“I didn’t think I was going to give any. But they’re offering money. Quite a bit of it. Crew’s got power in the form of the police force covering his corrupt ass. I’ll take mine in the form of cold hard cash.”
“Money can’t buy everything,” I whispered.
His shoulder raised as he moved the ice across my ribs. “No, but I’m not above trying to let it buy me whatever I can to keep you safe.”
Again, a clash of emotions. Guilt for knowing he’d never have taken the interviews if it hadn’t been for my situation. Gratitude because of it. I welcomed them both. I fought them both too.
My phone beeped from inside my purse resting on the table by the door. Brecken and I both fixed in on it.
After balancing the ice bag on my shoulder, he rose from the chair and started for my purse. His limp was more pronounced this morning, probably from being stiff after spending all night propped up in a chair. When he returned, he settled my purse gently in my lap, distracting himself with the bag of ice while I dug out my phone. I hadn’t missed any calls, only the one text that had just come in. It was from Crew. Simple. Concise. No drawn-out apology. No elaborate defense. Just a statement.
“He’s checked into a rehab program,” I said, rereading his message before lifting the phone at Brecken. “A twenty-eight-day one.”
This time when his eyes closed, he let out a deep breath. When they opened a moment later, the Brecken I remembered was looking at me. “That gives me twenty-eight days to figure out a way to save you.”
The relief in his voice was matched by what I felt inside, though my relief came from a different place. He was thankful for the time so he could figure out a way to save me. I was thankful for the time so I could figure out a way to save him. From me. From this life. From tying his rope to me and drowning with me.
There was no “out” for me. No heroic rescue.
I was a mother who’d do anything for her child. Including staying in a gruesome situation. Others might have argued that I was setting a bad example for my son by staying in an abusive relationship, but I didn’t give a shit about setting examples—I cared about keeping him safe. That wouldn’t happen if I tried to leave Crew and he proved me an unfit mother and earned sole custody. If I tried running away with Keenan, every cop in the country would keep an eye out for us.
I had twenty-eight days to get Brecken to realize that it was too late to save me, but it wasn’t too late for him.
The familiar creak of a bedroom door opening caught both of our attention.
“The table,” I whispered, motioning at the wall table still buttressed against the front door.
Brecken dropped the bag of ice on the floor and rushed toward it. He heaved it back into place in the same amount of time it took me to adjust my robe and blankets to make myself look asleep.
“Don’t say anything to him about Crew. I’ll figure out something to tell him, okay?” I tucked one of the blankets up around my head to cover the bandage Brecken must have finished putting on after I’d fallen asleep. I didn’t want Keenan to see it and ask questions before I’d figured out the right answers to give him.
Brecken made eye contact with me, nodding. He might have wanted to announce to the whole world what he really thought about Crew Graves, but at least on this, with Keenan, he was with me. No little boy needed to find out that the man who’d raised him had been beating his mama for years.
I closed my eyes when I heard Keenan’s footsteps start down the stairs. Brecken’s started up to meet him.
“Hey, little man,” Brecken whispered, his voice giving away nothing. “Your mom’s not feeling good this morning. She called me a little bit ago and asked if I’d come over to watch you so she could rest. That okay with you?”
There wasn’t a fraction of a pause before Keenan gave his answer. “You get to be my babysitter?”
“I’ve never had any formal babysitting experience, so I can’t promise to know exactly what I’m doing, but if you give me a few pointers, we should be able to make it work.”
I had to tuck the blanket over my mouth to hide my smile. My body felt like it had been run over by an SUV, but hearing my son’s voice, hearing him happy, was enough to cancel out all the rest. If only temporarily.
“We do breakfast first in the morning. Sometimes eggs and toast. Sometimes Cheerios and sliced bananas.”
“Cheerios and sliced bananas it is.” The thud of their footsteps coming down the stairs echoed through the whole house, bringing life into it.
“Still can’t cook?” Keenan asked.
“Without lighting something on fire?”
