by West, Dahlia
Jonah would go back to the house and grab some more clothes. He still didn’t have a plan, but he no longer felt afraid of what lay ahead of him. He’d work it out, somehow.
He walked across town and it took most of the rest of the afternoon. For the first time since he could remember, he was comfortable in his own skin, in his own head. That had never happened before. He supposed he had Dr. Lawson to thank.
Eventually his feet led him to the Stark house and he paused for a moment before heading inside. He was grateful for the time he’d had here, even if he’d been too much of an asshole to say it out loud.
He opened the front door and stepped inside. Adam was on the couch with the television on. Jonah felt a familiar pang of guilt as he closed the door behind him.
Adam turned to look at him. “She’s not here yet,” he told Jonah, startling him.
Jonah froze. She who? “She?” he repeated carefully. Surely not Sienna. He couldn’t see her right now.
“Calla,” Adam replied and relief flooded through Jonah’s body. “Her name is Calla. I invited her to dinner.”
Jonah frowned. “Is she a social worker? A counselor or something?” As soon as he said it, he knew it was a silly question. He was too old for a social worker. No one would come to put him in another foster home. If Adam wanted him out, Jonah would be on the streets.
“She is. A guidance counselor. Ava’s guidance counselor, as a matter of fact.”
Jonah was having a hard time following the conversation, worried as he was about how long he could sleep in the gym without being discovered. One week? Maybe two? “So why is she coming to dinner? For Ava?”
“Uh, nope. No. She’s… We’re seeing each other.”
Jonah blinked at his older brother. “Oh.”
“Yeah, so I just wanted her to meet everyone. Officially.”
Jonah remembered getting a few texts from Adam after he’d taken off. He hadn’t read them, though, afraid of what they might say. One of them probably contained news about this. If Jonah had known, he would have stayed away, of course. This was none of his business. “Okay, then. I’m just going to grab some stuff.”
But Adam wouldn’t let him go. “We still need to talk.”
“There’s nothing to say.” Jonah felt incredibly guilty for laying his hands on anyone in the Stark family, especially Adam, who was already dealing with so much right now. He should apologize, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to form the words.
“There is,” Adam insisted.
“You don’t know anything. You don’t know.” Jonah moved past Adam and headed to his room to grab some more clean clothes. Thirty seconds, a minute, and he’d be out the door again, out of their hair, out of their lives.
Unfortunately, Adam followed him.
Jonah suppressed a sigh, just wanting to be done with this. “It’s not going to happen again,” he promised Adam.
Adam eyed the shirts Jonah had in his arms. “Because you’re moving out?”
Jonah hadn’t let himself think about it, but at some point last night he’d realized it was the only answer. “Yeah, I have to,” he replied.
“Can we talk about it? We could—”
“No. I have to leave.”
“Jonah, I’m not letting this go. This thing with Sienna—”
Jonah stuffed the shirts into the bag and zipped it quickly. “There’s no thing with Sienna, okay? Nothing. Nothing like that ever happened before. I was in my room; she showed up. She was all over me.” He gazed at the carpet, hating himself for talking about her, spilling her secrets.
“Jonah, I don’t know if—”
That made him look up. “You don’t know if you believe me?” Jonah suddenly felt nauseated, like a ball of ice had been dropped into the pit of his stomach.
“It’s not that,” Adam said quickly. “Okay, I believe you. Even so, it doesn’t matter if she came on to you. What I saw was unacceptable. You have to be the bigger person and say—”
“I’m in love with her.”
“What?”
Jonah almost couldn’t believe he’d spilled his own secrets. Part of him wanted to run but part of him felt like a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Maybe he’d opened a floodgate with Dr. Lawson—maybe once you started talking, there was no stopping. “I’m in love with her,” Jonah said slowly, marveling at the words on his tongue. “I’ve been in love with her my whole life. She doesn’t know.”
Adam stared at him. He looked about as bewildered by Jonah’s confession as Jonah himself was. “I—Jesus.”
