He cringes at the words, his body strung so tight I fear his next words will snap the tension, relieve the boy but break the man within. I look at him, my own heart shattering, my own faith dissolved imagining the horror his small body endured, and I force myself to stem the physical revulsion his words evoke because I fear he’ll think it’s for him, not the monsters who abused him.
I can hear him struggling to catch his breath, can see him physically revolt against his own words with a forceful swallow. When he starts speaking again, his voice is more controlled but the eerily quiet tone chills my skin.
“Love was snapping her little boy’s arm in half because he bit the man raping him so hard that now he won’t give up her next fucking speedball. Love was telling her son he wants it, deserves it, that no one will ever love him if they know. Oh and to seal the deal, it was telling her son that the superheroes he calls to while being violated—ruined—yeah those, they’re never fucking coming to save him. Never!” He’s shouting into the night, tears coursing down both of our faces, and his shoulders are shuddering with the relief of being unburdened from the weight he’s carried for over twenty-five years.
“So if that’s love?” He laughs darkly again, “…then yeah, my first eight fucking years of my life, I was loved like you wouldn’t fucking believe.” He walks up to me, and even through the darkness I can feel the anger, the despair, the grief that’s running rampant through his body. He looks down for a beat, and I watch the tears falling from his face darken the white concrete below. He shakes his head once more, and when he looks up, the resignation in his eyes, the shame that edges it, devastates me. “So when I ask why I’m confused about how I can feel anything other than hatred to know she’s dead? That’s why, Rylee,” he says so quietly I strain to hear him.
I don’t know what to say. Don’t know what to do, because every single part of me has just shattered and crashed down around me. I’ve heard it all in my job, but to hear it from a grown man broken, lost, forlorn, burdened with the weight of shame over an entire lifetime, a man I would give my heart and soul to if I knew it would take away the pain and memories, leaves me at a complete loss.
And in the split second it takes me to think all of this, it hits Colton what he’s just said. The adrenaline from his confession abates. His shoulders begin to shake and his legs give out as he crumbles to the bench behind him. In the heartbeat of time it takes me to get to him, he is sobbing into his hands. Heart wrenching, soul cleansing sobs that rack through his entire body as, “Oh my God!” falls from his lips over and over again.
I wrap my arms around him feeling completely helpless but not wanting to let go, never wanting to let go. “It’s okay, Colton. It’s okay,” I repeat over and over in between his repeated words, my tears falling onto his shoulders as I hold tight letting him know that no matter how far he falls, I’ll catch him.
I’ll always catch him.
I try to hold back the sobs racking through my body but it’s no use. There’s nothing left for me to do but feel with him, grieve with him, mourn with him. And so we sit like this in the dark, me holding onto him, and him letting go in a place that’s always brought him peace.
I just pray that this time the peace will find some permanence in his scarred soul.
Our tears subside but he just keeps his head in his hands, eyes squeezed tight, and so many emotions stripping him straight to the core. I want him to take the lead here, need him to let me know how to help him so I just sit quietly.
“I’ve never … I’ve never said those words out loud before,” he says, voice hoarse from crying and eyes focused on his fidgeting fingers. “I’ve never told anyone,” he whispers. “I guess I thought that if I said it, then … I don’t know what I thought would happen.”
“Colton,” I say his name as I try to figure out what to say next. I need to see his eyes, need for him to see mine. “Colton, look at me please,” I say as gently as possible, and he just shakes his head back and forth like a little kid afraid of getting in trouble.
I allow him time, allow him to hide in the silence and darkness of the night, my thoughts consumed with pain for this man I love so very dearly. I close my eyes, trying to process it all, when I hear him whisper the one line I’d never expect in this moment.
“Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Ironman.”
And it hits me like a ton of bricks. What he’s trying to tell me with the simple, whispered statement. My heart falls and my head screams. “No, no, no, no!”
