Stacy’s hand tightened on his and she swallowed audibly. “She was abused.”
“Yeah.” Helen finally took one of the chairs and sat across from them. “That’s not uncommon. So many that have gone through my house and others like mine have similar stories. The men on these compounds are the rulers, the priesthood holders. Like holy men. They are supposedly closer to God, so the women and children are taught from their earliest days to always obey these men. Whatever they are doing is God approved, so to speak, so the kids and women don’t often question them.
“Angela, she’s…she’s been through hell. She wasn’t sold, no, because she was not only closely related to the prophets, but the old prophet’s brother had his eye on her. The reason he liked her so much was that he’d had her before they were sealed. Some of the girls, in fact, from what Angela just told me, a lot of the girls were used from the time they were small. The men in power, and even some that didn’t have a lot of power, would have sex parties. Angela told me Matt was there at a lot of them. He didn’t partake in the festivities, so to speak, because he was a kid. Only the older men were allowed to sample all the girls. He was made to watch, though, to carry on when Gabriel, like his father before him, would pass the kingdom down to the next prophet. Him.”
Steve was dizzy and thought he’d faint, but held on to his mind long enough to ask, “Him? Matt was supposed to be the prophet?”
“Yeah. After Gabriel was through getting his jollies and settled in with his ten or twenty young brides, sure. They’d laugh and hold Matt there to watch. Angela said she begged him to help her, but he never would. Of course, he couldn’t, he was kowtowed by the prophets like the rest of them were.”
“So, Matt knew that was happening and never did anything?” Stacy asked, her voice nearly a shriek.
“Baby, come on, he obviously blocked it out.”
Charlie was right. Steve would have sensed it if he’d had the slightest clue. “He blocked it, but it came roaring back. Jesus.”
“He needs some help, Steve. This is not going to go away. Even if he could successfully block it out again, it’ll come back. He has to deal with this.”
She was staring at him, expecting him to agree, and he did, of course, but he was wary of how she thought the help should come. “Yes, he has to deal with it. I’ll get him all the help he needs. I already told him I’d be by his side through anything he had handle.”
Her hand covered his on his lap and she smiled patiently. “You can’t be beside him through this. If you were from the compound, or another one, you could maybe help, but he’d come to resent you. I’ve seen it so many times. Men, women, they fall for these kids, and yeah, they’re all kids emotionally, mentally most of the time. It’s hard not to fall for them. Their stories, their strength at having survived what they’ve been through, it’s endearing. The more they push themselves into these kids’ lives, however, they are pushed back because they can’t relate.”
After swallowing what felt like a knot inside his throat, he blinked away the tears forming in his eyes and croaked, “I…I was molested.”
Her head dropped, and she squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry, Steve.”
“Well, that means I can relate to him, on some level, anyway.”
It was Charlie who said, “Steve, you know from your time in the marshal service that isn’t how that works, man. That’s nothing to be sneezed at, but it’s also not close enough to his experience. Your family took you away from that, helped you. His was a part of it. His family members were the pedophiles and the creeps.”
“Exactly,” Helen added. “And this…it goes deeper than molestation. It was his entire life. It was a cult that he was raised in, taught from birth how to feel, how to believe, to obey. It was a miracle he woke up enough to help the girls like he did, and so much of that probably came from the guilt of seeing what was happening to the younger girls and being unable to stop it.”
“He’s…he’s so good, Helen. You know him, he’s not like them, not even a little.”
“I know, honey. I know. He’s one of the very best people I know, and I know some amazing folks. Let’s get him the right kind of help, and if you can hold on to that love you have for him, be there for him after, then I have no doubt he’ll be in your life for the rest of it.”
It hit him, what she was saying. He was wounded, scarred, and he’d have to let go to have any chance of keeping him. It was ironic and horrific, but he’d do it. He told Matt that he’d do anything for him, and it was true.
“So, what do we do? What does he need?”
Helen sat up, back in business, and explained, “There’s a great place called The Center of Hope. And that’s exactly what it is. It’s not free, which is why I can’t send all my kids there, but for those we can get in there, it changes their lives.”
“Nothing does that,” Stacy scoffed.
“Well, that is mostly true, but The Center gives them hope that they can have a life after the compounds. They do lectures and counseling off site, and they come to my kids a lot. Those few sessions alone help them, so a year inside the place is like a miracle.”
“A year? A goddamned year?” Steve was angry and hurt and the thought of missing Matt for an entire year cut through him like dull razors.
“The program is a year, and some stay longer, Steve. They were brainwashed their entire lives, it takes more than a few therapy sessions to deprogram them.”
Stacy held him while he sobbed, the tears running so fast, he couldn’t brush them away quick enough. The thoughts of Matt, his smile, his searching eyes, so much inside him that needed to be fixed. Stacy joined him in crying, but he felt her resolve and took some of it for himself. Charlie asked him if he could speak with Helen, plan to get Matt to the place, if he agreed, and Steve nodded, unable to say the words.
When he went into Matt’s room, he saw a different man on the bed. Matt was sitting up, arms wrapped tight around his bent legs, and his drawn face was between his knees. “Matt?”
