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I shake my head. “No, you choose.”

He just stares at me for a second before a grin pulls at his lips and he starts playing. At first, I don’t recognize it but after a few seconds, it hits me. He starts singing the lyrics to a stripped down version of Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic by The Police, and I’m enthralled. His voice is soft but so soulful, and the look in his eyes as he sings for me almost has me in tears. My God. This is, without a doubt, the most romantic moment of my life. When he’s finished, he looks up at me, a little nervous, and I beam at him.

“Did you like it?” he asks, a little of his vulnerability showing through.

“I loved it. Will you show me how to play?”

He flashes me a full on smile and nods before standing with the guitar still in his hand and sitting on the edge of the bed with his back facing me. As I crawl across the mattress, I start to see pale white lines on his back, and I gasp. I stop right behind him, tears welling up in my eyes, and I reach out and trace my finger over one.

“Trey,” I say, my voice cracking, “who did this to you?”

He’s quiet for a long moment, and I wonder if he’s not going to tell me but finally he clears his throat and says, “My dad.”

“Your dad? He left when you were a baby,” I say, still not understanding. There are so many scars across his back, too many to count, and I just can’t comprehend someone doing this to anyone, let alone a baby.

“No. I mean, yes he did but he came back every couple of months, and he’d take his anger out on my mom and me.”

The tears spill over. I can’t stop them anymore, and a quiet sob slips out as I press my hand to his back. He turns and grabs me, pulling me into his lap as he strokes my face, and kisses my forehead.

“I can’t believe you went through all this. Why didn’t you ever tell us? We would have helped you,” I sob, and he runs a comforting hand down my hair to soothe me.

“Shhh, baby. You don’t need to cry for me.”

“Of course I do. He hurt you, and we didn’t do anything.”

“Addy, it’s okay. I’m okay. I’m one of the lucky ones. Any other kid in my position would have been thrown in foster care and forgotten about but Michael and Charlotte, they took me in. They were always there for me.”

“It kills me to see that, Trey. It kills me to think about you going through that back then. And I wish that they could have gotten you out sooner.”

“I don’t,” he says, and I jerk back in surprise.

“What?”

“The way I see it, the path I took brought me here to this moment with you so, yeah, it sucked, and I didn’t know how to deal with it for a long time but now I’m here with you and you make it better, baby. You chase away the darkness.”

“I do?” I squeak, surprised and overwhelmed by his words.

“You do. You’re so full of light that any demons living inside me have nowhere left to hide when you’re around.”

“Oh,” I whisper and he nods, smiling at my tear-stained face before tucking me into his arms. As I quiet down, I think about all this new information, and it offers me insight into parts of Trey that I didn’t understand before.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask, and he tucks me into his body and looks off into the distance, staying silent for so long that I start to think the conversation is over.

“When he would come around, my mom would be so happy because she missed him when he was away. I’d come home from school and see his car in the driveway, and my stomach would just drop. Sometimes, I would try to sneak over to Tucker’s before he saw me but he caught me a lot. It was always worse when he caught me.”

His words bounce around inside me as I try to imagine the horrors that he experienced. To hear him talk about it almost kills me. His voice is so haunted even all these years later.

“He’d get his belt and hit me, telling me what a disappointment I was as a son. Telling me that no one was going to love a useless little piece of shit like me.”

Sobbing quietly, I place my hand on his cheek and reach up, pressing my lips to the underside of his jaw, and he shudders, his eyes closing for a moment.

“When he was done with me, he’d throw me in my room and tell me not to come out no matter what. I had this little closet that was my secret hiding place, and I’d go in there, too scared to even move as I listened to him start in on my mom. She would cry and beg him to not hurt her again. She promised him anything and everything under the sun if he would just not hit her but he never listened.”

“I’m so sorry, Trey,” I whisper, the searing pain in my heart making it hard for me to speak.

He shakes his head. “Sometimes in my dreams, I can still hear the sound of her body hitting a wall or the way she would tell him how much she loved him over and over again mixed in with the sounds of his fist hitting her body.”

“Trey,” I say, not sure what else to say.