I drop to my knees in front of him, reaching out my hands to the side of his face and direct it up so that his eyes can meet mine. And I cringe when he flinches at my touch. He’s petrified to take this first step toward healing. Scared of what I think of him now that I know his secrets. Worried about what kind of man I perceive him to be, because in his eyes, he allowed this to happen to him. He’s ashamed I’ll judge him based on the scars that still rule his mind, body, and soul.
And he couldn’t be any further from the truth.
I sit and wait patiently, my fingers trembling on his cheeks for some time until green eyes flicker up and look at me with a pain I can’t imagine reflected in them.
“There are so many things I want and need to say to you right now … so many things,” I say, allowing my voice to tremble, my tears to fall, and goose bumps to blanket my entire body, “that I want to say to the little boy that you were and to the incredible man you are.” He forces a swallow as his muscle in his jaw tics, trying to rein back the tears pooling in his eyes. I see fear mixed with disbelief in them.
And I also see hope. It’s just beneath the surface waiting for the chance to feel safe, to feel protected, to feel loved for it to spring to life, but it’s there.
I am in awe of the vulnerability he is entrusting me with, because I can’t imagine how hard it is to open yourself up when all you’ve ever known is pain. I rub my thumb over his cheek and bottom lip as he stares at me, and I find the words I need to convey the truth he needs to hear.
“Colton Donavan, this is not your fault. If you hear one thing I tell you, please let it be this. You’ve carried this around with you for so long and I need you to hear me tell you that nothing you did as a child, or as a man, deserved what happened to you.” His eyes widen and he turns his body some, opens up his protective posture, and I’m hoping it’s a reflection of how he feels with me. That he’s listening, understanding, hearing. Because there are so many things I’ve wanted to say to him for so long about things I’d assumed, and now I know. Now I can express them.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, then, now, or ever. I am in awe of your strength.” He starts to argue with me and I just put a finger to his lips to quiet him before I repeat what I was saying. “I am in awe of your strength to keep this bottled up for all this time and not self-destruct. You are not damaged or fucked up or hopeless, but rather resilient and brave and honorable.” My voice breaks with the last word, and I can feel his chin quiver beneath my hand because my words are so hard to hear after thinking the opposite for so very long, but he keeps his eyes on mine. And that alone signals that he’s opening himself up to the notion of healing.
“You came from a place of unfathomable pain and yet you … you’re this incredible light who has helped to heal me, has helped to heal my boys.” I shake my head trying to find the words to relay how I feel. So he understands there is so much light in him when all he’s seen for so long is darkness.
“Ry,” he sighs, and I can see him struggling with accepting the truth in my words.
“No, Colton. It’s true, baby. I can’t imagine how hard it was to ask your dad for the help to find your mother. I can’t imagine how you felt taking that call today. I can’t fathom how hard it was for you to just confess the secret that has weighed so heavy on your soul for so very long … but please know this, your secret is safe with me.”
He sniffles back a sob, his eyes blinking rapidly, his expression pained, and I lean forward and press a soft kiss to hi
s lips—a touch of physicality to reassure the both of us. I press a kiss to his nose and then rest my forehead against his, trying to take a moment to absorb all of this.
“Thank you for trusting enough to share with me,” I whisper to him, my words feathering over his lips. And he doesn’t respond, but I don’t need him to. We sit like this, forehead to forehead, accepting and comforting each other and the boundaries that have been crossed.
I don’t expect him to share any more, so when he starts to speak, I’m startled. “Growing up I didn’t know how to deal with it all, how to cope.” The absolute shame in his voice washes over me, my mind reeling from the loneliness he must have endured as a teenager. I rub my thumb back and forth over his cheek so that he knows I’m here, knows I’m listening. He sighs softly, his breath heating my lips as he finishes his confession.
“I tried quickly to prove that I wasn’t damned to Hell even though he did those things to me. I ran through the gamut of girls in high school to prove to myself otherwise. It made me feel good—to be wanted and desired by females—because it took that fear away … but then it also became my way of coping … my mechanism. Pleasure to bury the pain.”