Keenan’s laugh came to a halt when they made it to the first floor. “Is Mom really sick?”
“Pretty sick. But she’ll be okay,” Brecken added, like he knew what he was doing when it came to kids. “She just needs some rest and she’ll feel better.”
“Should I get her a popsicle and cold washcloth for her forehead? That’s what she does when I’m sick.”
“How about we let her keep sleeping, and when she wakes up, we’ll bring her in a popsicle and cold washcloth. Sound like a plan?”
Keenan made a sound of agreement before his slippered feet padded across the living room. He barely made a sound, and he didn’t touch me other than the spot where his lips touched my cheek. He was just as quiet rushing back toward where Brecken must have still been stationed at the bottom of the stairs.
“Mom always needs her kiss from me in the morning.”
The sound of what I guessed was a high-five followed. “Good man.”
“Where’s Dad?” Keenan asked, like he’d suddenly remembered Crew. “I didn’t think he had to work today.”
My lungs stopped working the longer Brecken’s silence ran. I wasn’t sure what he was going to tell Keenan, but all I hoped was that it wasn’t the truth. Not all truths were meant to be told—especially to the innocent.
“He had to leave for a while. Came up really suddenly. Your mom knows more about it than I do, so she can tell you when she wakes up.” Brecken paused for a moment, then I heard footsteps. “Come on. Breakfast of champions time.”
Keenan’s muffled footsteps hurried after him into the kitchen. “So what do we get to do today?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking we could start off with some skydiving, followed by some rock-climbing, cliff-jumping, then target practice. Then we should probably take a break for lunch. You know, to refuel for the rest of the day.”
Keenan was laughing again, the sounds of cupboards opening and closing joining with it.
“What? Did you have something else in mind?” Brecken asked, pouring cereal into a bowl.
“Running through the sprinkler? Playing Legos? Digging in my sandbox?”
“So no to the skydiving?”
“I don’t think Mom would like me jumping out of planes,” Keenan said, crunching on a bite of cereal. “She likes to keep me safe.”
Brecken was quiet, so just the sound of Keenan eating came from the kitchen.
“She does. She’d do anything to keep you safe.” Brecken’s voice drifted into the living room, settling around me. “And I’d do anything to keep you both safe too.”
The living room had never looked like this before. Demolished. Blankets draped around kitchen chairs that resembled the most giant, misshapen fort ever. Games scattered on tables and the floor, play money and pawns everywhere. Half-eaten bowls of popcorn, empty pizza boxes, and soda cans mixed in with the rest. It looked like the kind of mess Crew would lose it over. He liked order and coming home to a tidy house—he thrived off of predictability.
But we had twenty-eight days to ourselves, to make a mess without the need to have it cleaned up before Crew came in from work. To eat junk food without having to keep it hidden in the back of the cupboards. To laugh and be silly without being met with a raised brow. It was just a messy living room, but it was freeing. Like someone had opened the cage door and let me escape. It was a temporary reprieve, but
one I wouldn’t let be tarnished by the knowledge of its expiration date.
“I think he’s out. It finally hit him.” Brecken was propped in front of the couch I was still stretched out on, his back leaning into it.
Where he was, how he’d positioned himself, it felt as though he were guarding me. Silly, but I also hadn’t missed the way his eyes shifted every couple of minutes during our movie marathon—toward the front door. We were both holding our breaths for when Crew would come marching through that door again, but for different reasons. He was anticipating it, while I was dreading it.
“What finally hit him?” I whispered, peeking at Keenan. He’d fallen asleep with a half-eaten bag of fruit snacks clutched in his fist, his other hand gripping his favorite superhero action figure.
Brecken motioned at him. “The sugar crash or the exhaustion coma.”
“Probably both.” I shifted onto my back, since my side was numb.
I’d only left the couch a couple of times today, and both instances were to use the restroom. Both times, I’d needed Brecken’s help to get there. I’d made sure Keenan was good and distracted so he wouldn’t see me hobbling around, being practically carried to bathroom, and when he saw my bandage, I’d explained I’d fallen and hit my head the night before. Which wasn’t a lie. I just left out the part about Crew pushing me down the stairs first.
