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He stays there, hiding, and I sense the shift in him as soon as it happens.
“Remember when I opened up in that supply closet?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“I want to do it again.”
My heart almost stops, but I keep a calm breath. “We can use my closet. No one will hear you there. Just me and you.”
He pauses before lifting up his head and looking down at me. “Okay.” I recognize this tone of voice. It’s the kid that’s dying to find an ally in his misery.
I look at him as if it was the first time I ever did. He is gorgeous. A God among us humans. His dark blue eyes are searching for something in mine. His long lashes blink at me in a need for reassurance.
Jake never got to have a childhood. He’s a broken child inside, one that never got to grow up and instead had to build walls around him to protect himself.
I nudge him so we can both get up and I grab his hand, guiding him to my closet. We barely fit in there with his big shoulders and height, but we manage. We even manage to slide to the bottom so we can see each other under my hanging dresses.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “You can do it.”
“I need to confess,” he says as his voice breaks. “I did something horrible, Angel. Something that might make you hate me.”
“I know,” I reassure him. “I know, Jake.”
“No, you don’t.”
My heart accelerates even though I am sure I’m right.
“You talk in your sleep,” I explain. “Your nightmares are as clear as if you were talking to me.”
“But I want them gone,” he admits. With his raspy voice and his constricted chest, it makes him sound so breakable.
“Then say it,” I tell him. “Because I have already accepted it.”
“I…” he hesitates, looks away and back at me.
“You can do it, baby.”
“I killed someone,” he murmurs.
“I know,” I whisper back. “And I still love you.” I’m holding his hand so tightly, his knuckles are bound to break.
Sitting cross-legged in front of each other, he drops his head on my shoulder.
“He was just a kid,” he sobs against me, his voice muffled against my skin. “And I took the gun Bianco handed me and I shot him. I shot him because Bianco said so. Because he said it was him or me. I was only twelve, but I did it. And I missed the first time. There was blood everywhere because I got his ear. His screams still haunt me. His sister was next to him, and she was begging me not to. But I did it. I emptied the gun on him. It was slow, and bloody, and painful. But he died. He died because I killed him.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I tell him as I rub my hand up and down his back. “You were abused, and you were forced. You didn’t kill him, Bianco did.”
“His name was Tim.”
“I know,” I comfort him. I heard that name so many times in his sleep. Tim is the ghost of his past that still haunts him. “I love you, Jake.”
We spend the next hour in the closet together. He explains how obsessed Bianco was with him. Because Jake was strong and survived so much Bianco put him through. He tells me how he used to make him compete with other kids he would take in. How they would drop like flies after he’d put them through awful physical activities. How Tim and his sister were the last ones left and Bianco made Jake get rid of him. Then he called the police on him and made him spend a night in jail. He let him have his first charges and put his name on police records before paying them to forget about it all and taking him back in.
Bianco spent the rest of his life threatening Jake to put him in jail for killing Tim. That’s how he kept him in check all along. That and pure fear.
But in this closet, together, he doesn’t feel that fear. He frees himself word by word, letter by letter, with his head sometimes on my shoulder and sometimes in his own palms to hide his tears.
It’s our own made-up therapy. And with time, he might want to see a professional, or he might want to keep hiding in a closet with me. It doesn’t matter. Either way, I’ll love him.
