What had I done? I must have missed something in his morose ramblings. Even then, I knew what it meant to be a Noire. That my father owned the city. Our name was royalty, coveted—or so I’d heard. Being told I wasn’t good enough to be one was the worst fate I could envision.
“What do you mean?” I pressed, my lower lip quivering.
He glared at the ground, toeing the weathered boards of the porch. “I’ll be the bad guy for not raising you, which is fucking rich. But at least I’m not pretending. False protection wouldn’t do either of us any good. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a liar.”
None of it made sense to me. And in my six-year-old brain, I surmised that it was the kettle corn. I’d chosen to love something that wasn’t a Noire staple. I’d failed him.
I wasn’t special. I was a burden.
Kids draw wild conclusions. But even though I eventually knew it wasn’t the sweet-and-salty dessert, that was the last time I ever ate kettle corn. The treat had lost its flavor.
It was only a few sentences within the blathering that accompanied my snack. One of which sculpted itself into my greatest fear.“You don’t have what it takes to be a Noire.”
If life had taken a different turn, perhaps it would’ve been a forgotten string of words, holding no value. But that’s what makes the mind so fascinating. How it knows what to grip or how it sadly clings to the very sentiments that cloak us in shame.
It’s a memorialized encounter in my brain. The day I was told being a Noire was a mountain of prestige and I didn’t have the gumption to endure the climb.
My father’s cruelty was subtle. In hindsight, it was glaring in his absence. Spoken in the narcissism. Hidden in his justification. So that even now, when I recognize the heartlessness of his words, they escort confusion. A question of clarity. Maybe that’s some ofthe most challenging wickedness to conquer. That which leaves us wondering if we imagined it, embellished something rather benign.
Gaslit.
The pieces are more fleshed out now that I understand he’d found out I wasn’t his at about that time. But the reasoning as to why an adult, who had once supposedly loved me, would feel the need to share that with me is still a mystery.
Through broken sobs, I confessed that conversation to my brothers that same afternoon. I started by claiming that Dad said Noires don’t eat kettle corn, which pissed Axel off to the point of asking me a hundred more questions until I revealed all I could remember. And Ryker kicked a dresser, causing a vase to shatter on the floor before they both cocooned me in their warmth.
As I got older and thought back on that conversation, I often wondered if my father had set our house on fire. Taken his own life. That what he had expressed on the porch was his shame. There was the question of why my mother would have been in the house if that were the case, but still, the possibility festered. Maybe I’d misinterpreted, and his, “I’ll be the bad guy for not raising you,”was a guilty goodbye. I even asked Axel once if he thought Dad had died because I wasn’t enough or because I couldn’t ease his sadness. His eyes welled with tears as he vehemently insisted that wasn’t the case.
But for me, it was all connected. I vowed to never be anyone’s burden again.
I can’t ascertain the depth of trauma rooted in Ty’s nightmares. He revealed enough before our wedding that I’ve pieced together a truly horrific narrative of his first three decades though.
All these years, I’ve believed I was drawn to him because he was a beacon of hope and benevolence in a sea of gray men. I loved those men, but Ty was often shinier. Gleaming and full of life.
But I think it may have been the opposite—that undeniable simmering under his skin. When he admitted to pining for me and told me I was his glimmer of light within his eternal nightmare, it was as though I’d finally become who I’d always yearned to be. Forhim, I embodied hope. So much so that the thought of losing me had him making it official in the middle of the night.
I’m still swooning. And reflecting on that when Wells leans in close, although not out of earshot of Ty. We’re all sitting by the pool. Ivy and Celeste are swimming with Felicity. Gage and Liam are gathering the supplies for a cookout. Ty is prepping the grill. And Wells and I are lounging in the center of it all.
“How have his nightmares and flashbacks been? Frequency? Severity?” He flicks his gaze to the man in question in an unspoken dare. But there’s a tenderness to it that I’ve noticed is the adhesive of their group.
Gardens out of graves—that’s what Ty said they’d learned to create. And I see the flourishing of life and love and family planted upon a mound of loss. Growth happens in the dirt. It’s inspiring.
Wells’s prodding piques Ty’s scrutiny. He may be wondering if I’ll sell him out.Never.But he is struggling, and Wells would know better than me how to help him, so I glance sheepishly at Ty in question. He offers one quick dip of his chin to go ahead and fill in the man who clearly means everything to him.
“We’re working through them,” is how I begin because I want Ty to hear thewein my words. Something tells me he needs to know he isn’t failing me. We’re simply tackling something as a team. I want to be his partner, his teammate.
When he slid inside me last night after his night terror, it wasn’t sexual, but it was so intimate and beautiful andright. He held on for dear life, his breathing steadied, and the creases by his eyes and between his brows disappeared. And I felt more content than I ever had, like a night bloom coming to life in the presence of darkness. Battling his demons is an honor I’m grateful to undertake. But I don’t think the specific tactics need to be revealed to Wells.
He sifts through his Sour Skittles, mining for the reds and yellows, before snapping his eyes up to mine. “And how often are you working through it?”
Ahh. Yes. I didn’t share the particulars.
Another dip of the chin from my other half tells me it’s fine to respond.
I dig for my own Sour Skittle treasures, greens and purples, and banish any worry from my tone. “You’d have to ask him about flashbacks. But as for nightmares, at least once or twice a night. Sometimes, he doesn’t wake up. He yells and thrashes and drifts back to sleep.”
By the tawny-brown Adonis’s quirked brows and his head slanting in dismay, it would appear that Ty wasn’t aware of the ones that don’t wake him. But he should be. The man is haunted, tortured, ensnared. He needs a breath of freedom more than anyone I’ve ever known.
I hope I’m it.
