“So tell me more,” I beg and blink because the room is getting blurry. “Like how you really got those scars on your back.”
He shakes his head no, and I move to the bed and sit down on the corner of it. “After my grandfather had a stroke, they put me in foster care.”
“In Montreal?” I nod and he swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“I was in a home for a week. It was bad. I don’t know exactly what happened. I can’t remember. But I know that police came and took everyone away.” I swallow before I continue. “I also remember a boy fell through a glass window.”
The only thing I hear is the thumping of my heart, and maybe even his, and then he says in a low, firm voice, “No.”
“What?”
“You don’t remember that. Someone told you,” he argues, his voice taut with fear and anger as he rises off the bed. “You read my file.”
I shake my head, my heart pounding harder. “I readmyfile.”
His eyes get dark. He shakes his head again. I stand up. “Brie is short for Gabrielle. My birth name was Gabrielle Laflamme.”
“Oh God.” Suddenly looks at me like I’m someone else. Because now I am. I’m a four-year-old girl he knew for a week in a nightmare he lived. “It was you?”
“It was you,” I reply. “You’re the boy who fell through the window.”
“I did. On purpose,” he tells me, still looking at me like I’m a ghost. “They were abusing all of us, locking us in a closet in the basement and then after a few years when Jayla, the girl in the home, got older the man would go up into her room when his wife wasn’t home and lock the door. We could hear her crying and she told us he was touching her and making her do things. No one would tell anyone because they were scared, and when I tried the social worker told me I was a liar.”
He pauses and lifts a hand to run through his hair. He’s shaking, but I don’t dare try to touch him because I don’t think it would help. “I was going to run away, like Andre did, but then they dumped you there.”
He cocks his head to the side and blinks. “You were scared and quiet, but you didn’t cry and you seemed so…normal. I wasn’t going to leave you there to get fucked up like the rest of us. I didn’t want you to experience that cement room in the basement and I knew eventually he would do things to you like he did to Jayla. I knew it.”
I shudder violently at the thought.
“I was too young to handle this, you know? Only eight. And no one would listen to me. So I had to do something they couldn’t ignore,” he says, walking over to the bed. He sits on the edge and runs his hands through his hair before resting his elbows on his knees and hanging his head. “One night they’d already locked Kenny in the basement for something stupid like not eating all his dinner and Jayla was in her room, and the guy said I needed to go in the closet too so he could spend some time with you and Jayla. You were sitting on the floor just staring at us, and I was standing by the coffee table refusing to go into the basement. I felt so sick and panicked. He reached for me and I jumped up on the couch and I screamed as loud as I could. I just wanted someone to hear me and see what was going on. The couch was in front of the bay window and it was dusk and there were people outside, walking their dogs and I thought,Fall through the window and tell everyone he did it.”
“Alex, oh God.” I can’t imagine the desperation that would lead a child to do that.
“So when he tried to grab for me, I did,” he says quietly. “I was young and stupid and didn’t understand I could have died. I got up on the couch and just hurled myself backwards through the window. I got hurt worse than I thought. And they labeled me a problem child, but…it worked.”
He lets me pull him to his feet. I wrap my arms around him and he collapses into my embrace and I start to cry. I think he might be crying too. “My parents were living in Quebec for my dad’s job. They were having trouble conceiving and had been trying for years. They’d already agreed to look into adoption and fostering when my mom saw the story about the home on the news and there was a clip of me crying, being taken away by the police. That’s how they found me. Because of you.”
He pulls away and turns toward the window. He reaches up and wipes at his eyes and takes a shuddering breath. “Good. Then it was worth it.”
“Alex, I’m falling in love with you,” I confess and it’s terrifying. “I know you’re not ready for that. I’m sorry.”
He finally turns and looks at me.
“I know there are a million things I can say to you, as a trained psychologist, to try and console you or change your thought patterns,” I tell him quietly as I cross the distance between us. “I can point out to you how loved you are by your friends. The people downstairs would never hurt you. And I can remind you that Mackenzie, in all her lippy teenage cynicism, idolizes you. For a girl who hates the world, that speaks to how lovable you are.”
I reach up and lay my palms on either side of his face. He closes his eyes at my touch, the hard lines on his face relaxing a little. “But I’m not your shrink. I’m just this girl who sees you as this amazing human being and who is tripping all over herself to make you see it too so you’ll let me love you.”
He opens his eyes. “I get nightmares.”
His words swirl around my brain as I struggle to focus again after the kiss. Nightmares? I blink. “Is that why you won’t sleep with me?”
He nods. “They can be violent. I thought I had them under control, like if I drank enough or was tired enough, they wouldn’t happen. But then I had one this past summer at Avery and Steph’s place, despite being tired and drunk, and he tried to wake me up and I accidentally hit him.”
“You’re scared you’ll hit me.” Realization dawns on me.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he whispers, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against mine. “But I need to get my head on straight. I’m going to fuck this up again if I don’t. I want to see that shrink you mentioned.”
“I’m going to give you the time you need, the space you need,” I tell him, even though it hurts so much I can barely breathe.
