I hate hearing this shit. I hate when she brings up the past like it’s something to conquer and not something to bury and try to forget ever happened.
I don’t want to even think about the shit I’ve been through. It’s bad enough I have to relive it in nightmares that plague me every goddamn night.
I don’t need to do it while I’m awake.
Clearing my throat, I unlodge the lump that’s settled, fighting the urge to hang up and toss my phone across the room.
“I hate being here, and I would do just about anything to get the fuck out of here and burn everything to the ground on the way out,” I finally say.
“I know. But you can’t do that. This isn’t something you can push down and bury with the rest,” she says quietly, and I hear the rocking chair in Lily’s nursery creaking as she speaks. “Maybe I can come for a visit, and you can show me your new office, and I can help you unpack?”
“No. Fuck no. Absolutely the fuck not. You’re not coming anywhere near this shithole,” I say, about both the entire goddamn city and the apartment, but she has no idea that I live not far from where we grew up.
In the worst part of the city.
Cam also has no clue that the only thing in my apartment is a mattress on the floor, a moving box I’m using as a nightstand, a dresser, and four boxes of clothes and random shit.
My entire life fits in those five boxes.
The psychologist that I was forced to see at the start of my professional career, once my coach had realized that myaggression went far beyond the ice, told me that my “trauma” is poverty PTSD.
He said it’s the reason that, despite multiple contracts, a decade in the NHL, and the sum of money sitting in my accounts, I still live the way that I do.
With the bare minimum.
I thought he was a fucking idiot, but apparently, he has a PhD, so that makes him the smart one in this scenario.
That’s the thing though. Guys like him? They’ll never understand the shit that Cam and I went through. That the millions of kids who are lost in a broken, fucked-up system go through.
People like him, people who have never lived this life, who have never experienced the gnawing pains of hunger in the pit of their stomach night after night or sleeping on a bus stop bench when their foster parent of the month decided they no longer wanted the burden of them, they will never fucking understand how it feels to suffer at the hand of your mother, the one who is supposed to protect and nurture you.
They’ll never fucking understand what it was like to not know where you’ll lay your head the next night or when you’ll eat again. They’ll never understand that no matter the amount of money you have, the bone-deep fear of having to live that way again will never go away.
It’ll always be there in the back of your head, a constant voice that never wanes.
There’s no amount of money or therapy that’ll ever cure it. That’ll ever make me feel secure enough to know that I’m not going to end up on the street again, desperate for food and shelter.
No matter what fancy name they put on it, with some medical jargon bullshit, they’ll nevertrulyget what they’re preaching about.
So fuck that guy, and fuck what they think they know.
“Don’t tell me what to do, Wilder,” she repeats from earlier. “I do what I want, and you should know this after how many years of friendship? I’m going to come visit, but I can wait until you’re settled. Lily is going through a horrible sleep regression, and I’m barely hanging on. I think she must be cutting new teeth or something.”
“She wouldn’t be your daughter if she wasn’t giving you hell, Cam.”
She sighs. “So true. I love you, you know that, right? And if you tell me you need me, I’m there, no questions asked. I’ll strap Lily to my chest, and we’llbothbe there in a heartbeat. She’d love to see her Uncle WyWy.”
A groan rumbles out of me, but I’m smiling, and thank fuck she can’t see it. “Jesus, Cam, I told you, do not call me that shit. Don’t even put that in her head.”
“She’s three months old, dickhead—she can’t understand me… yet. But you know, if you keep ignoring me and pretending that we don’t exist, she’s just going to think of you as her rich uncle who sends her presents but doesn’t answer when she calls. You wouldn’t want that, would you? You better answer the damn phone.”
“Fine. I’ll pick up, alright?”
I don’t specify how often, but I’ll try. For them, I can try.
“Okay, well, I’ll let you go only if you promise to answer. And Wilder?”
“Yeah?”
