Page 39 of Stone
His jaw ticked. She squeezed his hand. He took a sharp breath. Moving closer to his side, she spoke. “Simon?” His shoulders stiffened in response. “We don’t have to stay here,” she said, suddenly certain that his behavior wasn’t because they were in danger. At least not from the triad. “We can leave right now,” she added.
He swallowed, then shook his head, as if clearing his thoughts. “No, we can stay.” More words hovered in his eyes, so she remained silent. “I just haven’t been back in a long time.”
“Back?” she asked.
He shook his head again, his brown hair falling over his forehead. “Not for more than fifteen years.”
She glanced around, wondering what he was seeing. “What is this place, Simon?”
He took two quick breaths before answering. “This is where I grew up.”
20
The words slipped out before he could stop them. He didn’t need to burden Juliana with his past. Sure, he’d shared the gist of his shitty upbringing, but those conversations hadn’t even scratched the surface. After his parents’ trials, he and his brother had gutted the place before moving back in. Too bad tearing out rusty nails from the old wood floor, stripping the ratty, smoke-darkened wallpaper from the walls, and ridding it of the furniture stained with about every kind of bodily fluid couldn’t wash away the memories. Not even a second renovation several years ago managed to do that. Somehow, they still clung to the walls and hovered in the air.
“We don’t have to stay here,” Juliana repeated.
They didn’t, but he felt a strange sense of inevitability about being there. He’d had his fair share of therapy over the years, and he’d worked through most of the shittiness of his upbringing, but he’d never returned to ground zero since leaving at eighteen. He hadn’t ever thought he needed to. But standing in the living room, with the ghosts of his childhood lingering in every shadow, it seemed right to be there with Juliana. Right tobe there facing the final piece of his past with the woman he wanted in his future.
“My parents were part of a trafficking ring,” he said. “Low level and not the kind you read about in books. There were no auctions of beautiful young women. No billionaires bidding on virgins. Mostly, someone lured kids and young adults off the street. Victims already lost to their families or without any family at all.”
He paused and looked around the space. “It’s different now.” He waved toward the spacious kitchen and living area. “This was three separate rooms. A galley kitchen, a small dining area my parents used to store shit, and a tiny living room. There was a room there”—he pointed to the current dining area—“next to a bathroom that had a toilet and a shower. That’s where my brother and I slept. We got very good at climbing in and out of the window at the back when we needed to.”
A shudder went through him. “They kept the victims in the garage. Sometimes in cages.”
Juliana sucked in a breath. Nothing he could say or do would make this story less ugly, more palatable. It wasn’t fair telling her all this. But now that he’d started, he didn’t want to hide any part of himself from her. He wanted her to see every dark part of his past. He wanted her to understand him in a way no one ever had. So, while it was a burden, it was also a plea. A plea for her to accept all the complicated, ugly, awful, and beautiful things in his life.
“There were four bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs,” he continued. “People would come here and buy time with one of the victims. If they didn’t buy them altogether and take them away—usually to a brothel—they’d take them upstairs.” Bile rose in his throat as he remembered the sounds. The grunts, the muffled screams, the distinctive echoes of skin hitting skin as one of the johns hit their chosen prey. Frequently, it was hisfather delivering the blow. He had a violent streak and took pride in “breaking them in,” he used to say. His mother tended to stay high on whatever drug she had on hand. Sometimes she’d join her husband, but often she’d stay passed out in the living room.
“When James, my brother, turned eighteen and was old enough to get custody of me, we went to a woman he trusted and told her everything. He’d even gathered evidence against our parents.” He paused, remembering that meeting and the days that followed. “She was his high school counselor, and by the time we showed up in her office after school that day—I was still in middle school—she’d figured out more than James had ever told her.” He paused again and smiled. “Mrs. Baxter had seen a lot in her life and career. She could spot kids like me and James a mile away. Kids who wanted more from life but who had everything stacked against them. She didn’t hesitate to help.”
“You’re still in touch with her, aren’t you?” Juliana asked.
“We are. She was a licensed foster care guardian and took us in while the police sorted everything out. They arrested my parents, of course, along with several other people. They also picked the house apart searching for evidence. It took more than a year before James and I were allowed to move back in. Before we did, the Baxters and their three sons helped us tear much of it down and build anew. It didn’t look like this when we were done—this renovation was done six years ago—but it looked different enough.”
“You moved back in?”
He nodded. “Both our parents died shortly after their trials. My mom from an overdose and my dad in a fight. To our surprise, they owned the place, mortgage free. It wasn’t easy being here, but we didn’t have a lot of options. I was in high school by then, and it meant I could be in the same school Mrs. Baxter worked at. James took night classes, and we both got jobsto cover our expenses. We didn’t need a lot since we didn’t have rent, but it wasn’t easy.”
“I can’t imagine what it was like for a nineteen- and a fourteen-year-old,” she said. “But you did it.”
“We did,” he said, his chest easing with the acknowledgment. “We muddled along for the next few years. By the time I graduated, my grades were decent but not enough for a scholarship, so I chose to enlist in the army, like Aaron, Mrs. Baxter’s oldest son. James had always had good grades—both in high school and in his night classes—but he didn’t want to stay in San Francisco. I couldn’t blame him. We agreed to rent the house out, and he could use the money to move. He went as far away as he could and still be in the US.”
“Boston.”
He nodded again. “The real estate market was already growing here, and the rent we got allowed him to find a small place and focus on school. You know the rest.”
“And you?” she asked.
“You know that story, too,” he said, turning and looking at her for the first time since reliving his past. They still stood at the top of the stairs, side by side, holding hands. The ambient light from the street filtered through the closed blinds, highlighting the golden streaks in her hair. Her blue eyes, cast in shadow, held steady on his. The weight of everything he’d shared, everything he’d lived, hadn’t gone away, but it had eased. His breathing grew steadier, and the bands in his chest loosened as all his senses came back to him—the smell of Juliana’s shampoo, the heat of her soft skin under his fingers and against his palm.
“I enlisted and rose in the ranks, as they say. Joined Green Berets, then Delta. I spent eight years without a scratch, then one day, that all changed. Our convoy of two trucks hit a series of IEDs. Those of us who survived were shot by waiting insurgents.Insurgents who, thankfully, didn’t have good aim. Four people died in the explosion, two by gunshot, but five of us survived.”
A pained sound escaped Juliana, and she looked as if she was about to cry. For him. He lifted their hands and kissed the back of hers. He didn’t think anyone had ever cried for him.
“After that, there was no question about going back to Delta. Rather than take a desk job, I decided I wanted something different in life. Mantis was a teammate—one who hadn’t been in the ambush—and he’d been feeling the same. A ragtag team of us discharged at the same time, and although we had no idea what we wanted to do, we knew the life we wanted.”
“Which was?”