The wet washcloth, which was mostly dry now, was still on my forehead, and I’d gratefully accepted my popsicles when Keenan had brought them to me whenever he heard me stir. We’d survived the day, and Keenan didn’t know the real reason for me barely being able to move or the reason Crew was gone. He’d accepted the stories about me being sick and Crew having to leave for an extended work training. It was easy to convince a five-year-old his mother was sick, not beaten to an immobile pulp. It wouldn’t be so easy with a fifteen-year-old.
“Must have been the manual labor. Slave driver,” I tacked on as Brecken clicked off the television.
“Oh, please. He loved getting to swing a hammer and work a wrench.”
I blinked at him. “He’s five.”
“Your point?” His brow carved into his forehead as he leaned over to pick Keenan up off the floor.
In between running through sprinklers and playing with just about every toy in Keenan’s possession, they’d taken breaks to fix the broken board in the fence out back, take care of the leaky faucet in the laundry room, and change the back porch light that had burned out. It was strange to see Brecken wearing Crew’s tool belt as he saw to the things that needed maintenance around our house. Hold Crew’s hammer, climb his ladder, move around his garage.
It all seemed to fit Brecken better than any of it had Crew.
“I’ll carry him up to bed. Then I’ll be back for you.” Brecken started for the stairs, Keenan carefully tucked into his arms.
“I’ll just sleep down here again.”
“You’ll feel better in a bed,” he replied, disappearing up the stairs.
He was gone a couple of minutes, which gave me a chance to try to sit up on my own. Tomorrow I’d feel better, but I hated feeling so incapacitated. I’d never been so immobilized after one of Crew’s attacks, and the voice in the back of my head kept whispering at me about domestic abuse getting worse until the victim wound up dead.
But that wasn’t going to happen to this woman. Not me. I was strong. Crew was getting help. I just hoped it would be enough to get me through the next thirteen years before Keenan was an adult and out of the house. I’d be one step behind him.
“He’s all tucked in.” Brecken’s soft footsteps came down the stairs. “Next.”
I attempted to lift myself up off the couch. I made it. A whole half inch.
“You don’t have to carry me up.” I sighed as his arms slid around me.
“I know I don’t have to.” He glanced at me once he’d lifted me up. “I just know I want to.”
“Is that the hero you try so hard to keep hidden speaking?” My body felt like it was melting into his arms as he wove around the fort and mess. He wasn’t limping.
“I spent six years picturing this.” His arms tightened around me. “It might have been a different sort of picture, but I’ll settle for this. I’ll settle for whatever I can have of you, even if it’s just carrying you from a couch to your bed. I’ll be that guy.”
My head relaxed into the bend of his arm as he moved up the stairs. “You’ll be what guy?”
His light eyes found mine, seeming to illuminate the darkness surrounding us. “The one waiting in the wings.”
My lungs struggled. My heart fought the same battle. “I’m married, Brecken. You know the situation. You know there’s nothing I can do to change that for a long time. I married Crew.”
“So? That might change your feelings for me, but it doesn’t change my feelings for you. I told you forever ago that I wasn’t going anywhere. That there was no one else for me. No one else I wanted to love. Nothing can change that. If you think a piece of paper and a couple of vows can end my feelings for you, then you really don’t know who I am.”
He hadn’t stopped staring at me, and it was making me feel things I wasn’t allowed to feel. His body, his words, his stare, they weren’t mine to covet. They weren’t mine to want to claim anymore. He was free to follow the tenor of his feelings, but I was not.
“Sorry. I’m staring. Again.” Clearing his throat, he tore his eyes away before we rounded into the bedroom. The guest bedroom. I’d been so distracted when his arms came around me, I hadn’t noticed the direction he’d taken me—away from the bed I’d known for years, the one I’d shared with him, toward one that held no ownership or designation.
