I printed the article knowing that in his stubbornness, he’d never believe me. Though it was only a sheet of paper in my pocket, it felt like I was carrying the weight of the world on my back. In a state of zombie-like lifelessness, I walked out to my car. I wasn’t sure what Liam would say about what I’d discovered, but I knew for certain that I couldn’t let it go unsaid.
Fucking hell, I didn’t even know how to bring it up. By the time I reached his house, I still had no clue what to do. All I knew was that I needed to make Liam feel safe enough to tell me the truth. I had to make him know that no matter what was in his past, I was still right here with him.
I knocked, a light tap, all my strength having left me when I saw the image of Liam in his youth.
“Hey.” His smile shattered any remaining wholeness I had left in me. “Why are you knocking? Don’t have your key on you?” There was this young boyish-like quality about him. It had been there in the recent weeks, since we put a definition to our relationship. It had wiped away some of the angst, the pain, the anger that used to follow him like a black cloud.
How much would return when I brought this up?
But, still, it wasn’t something I could keep hidden. Especially if that kid had anything to do with Liam; I’d never be able to forgive myself if something like that happened.
My legs like worn rubber bands, I walked into Liam’s home. “What’s wrong?” he asked tentatively, his voice obviously filled with a worry he wasn’t ready to unleash just yet. When I didn’t say anything, just slumped down onto his sofa, he sat next to me, pulling my hands into his. “You’re acting really strange. What happened? Please, say something.”
Twisting in my seat, I kept my hands laced with his. “I . . . um . . . I mean . . . I found . . .”
“You’re not making any sense.” Liam’s rough hands, rubbing against mine, offering me comfort and warmth, gave me the tiniest push I needed.
Shifting my weight, I pulled the article from my back pocket and handed it to him, the words to express what I needed to express having vanished into thin air.
Just as Liam had ten years ago.
All the color on his face was gone in an instant. “Where did you find this?” The angry accusation hung heavily between us. His fingers curled around the paper, crumpling it into a ball. “I said where did you get this?” he seethed, staring me down.
Reaching for his hands again, I wasn’t shocked when he pulled away from me. “Please, Liam. Listen.”
“Is this how relationships work?” Mockery shaded his words, twisted his face, and made his voice shake almost uncontrollably. “You don’t trust me for whatever reason so you have to go looking me up online. You needed to research me to get to know me.”
He said “me.” It was him. Through all his pain, that was all I heard.
Liam stood before me, his eyes shimmering with hatred. With his fists clenched like wrecking balls at his sides, he was hard on the defense.
“Liam,” I coaxed, reaching out for his hands again. He didn’t pull back, but he also didn’t move. “Can we just talk? Please? I swear I didn’t research you. I only found this because there was a boy. He came to me at my office. He had this crazy idea since I’d helped Ashton, I could help him. He gave me his name and after I was done with the cops, I did a little research of my own. Then this came up.”
My sentence met no resistance as Liam fell back onto the couch. His head flopped backward, resting against the cushions as he stared up at the ceiling. “How old?” His question was barely audible and it took me a second to process the sound of his voice. I wasn’t reacting quickly enough for him, because without warning, he twisted toward me, gripping my shoulders with such strength I knew there’d be bruises. “The boy,” he demanded. “How old was he?”
“I’m not sure. Thirteen or fourteen maybe.”
His hands fell from my shoulders and he shot up from the couch. When he sprinted away from me, and down the hall toward his room, I had no clue what was going on. It wasn’t until the sounds of his retching, of the vomit splashing against the bathroom floor that I pieced it together.
By the time I made it to him, he was slumped against the wall, covered in his own throw up, tears streaming down his cheek.
He was crying. The man who I’d never call anything but stubborn and strong, even pig-headed at times—he was broken. Shattered into a million shards of glass, a mere remnant of the man I loved.
I pulled the towel down from the hook behind the door, and swiped it over his face and hands. As I helped him up, he refused to look me in the eyes. “Come on. Let’s get you changed.” I guided him out of the bathroom, turning around only to toss the towel over the rest of his throw up.
