Page 39 of The Backdraft
That was enough explanation for my dad, who nodded and retreated down the hall, a snickering Shelby on his heels.Garrett, on the other hand, lingered another moment, as if our parents leaving would get the truth out of me. When I didn’t offer anything more, he grumbled something about being quiet, then headed back to his own room.
Closing the door, I padded back over to the bed where Archer hadn’t moved a muscle, his eyes once again closed. I hesitated, unsure of what to do. Should I climb back into his arms, or get back on my side of the bed? There was no way he was asleep again, but I also wasn’t sure if he wanted to forget what had just happened.
I climbed onto my side of the bed, and had just pulled the covers around me, when Archer reached out and dragged me back to his side. He still hadn’t opened his eyes, and I didn’t dare move, nervous that my breathing might be enough to startle him. I simply peered down at his face, letting myself really look at him for perhaps the first time.
Had the three-inch scar running from his hairline through his left eyebrow been there back in high school? It seemed like an old injury that had spent years healing—the edges no longer as jagged as I imagined they used to be, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still hurt. That whatever, or whoever it was that caused it, didn’t still pain him because clearly it did. Granted, that was me connecting dots and making assumptions for myself, but the longer I looked at it, the surer I became. This hadn’t been a tiny scratch from an accident, this was a gouge. A purposeful gouge, and he’d nearly lost an eye.
My eyes burned with tears of my own, as I traced it with my fingers down his forehead, through the hairless part of his eyebrow, and stopping right before his eyelid.
When I noticed that his eyes had opened, and that he was staring up at me, I stilled but didn’t remove my fingers. “What happened to you?” There was no need for me to clarify, we both knew that I wasn’t talking about the scar.
Several minutes passed by where I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, the conflict of whether or not he wanted to trust me with whatever it was, warring in his eyes. But whether he consciously decided I was someone he could confide in, or he fell prey to the vulnerability of the moment, he spoke.
“I didn’t grow up like you.” His voice was barely a whisper, and my breath caught in my throat.
I hadn’t expected him to answer me. If the roles were reversed, I probably would’ve thrown my walls back up and pushed him away because being vulnerable wasn’t my favorite, but he didn’t. He was letting me in, so I waited.
“My dad,” he started, before closing his eyes for a moment to collect himself. “He isn’t like yours.”
“He did this to you?” I asked, fingers brushing his scar again.
The answering nod had my stomach dropping. “My mom died in a car crash when I was seven. I had been in the car with her because we were going to see some movie I’d been wanting to see, but can’t even remember the name of now. The other car blew through a red light on the way there, and hit us on the driver’s side. My mom died on impact, but I was on the passenger side, so I was fine. I mean, I had some cuts and bruises, and a minor concussion, but I was fine.”
My heart broke again for a seven-year-old Archer, who most definitely had not been fine.
“Anyway, when the ambulance finally came, it took us both to the hospital. Not that they could do anything for my mom, but I remember screaming over and over for them to help her—for them to dosomething, but they couldn’t. I sat in a hospital bed by myself for four days before the police could track down my father. Once they told him about my mom, he’d turned his phone off and disappeared. I still don’t know where he went for those four days, or how they found him, but when he came to get me, it wasn’t my dad in the hospital room with me. My dad was neverangry, never laid a finger on my mom or me, but when she died, it was like the good in him died too.”
The tears that had been swimming in my eyes before, cascaded down my face freely now. I almost wanted him to stop there before his words broke me beyond repair, but I sensed that whatever he was about to tell me was crucial to understanding the man beneath me, and I was desperate to understand.
“At first, he couldn’t even look at me. He blamed me for her death, and I did for a long time too. If we hadn’t gone to see the stupid movie, maybe she’d still be here. Then, once he could stand talking to me, it was only to tell me as much. The beatings didn’t come until after the one year anniversary of her death. I was eight and a half the first time he hit me. I remember seeing a flash of my dad in his eyes right after he did it too, but then the anger and hurt crept back in and he did it again. It wasn’t every day, it wasn’t even every week, but that’s what made it worse I think—the not knowing when it was going to happen again. For the most part, I tried to stay quiet and fly under his radar, but that only worked sometimes. It didn’t get really bad until he started drinking. That’s when I got this scar. I was thirteen and I’d just come home from school. I took one look at him, saw the half-drunk bottle of scotch in his hand, and I knew it was going to be a bad one.”
“Archer.” My voice broke halfway through his name, and his hand came up to cup the side of my face, as ifIwas the one who needed comforting.
“I had her eyes. That’s what he said before he smashed the bottle into the wall, and tried to cut them out with one of the shards. If he hadn’t been so drunk, I probably wouldn’t have gotten away, but I did. I ran out the back door, and kept running. When I came back a few days later, he’d cleaned the glass and blood up from the floor, and it was like none of it had ever happened.”
“Why’d you go back?”
“I was thirteen. Where was I supposed to go, you know? And he was my dad. I think I thought that if my mom were still there, she’d have wanted me to help him. After a while, I realized there was no helping him, but by then I was sixteen and graduation was only two years away. Plus, I was able to hold my own a little better, so that’s what I did.” He swiped at his eyes and cleared his throat. “But, yeah, clearly the damage had already been done.”
“Archer, I—”
He shook his head, squeezing me tighter. “You don’t have to say anything. I’m okay now. I just still have nightmares sometimes.”
They definitely weren’t just nightmares, not with the pure anguish and terror I saw from him, but it wasn’t my place to get into that. “Does anyone else know about the nightmares?”
“Harrison knows about it all, but other than that, no. No one other than you two.”
“No one at the firehouse knows?” I questioned, trying to wrap my head around how he could be suffering so much and no one knows.
“I don’t sleep long enough or well enough there for it to be a problem.”
I shook my head, not knowing what to say. What was there to say to any of it? I’m sorry? That didn’t change anything for him. Nothing would. So I said nothing, and instead wrapped my arms around his neck, and held him in a way that it sounded like no one had in a very,verylong time.
I had no idea how long we stayed like that, holding each other, but when he spoke again, his voice was much calmer, more in control.
“He’swhy I can’t be a father, Darcy. It has nothing to do with you, or the baby, and everything to do with me. How am I supposed to be a dad, when that was mine?”
And the fractured pieces of my broken heart, detonated again.