“Go the fuck away.”
He didn’t cuss, so that struck Steve first, but the coarse, deeply saddened voice that the words were carried on bothered him much more. “No, I’m not going away, but you are. We’re sending you to a place that will help you, and if you don’t agree to go, I’ll handcuff you and take you there kicking and screaming. Helen said she spoke to you about the place. It would be good for you, and you need to go.”
His face had risen from the shield of his legs and he glared, spitting, “Isn’t that dominant of you? Telling me what I’m going to do.”
Steve sat on the bed, sighing, “I’m no dominant. I’d crawl on my hands and knees to you, begging you to go, if I thought it would work, but that’s not what you need right now. You’re going to be hard, so that’s all you understand.”
He scrambled off the bed and rushed to the window, spreading his arms to hang onto the sides, turning his back to Steve. It didn’t matter. Steve knew what his face looked like, had memorized ever curve and line of it, whether it was when he was smiling, in pain, or angry.
“You’re perfectly okay with ditching me for a year?”
A dry, ironic chuckle came out as he started to say, “No, but yes.”
He spun, confusion narrowing his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Steve took a tentative step to him, pleading, “It means that! Please, understand, I would rather cut off my own arm than to lose you for a day, but you need this. Matt, baby, you need this, and we need this. If you didn’t go and all this closed in on you, what is that going to do to us in a year or two or whenever down the road it all comes back and hits you again?”
His saw Matt’s face as his eyes slammed shut, tears streaming, and that was when he finally touched him, taking him easily into his arms.
“How can you want me? How could anyone?”
“That wasn’t your fault. You were a little kid, Matt, and they made you. You didn’t know anything except obeying your dad.”
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br /> “I should have done something.”
He could go on and on, comforting him, telling him that he couldn’t have done a thing back then, but it would do no good. That was the moment it hit him the hardest. Helen was right, and there was no therapist he could contact that would do as well as an immersive therapy center dedicated specifically to Matt’s issues.
Matt pushed him away and said coldly, “If I go, it’s over for us.”
As much as that hurt, broke his heart into tiny pieces, he had expected it. “If, at the end of your time there, if you don’t want me, I’ll find a way to live with that. All I care about is that you’re healthy, safe, and happy.”
Cracking again, his face broke, eyes slamming to try to stop the tears that wouldn’t be halted. Steve held him again as he blubbered, “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean it. Please, don’t leave me. Don’t make me go, please!”
Steve’s strength was waning, but he pulled enough back to scold, “You have to go. It’s better for us.”
“How? Being apart for that long?”
Rocking him a little as they stood, Steve reasoned, “It’s not all that long. I told you I’d wait for you no matter how long, and that was before we knew about this.”
He went back and forth for an hour, but in the end, he agreed it was the best thing for him. Steve left the hospital room and wanted to run, to run away and hide. He’d never cry so many tears as he would while missing Matt, he knew it, and his heart was breaking so badly, he felt as if he was having a coronary.
Stacy was there, helping him through it all, along with Charlie, Helen, and Pat. Pat was no longer pressuring him to leave Matt. He was encouraging him not to give up. Something had turned for him, like it had all of them. Knowing more about what Matt had gone through, and still came out the other side, trying to help, trying to save people, when he could have easily given up and turned to drugs or more, they all respected him. They admired him, as Steve did, but Steve loved him so much more because of it.
Matt went back to Steve’s house to pack and ready for the long trip. Pat and Charlie would be accompanying him on the plane, worried the cartel who the elders of the compound were selling the girls to would want retaliation. Steve wasn’t allowed to go, Helen telling him it wasn’t a good idea, as well as Matt begging him not to.
He was in the master bedroom, packing, when Steve came in to say his goodbye. “I still don’t want to leave you.”
“I know. I promise, the year will fly by. You’ll be working hard on getting better and getting all those memories out and dealing with them.”
He was saying the words he knew he was supposed to say, but in his heart, he wanted to scream and beg Matt to stay.
Matt would barely glance his way, and whenever he did, he’d cry.
That was maybe all he needed to get him through it, knowing Matt was as sad to go as Steve was to see him leave.
“We should have, I don’t know, gotten married, or at least made love. I mean, what do you have to hold onto? You could meet someone else, someone that will have sex with you right away, and you’ll wonder why the heck you were waiting for some dumb idiot mental case.”
Ignoring that was all he could do, and he handed Matt something he’d put together. “Uh, you can’t get a lot of mail, or visits, and not for a while. There are some songs on here, on a playlist, and maybe, whenever you need me, I mean, really need me, listen to them.”
Matt took the iPod, laughing darkly at it. “I’ve never had one of these.”
“Well, I’d put the music on your phone, but you’re not allowed one, so this will have to do.”
He turned Matt, forcing him to finally meet his eyes. “Whenever you listen to these songs, know that I’m thinking about you. Because I will be. There’s not a moment I won’t think of you while you’re gone, baby.”
“Do you promise to be here when I get back?”
“No,” he said, then watched Matt’s eyes widen. “I won’t be here, I’ll be at the Center to pick you up.”
He threw himself into Steve’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably, and Steve joined him. “I…I love you, Steve. I love you.”
