Page 53 of My Revenant
“No, nothing like that. He’s just… not there. Hasn’t been for a long time.”
“Since your sister?” came his next question, and I was startled for the second time. Unpleasant heat clawed up my chest and throat. I didn’t talk about Adaline. Not ever. Not even to Becca.
“No, he wasn’t much of a father before then either,” I admitted. Whatever little fatherly instincts the man had possessed died along with his daughter.
“What about your mom?”
“She’s worse.”
“Does she hurt you?”
I turned to look at him, wondering where these questions were coming from and why he cared enough to ask them. That wasn’t what this was. It wasn’t what we did. My parents were none of his fucking business, and I was about to tell him as much, only when I met his pale eyes he looked so… open. His usual smirk was absent, his expression soft in a way I’d never seen on him before.
Lately, keeping my rage around him had taken conscious effort. Where it had usually been bubbling away in my core, it now simmered, cooled. Still there but tolerable. Just like when I was around Becca and her presence soothed me, like a balm on a wound. This felt similar, and yet different in a way I couldn’t place, or perhaps didn’t want to. Maybe acknowledging the way things were changing would make them real, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
“Why are you asking me this, Devil?”
“Because I want to know you.”
“What if I don’t want you to know me?”
“You do. You have from the start.”
It pissed me off, how confident he always was, how sure. Especially in the things he assumed about me. But I couldn’t even argue, because he was right. What I wanted—from him, from Becca, from my parents, from the world—was to be known. To be seen. To be understood.
“No, Dex. My mom doesn’t hurt me. My mom doesn’t care enough to hurt me, or maybe she isn’t capable of caring at all,” I started, and like a switch had been flipped, everything rushed to the surface. The floodgates had been opened, and I was powerless to close them again. That beast that always lurked inside me took its chance to claw its way up my throat and show its hideous form to whoever would look at it.
“Maybe she’s just a human-shaped void where a mother should have been,” I said as my throat grew tight and itchy and heat pooled behind my eyes. “Maybe whatever motherly love she had left in her died with Adaline. Maybe my dad was the same. Both of them died as parents when she died. And fuck, maybe that’s to be expected after losing a child. Maybe their grief was too much for them. But I’m still here! I still needed them, and I was fucking hurting too! I lost her too! I lost my sister, my best friend, and I lost my parents right along with her. So no, they don’t fucking hit me if that’s whatyou’re asking, but I fucking wish they would, because at least then they’d have to fucking acknowledge me.”
“Hey.” Dex spoke calmly, so infuriatingly calm, like he was trying to soothe a wounded animal, and that was exactly how I felt in front of him as my vision blurred. He closed in, moved over me, and his hand cupped the back of my neck like an anchor. But I didn’t want to be anchored. I wanted to thrash and scream until this ugly feeling escaped enough for me to push it back down into the depths of me where it could continue to rot away inside me until the next outburst. “I’ve got you. You’ve been alone for so long, Rabbit, but you aren’t anymore. I won’t ever let you be again.”
I didn’t want to hear it, not those words, not from him. If I heard them, I might believe them, and I couldn’t let myself believe them. It would leave me too vulnerable. Would give him too much power over me. Letting him have any part of me meant he could hurt me, or worse, he couldloveme. If he loved me, then I’d finally have something to lose instead of just something I yearned for.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” I snapped at him, but I wanted him to touch me so fucking badly. I wanted him to hold me hard enough to bruise. To fucking hell with gentle caresses and soothing touches that faded away the moment they stopped as if they’d never been there at all. I wanted to be held with teeth and claws, touched only in a way that left marks behind. Scars. So that I could press and poke at the wounds and the pain could echo the touch for as long as I needed until it felt real.
“I’ve got you,” he said again, and despite me pushing him away, he only pulled me closer.
I shoved him, because I wanted him to fight me for it. I wanted him to prove that he wanted to touch me because this was real and not because it was easy. Dex shifted, his body moving overmine, and I thrashed against him, trying to get away yet hoping I couldn’t.
“I’ve got you.” This time when he spoke, his voice was firmer. His hands, so big and warm and secure, grabbed my wrists, pinned them to the grass on either side of my head where I couldn’t hurt him with them. Where I couldn’t hurt myself. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re mine, Jonah Hargreaves, and if you want to fight me, then you fight me. But it won’t change anything. I know your parents made you feel like asking for attention was a bad thing, that it made you feel like too much, but it’s not too much for me. You’re not too much for me. I’ll give you all my attention. I’ll give you everything. All you have to do is ask, Rabbit.”
“Let go of me!” I shouted, because the walls I’d put up were crumbling. Those walls kept everything that could hurt me out, but they also kept all the pain I’d been holding onto in as well, and I wasn’t ready to let it go. I wasn’t sure who I’d be without it. “I hate you!” I told him, like I’d told him countless times before, only this time when I said the words, they felt wrong; they tasted like a lie.
“Stop, Jonah.” Dex’s voice was firm but not cruel—in the way I both hoped and feared it would be when he finally realized how difficult I was. “It’s time to stop running. I think you started running when you were a child, and you haven’t let yourself stop. It’s time to stop now. I know you’re tired of it. It’s okay to stop.”
“I don’t know how,” I confessed, the words burning my throat like acid.
“I know. And that’s okay. I don’t know either. I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you. We can figure it out together.”
“What if you change your mind?”
“I won’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
I just do. Like it was that simple. I didn’t understand how he could say those words, how he could be so sure and certain of them, but now more than ever I wanted to believe him. I was so fucking tired of doing this all on my own.
