ‘help him work out’ the nights he’d keep me downstairs and he would…” I shake my head, not even wanting to put it into words. “And then I told her about the night before. And she sat there, white-faced, while I told her everything. And I felt like I was… scooping out my soul and putting it on a plate for her. And she didn’t say a word. After an uncomfortable silence, I asked her to say something, and she said she’d take care of it. I went to school, and then I went over to Mitch’s house after. I felt… optimistic, I guess. It felt like a weight had been lifted finally telling her about everything. There were times over the years I got this feeling like she knew, but she couldn’t have possibly known. What kind of mother would allow a man to keep living in her house knowing he was preying on her daughter?” I swallow. “But she said she’d take care of it, so I knew things were finally going to get better. I even stayed at Mitch’s house later that day, thinking AJ was probably moving out his things and I didn’t want to have to see him.” I shake my head, remembering how fucking stupid I felt when I came back home that night. “When I got back, I remember walking in the door and seeing she’d made one of his favorite dinners. And I thought, ‘how strange.’ Why would she make his favorite dinner on the day she was kicking him out?”
Killian sighs, and I glance at him. He grabs me and tugs me up, dragging me across the mat until I’m planted between his legs, then he wraps his arms around me.
I smile sadly. “She didn’t kick him out.”
“No,” he says quietly.
Tears well up in my eyes. I don’t let myself feel sad about it anymore, but I still feel sad for the version of me I was that day. I’ve never been that girl again, but I have made a lot of progress this year, and I’m proud of that.
“I was just so fucking stunned,” I tell him. “I had no doubt when she said she’d handle it that she meant it, and I was so sure she would fix it for me. She would make sure it never happened again. She would protect me now that she knew, because the story I told myself about why she never had before was that she didn’t know.”
His arms around me tighten. He has already figured out that she knew, so he whispers, “I’m so sorry, Brynn.”
Those words open the floodgates. The apology I never got from her, and I never will.
“Since he wasn’t leaving, I did. That’s when I lived in my car.”
He brushes a tear off my cheek. “I figured.”
I’m quiet for a moment, then I tell him, “The worst part was how alone I had felt all those years. I thought I was bearing a burden all by myself to protect the people I loved, and…” I clear my throat. “I was angry after I told her and she did nothing. I wanted to lash out. To punish her for not loving me enough to keep me safe. I was spoiling for a fight back then, and living out of my car was hard, so I did have to go back eventually. But I couldn’t stand to look at her anymore. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her, and she infuriated me because the way she would talk to me… it was like the way she texts me now. Like everything is normal between us. Like nothing happened. Like she fucking expects me to live in denial with her and pretend… pretend she didn’t choose that bastard over me. Or to accept it, I guess. But I could never do that. The excuse I always made for her was that she didn’t know, but the truth was that she didn’t care. As long as she didn’t lose him, she didn’t care what kind of hell he made my childhood. She just didn’t care. All she cared about was herself. And that made me so angry. You’re supposed to care about more than just yourself, and you’re damn sure supposed to care about the people you bring into this world. So we got in a fight one day, and Geli came downstairs because she heard us yelling. And she joined the screaming match, and she called me a liar, and said I was making it all up, that her dad would never do that and I was just trying to make her lose her dad because I didn’t have mine.”
I swallow, but I can feel my emotions settling. The practiced detachment I needed in order to leave all of it behind.
Back then, it hurt like hell to hear the people I loved turn on me. It confirmed all my very worst fears.
But I got past it. I learned to stop needing their love. I learned to be okay without it.
I’m calmer, my tone more normal, when I finish the story. “Her denial of my experience felt more like cruelty than anything because… I loved her. I loved them both, and I endured so much to protect them, to keep that family intact for her, and there she was, accusing me of jealousy. It was salt in the wound. I thought they loved me, but you protect the people you love, and that day, I just felt like they didn’t love me anymore. Maybe they never really loved me, so as soon as it stopped being easy to love me, they gave up the charade. So, I packed as many of my things into my car as I could, and I left. I never went back. When I graduated, I moved here, and… that’s the end, I guess.”
“Jesus. Fuck, Brynn.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” I say, glancing back at him. “I know that’s heavy. I didn’t want to bring it up, but…”
“I was an asshole,” he says with a nod.
I crack a smile, stretching to kiss his cheek. “No. I mean, yeah, a little bit, but it’s okay.”
“Why didn’t you block her?” he asks, genuinely curious.
That question triggers a slight twinge of shame. Or I guess the answer does. “This may sound bad.”
“After what you just told me, I fucking doubt it.”
I still hesitate before I admit, “I have no desire to talk to her anymore. I’m past wanting that, but… after everything that happened and feeling so… thrown away by her…” I sigh. “I like knowing she still wants to reach out to me. I like knowing… or believing, I guess,” I correct myself. “I like believing that means she regrets her choices, at least the tiniest bit. It’s the story I tell myself because it makes me feel better, and no one else has ever given a shit about making me feel better, so I had to look after myself, but I like to imagine she wouldn’t reach out if she didn’t care in some little corner of her heart. The truth is probably that it isn’t that. She’s a bad person, but she needs to believe she’s a good person, and good people tend not to have kids who just stop talking to them. So in reality, I’m sure it’s more about her than any genuine feelings she has about me. She’s looking after her own image, not genuinely working to mend a relationship she blew up. But… it’s a comforting lie, and I went a long time without any comfort. If I delude myself into interpreting every unanswered text as an apology, a useless attempt to retrieve my lost love… it just makes me feel better.”
I’m deeply embarrassed to admit that. I never have before, even to myself. But Killian doesn’t judge me. He holds me tight, and he says, “I think you should do whatever makes you feel better about it and fuck what anyone thinks. It’s not their trauma, it’s yours.”
I nod. “That’s what I think, too.”
“And Brynn?” he says, grabbing my jaw and turning my face so I’m looking up at him. “I’m gonna take care of this for you.”
I hold his gaze, and I know exactly what he means. Not only because of what he did to Kyle, but because of the crazy threat he just made when he thought I was talking to someone else.
Killian doesn’t share, and his protection is retroactive.
And I know the right thing to do is probably to argue with him, to plead for mercy for people who had none for me. Because after everything I went through, I fought the hurt and the anger and the temptation to just shut off and feel nothing. I healed, and I had the courage to open up again. I overcame my baser impulses to punish everyone for the pain I felt. I chose to be a good girl and walk away instead of lighting their world on fire.
But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to see it burn.
