“It’s okay.” I sway back and forth gently with Ant in my arms. “I’m right here,” I reassure him, not sure what else to do.
I’ve never seen him like this. Hell, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any man like this. His pain radiates off him like smoldering heat that causes sweat to bead across the back of my neck.
It’s not long before Ant pushes out of my embrace and stands, swiping angrily at the wet streaks that pepper his cheeks. Scrambling to my feet, I barely get myself upright before Anthony begins to pace in front of me.
“He doesn’t deserve this,” he mutters more to himself than to me. “He’s not worth one fucking tear. I fucking hate him. I hate him.” He stops, speaking the last part directly to me. “Do you have any idea how fucked up this is? To hate someone so much and yet not be able to shake this overwhelming weight of guilt like there’s something you should’ve done differently. Like you somehow were in the wrong?”
“Unfortunately, yes, I do. And, honestly, no matter how much you hate him, he was still your father. He was the person who gave you life, and now he’s no longer here.”
“I’m glad he’s not fucking here,” he seethes. “I’m relieved. Fuck, Bree, I’m so fucking relieved. Is that it? Am I crying because I’m so fucking glad he’s gone, and I know how bad of a person that makes me?”
“Hey.” I reach out and take one of his hands in mine. “You’re not a bad person.”
“Have you listened to one word I’ve said to you?” he bites, pulling his hand away.
“I have, but I also somewhat understand what it’s like to be in your shoes; to feel the pain of losing someone who hurt you and the overwhelming relief that comes along with it. I know the guilt of both what you’ve done and what you didn’t. I know the shame of knowing deep down you still loved that person even after everything they did. He was your father, Ant. Maybe the part of you that loves him is buried deep, but that part of you still exists. You have to stop fighting that and just accept that it will always be a part of who you are.”
“I don’t want to fucking accept it. I just want this…” He pulls at his shirt. “I just need this feeling to stop.”
“And it will, eventually,” I reassure him, taking his hand once more and leading him to the bare bed along the left wall. “Come here.” I climb up the mattress and turn, pressing my back flush with the wooden headboard.
Patting my lap, it’s only seconds before Ant crawls up beside me, laying his head in my lap before stretching his long body sideways across the bed. My fingers immediately find his hair, running through the thick brown strands from root to tip.
We remain silent for several moments before Ant finally speaks again, and this time it’s me who is left wishing the ground would swallow them up.
“Tell me who hurt you.” It’s all he says, but in reality, it means so much more. It means he’s noticed. It means he’s been paying attention. It means that if I want any shot of making this work, and God knows I do, that it’s time to come clean.
If I expect him to love me for who I am, then I guess it’s time he knows exactly who that is. If we’re opening doors today, might as well open the one I boarded closed years ago.
“There was more than one,” I find myself saying without really thinking it through. “Kind of a series of people and things along the way.” I let out a slow sigh, knowing there’s no turning back now.
“We’re not talking about Blake either, are we? All the things you’ve said about loving someone you shouldn’t, about hurting over and for someone you hate, none of that was Blake, was it?”
“No,” I admit truthfully. “Blake was just the end result, me trying to find penance for my wrongdoing.”
“What wrongdoing?” he asks, not moving from his position in my lap.
I concentrate on my fingers as they continue to glide through his hair, knowing if I let myself think too long and too hard about what I’m going to say next I will never get the words out.
“When I was seven, I was sexually abused by my mom’s boyfriend.” I feel him stiffen beneath me, but I push myself to keep going. “I don’t remember how long they had been together. All I remember is one day my dad was here, the next he wasn’t, and my mom was never quite the same after that. She started bringing over random guys and drinking all the time. There were even a few times she would leave me home alone for hours on end, even overnight.”
I lose myself to the memories as the words continue to pour from my lips.
“One night she left me home with Mark. I’ll never forget his face for as long as I live. He had a full beard and a scar along the side of his bottom lip. I can still hear his voice, the way he told me everything would be fine as long as I kept quiet. How it would only hurt for a minute and then it would feel good. I remember laying there knowing it was wrong but also couldn’t do anything to stop it. He touched himself; at the time I didn’t really understand it, but later I realized why he did.” I shudder at the thought, still unable to understand how a grown man could look at a seven-year-old child like that.
“He told me afterward that I couldn’t tell my mom. That she would hate me if she knew what I had done. He made me believe it was my fault. Looking back, I understand why he knew that approach would work. After my dad left my mom would fly off the handle at anything. Her being mad didn’t result in me being grounded or sent to my room; it resulted in punches, belt lashes, and sometimes going without food for an entire day or more. So I kept my mouth shut, just like he knew I would.”
“Bree.” Ant shifts beneath me.
“No, just let me get this out.” I fight back the emotion clogging my throat.
“Mark only got about a year out of me before my mom moved onto the next boyfriend. I wish I could say the abuse stopped after that first time, but it didn’t. It escalated to the point that all we had not done was have physical intercourse.”
“John was next. He was an okay guy. Okay in the sense that he didn’t touch me in the same way Mark did. No, John liked to push me into walls when I would walk by him or throw empty beer bottles at me from across the room. He didn’t last but a few weeks, and after that, I thought maybe things would get better. But again, I was wrong.” I pause, letting out a slow breath.