Liam sat on the edge of the bed; his shoulders slumped in defeat, his eyes welling with tears that hadn’t yet gained the momentum to roll down his cheeks. His body was near lifeless as I tugged his shirt over his head. Like a toddler, he raised his arms when I held the new shirt in front of him. When the bed shifted as I sat next to him, I was worried he’d flop over. It was almost as if his ability to support even the weight of his own body was a monumental task.
When I twisted to face him, I breathed a sigh of relief that he did the same. With tender caution, I ran my hands over his arms. He was shaking and if I knew it wouldn’t send him running again, I’d pull him into an embrace so tight, he wouldn’t be able to breathe. So instead of doing that, I held his blank stare. “Liam, I’m here for you. Please talk to me. Is that you in that article?” Even though he’d said as much before, I needed to hear it from him now that he was a touch calmer.
“Yeah,” he croaked, those tears finally gathering the strength they needed to fall. “It’s me. Liam Davis is just a name I made up along the way.”
And then the last piece slid into place. Liam Davis, the man who I’d grown to love was really a teenage runaway. His new name a fragmented version of the one he’d held years ago. The man sitting next to me was neither Liam Davis nor William Davidson.
He was some knotted-up version of the both of them and if I wasn’t careful in untangling the knot, I was sure to strangle him in the process.
Seeing that picture wasn’t like seeing a ghost.
It was a ghost. A faded image of a young man, gone, lost, forgotten. Exactly like he’d hoped to be.
“Please,” Parker’s plea cut through my unfocused thoughts. “Talk to me.”
“The boy?” I managed somehow to circle back to that piece of information. “What was his name? What did he look like?” If I held on tightly to that part of this shit storm, then maybe I’d be able to think clearly, maybe I’d be able to keep the horrors of my youth dead and buried, where they belonged.
Parker pulled another piece of paper from his pocket, but held on to it. Reluctant to let it go, he stared at the folded up square. Still stuck in his consideration, I snatched it from his hands. As I began to unfold it, he covered my hands with his. “Wait,” he demanded.
Ignoring him, I opened the paper, his fingers lacing through mine as the sheet tumbled to the floor. The blood froze in my veins. “The fucking bastard,” I seethed with anger.
“Who? What? Liam,” he begged, pulling on my shoulders until I turned to face him again.
“The uncle in the note,” I spat out, tipping my chin to the discarded note. “It’s my uncle.”
Watching Parker’s face morph from one of confusion to one of understanding and then onto one of clarity, I knew I needed to find the words to explain what the hell had happened, but to me, they didn’t exist. They never would. And that younger version of myself had once reveled in the fact that the words were non-existent. Because somehow, if there were no words to define what had happened to me, then illogically, it meant that it never happened.
“Then the boy?” Parker’s question was a leading one, but one he must have known he didn’t need to ask.
“Brendan Davidson is my brother.” Saying those words made my stomach churn again.
�
�He told me the note was from a friend. Maybe it was.” Parker held onto a hope I didn’t have.
“It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. I left him years ago. And I failed him. I didn’t protect him. I should have stayed. I should have known he would never leave him alone.”
“How could you have known?” We stood now, face to face, the ominous question hanging between us.
With a flippant snort of derision, I said, “Because he did the same thing to me.”
“What?” Parker’s fists clenched, his eyes widening in what could only be described as pain.
Needing to move, I paced the living room, walking in circles. Scrubbing a hand over my face, I hoped to wipe the memory from my mind, but no amount of cleaning would ever rid me of those images, of his voice, of his touch. “I don’t know where to start. And we can’t right now. We need to call him. Find him. Even if it’s some strange coincidence, I have to know.” A tiny part of me held on to the idea that maybe, just maybe the Brendan who’d given Parker this note was some other Brendan.