He flipped on the light switch as we entered the dark room, inspecting it in the same way I knew he’d been trained to clear a room. He was still waiting, like I was, for Crew to appear out of nowhere.
“I’ve been thinking …” He set me down at the foot of my bed, then he moved around the room, turning on the lamps. “Crew’s got all of this evidence against you, right? Proof that could make you seem like an unfit mother.”
He glanced at me when I didn’t answer.
“Yes,” I said. “He does.”
“Then we need some of our own evidence.” He said the words slowly, his eyes moving around the room, away from me. “Camryn …”
I knew what he was about to say the moment before he said it. “What? No.” My feet carried me backward until I rammed into the footboard.
“I’d take the pictures on my phone. No one would see them, I swear on my life, unless you gave me your permission first. He wants to lie about you being a bad mom? We’ll prove he’s a bad man. We’ll prove he’s a monster.” Brecken swallowed and stepped toward me. “But we need to be able to show what that monster’s capable of.”
My arms wrapped around myself. “I don’t want you to take pictures of me. I don’t want you to see me like that.”
“I see you exactly the same way now as I saw you back then.” His voice rose, his finger thrusting at me. “As a strong, beautiful woman who seems to know exactly what to do to take the ground right out beneath my goddamn feet and the air straight out of my godforsaken lungs. The same girl I grew up admiring from a distance, and the same woman who was foolish or charitable enough to let me love her when I was a dumbass kid with nothing to my name. When I look at you, I will always see you. The real you. Not the one he’s trying to make you.”
My breath was making my chest ache. Too fast. Too hard. His words echoed in my head, spreading. I felt like that same woman when I was with him, but if he saw me exposed and vulnerable, he’d realized I wasn’t that same person. She’d been broken in too many places to hold her old form. She’d been forced to take on a new shape, a form designed at the hands of her abuser.
“No. I can’t.” My head whipped back and forth as Brecken pulled a cell phone from his pocket.
“I know you can,” he said, moving toward me. “You won’t be able to just tell people he
abused you and hope they’ll take your word for it. That’s not how the legal system works. You’re going to need to show them he abused you.”
As he moved closer, my arms tightened around my body, starting to coil up like I was more a cornered animal than a confronted human. When he was a few steps away, he stopped. His eyes wandered up and down me, taking me in as I stood there trembling, cowering, silent tears streaming down my cheeks.
He let out a long exhale as he reached for the bottom of his shirt. He didn’t say a word, but his eyes went to mine, only losing their connection for the moment it took him to tug his shirt over his head. He stood there for a moment, his shirt falling to the floor, staring at me. Waiting. The light in his eyes shuddered, like a gust of wind had blown by it, as his breath picked up speed.
Then he raised his arms at his sides and slowly turned around. Without his eyes claiming mine, my eyes dropped. When they landed on his back, the breath I’d been taking hitched in my throat.
My hand flew to my mouth. Then my other joined it. There were no words for the sight before me. No words of apology or anger or consolation. It was still Brecken’s back I was looking at, but it had become the canvas of a tormented beast.
My fists were no longer curling into my bathrobe out of fear for myself but anger for him. Blinding rage made me wish I could face just one of his captors and attempt to inflict a tenth as much damage as they had to him. God knew I would have passed out in exhaustion from the effort.
Every size and shape of scar spanned the stretch of his back, some jagged and angry looking, others precise and calculated. Brands had been burned into his flesh, most in symbols of a language I didn’t know or ever want to understand. A few universal symbols needed no translation to understand. They’d marked him. Branded him. Attempted to strip him of all his humanity. They’d torn his back to pieces then carefully stitched it back together so it could be shredded again. Scars were layered over scars, the mark of one flowing into the pucker of another.
My stomach folded when my mind started down a dark path, imagining the smell of his flesh as it burned, picturing the things they’d done to him to leave him with those kinds of scars, hearing his cries as they ripped him open. Again. And again.