I don’t even bother to hide it from her nor do I consider it a weakness. No, this event is what defined me and the kind of life I live. I’m not embarrassed about hurting because I lost my best friend to a stupid, juvenile practice performed by self-righteous, entitled assholes.
Beside me, Faith freezes. “Hazing?” She obviously hasn’t considered how Levi died, because she sounds horrified as realization dawns.
“Hazing. A secret practice carried out by older classmen in the basement of this house.” I gesture with a sweep of my hand toward the building behind them. “Good old-fashioned kissing ass of seniors, doing their bidding, paddling, eating disgusting things I’ll spare you from hearing about, and forced alcohol consumption.” I clench my jaw at the memories I do my best to keep far away from my present reality.
“God. Jason, I’m sorry. If you don’t want to tell me what happened, I understand.” Faith’s green eyes are bright with unshed tears as she holds on to my hand with hers, her free one in the pocket of her jacket.
The irony doesn’t escape me, and I explain it to her. “I didn’t talk about it with anyone. My parents sent me to therapy and I went because they insisted, but I didn’t speak. Week after week, I sat in silence until the therapist gave up. So did my parents. They left me to brood. I never wanted to discuss it… until now.” I want to tell her about the raw pain I experienced, and then let her soothe the remaining ache.
“Then I’m listening.”
I nod, grateful. “The final initiation, as the upper-class guys called it, was scheduled on a Saturday night. Up until that point, we considered it just bullshit we had to get through to join,but Landon heard rumors that this last party usually got out of hand. And the guys in charge our year were determined to make a name for themselves in the history of the frat. They’d make it more difficult for us than any year before.”
Faith squeezes my hand. “Do you want to go inside? Or find someplace warmer to talk?”
“No. I need to do this here.” I know she’s cold and I’m determined to get through the rest quickly so we can go home and I can lose myself inside her warmth. “We tried to talk Levi out of going but he insisted.”
“And you guys weren’t going to let him go alone,” she correctly guesses.
I nod. “Right. It started with shots. We could deal with shots of vodka, right? The night passed and we drank. And drank. And soon we were all given handles of what we thought was regular vodka. Turns out it was one hundred proof.”
“Crap,” she mutters under her breath.
Although I can describe the paddling and the pain, she doesn’t need to hear that any more than I need to relive it. “They insisted we finish a handle. Levi volunteered to go first.”
Faith winces but remains silent.
“We told him he didn’t have to do it. We each offered to walk out with him and fuck the pledge and the joining, but he was game. He wanted to be accepted so damned badly. So he drank. And drank. Then they put a backpack filled with weights on his back and made him run up and down the basement stairs. He tripped, fell backward, and smacked his head a few times on the way down.” Nausea fills my throat at the memory of the sound of my friend’s head cracking against the stairs.
Faith wraps her arms around me as I finish the story, and I take comfort from the warmth of her cheek against mine.
“I couldn’t call anyone. They’d taken our phones when we arrived and pulled out the landlines ahead of time.” I drop to myknees, remembering my friend lying lifeless on the floor, blood coming from his head, Landon yelling at his brother to wake up, slapping his face in his attempt.
She lowers herself with me, hanging on to me for dear life.
“Then Vic… Victor Clark, who’d been in charge all along, who put the backpack on Levi and smacked his face when he tripped the first time, called us pussies and demanded we drink next.”
“What did you do?”
My eyes burn with unshed tears and my throat is raw from holding them back. “I… We picked up Levi and walked out of the house. Nobody stopped as we headed for the university hospital until finally a campus van picked us up. Levi was DOA.”
“Oh, God, Jason, I’m sorry.” She clasps her hands against my cheeks and meets my gaze. “You all know it wasn’t your fault, right?”
I roll my shoulders. “To this day, I don’t fucking know. There are so many ifs. If we hadn’t agreed to rush a frat. If we hadn’t agreed to go to the party. If we hadn’t let him drink and just turned around and went home… But none of it matters because it happened and he’s gone. But it’s the lesson I took from it that’s my point of telling you.”
She shivers despite being tight against me. “Which is what?”
“You need to understand. You asked if I wanted kids, and I need to explain why I don’t. We nearly lost Sienna when she was a kid. I lost Levi. I already have a big family, and I have the guys. That’s a solid handful of people to worry about already, and I vowed I wouldn’t add more.” I look at her, regret all over my face. “I can’t have more people who I could potentially lose. Kids? Yeah, that’s… more.”
***
Faith
I hear him.I even understand. My heart breaks for what he saw and lived through and the pain he still harbors inside him. But what he doesn’t seem to understand is that he is a warm, giving man who naturally helps people… like me. Which inevitably means bringing more people into his inner circle. But he doesn’t want those connections.
He’s helping me, yes, but he doesn’t want to get emotionally involved. If I harbored any illusions after our morning in bed, he’s definitely set me straight now. All I can do is to be there for him the way he’s been there for me since the day we met.
“Hey.” I lean back and look into his red-rimmed eyes. “I get it, okay? I understand more than you could imagine. I have a complicated life that doesn’t lend toward bringing people in. My brother is dangerous. By letting anyone in, I put them in danger, too. I never wanted to do that to you but you insisted. So the truth is, I get needing to keep people at a distance.”
