Page 142 of Did They Break You

I just don’t wantanyoneelse touching her.

There’s so much between us besides the giant center console and the touchscreen of my truck. Oceans of memories and shit we could psychoanalyze. But I think about Tristan sleeping in that hospital bed, Dad on the chair next to him, his head bowedover the Bible, praying for his soul. I know it’s all bullshit. We only have the now. There’s no God to pray to. No higher power that’ll forgive us our sins. And if we fuck up the now, just like with me and Remi, there’s nothing to make that all go away.

I was raised in church, crowding into that stuffy Baptist building every Sunday like most of the town of Beckley, West Virginia. But I knew better. I saw the devil in my mother’s eyes every day when she looked at me like I wasn’t shit. When no matter what I did, I couldn’t please her. Tristan had it worse, because he’s smaller, non-athletic. She dominated him physically.

With me, she just tore me down. Humiliation was her favorite game. When I was six years old and we went camping, Mom deciding to tag along this time, I’d been wetting the bed at night. We went out to the crowded lake, but before I could go out, she took me to the bathroom and handed me a diaper.

I had to wear it under my swimsuit, and because it wasn’t waterproof, I was terrified to go past knee-deep in the lake, in case anyone saw my fucking diaper.

“Learn to pee on the potty like a big boy and you won’t get treated like a baby, Cort,”she’d said, kissing the top of my head when we all walked home from the lake that day, her laying out in the sun and grinning at my obvious discomfort every few minutes while she applied suntan lotion.

Tristan wet the bed not long after that. He came to me. I changed his sheets, did the laundry myself so Mom never found out.

I hold all of that shit down, knowing nothing could make up for my mom’s cruelty, even if she decided she wanted to be sorry.

Nothing can make up for what’s between me and Remi either.

So we don’t bring up the shit that doesn’t matter.

What happened to her. What happened to me.

What’s going to happen when this is all over.

It’ll hurt.I know that. But I can’t give her up just yet. And she’s nothing like my mom. Even when she went to the cops, even last night in the party cabin when she could have, I don’t think she’d ever intentionally try to humiliate me.

I always saw that goodness in her.Always.

“How long have you been stalking me, Cort?” she asks after a moment, and I see she’s gone through three Reese’s cups. She deserves them for all the work she did in my truck last night.

Holding her close to me in the little bed of the empty cabin—thanks to Storm’s distractions—was like… heaven on earth.

I steal another look at her. Her hair is in braids again, the orange fading just enough to show hints of her natural dark blonde.She’s fucking beautiful.

“Cort?”I counter, answering her question. It’s what most people call me. But Remi Ocean is not most people, and she gave up that nickname for me after that night. I think she used it then to get my attention.To tell me she was scared.

I push that aside as I stare at the road.

The traffic is nearly non-existent as we head down the highway, the foliage of the mountains already turning yellow and orange with the start of fall. It’s breathtaking to look at, and in West Virginia, it’s even better.

I wonder if Remi would like it there.

If she’d ever let me take her.

I wonder how temporary this is.

My chest tightens and I rub my thumb over my sternum, trying not to think about that.

“You don’t like it?” she asks me. “When I call you that?”

I shrug, glancing over at her and seeing her watching me. The entire bag of Reese’s is still on her lap, and she looks carefree, her feet tucked up under her, no doubt dirtying my seats.

“You can call me what you want,” I tell her, eyes back on the road. I brush my sunglasses up over my head. It’s kind of gray out now, clouds rolling through.

“What about asshole?” she quips.

“Good one.”

I hear her laugh softly. “Bastard?”

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