He sighs. “I don’t understand.” He shakes his head. “I just don’t get it.” Jaxon groans, frustrated. “Please, for fuck’s sake, give me more than that. That makes fuck-all sense. I’m worried about you.”
Thisis the barrier in lived trauma. The one Blesk and I share. That no one else will understand. I can explain it to him, but he’ll never breakthat barrier—the one only kids with trauma have. “Okay, Jax! Okay! No one knows this stuff, Jax. My family knows what happened, obviously, because they adopted me, and Elise knows because Blesk wanted her to?—“
He scoffs. “Don’t do me any fav?—”
“I want to tell you.”
And I do.
And so, I tell him. Everything. I try not to watch his expression as I run through the events of the past seventeen years, but I can tell he’s shocked.
He never makes a sound.
To my surprise, by the end of my story, I’m half-smiling, because it’s over, because we won.
The sun flickers above me. The trees move in the wind, and the grass is soft beneath my back, and I’m free.
After hearing my story again, in its entirety, I realise it’s almost over. We are so close to truly moving on now. And I have Blesk, my Duchess.
I chew on the inside of my lip in contemplation. “There are a lot of things about me that are a result of that experience,” I admit to Jaxon. “I play them off, of course, as personality idiosyncrasies, but they aren’t... They’re scars, some of which I’llnever share with Duch. I don’t need her feeling any more guilt.
“The first year after I got out, I got sick —a lot. I wasn’t used to all the germs people carried, and I was pretty much always on some kind of antihistamines or antibiotics. My system was shot to hell. I never felt... right, ya know? Even though I knew the world was big, it still kinda scared me.
“You’ll laugh at this,” I continue. “But, ah, I was shy once. If it wasn’t for two boisterous sisters, I might have disappeared. They forced me out of my shell, and I mean literally forced.” I laugh, reminiscing.
“When I had my first drink with Flick, it changed everything. With that in my system, I had courage. I was funny. Impenetrable. And... I felt closer to the boy in the basement. I was in a bit of a daze in that cell, mate. The drugs I'd been given warped the way I saw things.” Hesitation changes my tone, dropping it to barely a choked whisper. “The thing I’ve never told anyone, ever, Cassidy, Flick, or my shrink, is... I missed the basement. I missed it because it had become me, and it was where we'd shared a life. There, I got to be with her all the time, every day. And then I was alone, and it was scary. I was scared all the time.”
I stop talking, realising I’ve been dumping on him. Guess I liked sharing that. Maybe he doesn’t need to understand the barrier; he just needs to recognise it?
“So?” I look at him. “What do think?”
His cheeks inflate as he breathes out. “I didn’t expect that. I—” His brows furrow. “I’m glad you told me, you fucking psycho.”
I chuckle.
Suddenly, a silhouette blocks my view. Blesk straddles me, one foot on either side of my waist, as she peers down. Lined in silver, she looks like an angel.
Relief floods me.
“Hey there, Mr Slater. Come here often?” she asks, lifting a brow and smiling softly.
I sit up and grab her knees, pulling her down onto my lap. Her incredible arse meets my thighs, and my cock jumps inappropriately.
I shuffle her against me, and her breath catches on impact with my body. “Miss Bellamy, what’s a girl like you doing outside a place like this?”
Elise chuckles. “You two are hopeless!”
Jax jumps to his feet. “Have your menstrual cycles synced or something?”
“He’s jealous,” Blesk says.
Jax scoffs. “Kill me if I ever act like that.”
I ignore Jax and Elise, eyes on Blesk’s gentle grin, thrown by it actually, given where she just came from. I lean in and she edges backwards, laughing—teasing me.
I tut and pull her harder against me by the backside. “Do you want that distinction, Miss Bellamy?”
“I thought all I had to do was show up?” she challenges, forearms resting on my shoulders, fingers finding the back of my neck, brushing up and down.
