With steady steps, I walked through the house and into the mud room. I grabbed a random coat off the wall and shoved my feet into a pair of mud boots. I stormed my way across the yard to the barn. The door was cracked open, and I pushed it wide, letting the afternoon light spill into the darkened space as I stepped inside.
“Get the fuck outta here,” he told me, eyes cold as he narrowed his gaze at me.
It hit me then, despite all the shit he’d been through and all the stuff he held inside, Austin’s eyes never went completely cold. There was always this sad glint in those almost golden brown eyes. A desperate plea hidden there in the background,begging someone to call him on his shit. To open the door and beckon him forward.
His emotions were bubbling to the surface. The rage and anger and hurt and guilt. It was rising and mixing, and creating an explosive cocktail.
“No,” I snapped, standing tall.
We stood there for a moment, staring each other down as if our eyes were two armies on the brink of war.
“Nearly every subject is off limits when it comes to you. How am I supposed to have a conversation with you if we can’t talk about anything?” My feet stomped over the packed dirt ground as I spoke, only stopping when three feet separated us. He stood there, back straight, doing his best to let me know he wasn’t afraid of me.
Good. I didn’t want him afraid. I wanted him to trust me. I wanted him to give me all of his secrets and emotions freely. I wanted him to know he was safe with me.
It was probably the worst moment to realize that there was more here with Austin. More to how I felt about him.
When the hell did that happen?
“We don’t need to have a conversation,” he said, voice shaking with rage. “There is only one thing we should be talking about. Only one thing that matters. Everything else is just a distraction.” He cut his eyes to the side. “I don’t need to get to know you, and you don’t need to get to know me.”
The cut line of his jaw bulged, giving away the hidden truth in his statement. Maybe we didn’tneed to, but that wasn’t to say that neither of uswanted to.
The longer I was around him and the more I figured out about him, the more I felt drawn to him.
I suspected he felt the same about me. That there was at least a little part of him that had stirring feelings for me, whether he would admit it or not.
I was done with letting it go on like this. Letting him pretend I wasn’t someone he could trust and count on. I was tired of only getting little truthful moments of him here and there. Of searching through the murky water to find the gold. I wasn’t saying I would stop, or that he wasn’t worth the hard work. I simply meant that I wanted more, and I thought it was about time something changed between us.
All I wanted was for him to break. To finally set all of these things free that he’d been holding in for years. Things that didn’t even have to do with me, but I wanted him to trust me enough to know that I’d take care of him while he purged every single thought that held him tied down in the darkness, and I’d be there for him after it was over. I wouldn’t let him get trapped under his crumbling walls.
His chest rose and fell heavily. His eyes were wild. I took a step closer to him, and he receded one away from me. Again and again, until I had him backed up against the side wall of the barn.
I didn’t say a damn thing, but I didn’t need to. Sometimes the uncomfortable silence brought out the things people didn’t want to be released.
“Tell me who I am,” he said. My gaze went hard. His tone wasn’t something I liked hearing from him. It wasn’t angry, not exactly. It was more a mix of disgust and fear. “Tell me you see him in me.”
It took all the strength inside of me to hold it together. I could see the way he held himself captive in his father’s shadow. The way he tortured himself for all the things his father had done.
More than anything, I wished I could take that away for him.
“Tell me you don’t see a monster when you look at me!” His taunts weren’t going to work on me. I wouldn’t give him the fuel to feed the internal hate he harbored for himself.
“You are not him,” I said, voice even while I kept my eyes locked onto his so he would know every word I spoke was the truth from my soul.
“The sins of the father—”
“Are bullshit,” I said, cutting him off with a stern tone. I pressed my chest into his body until I had him pinned in place with no chance of running from me. “You can throw that religious shit at me all day, but it’s never going to stick. You are your own person. You make your own choices. You have your own feelings. And the fact that thinking about him makes you sick, says more than any words ever could.” When he tried to turn his face away from me, I pinched his chin between my thumb and finger and held his gaze to mine. “You are not him. You don’t need to pay for what he’s done.”
“Don’t I?” His voice quaked. The Austin before me was a scared teenage boy who had been holding this in for too long. “I was there. I’m his fucking son! I should have seen that something wasn’t right. Should have connected the dots to him? Right?!”
“No,” I said calmly. “He was good at keeping the two sides of himself separate, his two lives separate. For fuck’s sake,” I felt the temperature of my blood rising and I took in a quick breath as I pushed my anger down, “you were a damn kid, Austin. No one would have expected you to know.”
“It doesn’t feel like a good enough excuse,” he said almost so softly I didn’t hear.
His whole body was shaking. I wanted nothing more than to hold him. To shield and protect him from the things that hurt him.
“You need to let that burden go. It’s not on you. It’s not your burden to carry.”