“I’ve called him already. He didn’t pick up, but I left a message. He hasn’t called back,” he explained. Parker took a deep breath, surely because processing all of this was not an easy task.
Caged in my own existence, I lashed out. My fist crashed into the sheetrock, denting it. Cocking my arm back once more, I punched it one more time, satisfied only when there was nothing left there but a gaping hole. And then I made another, and another before Parker finally grabbed me from behind.
In his usual ‘take control’ manner, he held my arm behind my back. “Stop. Now. I’m not going to let you hurt yourself more than you already have.” With gentle persuasion, he guided me to the table and sat beside me. “I’m not going to ask you to tell me more than you already have.”
“What the fuck else is there to tell?” I yelled. “My uncle molested me. He raped me. Made me promise not to say anything otherwise he’d do the same thing to Brendan. So I ran. That was the only option I had at the time. I ran away so he wouldn’t find me. So no one would find me. For years, I hid in the back of the garage, under the hoods of countless cars, just so no one would see me and make me go back home.”
When I looked up at him, I thought I’d see pity or shock, disgust or vengeance, but what I saw drove a wedge into my chest, threatened to split my heart right in half. His eyes watered, but he kept his tears at bay.
“Don’t pity me,” I growled, already embarrassed.
“Pity?” he spoke quietly, but with more venom than I’d ever heard in his voice. “You think I pity you? How the hell could hearing that make me feel pity for you?” He blinked, letting the single tear go. “I love you. I don’t pity you. What I feel right now is pain and anger. I hurt for you. I want to take it all away. Make it so that it never happened to you, or to this boy who you think is your brother, but I can’t do that, can I? So I feel powerless. Lost. Confused.” Parker reached across the table and grabbed my bloodied hand, holding it with all his power. “So I feel all these things, but the last thing I would ever, ever, feel is pity for something over which you had no control.”
I laughed. It was the only reaction I could muster, because I knew when I told him what I hadn’t said yet, he would feel worse than pity. He would feel disgust. “How do you know I didn’t have a choice?”
“What the hell do you mean? You can’t choose to be raped.” The compassion in his eyes broke me.
Resting my elbows on the table, I held my head, running my fingers through my hair. “It started when I was fourteen.” Looking up at Parker, there was sadness in his eyes as he listened. “My mom and dad worked a lot. We didn’t have a lot of money and it seemed like they were always gone.” The words mom and dad felt foreign in my mouth, having been absent from my speech for over a decade. “He’s my mom’s brother. He lived with us and watched me while they worked.” Pausing, I found myself thinking back to the time before my world changed forever. “I used to think he was a god. He was young, too. Only twenty-five when he moved in with us. He was the coolest person I’d ever met. So when I began to realize something was different about me, that I was gay, I turned to him.” My voice wavered as the memories came crashing over me. The only thing giving me some semblance of strength was Parker’s hand wrapped tightly around mine. “It didn’t start right away. The asshole actually built up my trust. I must have been so blind not to be able to see through it.”
“You were a kid. Barely even a teenager. He preyed on you. Don’t you ever blame yourself for what he did to you.” His strength and determination never weakened as he sat there listening to the parts of my past I’d covered up for so long.
Bile rose again thinking about the lies my uncle had told me. “The first time it happened, I was so shocked by it all. I don’t think I processed it for days. He walked in on me after I’d showered. Distracted me by talking about how my body would change because of puberty and all that.” I breathed deep, taking a pause to form the words of his most disgusting lie. “He told me since I came,” the word stuck in my throat, “that meant I enjoyed it. Even went so far as to say that it was proof I was definitely gay.”
All these years, I’d never spoken a word of this to anyone, yet here, with Parker at my side, it somehow seemed less frightening. The sickening feeling, however, would never leave.
“I was so young and so confused and I didn’t want to burden my parents—not that I ever really saw them much. I didn’t know what the fuck to do, so I just believed him and hoped it wouldn’t happen again. I knew it was wrong, but telling someone about it would mean having to tell them about me being gay. It meant somehow being vulnerable. I was so fucking lost. So I became depressed and angry.”
