“Hey!” Charlie shouts, something I’ve seen him do maybe twice. “Erik, you are way the fuck out of line here.”
“Oye, pendejo. Watch your fucking mouth around my nephew,” Javier snaps, pushing past Charlie, ready to defend Ant with everything he’s got.
The one who’s gone quiet, however, is the guy who never seems to shut up. I finally look over and immediately want to eat my words.
Ant’s chin wobbles, and he’s fighting back tears.
“Oh,” he says, his voice barely audible as he chews his lower lip, obviously trying to arrest the emotion threatening to overtake him. “That’s…that’show you view me. It’s not even my age or my size, is it? All you see is a victim. Got it.”
Nodding to himself, he unfolds from the chair, stands, and turns toward his hallway. Bunny follows and, just like I taught him, nudges Ant’s hand to make him feel better.
“Ant—”
He ignores me and keeps going. Javier looks like he wants to rip my face off, but it’s Charlie’s look of realization and disappointment that gets me moving. We both know I know better, but I can’t help how I feel. It’s different with Ant. It just is.
Still, I have majorly fucked up.
I jog over to him, catching him before he can open his bedroom door. Placing my hand on his shoulder, I start again. “Ant, I’m so—”
Whatever I was going to say gets lost as soon as Ant’s hand lands on mine. Within seconds, he’s twisting my arm so violently that I fall forward to prevent my elbow from coming out of its socket.
Using the proximity and his lightning-fast reflexes to his advantage, he pivots and lands a kick right behind my knee, driving it to the ground. He then grips his doorframe to power another, far more brutal kick. When it lands, it feels like it’s gone straight through the middle of my chest.
I fall back, pain shooting through the bruised and torqued knee. I then awkwardly tip over to my side, trying to just fucking breathe, while he stands over me and punches me in the face twice in quick succession.
Before I can even process what’s happening, he grabs me by my ears and smashes his knee to my nose, breaking it with a wet crunch. He steps back, resetting his posture, and it dawns on me that he’s about to put me in the hospital.
“Ant!”Javier yells.
Ant throttles the kick aimed for my ribs and holds up his hands. Breathing heavily, he kneels in front of me, his chest hitching and tears flowing freely.
“When you sayrapist, you ignore the rest of it. The sex wasn’t so bad in the end. It was the dehumanization,” he says, displaying the deep scarring on his palms. Scars given to him by the traffickers who stole his very language. “It was the being sold like cattle. It was theeverything, everything, everything,you fucking Nordic tree.”
My ears ring from the volume and violence of his words.
Ant takes a ragged breath, not quite done with me. “When I was in those rooms, I did whatever I could to give myself a sense of control. So I stopped thinking of them as rapists. I started thinking of them as clients. Johns.My johns.Who I would wrap around my perfectly manicured pinkie because it gave me back control. It allowed me to not lose myself to theeverything. By the way, that’s what makes me and everyone else who dealt with that shit survivors. Not victims.”
Blood is pouring from my nose, running into the seams of the expensive wood flooring. Flooring that I convinced Charlie to splurge on because I thought this place should feel like a home.
Ant continues, even as his voice trembles, “So, yeah. Victim? Rapist?You don’t get to use those words.Though I shouldn’t have to explain myself, should I?” He shakes his head, rage flaring behind his eyes. “Levy says rule number one is to use the patient’s language. When you don’t respect my language around the thing thatfucking stole my life, when you don’t like how I’ve changed to take back control, when you don’t let yourself see me.Me,” he says, poking his chest as he rises to his feet. “Well. Then you are no better than them.”
I sense Charlie’s and Javier’s presence in the hallway behind us, but they are silent as church mice. The only thing I can hear is the sound of our breathing.
Blood continues to drip from my nose, and pain pulses everywhere his sharp, efficient hands and feet landed. I fucking know the rule about matching the language the people who’ve lived the trauma use, and I broke it with one of the most important people in my life. Frustrated and angry at myself, I pound the floor with the side of my fist.
“Tell him, Erik,” Charlie says, his voice soft.
“Fuck off,” I bite out, fighting back tears.
Charlie kneels beside me and kisses my temple. “You have to tell him how you feel.”
My throat constricts at the thought, and the tears win, joining the blood. “He doesn’t want to hear about my stupid emotions.”
Ant rubs my shoulder. “Actually, I do,” he says, sticking out his hand.
I take it, still puzzling at his strength as he helps me to stand. Dizziness spins me around, and I lean against the wall to steady myself.
“Here,” Ant says, gesturing me toward him. “Bend down.”
