I sit straighter, my hands finding his face, gently but insistently turning his gaze to meet mine.His eyes are shadowed with remembered agony.
“Your mother adored you, Matt,” I whisper, pouring every ounce of certainty I possess into the words.
He tries to look away, an ingrained unworthiness flickering in his eyes, but I hold his face steady.“Please,” I plead softly.“You have to see it.What she did, staying, enduring all of it for you.That is the devastating, unconditional gift of her heart.”
A harsh sound tears from him.Half pained scoff, half fractured sigh.“A gift, Amy?”His voice is laced with the agony of a boy who felt the weight of her life on his small shoulders.“She stayed in that hell because of me.”The self-blame is an open wound.
“And that,” I insist, my voice soft but unyielding.My hand slides to cradle the back of his neck, urging him closer.“That absolute devotion is undeniable proof of her love for you.Don’t let his horrors or your guilt tarnish it.That love is yours.All yours.Untouchable.Even by your father.”I pause, searching his tortured eyes.“I know this is going to sound harsh and so very wrong.”My voice drops, imbued with a lifetime of my own quiet sorrow.“But you have no idea how lucky you are.”
His brows draw together.Confusion and a flicker of hurt war in his grief-stricken eyes.“Lucky?”The word is a breath of incredulous pain.
I don’t flinch.“Yes,” I affirm, my voice trembling as I unearth my own long-buried grief.“You’re lucky because youknow.For the rest of your life, you will carry the unshakeable certainty that your mother loved you more than life itself.”My vision blurs, but I hold his gaze fiercely.“That kind of certainty… it’s a bedrock, Matt.A truth to hold on to when everything else crumbles.”I take a shaky breath, the words I’ve never spoken to another soul pressing against my lips.“It’s a gift I will never have.”
His brow furrows, his gaze questioning, laced with his own sorrow, but now dawning with attentiveness to mine.
“My father,” I begin, the words devoid of the fire they once held, now just a dull, chronic ache.“He made it clear he wanted a son.It was a fact that lay like a suffocating weight over our home.Over my mother.Over me.”
I can almost see the disappointment and disregard that used to cloud my father’s features whenever he looked at me.
“They tried, but weren’t able to have any more children.I was it for them.For him.He tolerated me for thirteen years, but it was like living with a ghost.He didn’t see me.Rarely interacted with me unless he absolutely had to.He was just biding his time.”I swallow hard.“Until one day, he found another woman.She already had a son.The son he’d always craved.So, he just… replaced us.”
The silence in the backyard feels immense.
“And my mother,” I clear my throat.My voice is raw with a desolation that has lived in my gut for years.“She blamed me for him leaving.For her life falling apart.For not being the son who might have made him stay.”I look down at my hands.“She wasn’t protective of me like your mother.Every sigh, every barbed remark… they were reminders that I was the curse that broke her marriage.The reason her life was a misery.”My voice finally cracks, the carefully constructed dam of my composure crumbling.“She couldn’t wait for me to be old enough to leave.So, the day came when I gave her what she wanted.I left.And ever since, I just… kept leaving.”My voice fades on a shuddering sigh.
For the first time in my life, my story is out.I feel stripped bare.My old wound is ripped open, the poison bleeding out, leaving me hollowed and terrifyingly exposed.
Every old shame, every childhood hurt, laid bare for his judgement.
I keep my gaze fixed on my hands, twisted together in my lap.Afraid to look up.
Matthew’s fingers find my hair, gently caressing the strands from my temple.A silent encouragement to meet his gaze.When I hesitantly lift my eyes, the muscles in his jaw are pulsing.A hard, rhythmic beat.A quiet, chilling fury that settles over his features.But those emerald depths burn with a fiercely protective light that makes the wounded core of me feel profoundly…
Seen.
His voice is a low, dangerous rumble, scraped raw.“They broke you.”It’s a grim acknowledgment from someone who understands the brutal language of damage.“Robbed you of your right to feel safe.Loved.”
My breath shudders out of me.“My father ultimately got the son he always wanted.My mother got the house to herself…”
“And you walked away carrying all their shit,” he finishes for me, his contempt for my parents a palpable force.
His thumb catches a tear on my cheek, his touch impossibly tender against the storm brewing in his eyes.
“They made you believe you were the reason for their own pathetic failures.”His eyes, which had been blazing with that protective fire, soften infinitesimally as they hold mine.“So damn sorry, love,” he breathes, the fury draining away, replaced by a deep, aching sorrow.“So incredibly sorry they did that to you.”He pulls me closer, his forehead coming to rest against mine.
His sincerity is a balm, mending pieces of my soul I didn’t know were still broken.
Here in his arms, my pain is validated.
I am not the curse my mother painted.
I am not the disappointment my father fled from.
I am just me.
And for the first time, that feels like enough.
The staggering force of that acceptance cracks open something deep inside me.A sob, thick with years of unshed grief and a dawning, incredulous relief, escapes me.
