Looming over me, I had no defense against him. He was a giant compared to me. He held all the power and my depression weakened me to the point of only being able to nod back at him, agreeing to whatever terms he’d laid down.
“Good.” He smirked as he unbuckled his belt. Closing my eyes, I tried to go back to just two minutes ago. Sitting on the floor, lost to the child-like innocence of playing trains. He took that pause to land a knee in my stomach, sending me backward on the bed.
It was impossible to get oxygen into my lungs. I didn’t need it anyway. I wouldn’t scream. I never did. His naked body was over mine in an instant, and my brain turned off. Though it never worked, I tried my best to numb myself to his touch, his mouth, and his fingers. I ran through my day, reciting words of the lectures I’d heard, or conversations of which I was never a part.
“See you love this,” he whispered into my ear, his hand moving over me.
Biting the inside of my cheek until I drew blood, I refused to speak to him. It would be over soon enough.
At least that’s what I prayed for.
But today, those prayers fell on deaf ears. “Here’s how it’s going to go.” His horrid voice made vomit rise in my throat. “It’s about time you learned how to do the fucking. Don’t you think?” He held my face in his massive hands, the smell of alcohol bathing over me.
“What?” I gasped. “No,” I screamed. His hand was over my mouth before I could say anything. Biting down as hard as I could, I sank my teeth into his palm.
“You fucking bastard,” he seethed as he slapped me with his bloodied hand.
“Get the hell off me.” Trying my best to bring my leg up, all I needed to do was land one shot into his groin. He was strong, but I was fast. “You fucking asshole!” The rage I’d suppressed for so long sprang to the surface. “Get the fuck off me.”
Pressing his legs against mine, he locked me in place. When his body invaded mine, the pain was blinding. His hand clamped down over my throat as he lowered his face to mine. “You can try to get away all you want, but you never will.” His words were muttered with such hatred, punctuating every one of his thrusts, that there was no escaping them. I had no choice but to take his threats, to accept the pain of his body, and simply hope for better days.
Closing my eyes, I tried to block out the image of his body looming over mine. I tried to erase the numbness settling into my legs. It was his loud, pleasure-filled groan that made me open them. It was over and done with.
But it never would be.
“Now listen here, you little faggot.” With a light slap, he turned my face back to his. “I’m gonna get what I want. And you’re going to give it to me.”
“Like fucking hell I am. I’m not keeping my mouth shut anymore. This is it. Three years is enough.”
A maniacal laugh fell from his mouth. “Oh, really?” He slapped me again, harder this time. “You think you control this? Well, let me explain something. You don’t and you never will.” His hand moved down my body, trying to spring me back to life. And the fucker had me, he knew he did. I could hate him all I wanted, but my body was a fucking traitor. I’d learned long ago that coming never meant I’d enjoyed it, but it didn’t mean I had any control over my reaction to being touched. While he kept me pinned to the bed, he spit into his hand. As he continued to touch me, he moved us so that he was under me, careful not to release me the entire time. “Now, here’s how it’s gonna work,” he slurred. “You’re gonna do what I tell you or–”
“Or what?” I spat in his face. “You’re a fucking monster.” Tears sprang into my eyes, all the years of abuse finally boiling over.
He laughed as he slid his hand under the pillow. When I saw the blade catch a glimmer of light, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. But when I felt the cool metal press against my throat, I knew it was real. “Do I have your attention now?” he mocked, pressing the blade a little harder against my skin. When I swallowed, I felt the blade move.
There was no way out of this, none that I could think of especially with his impossibly strong legs wrapped around mine and the sharp point of a knife at my neck.
Closing my eyes, I nodded. When his wet hand wrapped around me again, I gagged on my own throw up. Somehow, I managed to keep it down as he guided me into his body. “Move. Now.” His command came with a slice of the knife. An inch-long gash cried out in pain along my shoulder. “I said move,” he yelled.
So I did.