“Next came Tommy. Tommy, like Mark, got off on touching little girls. But unlike Mark, Tommy was bold, and he didn’t care if he got caught. Either that or he just really believed he wouldn’t. He wasn’t at our house more than a few weeks the first time he came into my room. And again, unlike Mark, he wasn’t careful, nor was he gentle. I was eleven the first time he raped me.” I swipe at a tear that streaks down my face.
“I still remember the way he sounded on top of me, how he smelled of beer and stale cigarette smoke. He kept telling me how pretty I was. How pretty my pussy was. I remember how just his voice made me want to puke.”
“Bree, you don’t have to do this.” Ant sits up, rocking back on his knees to face me.
“Yes, I do. You have to understand. You need to know everything.” I push off the bed and begin to slowly pace the small room, not sure how to proceed; knowing the worst is yet to come.
“He raped me countless times over the next several months. Hurt me in ways I didn’t know I could be hurt. I finally told my mom when the abuse reached a point I couldn’t tolerate. She called me a liar. Said I was an attention-seeking whore who would say or do anything if it meant someone would pay me any mind. I was her child.” I stop, turning to face Ant who has moved to the edge of the bed and is watching me like he’s not sure if he wants to hug me or run away from me.
“I was her only child, and she didn’t believe me. Who does that?” By this point my tears are coming harder now, flowing down my face in a steady stream that I don’t even try to control; there’s no use anyway. The floodgates are open, and I know that the emotion seeping out of me will just have to run its course.
“Tommy I hated. I hated him so much that when Brad came along a couple of years later, I clung to him like he was air in a room with no oxygen. He was nice to me, treated me better than any of the men before him, but like all the others I knew what he wanted. He wanted me.”
I pause, doing my best to keep my voice even.
“Brad started slow. He worked me up little by little, did his best to make me comfortable with what he wanted from me. I hated it. I hated being touched. I hated being forced. But I loved it all at the same time.” I can tell by the way Ant’s eyes go wide that he wasn’t expecting me to say that.
“I used to lay in bed at night, trying to convince myself I didn’t want him to come in. Most nights I’d pretend to be asleep when he entered my room. But as soon as he touched me I couldn’t deny him. I wanted him. I wanted him to make me feel good. What started out as sexual abuse quickly morphed into me having sex with my mother’s boyfriend and enjoying it. I craved it; even when it made me sick to my stomach I wanted it.”
“Bree.” Ant stands, running his hand through his hair on a long exhale.
“You get it, now don’t you?” I laugh bitterly. “You understand what I mean when I say I know what it feels like to hate someone so much and yet still love them. Because in some sick, twisted way I loved all those men—especially Brad. I loved that they wanted me, even in a way I didn’t want to be wanted. It meant I existed. It meant someone saw me. You want to know how fucked up something is; well how fucked up is that? I loved the men who abused and raped me. So much so that when it stopped, that when that feeling went away, I sought out the one person who could give me what I still craved.”
“Blake,” he says without question.
“Blake,” I confirm. “Of course, I didn’t know it at the time. I clung to him because he was the one guy who made it clear what he wanted—my body. And I was more than willing to let him have it any way he wanted.” I shake my head, realizing that all this sounds even worse when I say it out loud.
“The physical abuse started later. At first, I wanted it, craved it—loved that it made me feel whole again—like something was missing. But then it started escalating, and I quickly realized I had lost control of the situation. Even still, I couldn’t walk away. I couldn’t leave him. Because now he knew my secret. He knew my weakness. He knew me to my core, how sick and fucked up I was. I convinced myself I deserved it. I deserved the abuse for my past sins. For fucking my mother’s boyfriend when she was in the next room. For wishing he would fuck me again and again. I deserved to be beaten, to be punished, to be hated.”
“No, you didn’t.” Ant takes a step toward me.
I hold my hand up to stop his advances, not the least bit surprised when he instantly freezes in the middle of the floor and doesn’t take another step.
“When I got pregnant with Jackson, it was like a sign from above. I knew I needed to get out, if not for me then for my child. So I made arrangements with my grandparents and spent as little time at home with my drunk of a mother as I could until he was born. I still believed I was in the wrong, that this was all on me, but after I had Jackson I also realized that I was just a child. It took months in therapy to finally accept that what happened to me wasn’t my fault, and I’m still dealing with it, Ant. Every single day. I need you to understand it’s a part of me. This, this disgusting, sickening thing will always be a part of me. But it no longer defines me. Don’t let your father define you.” I take a step toward him, allowing him to pull me into his arms.
“There is nothing sick or disgusting about you, Bree Kingsley,” he says against my hair, squeezing me so tightly it would be painful if it didn’t feel so unbelievably good. “What you went through… My god, I had no idea.”
“How could you have known? I didn’t want anyone to know, least of all you.”
“No child should ever have to go through the things you’ve been through.” He pulls back, cupping my cheek.
“And no child should ever have to go through the things you’ve been through either, but it happened, and we are who we are because of it. I understand why you hate your father. I also understand why you love him,” I say, choking back the sob stuck in my throat.
“You’ve always understood me in a way no one else ever has.”
“Because I know you.”
Without a word, Ant leans down and brushes his lips against mine. “Thank you for telling me,” he whispers against my mouth before deepening the kiss, showing me without words that what I told him hasn’t changed us.
He’s doing what he always does—giving me reassurances without me ever having to ask. Because he too, understands me in a way that no one else ever has.