His fierce protectiveness.
The ghosts he carries.
It was never about a lack of trust in me.It was about the terror of his past.
My heart clenches with the certainty that the ‘she’ whose suffering defined his fears was his mother.I draw a small, steadying breath, needing to counter this darkness I sense in him.
My voice is soft but laced with conviction.A tremor of apprehension runs through me as I dare to name both of his shadows.
“Matt,” I say, my gaze holding his.“You’re nothing like James.”I pause.
Then, more gently, more insistently, I offer him the one truth he can’t see for himself.“And you are certainly nothing like your father.”
“I am my father’s son, Amy.”The words seem to tear from him, steeped in a lifetime of hidden anguish.
The admission itself is a branding iron searing his soul.
He winces, his gaze instantly breaking from mine, skittering away to some unseen horror beyond the tranquil pool.That muscle in his jaw ticks violently, a visible sign of the storm raging beneath his skin.
“Nothing,” he continues, his voice flat now, heavy with a bleak, immutable finality.“Nothing changes that biological fact.”He forces his gaze back to me.The desolation, the self-loathing I see there, is a chasm that threatens to swallow me whole.“It’s in my blood.”He swallows, the sound harsh in the stillness.“I can’t change that.Can’t trust myself.”
For a heart-stopping moment, I feel the ground beneath me crumble.The sheer force of his despair threatens to pull me into that darkness with him.
How can this be?
The man whose integrity shines like a beacon.Whose protective instincts are so fierce.Whose tenderness has been a balm to my own battered soul…
How can he believe himself untrustworthy, tainted by the very monster he so clearly despises?
His easy warmth is gone, replaced by a rigid tension.As if he’s bracing for my reaction.
A fierce protectiveness surges through my veins.A desperate need to shield him from this cruel judgment he’s passed on himself.
He’s wrong.
So wrong.
I pull my hands from his.This requires more than a comforting touch; it requires conviction.I place my palms on either side of his face, my thumbs tilting his chin until his shadowed gaze is forced to meet mine.
“No.”My word is aimed like a defiant arrow at the heart of his despair.“That’s not true.”
His eyes are still fixed on that bleak internal landscape of his own making, but a tiny question flickers in their depths.
“You may be his son, but that poison is not in your blood,” I insist, desperate for my words to find a crack in his despair.“The man I see in you has an enormous capacity for goodness and a strength that honestly leaves me in awe.”
He pulls back slightly, his face slipping from my hold.As if my belief in him is a pressure he can’t quite bear.“The man you see got his ass handed to him every damn time he tried to rescue his mother.Over and over and over.”His repetition is a bleak litany.“Until that strength you mention got beaten out of that boy and he learned to give up.To run and hide in Sal’s truck whenever shit hit the fan, leaving her behind.”He squeezes his eyes tightly shut, fingers raking agitatedly through his hair.
“I made a promise,” he chokes out, the words thick with the ghosts of youthful hope and crushing responsibility.“When I finally left that hellhole, I swore to her I’d come back.I’d graduate top of my class, claw my way up, make enough money to buy her a life.A real one.A safe one.Away from him.”
He presses the heels of his palms hard against his closed eyes, as if trying to physically block out the images.“But that piece of shit…” His voice breaks, raw with fresh grief.“He got to her first.He killed her.Before I could bring her here.”
He gestures vaguely around us, at the house, the pool.“This was supposed to be for her.I was on the phone with her, from right there in the kitchen, telling her I was finally coming to get her.That it was over.”
He drops his hands from his face.His eyes are a storm of remembered horror.“But just as I was saying this to her, I could hear him start in on her.Drunk.Then I heard a crash and her screaming in pain.”
His voice drops to a haunted whisper, lost in the memory.“She yelled, ‘I love you, Matty!I’m so proud of you!’Her voice was so far away.Must’ve dropped the phone.Then she screamed again.A sound… a sound I can’t even describe… but I can still hear it.”
A single, ragged sob, he tries and fails to swallow, rips from him.“Then it was just him.His voice, roaring.The sound of him kicking something.I just kept screaming her name into the phone.Then, hung up.Called 911.”