No amount of hoping for better days kept the disgust at bay. As usual, my body defied me. And when my hips wouldn’t move on their own, he made them. The knife pressed against my skin, slicing new wounds in my chest and shoulders.
There was no weakness in his movements, no opportunity for me to fight back. He stayed in control the entire time, waiting for me to “enjoy it” so he could be absolved of whatever guilt he may have felt.
But guilt is a human emotion.
And my uncle, the man after whom I’d been named, was most certainly not a human.
The electric pressure of the orgasm he wanted from me gathered at the base of my spine at the same time a surge of vomit gathered in my throat. The orgasm won the race and I rolled off him the second before the vomit spewed from my mouth.
As I lay there naked, bathed in my own puke, he pulled on his clothes as if it was the most normal thing in the world. My chest was dripping blood. My head throbbed from the smacks to the face, but the worst of all the things I felt was the remnants of my semen on the sheet beneath me.
There was no going back now. This was something from which I knew I’d never recover. Yet, when the blade of the knife pressed to my side, I had no choice but to roll over and face him again. “Now, listen up.” His eyes were evil—dark, black, and empty. The knife moved to right under my chin, pressing against the soft flesh above my Adam’s apple. “You tell anyone about this, anyone at all, and it’s him next.” He tipped his head to the door at the same time that Brendan began knocking. “And you know I will.” His lips pressed against my cheek and I felt sick once again. “Your mother’s going to be home soon, so you better clean this up before she says anything.” As if I wasn’t injured enough, he twisted my arm behind my back, popping my shoulder out of its socket. The pain was nothing compared to the emotional turmoil I was feeling. I knew how to pop my joint back into the socket. Getting my own life back, however, that was something I would never know how to do.
As he stepped out of the room, I heard him say to Brendan that I wasn’t feeling well and that he’d play trains with him.
I’d never wanted to die so much in my life. In that moment, I wanted to be able to stop breathing. If I could have willed my life away, I would have. But I couldn’t.
I didn’t have the strength to kill myself.
I didn’t have the strength to keep living.
I didn’t have the strength to do anything.
So I cleaned up the sheets. Ate dinner with my family. Kissed my brother goodnight.
And when it was just me and the moon, I slid out the back door and ran away from the only life I had ever known, in search of one less painful.
“How did you end up here?” It was a lame question, but I couldn’t come up with anything else.
“I had some money stashed away. So I went to the nearest Greyhound station and bought a ticket to the next bus. It happened to be heading to the Hamptons so that’s where I went.”
“Where was home?”
“Outside of Westchester. Some poor little town you’d probably never heard of. No one had ever heard of it until I went missing. That’s why I laid low for so long. Nearly starved to death trying to go unnoticed. I was gone for about four weeks when I stumbled on Paulie’s shop.” Liam’s recollection of his life from a decade ago was filled with as much nostalgia as it was pain. “Someone must have been looking out for me the night Paulie caught me lifting spare parts from him. He took me in, gave me a job and a place to stay and the rest is history. He never asked any questions and when
I eventually told him even the small pieces of my story, he understood why I’d run away.” Liam spoke with such casual calmness as he told me about running away, yet I couldn’t wrap my head around his life. What he’d been through, how much he’d suffered, not just at the hands of his uncle, but in leaving everything he knew, everyone he loved, all because he couldn’t find another way out.
With my heart shattering into a million pieces, I did the only thing I could think of. I wrapped my arms as tightly around him as I could. “You are incredible. And I love you. More than I ever thought I would.”
He angled his body away from mine, avoiding eye contact. “Don’t–”
“Don’t what?” I pulled him back to me. “Love you because of your past, not despite it? Don’t you realize how strong you are?”
