And that’s when my control slipped, a sob breaking from my lips. I hadn’t shed any tears yet, but all of a sudden mymind went back to the worst time in my life when I’d done almost exactly that. When I’d been so close to walking right off the edge. The dam inside me had broken without any build up and the tears flowed like a raging river.
That seemed to snap him out of the trance he had been in.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’ll stop.” His thumb hadn’t stopped moving but had changed in rhythm a bit.
Huntley was now working to soothe me versus himself. Even as wound up as I was, I could feel the shift.
“N-No, p-please finish.”
He needed to get it out and I had to hear the rest. Knowing the amazing guy next to me went through anything horrible hurt my insides, but as crazy as it sounded, it made me feel even closer to him.
Like maybe there was hope I could be as whole as him one day.
And also share my past with him soon.
“You sure?” he whispered.
“Y-Yes,” I answered, softly. The tears were still streaming down my face but with a few deep breaths they had lost some of their steam.
“I could tell you about many incidents. Even as young as I was, they are burned into my brain. But we don’t need to do that. The one that shifted our lives was the day my father turned his hands on me.”
Don’t ask me how I’d ever found a nurturing side, Lord knows nobody had used it on me growing up. I’d never witnessed it in the homes I’d been in and the first time I’d ever felt an ounce of it directed at me was when my angel found me that grim night.
I owed a lot to her.
Horrified for the young boy whose own father would touch him in anger, I shocked the two of us once again. Ipulled my hand from under Huntley’s and reached out to touch his cheek tenderly. It was an action I’d only done with my kids and while it was done to comfort, something shifted.
A charge of energy sparked and I yanked my hand back as if I’d been struck by lightning. Huntley seemed to have an abundance of power and it was coursing through me then from head to toe.
I wasn’t scared that he’d hurt me.
No, I was more scared of the thoughts in my head telling me to do something about how he made me feel.
Needing to escape the craziness running through my mind, I asked, “What happened?”
Letting me off the hook, though his eyes told me he wanted to address the thing zinging between us, he carried on.
“My father came home one night after work—drunk as usual—having stopped at the bar, and I’d forgotten one of my toys by the door. We were always so careful to not do anything that would make him mad, but when the guy was angry at everything it was hard.”
Huntley flexed the hand I’d released in and out, so I grabbed it again, clasping my palm with his. He gave it a gentle squeeze.
“You can imagine that when he almost tripped on my little plastic fire truck, he was one pissed off motherfucker. Normally he’d have laid into my mother for not cleaning up, but I was closer, so he started on me first. He backhanded me so hard, my lip split and I fell backward, hitting my head.”
That broken voice was back but by what he told me next, I knew it wasn’t for the kid who’d just been abused by his father, but because of what his mother experienced next.
“River you should have seen her after. She was a bloody mess. He’d broken her arm and hit her so many times that her face, along with her back from trying to move away fromhim, were almost instantly black and blue. She just kept yelling at me to get in my room and hide, but I couldn’t move.”
There was no way I could stay silent any longer.
Or be as far away.
Letting go of his hand, I swallowed down the trace of fear over what I was about to do, and I climbed onto his lap. Straddling his muscled thighs, I rested both hands on his cheeks where a few wet tears had begun to fall.
The big, bad fireman, amazing guy, larger-than-life, superman as my daughter called him, was crying.
And itkilledme.
He didn’t touch me, but he didn’t need to in order for me to feel the undeniable connection the two of us had.
