I stop myself abruptly. I was about to say pills. I was about to admit how bad it really is, how broken I really am.
"Without what?" Ivan asks quietly, his eyes searching my face.
"Nothing. Forget it."
"You can tell me."
"It's nothing. Don't worry about it."
"Please, talk to me." His hand tightens on my face, not letting me look away. "Please. I want to know. All of it. Everything."
I stare at him for a long moment. At the concern in his eyes. At the way he's looking at me like I'm something worth saving despite everything.
I take a breath. "Sometimes, I can't sleep without help," I say finally, forcing the words out. "The whiskey you saw last weekend, that was part of it, but there's more. There's also pills. I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to see how bad it really is."
"What kind of pills?"
"Xanax, mostly. Sometimes Ambien when I can get it. Benadryl when I can't. Whatever I can get my hands on." I can't look at him anymore, so I stare at the ceiling. "I know it's bad. I know I need to stop. I know it's dangerous. But when I don't take them, when I try to sleep cold sober—the nightmares come, and I can't—I can't do that every night. I can't survive that."
"You dream about what happened? About Henderson?"
"Every night." My voice breaks on the words. "When I'm sober, when I don't have something to knock me out completely, I dream about Henderson beating you and me being frozen, unable to move, unable to help. I dream about him bringing that belt down on your back over and over while I just stand there." I stop, swallow hard. "I dream about all of it. Every night. Over and over. The same nightmares for years."
Ivan pulls me into his arms, wrapping himself around me completely, holding me tight against his chest like he's trying to physically hold me together. I bury my face in his shoulder and try to breathe through the tightness in my throat, through the pressure building behind my eyes.
"I'm broken," I whisper against his skin. "I know I'm broken. I've been broken for a long time and I don't know how to fix it. I don't know if I can be fixed."
"You're not broken." His arms tighten around me. "You're hurt. There's a difference."
"I am broken. I can't sleep without pills. I was drinking too much before you showed up. I start fights in bars because I'd rather feel physical pain than emotional pain. I live in a motel room and I have nothing. I don't have a damn thing to give you, Ivan. Nothing except all this damage. All these scars. All this shit."
"You have you. You're my Jay. That's all I want. That's all I've ever wanted. Just you."
"I'm not enough. I'm not—"
"Stop." He cuts through my spiral. "Stop telling me what you're not. Stop deciding for me what I should want. I know exactly who you are on the inside. I've known since we were kids."
"I was different then. I was a kid and trying to keep us both alive. Now I'm just—surviving. Barely."
"No, you weren't different. You were a kid trying to survive, just like me. And now you're an adult trying to survive, and you've done it alone with no one to help you, no support at all." He pulls back just enough to look at my face, his eyes blazing. "That's over now and you need to get that through your stubborn head. You're not alone anymore. I'm here now."
"What happens when you go back to your real life and I'm here by myself again? What happens when the nightmares come back and you're not here to—"
"Then I keep coming back," he interrupts. "The next weekend. And the weekend after that. Every single weekend if I have to. Or you come to me. Or we figure something else out." He cups my face in both hands, forcing me to look at him. "I'm not losing you again, Jay. I'm not letting you disappear back into this darkness. Whatever it takes, however long it takes. We will make this work."
"What if you get tired of me. What if you realize I'm too much work, too much damage, not worth the effort?"
"I'm not going to get tired of you." He says it like it's the simplest thing in the world, like it's a fact as basic as gravity. "You're stuck with me now. For good. That's just how it is. Get used to me being around."
I want to believe him. I want to believe this can last, that I won't find some way to ruin it, that I'm capable of being someone worth staying for. But belief is hard when you've been abandoned over and over.
"Can I tell you something?" Ivan asks, his thumb stroking my cheekbone. "When I first got to the Reyes house, when Rosalyn and Mitchell first took me in, Rosalyn tried to hug me." He shifts, settling more comfortably against me, his warmth seeping into my skin. "Just a simple welcome hug. And I flinched so hard she thought I was going to bolt out the door and run."
"What did she do?" I ask, trying to picture it. Young Ivan, small and scared, flinching away from kindness.
"She backed off immediately. Gave me space. Didn't push. But she kept trying, not in a pushy way, just little things. A hand on my shoulder when she passed by. A pat on the back when I did well in school. And I couldn't handle any of it. Every time someone touched me, I expected it to hurt. I braced for pain. I flinched. For years."
I know that feeling. I know it in my bones, in the way my body still tenses when someone reaches for me.