Jonah hesitated, but Pop’s words floated into his head. In for a penny ...“It’s why I didn’t move out after I graduated. I thought being around her would be enough, just being able to see her every day. But it wasn’t enough for her. She wants more and I can’t give her more. So, I gotta go before something else happens between us. I know I’m supposed to say no, Adam. You think I don’t know that? You really think I don’t know that? But it’s Sienna. And I can’t.”
“Come with me,” Adam requested and a very surreal conversation—the first of its kind for Jonah—took an even stranger turn. “I want to show you something. After that, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Just come with me first.”
Jonah looked around his room, reluctant to leave but knowing he had no choice. Once he walked out, he couldn’t come back. Whatever Adam wanted from him, it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t change anything. “I can’t stay here, Adam.”
“I understand.”
Jonah followed Adam out to his car, taking his backpack with him. He took a long look at the house where he’d managed to live longer than anywhere else in his life. This was the only true home he’d ever known. He’d see it again, of course. He’d keep his promise to help out with Pop. But it was the last time it would be his home. Leaving it was more difficult than he could have imagined. He ducked into the car to avoid lingering. As Adam pulled away from the curb, Jonah couldn’t resist one last look in the mirror.
They drove across town to a building not far from the boxing gym. The window said Stark Ink. Jonah knew Adam had started his own business, but he’d never been here. It looked nice and Jonah was happy for his brother.
The inside was even better. As Jonah stood in the lobby, he couldn’t help but be impressed. “It’s nice,” he told Adam truthfully. “It looks good.”
“Dalton put in the floors. And rebuilt the stairs. There are extra rooms for another artist and a piercer, but I’ve been putting that on hold. So far it’s just me and my receptionist.”
Adam was looking at him expectantly and Jonah finally realized what they were doing here. “I’m not an artist,” he reminded Adam. Jonah appreciated the unspoken offer, but it wasn’t really feasible.
“Nah, but you only need some basic training for piercing. I know another shop where you can apprentice.”
Jonah paused and looked at him. “And what? Work here?”
“Yeah. The apartment’s upstairs. I couldn’t afford to pay you more than I am now, at least until we get the piercing up off the ground. But rent’s free. I figure you’re not too squeamish around blood.”
“Surprisingly,” Jonah laughed. He was being sarcastic but, inside, he felt a glimmer of hope. Too afraid to nurture it, yet unwilling to stamp it out, Jonah bit down on the inside of his lip. It was easier to listen to Adam speak than pipe up and ruin it.
Adam smiled at him. “If you like it and you want to stay on, you could sign on as a partner. You can think about it. Like I said, after the apprenticeship.”
Jonah was stunned by the offer. “Where will you live?”
“Home.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. I need to be around, with Pop. And Ava… I need to make sure she stays on the right track.”
Jonah whistled. “Moving back home at thirty-five.”
“Don’t bust my chops over it.”
Jonah wasn’t stupid, or as unconcerned as he tried to seem to the outside world. Mom
was dead. Pop was going downhill. Ava was headed for a crash if she kept going like she was. He stared at Adam, in awe of the sacrifice the man was willing to make for the people he loved. “Wow. Family,” Jonah breathed. The Starks really cared about each other.
“You are family, Jonah. You always have been. I’ve sort of… left you to your own devices, pretty much your whole life. Which I guess is a polite way of saying I didn’t know what to do, so I just stayed away. And I think I made the wrong decision. All of this, Mom’s cancer, Pop’s Alzheimer’s, Dalton’s drinking... If there’s been anything good about it, which is a stretch, but I guess it’d be that now I know. Now I know how much I love my family, and I’d do anything and everything to keep them together.” He rattled a set of keys in his hand. “Let me take you upstairs, show you the apartment at least. It’s no great shakes, I admit. But it’d be yours. You’d be free to come and go as you please.”
Jonah was glad that Adam turned away first, because his eyes stung at hearing his brother’s words. His brother.
