“He broke down my door first.” He stared at the door as if he could picture his father standing there.
“You don’t have to—”
“You wanted to know,” he said in a hard voice. When she flinched, he softened his tone. “You know how I used to be. You of all people.” He lifted a finger toward her cheek but then dropped it again. “You saw me, the real me.”
Her face heated in shame. If he noticed, he didn’t acknowledge it.
“The fact that I was an arrogant little fuck didn’t help. My mother wouldn’t tell anyone because of the shame. You know how the people here are. They’d rather pretend it didn’t happen.” He chuckled, the sound bitter. “When I’d try to stop him, he’d tie me up and whip me with his belt, breaking my skin with the buckle.”
She flinched at the picture he was painting, remembering his haunted eyes, his wildness, and the pain she recognized in his defiant smiles.
“I took the beating like he told me to,” his lip curled, “like a man, knowing the day would come that I’d be stronger.” He uttered a cold laugh. “That’s when I knew I’d be a killer one day, that I’d be capable of taking a person’s neck in my hands and squeezing until the bones crushed.” He glanced at her again. “Just like I had your neck in my fist tonight. I knew it the day Iwig laid his hands on you. If you hadn’t been standing there, I might’ve killed him.”
The confession crossed another line. Joss was making himself vulnerable. He was making this personal, impossible for her to hate him. “I don’t—” want to hear it, she was going to say, but he didn’t give her a chance.
“That night, the night it happened, I came home to find my father dragging my mother up the stairs by her hair. I wanted to kill him. I meant to when I grabbed him by the collar and threw him down the stairs.” His eyes were fixed on the wall, unfocused, somewhere in the past. “The bastard got up.”
She laid a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to do this.”
He carried on as if he hadn’t felt or heard her. “I hit him until he went down, and then I kicked him. Over and over. I would’ve killed him too. Wanted to so damn badly. Should’ve. It wasn’t my mother’s screams that stopped me. It was my brother. He was standing at the top of the stairs, watching.
“I told my mother to leave the bastard on the floor, and I sent my brother to bed.” He rested his head in his hands. “I took off to the beach and drank a lot. I didn’t think my father would come to his senses so soon. When he did, he was in a rage. He went hunting for me in the house, and when he found my room empty, he took his shotgun.”
It was too late to stop him now. The confession had tied them together. He was forcing her to see him too, to see all of him. All she could do for him was listen.
“He shot my brother first,” he said. “At least, that was what the autopsy said.” His mouth twisted. “In his fucking bed, just like the coward my father was. The only solace is that my brother must’ve been asleep. My mother must’ve woken from the noise. Her body was in the hallway. Then my father went back to bed and painted the walls with his brains. That’s how I found them when I got home wrecked and careless. Fucking careless. Selfish.”
He lifted his eyes to hers, the gray splintering and sorrow seeping through the cracks. “Now tell me again I don’t deserve the nightmares.”
Hearing him confess the facts she already knew was so much worse. The pain was right there, in front of her eyes, not a concept in her head, and it was unbearable to watch. No longer vague detail censured and conveyed by Erwan, the truth felt raw. She hadn’t known all of it, though. She hadn’t known about the beatings. No one did. Everyone suspected when Joss’s mother turned up in town with bruises on her arms and legs, but she always had excuses. She tripped over a step or slipped on a rug. No one challenged his mother when she lied. No one pressed harder, because no one wanted to get involved. No one cared. Not really. Her heart broke a little more for him.
“Your father did terrible things,” she said. “The only heritage he left you with is guilt, but the guilt isn’t yours to carry.”
His lips lifted in one corner. The almost-smile was sad, a consolation that seemed to be meant for her rather than himself. “You’re still so innocent, little witch.” His gaze trailed over her face. “So naïve.”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of it is.” He leaned closer, whispering over her lips, “Life isn’t.”
She couldn’t move. Her heart and mind were on opposite sides of a rope, each pulling, stretching her thin. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to let her go. They were playing a dangerous game. He was fire. Was she willing to go down in flames for him?
“There’s one way to make it better,” he said in a thick voice.
The plea hooked into her heart. She couldn’t rip it out without tearing a piece of her in the process.
“Lie down me with.” Cupping his hands around her head, he hooked his thumbs under her jaw. “Just for a little while.”
“I–I don’t—”
“Pretend it’s different. Pretend I’m good, and that you’re not scared.”
She swallowed. He was asking her to lie for him. It was wrong, but didn’t she always want him to corrupt her?
She didn’t stop him when he pushed her down. When her back hit the mattress, she didn’t move to the edge against the wall. She lay quietly as he stretched out on top of her, her heart sighing
