Memphis froze, jaw tensing. For a split second, Preacher thought he might have angered him, but instead, he sighed, flopping back onto the bed to stare at the trees silhouetted overhead. “I’m not hiding them from you. Not really.” He shifted his gaze towards him briefly before looking away again. “I mean, I guess I am, but it’s not you. It’s me.”
Memphis smirked at his own turn of phrase, but it quickly faded as he poked at his temple hard enough for Preacher to wince and tug his finger away. ”Easy,” he cautioned, kissing his fingertip and the temple he’d just abused. He always seemed to turn his frustrations inward.
As if to confirm Preacher’s findings, Memphis bit down on his lower lip, worrying it between his teeth before saying, “I’m the one who can’t get past it. Like, if these scars were on any other person, I wouldn’t think any different of them. I wouldn’t be less attracted to them or find them lacking in any way. But it’s not somebody else, it’s me. I think of people’s eyes on them, looking at me with pity, and something inside me…wilts. I know I should look at them and think of myself as a survivor, maybe find them empowering or some shit, but I don’t. I hate them.”
Preacher rolled onto his side, propping his head up on his palm, letting his fingers slide beneath the fabric of his shirt to trace the soft skin of Memphis’s belly. “Maybe it’s not the scars you hate but what they represent.”
Memphis’s gaze cut to Preacher, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. “When I think about my scars, when I feel them, when I look at them, it’s not the pain I remember. I’ve honestly blocked most of it out and the burns were so deep in some places there weren’t any nerves left to feel with.”
Preacher ached for him. “So, what do you think about?”
“The humiliation.”
Preacher frowned. Of all the things Memphis could have said, humiliation hadn’t even been on Preacher’s radar. He’d imagined Memphis might feel sadness, rage, but humiliation… It didn’t compute.
Maybe Preacher should have just kept his mouth shut. What did it matter if Memphis felt more secure with a shirt on? Preacher had just wanted him to feel comfortable enough to not be self-conscious. But still, he couldn’t leave that answer as it was. “Humiliation? Why?”
Memphis rolled away from Preacher. He was fully prepared to let him drop the conversation if it was too much for him, but Memphis just scooted backwards until he was curled against Preacher, making him the big spoon. He pulled him closer, his heart kicking when Memphis tangled their fingers together.
“Do you know what it’s like to be hated? Not for anything you did, but just for the very fact that you exist at all?” Preacher didn’t think Memphis wanted him to answer, so he stayed quiet, burying his nose in his hair, inhaling the mint of his shampoo. “My dad hated me my whole life. He hated me so much that it felt like an actual thing, some creature always lurking in the corner. He never hated Nash like that. He smacked us both around, especially when we were young. We had to be tough. But he looked at me like there was nothing worse he could think of than having a son like me, like I wasn’t even human. And when I was little, I didn’t get it. It didn’t make sense. Like, what could a five-year-old do that would somehow make a grown ass man so disgusted? Now, I know that he realized I was gay way sooner than I did. I don’t know how or what it was…but he knew, and he hated it so much he wanted me dead.”
Preacher swallowed the lump in his throat, sad in his bones for Memphis. Not Memphis now, but for the boy Memphis once was, the one who’d needed a father and, instead, got a monster. The Memphis who had probably spent his whole miserable childhood asking himself why nobody loved him. The thought gutted Preacher, made him want to find Tennessee and slowly peel the skin off his bones.
Preacher had only ever known kindness from his father, right up until he’d realized what he’d done to his mother. That was its own type of betrayal, he supposed, with its own type of scars, but Preacher had never grown up feeling unloved, unwanted, or unsafe. “You know this was his issue, not yours, right? There was nobody you could have been that would have made him any different. He’s…damaged.”
“But that’s the thing of it. Everybody knew my father hated me. Everybody knew he beat me, threw me around, broke my arm, knocked out a couple of teeth. They felt sorry for me, of course, but it was just the way it was. Nobody wanted to be on Tennessee’s bad side, and I didn’t blame them. If I could have been somebody else for him, I would have been. But that’s why it’s so embarrassing. Because I knew I was a target. I knew he hated me enough to do just about anything to inflict pain, and I let my guard down.”