I whisper it the same time he does. The line he said to me in the Florida hotel room that stuck with me, ate at me, because I wanted to understand why he felt that way. And I get it now. I get the sleeping around. The fuck ’em and chuck ’em. All of them a way to prove to himself that he was not scarred by his past. A way to place a temporary Band-Aid over the open wounds that never healed.
I squeeze my eyes shut, my mind and heart aching for this man, when his voice interrupts the silence.
“I don’t remember everything, but I remember that he used to come up to me from behind. That’s why …” his voice so soft it trails off, answering a question I asked the night of the charity gala.
“Okay,” I tell him so he knows I hear him, knows I understand why he was robbed of the ability to accept such an innocent touch.
“The superheroes,” he continues, his stark honesty stealing my breath. “Even as a kid, I had to hold on to something to try and escape the pain, the shame, the fear, so I would call to them to try and cope. To have some kind of hope to hold on to.”
I taste the salt on my lips. I assume it’s from my own tears but I can’t be sure because I can’t tell where he ends and I begin. And we don’t move, remaining forehead to forehead, and I wonder if it’s easier for him to sit like this—eyes shut, hearts pounding, souls reaching—to get it all out. So he doesn’t have to see the despair, pain, and compassion in my eyes. But even though his eyes are closed I can still feel the chains that have bound his soul for so long begin to break free. I can feel his walls starting to crumble. I can feel hope take flight out of this place in the dark. Just him and me in a place where he can now chase his dreams without his past closing in on him
I angle my head down and press a kiss to his lips. I feel them tremble beneath mine, my self-assured man stripped bare and open. He finally eases his head back, our foreheads no longer touching, but now I can look into his eyes and I can see a clarity that’s never been there before. And a small place within me sighs that he just might be able to find some peace now, just might be able to lay the demons to rest.
I smile solemnly at him as he draws in a ragged breath and reaches his hands out and urges me up from my knees and onto his lap, where he wraps his arms around me. I sit there cradled, comforted, and loved by a man capable of so much. I hope he’s finally able to see it and accept it. A man who swears he doesn’t know how to love and yet that’s exactly what he’s giving me right now—love—in the midst of being in the darkest of despairs. I press a kiss to the underside of his jaw, his stubble tickling my sensitive lips.
The dust of a broken past settles around us as hope rises from its remnants.
“Why tell me now?”
He draws in a quick breath and tightens his arms around me, pressing a kiss to the top of my head and chuckles softly. “Because you’re the fucking alphabet.”
What? My head shakes back and forth, and I lean back so I can look at him. And when I meet his eyes, when the smile that spreads on his face lights up the green in the dark around us, my heart tumbles to new depths of love for this man. “The alphabet?”
I’m sure it’s the look on my face that has his grin widening, dimple winking, and his head shaking. “Yep, A to motherfucking Z.” A spark of his personality that he’d lost shines through fleetingly, and it warms my heart to hear that touch of amused arrogance in his voice. He chuckles again and says “Fucking Becks” before leaning forward and pressing his lips to mine without answering my question.
He pulls back and looks at me, eyes intense. “Why now, Ry? Because of you. Because I’ve pushed and pulled and hurt you way too much … and despite all of that, you’ve fought for me—to keep me, to help me, to heal me, to race me—and for once in my life, I want someone to do that for me. And I want to be free to do that for someone else. I …” He sighs trying to find the words to match the emotion swimming in his eyes. Eyes still haunted on the fringes but so much less now than ever before, and that alone eases the ache in my soul. “I want the chance to prove I’m capable of it. That all of this …” he says with an irrelevant wave of his hand, “didn’t rob me of that. That I can be who you need and give you what you want,” his voice pleads.