“It’s not much,” Adam told him. “I’m aware we’ve never been able to give you a lot.”
Jonah’s chest ached. He wanted so much to tell Adam the truth, that the Starks had given him more than he’d ever dared to hope for. He opened his mouth, but those words wouldn’t come out. There were too many of them, and they were anchored in too much pain. Instead, he said, “She bought me shoes once.”
“I remember.”
“I always felt weird about those shoes,” Jonah admitted.
“Weird how?”
Jonah took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “She got called to school after they pulled me off a kid. Some douchebag—I didn’t even know him. In the car, she asked me why. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I told her he’d made fun of my shoes. He didn’t make fun of my shoes. He called me a fag.”
Another point for Dr. Lawson.
“Jonah.”
Adam knew. Everyone in the family knew. Not talking about it didn’t make it go away. Even Jonah knew that. Maybe Dr. Lawson was right and that talking about it would help. God knew keeping it inside wasn’t working. It was leaking out all over the place. He’d pushed Adam, nearly swung on him. Things needed to change and Jonah felt like he might finally be ready.
To Adam, he said, “He didn’t mean anything by it, other than being a douchebag. We were playing basketball and I missed a shot. He was on my pick-up team. He was pissed. I don’t know how she did it, but she dropped me off at home and came back with a brand new pair of shoes. I knew she couldn’t afford them. But I knew she was only trying to make things easier for me. I couldn’t see a way to give them back without having to tell her the truth about what had happened. I felt like shit every time I looked at those shoes. I was so messed up then.”
“What about now?”
“Now? Now I guess I’m still messed up, just in a different way. I had the Sienna thing under control. Honestly, I did. Up until a few weeks ago, I would have said I was fine. Or as fine as I could get, at least. But then the only people who ever gave a shit about me started going through hell and I couldn’t do a thing about it. I’m sorry for all this, Adam. I really am.”
“Then will you help me? I could use it.”
“Yeah,” Jonah said quietly. A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed it down. “Of course. We’re family.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Looking at her now, she was just as beautiful as she’d been that day she’d stumbled into his room—more so, because she was flushed from her recent orgasm. Jonah was tempted to crawl back into bed and give her another, but he’d already screwed up enough for one night.
“Sienna—”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” she accused. She jerked at the sheets and gathered them up around her to cover herself. Her eyes flashed angrily at him. “After all this, all of this, you’re just throwing me away!”
Jonah struggled to stay calm despite Sienna’s rising anger. She’d misunderstood; that was fine. Well, it wasn’t fine. He’d pushed her away so many times that all she heard was ‘No’ when he’d stopped her again. She obviously hadn’t listened to his words. She was defensive, Dr. Lawson would say. And he’d be right. And Sienna was right to be upset. Jonah had hurt her too many times in the past.
She got off the bed and charged toward him, pulling the sheet off the bed as she did. She stopped short just in front of him. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “What did I do wrong? Why have I never been good enough for you?!”
Jonah caught her by the shoulders. “Sienna, it’s me who’s not good enough. What do you think this whole week’s been about? It’s me trying to be good enough for you, so that you’ll stay.”
Her mouth dropped open and, for a moment, the only sound was her labored breathing. “You… you gave me all this stuff—the globe, the dress, a car—so that I’d want to stay with you?!”
“I gave you those things because you deserve them, Sienna. Because I wanted you to have them.” There was no point in hiding anything from her. Not from Sienna. That wasn’t how this was going to work. He had to open himself up, lay himself completely bare, because otherwise he’d never know if she could love the real Jonah Stark.
“And, okay,” he continued, “maybe I wanted to hook you at the beginning, make you see who I am, what I’m offering, and hoping like hell that it’d be enough for you to choose me. But it is time for you to make that choice, Sienna. I won’t take it from you by hiding the truth.”
Sienna shook her head and wiped a tear from her cheek. “I don’t understand anything you’re saying. I thought we were finally together. I thought you finally chose me! I’ve been waiting so long—my whole life! Why do I have to choose? What could be so bad that I might not?”