“I love you, Matt. Don’t ever doubt that.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The plane ride had been quiet between the three men. They sat in first class for his first flight, and he hadn’t cared a bit. The takeoff was the only thing that got his mind away from Steve, his childhood, his memories that were flooding him more and more as the time passed.
Charlie did everything for his check-in, everything except signing his name. They were all trying to make it so much easier for him, but he didn’t feel he deserved any of that. He deserved to be in jail alongside his father and the others.
Pat pulled him aside before he went in the doors and confessed, “I didn’t think much of you when I first met you, but I’m really glad to say that I was wrong.”
“You were right.” As much as it pained him, he finished, “You should go to him. Be with him. He deserves better than me.”
As his face clouded with anger, Pat grunted, “Idiot. He loves you so fucking much, and you don’t see it now, but you do deserve that, and more.”
He walked off, fuming, but Charlie laughed at his leaving, telling Matt, “None of us hate being wrong about things. That was hard for him to say.”
Inside, he was showed to the room he’d share with two others. Ben Nightly and Josh Ketchum.
They were lying on their beds, reading books as Matt entered the room, promising to be ready in ten minutes for group therapy. Ben got up from his bed and approached him cautiously. “Hey. How you doin’?”
“I’m here, so it must not be great, huh?”
He got a chuckle for that, but Ben informed him, “You have that same look we all do when we come here. Shell shocked, someone said. Like you been through war.”
He sat on his bed, a plainly made twin with no headboard. His other furnishings were a simple dresser with round knobs and a night table with a lamp. That was all he was given, and all he needed, he supposed.
The other two had cards and pictures on the walls around their beds, Josh had mostly drawings, some garish and horrific, but he didn’t feel the right to judge anyone.
“I feel like I’ve been through a war, I guess.”
“Listen, we’ve all been there. If you like, I’ll be your buddy. They make us take a buddy whose been here a while. I haven’t gotten a newbie yet. I’ve been here four months.”
That surprised him. “You look…you look happy. If it only takes a few months, why do they want us to stay a year or more?”
Josh grunted from his bed, and Matt looked over to see his eyes flashing, but not at him. Ben explained, “It takes as long as it takes. I guess you were in a compound or some other cult, right? For life, or was your family newer to it?”
“Not new. Far from it.”
“Then you know, it took years to put all that crap on you. It takes a while getting it off.”
With his mouth so dry, he didn’t think he could form words, he croaked, “So I’ve heard.”
“Anyway, get unpacked. Group’s coming up. This is the male group, which is all you’ll be with for now.”
He sincerely asked, though he was glad of it, “Why do they separate us?”
After sitting on the edge of Matt’s bed, Ben reasoned, “It’s similar in all the compounds and cults that the girls’ experiences and the boys’ are different. They found it’s easier for the guys to open up, and the girls too, at first, if they are around people with the same issues. You’ll be integrated into the mixed groups when you’re ready.”
That made him relax some. He’d seen girls walking the halls when he’d been given the short tour to show him where the cafeteria and smoking area was, the library, and the showers. He didn’t want to face them, ever. “Good. Yeah, that’s good.”
“Yeah. It’s kinda weird hearing their stuff. If we hear it too soon, we tend to feel like our stuff wasn’t as intense.
For good reason, sure, but we have stuff to deal with too.”
He had no idea all the “stuff” Matt had on his plate.
Ben walked to the meeting room with him, pointing out other rooms as they went. “That’s the music room, for anyone who plays. Not many use it, we only have one piano player and a few who play guitar.” Further down the same hall, he pointed at a room with the number eight on it. “That’s Dr. Rodrick’s office. He doesn’t keep his name on it, because he likes to change it up sometimes. He gets restless, he says. You’ll probably talk to him soon, one on one.”
“Who is he?”
Ben smiled and said, “You’re about to find out.”
They turned a corner, and Matt barely noticed how nice the place was. Clean lines, white walls with a lot of windows when they were on the outer edges. The outside, what he ignored when they had arrived, was full of trees, hills behind them. There was a fountain in the courtyard to the side that he saw as they walked to the big room that served for meetings.
There was at least twenty men there, some as young as he was, a few younger, but it surprised him most to see five or six older men. Nearly his father’s age of sixty.
The chairs were arranged in a circle, and a thin, pale man came right over to him, hand extended for Matt to shake. “Matthew Whitehouse, right?”
“Matt, yeah.”
The man’s grip was strong, and his piercing, light blue eyes were intrusive but seemed kind all at once. He let go of Matt’s hand and said, “I’m Dr. Rodrick, but you can call me Tom.”
That was what Ben had meant. “Oh, yeah, Ben told me about you. Well, a little.”
“I hope it was favorable,” he chuckled. “We’ll schedule a session for the two of us when we finish up here today, if you’d like, but for now, don’t feel compelled to share unless you want to. We all know the first few days are tough, getting our feet wet. It’s perfectly fine to listen, and in fact, is probably the biggest part of these group sessions. Listening and hearing that we aren’t alone in our pain and our experiences.”
The Principle (Legacy Book 2) Page 24