I hear the sadness from his confessions still tingeing his voice, but I can also hear hope and possibility woven in there as well. And it’s such a welcome sound that I purse my lips and press them against his.
I can still feel the emotion shuddering through him as he slips his tongue between my parted and willing lips to deepen the kiss. I can still sense him trying to grasp this new ground he’s trying to find his footing on, but I know that he’ll find it.
Because he’s a fighter.
Always has been.
Always will be.
I glance over to him watching the light of the streetlights play over the angles of his face as I sing softly to Lifehouse’s Everything on the radio. It’s late, but time was of no importance as we sat together in the grandstands laying old wounds to rest and bringing new beginnings to the table. Sammy’s driving my car to the house but as Colton and I exit the freeway in the Range Rover, I realize we’re not going home just yet.
Home.
What a crazy notion. That I’m going home with Colton, because right now, after tonight, the word means so much more than just a brick and mortar building. It means comfort and healing and Colton. My ace. I sigh, my chest tightening with love.
I look over at him again and he must feel the weight of my stare because he glances over at me with eyes still slightly red from crying. They lock on mine momentarily as he smiles softly and then shakes his head subtly, as if he’s still trying to process the events of the past few hours before looking back at the road. But I keep my eyes on him because I know deep down that’s where they’ll always land no matter where else they look.
I’m so deep in thought I don’t even recognize our location when Colton pulls into a parking lot and puts the car in park. “There’s something I’ve gotta do. Come with me?”
I look at him confused about what we’re doing at eleven o’clock at night in some random parking lot in the outskirts of Hollywood. Obviously it’s important because after tonight all I can think of is that he’s probably exhausted and just wants to go home. “Of course.”
We exit the car and I look around, a little leery leaving such a nice car in this rundown, poorly lit lot, but Colton is completely unfazed. He pulls me in close to his side and leads me toward a very formidable wooden door that looks like it came straight out of the medieval times. Colton opens it and I’m immediately confronted with bright lights, music playing softly, and a strangely unique buzzing sound.
I whip my head over to Colton, who’s watching me with a bemused curiosity. He just chuckles and shakes his head at my slack jawed reaction and widening eyes.
I’ve never even stepped foot in one of these places before. Deep down a part of me knows why we’re here, but it doesn’t make sense.
Colton links his fingers with mine as we walk down a narrow hallway toward a room where there are bright lights. Colton crosses the threshold ahead of me and stops momentarily until the buzzing ceases.
“Well motherfucking cocksuck! The fucking wonder boy pays a visit,” a rumbling voice yells out, and Colton laughs before being pulled farther into the room. “Well goddamn, you’re a sight for sore eyes, Wood!”
I watch as arms, sleeved in a variety of colors and images, wrap around Colton and bring him in for a quick hug. I see a pair of hazel eyes catch sight of me over Colton’s shoulder.
“Oh fucking shit! I’m so sorry about all of the fucking cussing,” the voice belonging to the eyes says as he shoves Colton backwards and steps toward me. “Dude, if you bring a fucking lady in here you need to make sure to give me warning so I can be respectable and shit!”
Colton laughs as the man wipes his hand off on his jeans before reaching it out to shake mine. My eyes roam over the heavy set, tattoo riddled man with closely cropped hair and a long unruly beard, but what I find the most endearing is the blush staining his cheeks. It’s actually quite adorable, but I doubt he’d be amused if I said that right now.
“So fucking sorry! Christ, I just did it again,” he shakes his head with a wheeze of a laugh and I can’t help but smile.
“No worries,” I tell him, lifting a chin over toward Colton. “His mouth’s just as bad. I’m Rylee.”
“Okay, well I’ll try to keep the fucking to a minimum,” he says and then blushes again. “I mean—not with you of course—well unless you wanted to because then—”
“Don’t even think about it, Sledge,” Colton warns with a laugh as Sledge, I assume, shakes his head and just laughs that unique laugh of his again before ushering us into the tattoo parlor.