“What do you mean?” Adam asked.
Noah let go of Felix’s and Zane’s hands, hopping from the table and going to his fiancé, sitting in his lap and dragging his arms around him like a seatbelt. It was a comfort thing. Any time Noah brought up his past, he needed Adam there to…anchor him somehow. The thought of Adam being anyone’s anchor was astonishing to Aiden, but it was right there, impossible to miss.
“When you’re resisting your abuser, it makes you feel like you’re doing the right thing, like you’re still…the wronged party. But eventually, fighting gets too hard, especially when it changes nothing. So, you give in. You give them what they want without fighting, maybe you even pretend to like it. It doesn’t make it easier or less painful, but it does allow you to mentally check out.”
“But that doesn’t mean you’re not a victim,” Lucas said.
“It doesn’t,” Noah agreed. “But when you stop fighting, sometimes—in your head—a voice whispers that you’re not fighting because you like it, because you want it, because, deep down, you deserve it. And you start to feel like a willing participant. You start to think you really do deserve it. That really you and your abuser aren’t that much different, just two people locked in a relationship you can’t escape. Sometimes, you even feel sorry for them.”
“Feel sorry for them?” Felix echoed.
Noah nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but there were times when I felt sorry for my d—for Holt. He said he couldn’t help the things he did to me. Said it was a compulsion, a sickness. I was a kid, I didn’t know any better. I thought he was my father.” Noah shook his head like he was trying to keep himself from being dragged back down into a nightmare. “Thomas was a kid, too. Nobody should blame him for what happened.”
“We don’t,” Archer said. “At all.”
“We’re going to kill this guy, right?” Felix asked. “Like, we all get a piece of him when we find him. Right?”
“Obviously,” Asa said.
“Yeah, we have a whole list of ideas we can’t wait to try out on this fucking freak,” Avi agreed, rubbing his hands together.
“I get first crack at him,” Lucas recalled. “They went after our children.”
Lucas’s sudden bloodlust was both worrisome and impressive. Up until the girls were born, he’d been the level-headed one who somehow quieted August’s somewhat volatile moods, but after they arrived, Lucas became the unreasonable one, the paranoid one, the mama bear. Except, in this case, he wasn’t being paranoid or unreasonable. Someone had threatened his children. What would Aiden do if someone threatened his kid? If he had a kid. What would he do with a kid?
“Don’t worry, mindhunter,” Asa teased, pulling Aiden back from the ledge. “We got you. You can have the scalpel first.”
Avi’s eyes lit up. “Are we finally going to skin someone? I really want to skin someone.”
“Ew, count me out. That’s a hard pass for me on the skinning, thanks,” Zane said, lip curling.
“I’ll go,” Noah said.
“Me too,” Felix said.
“Well, if you guys are going, I don’t want tonotgo,” Zane said, deflating. “I just hate all the screaming.”
“I have excellent ear plugs,” August offered. “I’ll bring you a pair. You won’t hear a thing.”
Zane’s eyes went wide, clearly shocked at the offer. “Oh…thanks.”
“See, family bonding time. Yay,” Adam said.
Noah turned, putting a hand over Adam’s mouth. “Never say that again.”
“But it’s true,” Adam said, words muffled behind Noah’s palm.
“The family that slays together stays together,” Calliope murmured.
“Focus,” Aiden said, trying to drag them back to the point. “Yes, we’ll find this douche, and yes, we’ll catch him, but in the meantime, you all just need to be…nicer to Tommy, okay?”
“Tommy, oof,” Avi said, then shuddered. “Make it stop.”
“He’s Tommy to me. If you don’t like it, maybe August can get you some of those fancy ear plugs.” He leaned towards the twins. “But listen very carefully. It’s taken me twenty fucking years to get to this point with your father. If you make him feel weird about our relationship, I will put every single fucking one of you through a goddamn woodchipper. Got it?”
August laughed, but Atticus frowned harder. “Nobody’s going to make him feel bad. We’ve known about you two for years now. But it’s gonna take some getting used to. We’ve had twenty plus years of thinking of you as our weird, loner brother, and now, we have to think of you as our weird, loner…stepdad?” Atticus did a hard, full-body shiver like Avi. “Yeah, no. Can’t do it. That’s just fucking weird. You can marry our dad, but I’m not calling you anything but Aiden.”
Aiden made abring it ongesture. “Get all the jokes out of your system now,” Aiden warned. “But you will be nice to him.”