“What do you mean?”
“I fell asleep where he could get to me. Where I was at his mercy. I used to sleep at my friend Gemma’s a lot. I also kept locks on my bedroom door. It wasn’t enough to stop him, usually, but if he was in enough of a tear, it would slow him down enough for me to run, to get out the window and sleep somewhere else. But that night, I was just so…tired. I’d been cramming, trying to catch up for this stupid test. I don’t even remember falling asleep.”
Preacher tried to process the logic behind Memphis’s confession. “There was no way you ever could have thought you dozing off on the floor of the home you lived in would end in…fire. There’s no sane or rational reason for a person to do what your father did to you. Or for your brother to stand by and do nothing.”
Memphis shook his head. “I knew neither of them were sane or rational. I was going to leave. I had the money. But I just kept putting it off because I was afraid. I was afraid to leave that small town for something bigger and scarier. Afraid my father would catch me and kill me before I could escape. If I had just taken the money and run when I first got it, none of this ever would have happened. But I stayed and my father set me on fire. And I had to live with knowing the entire world knew that my father hated me so much he thought I deserved that. That I hadn’t been strong enough to leave, smart enough to run sooner. I don’t hide my scars just because of the way they look. I hide them because of what they represent. When I think of other people seeing them, it kills me because it feels like the world knows how powerless I am.”
Preacher didn’t know what to say to that. He couldn’t imagine anybody looking at Memphis and thinking he was helpless. “That’s not what I see when I look at you.”
Memphis craned his head back to look over his shoulder at Preacher, giving him the faintest hint of a smile. “I know.”
“I can’t imagine anybody looking at you and what you’ve been through and thinking of you as powerless. You got out. You made a life for yourself from nothing. When your brother needed you, you came, even though you were terrified. You made the hard decision of sending him away to protect him. You’re one of the strongest people I know.”
He was quiet for a long moment, then, in the smallest voice Preacher had ever heard, said, “I hesitated.”
Preacher frowned. “What?”
“When I saw Nash attacking Knox that night in the hospital…I froze. I told myself it was because I didn’t understand what I was looking at. It was dark. I was tired. But the truth is, I saw Nash hurting Knox and I fucking hesitated.”
Preacher pressed his lips to Memphis’s head. “We all hesitate. To you, it might have felt like minutes, but it was just a few seconds. Your perception of time changes in a crisis. But even if you did hesitate, you had every right to.”
“You wouldn’t have hesitated.”
“I’ve hesitated. Are you kidding? Of course, I have.” When Memphis didn’t respond, Preacher gripped his shoulder. “Hey, look at me.”
Reluctantly, Memphis turned in his arms, looking up at Preacher with a weary expression. “I was a seventeen-year-old kid in federal prison. I didn’t look like I do now. I was scrawny. Terrified. Soft. Believe me when I say there was a long period when I was an easy target and there were no shortage of times when I ran or hesitated. And a few times when I didn’t run fast enough. Truthfully, before I met Cyrus, things were bad. His size proved to be a big detractor from anybody who wanted to kick my ass. Over time, I trained them to forget about me, but that just put a target on somebody else’s back.”
Memphis reached up to brush his hand across Preacher’s cheek, and his heart squeezed. Fuck. Everything Memphis did just sent Preacher deeper down the rabbit hole. He was definitely falling for him. But that was a problem for another day.
Preacher gave Memphis a soft kiss. “Everybody always talks about fight or flight, but nobody talks about the third response to danger. Freeze. When I agreed to start working with Cy to help rescue animals and kids and whoever else needed our help, we had to take this six week training course on trauma. People sometimes freeze during dangerous situations. It’s involuntary. It’s not something you can actively stop. It’s your brain just trying to keep you safe. Even if you hesitated, you eventually did what you had to so you could protect your brother.”