Jonah had chosen his words carefully up to this point. He had scripted everything. Not exactly what he’d say but when and why. Before she gave him something she could never get back, she had to know the truth. The only thing Jonah couldn’t control was her reaction to it. He prayed, silently, for his mother’s strength.
“My father raped me.”
Sienna’s hands flew to her face. It was tempting to look away, to hide from her gaze, but Jonah forced himself to look her in the eye. He was done hiding in the dark. It was time to come into the light.
“Not just once,” he told her. “Or even twice. Dozens of times. Maybe a hundred.” His words settled into a steady cadence, not robotic but steady and even, just the same. Everything in its place. “It didn’t start out with that. At first he’d just come into my room, late at night. He’d touch me under my pajamas. I was really little and didn’t know what to do about it, so I didn’t do anything at all. I guess after a while when I didn’t tell, he got bolder. He started hurting me, holding me down, sticking his fingers in, then worse.
“My mother knew. I’m sure she did. She started drinking a lot, passing out at night on the couch instead of sleeping upstairs. I don’t know if she just couldn’t bring herself to sleep next to him, knowing what he was doing to me, or if she just didn’t want to hear me crying.
“It started when I was three or four and went on for a few years. He had to go out of town, for work, at one point. My mom was a full-blown alcoholic by then and she just… forgot… that I had to go to school, I guess. Or maybe she’d finally reached her breaking point.
“Anyway, I had no lunches to take with me and no one was waiting for me at the bus stop after school. My uniforms were filthy because she didn’t wash them and it was pretty obvious I hadn’t bathed.
“By the end of two weeks, my teacher showed up at the house. Then more people—social workers, police. I was only seven and I was kind of confused. I thought I was going to jail so I confessed everything, the way criminals did on TV. He went to prison for a little while. I went into foster care. I don’t really know what happened to my mother. I guess I don’t really care, either.”
Jonah watched helplessly as Sienna’s face tw
isted from rage and disgust. It was a horrible thing to have to put her through. She pushed him, hard as she could, but she was no match for his size. “Why didn’t you tell me? How could you keep this a secret? How could he do that, Jonah?! How could he do that to you?!” One hand tightened on the sheet and the other turned in on itself until her knuckles turned white. She swung at him, blinded by tears. Her fist beat his chest as she sobbed and screamed. “I hate him! Oh, God! I hate him so much! I want to kill him, Jonah. I want him dead!”
Jonah let her hit him, because she wasn’t really swinging at him. She was throwing punches at a ghost and he knew exactly how she felt. Jonah himself had been doing the same thing for years.
Finally, she collapsed into him, tears wetting the front of his shirt. Jonah wrapped his large arms around her and felt her shudder into him with every ragged breath. “He already is,” he whispered to her. “He’s gone. He’s dead, baby. He was shot in the head during a home invasion right after he got out of prison. They didn’t take much, but they killed him. Anyway, he’s not going to hurt us anymore.”
Not unless you leave, he thought. But that wasn’t real, either. Jonah knew that now after months of seeing Dr. Lawson in secret. Jonah’s fear of rejection was perfectly normal and also perfectly unfounded. Every time he looked at Sienna, he saw the goodness radiating from her and he knew in his heart that she’d never really leave him—not for that.
But it hadn’t stopped him from doing everything he should have been doing for all these years, giving her all he could. It was little in the way of apology, but he hoped it was a start.
Sienna’s breath hitched. “You thought I’d leave? Because of that? You must not think very much of me.”
Jonah smoothed her hair and kissed her on top of her head. “Sienna, you are, without a doubt, the most amazing person I’ve ever known. Trust that. But this is a lot to deal with. I’m a lot to deal with. I need therapy. A lot of it. I’m getting it now, but… there’s no quick fix, no easy way out. I don’t suddenly wake up in the morning now and not want to hurt myself. It’s a concentrated effort, all day, every day, not to.”