“Liam.” Parker let go of my hand, cupping my jaw with a tender touch. “You’d have to be a robot not to feel angry at that.” He ran his thumb over my lip and I basked in the comfort it gave me. “Is that when you ran away? At fourteen?”
“No. It went on for three years. It got so much worse after Brendan was born though.”
“Three years?” Parker’s voice twisted in agony. “The motherfucker.”
“Brendan was a surprise and money was really tight after he was born, so my parents were gone even more. The abuse never let up. And I was so beaten by it. So depressed, so lost. And I stopped fighting it. I’d muffle my cries in my pillows. The first time he raped me, I thought I was going to die.” Shakes wracked my body. They were an uncontrollable reaction to reliving the past. As I spoke, it felt as if I was in a trance-like state of disbelief. It was almost as if I was telling the story of someone else’s life. Maybe that was what made it possible for me to tell him the rest. “The physical pain was the worst. Emotionally, I had been so damaged that it didn’t matter anymore. When he was done, he rolled me over and made me come, a grotesque reminder that I’d enjoyed it somehow, that it was natural because I’d told him I was gay.”
“How did no one ever know?”
“I’ve asked myself that same question for years. Had my parents been so busy that they didn’t notice me changing, becoming more withdrawn. My teachers didn’t notice, and my friends didn’t seem to mind too much when I stopped hanging around with them. But I never said anything, so if there’s someone to blame for no one ever finding out about it, it’s me.”
“You are not to blame.” Parker spoke with such determination, the ferocity of his voice bordered on yelling. “Please, don’t do that to yourself.”
Nodding, I pretended to agree, but I knew in my heart that it was my fault. It had to be. No one could be blamed for what happened to Brendan except me. If I hadn’t run, maybe he would have left Brendan alone. “I tried talking to my mom about it once. But she was exhausted from a twelve-hour shift. Brendan was screaming his head off. I knew I didn’t have her attention and I couldn’t find the words. So I never said them.”
“Why did you leave?” There was no accusation in his question. Maybe that was what made me open up and tell him everything.
“You know how you hear stories of people reaching their breaking point? Of one incident throwing them over the edge?” Parker nodded, following my line of reasoning. “Well, that’s exactly what happened to me. It was one day. One event that I’ll never live down that made me run.”
As I walked up to my house, my gut churned with anxiety. Of course he was here. He lived here. It was the fact no one else was home that made me feel sick.
The only reason I ever came back was for Brendan. At three, he was more than excited to see me walk up the front steps. As he barreled into me, I nearly fell over. In the last year, I’d become so thin I could barely lift him.
“Hey, little man.” I ruffled his hair and he stared up at me with his big brown eyes. “Uncle Will inside?”
“Uh huh,” he answered, reaching up for my hand. “Trains! Trains! Please.” Tugging on my hand, he dragged me into his room to play trains. I’d get to my homework later. It wasn’t as if I could sleep at night anyway. Insomnia worked well for a straight A student and it always amazed me how keeping my grades up in school kept all of the teachers out of my business.
“You be the blue one. I want red.” Brendan’s chubby hand pressed a Thomas the Train engine into my palm, and with a touch of happiness, I watched on as he drove his trains up and down the tracks.
“You’re home.” Uncle Will’s voice prickled the hairs on my neck. “Help me with dinner.” It was a command that I knew better than to ignore. In the last few months, the abuse had gotten worse, if that was even possible. He’d never hit me anywhere someone could see it. Bruised ribs were his specialty. If I simply went along with it, submitted to what he wanted, I could get back to protecting Brendan.
So I stood, ruffling Brendan’s hair once more. “Be right back, buddy.” He looked up at me and smiled before returning to his trains.
As I walked out of Brendan’s room, Uncle Will pulled me into his room. My skin crawled at his touch. “We’re going to do things a little differently today.” His voice was serpent-like, coiling around my neck, choking me.
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