“Like fuck I am. I left because I didn’t trust myself not to say anything. I thought he’d leave Brendan alone. Or at least I’d hoped he would. And look what it got me. Look what it did to Brendan.” He huffed a frustrated breath, trying to break free from my arms. “I haven’t been able to live down that guilt for the last ten years. Sure, in moments of the everyday routine, I sometimes forget that I left him behind. I sometimes let myself believe that he was better off for it, that my uncle was really only that much of a monster to me. But at night,” he stopped, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes tight. “At night, when it’s just me and my nightmares, it was almost as if I could hear his screams. I learned to bury them down for so long, I almost actually believed they were just the echoes of my own screams, but there was a part of me that always knew they weren’t. They were Brendan’s calling out to me and damning me for not protecting him.” He inhaled a shuddery breath, his chest heaving with anguish of his failures as an older brother. Then, with a sudden determination, he declared, “We need to find him.”
“We will,” I stated calmly, pulling him back into a tight embrace. “I promise we will.” With one last squeeze, I finally let him go, deciding that he’d have to figure out his own way of believing that what I felt for him was real and genuine. That he was the strongest person I’d ever known. Reaching into my pocket, I dug out my phone and handed it to him. “Why don’t you call him? Maybe if you leave a message he’ll call back.”
Liam gasped a shocked, “No,” waving his hands wildly in front of his chest. “There’s no way in hell. I can’t even say that he’ll remember me. He hasn’t called you back. What makes you think he’ll call back the brother he might not even remember he had. And let’s say he does remember me; you can’t say he’s not going to be pissed as hell at me, can you? Who’s to say me calling him won’t send him running?” Defeated, he added, “And if he ran away from you, from the only person he thought could help him because of me . . . that’s not something I think I can live with. He needs help and he turned to you. You have to call him.”
As I ran through the way Brendan reacted to anything I’d asked him, I knew Liam was right. Hearing from Liam wouldn’t accomplish anything other than scaring the already petrified runaway. “So then how about I call him again and keep calling until he picks up?”
Liam nodded as he sat back down at the kitchen table. The war he was battling with his emotions was playing out on his worn face. I hadn’t realized my fingers were trembling until I started to dial. The phone rang twice before the other end actually answered.
“Hello?” I asked with trepidation.
“Hi,” he croaked.
Liam shot up from his chair, his face contorted in a careful mixture of worry and excitement.
“I’m glad you picked up this time.”
“I didn’t know what to say before,” he admitted, his voice quiet and shy.
Moving slowly, I sank back into my chair, pulling Liam back into his as I did so. “So what changed now?” It was risky pushing him even in the slightest, but I didn’t feel as if I had any other choice.
“I’m starving,” he whined. “I ran out of money after I got here and I’m so hungry I don’t know what to do. I can’t go back,” he began to ramble.
“Brendan.” I spoke his name with quiet control. The only sound on the other end was the shallow sounds of his breathing. “That is your name, isn’t it?” My question was only met with more silence. “There’s no friend is there?” As I waited for him to answer, I watched Liam’s concern multiply.
Quietly, he admitted, “No, there isn’t. It’s me.”
As I mouthed the words it’s him to Liam, he breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“Can you tell me where you are? I know you’re hungry and it’s getting late. I don’t want you to spend another night sleeping outside.”
I let out my own relieved breath when he told me where he was. “Okay, I can be there in ten minutes. Don’t leave, okay?”
“I won’t,” he promised and I believed him and his exhausted words.
As I ended the call, Liam walked away, down to his bedroom. Following behind him, I was surprised to see him sliding on a pair of socks and boots. Renewed and determined to come along, I wasn’t about to ask him if he was sure about it. Whatever fears Liam had about calling his younger brother seemingly vanished now that he knew where Brendan was. Without saying a single word, Liam grabbed his phone and walked to the front door. Just as he was about to open it and step outside, I dropped a hand to his shoulder and turned him back to me. “Hey. I’m here with you.” It was the only thing I could think of saying, his eyes distant, suggesting his thoughts were scattered and unfocused. “You’re not alone.” Pulling him into a tight embrace, I pressed my lips against his cheek. “I’m here with you for as long as you’ll have me.”
Then his arms banded around me in a force so strong I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Thank you,” he repeated over and over again, burying his face into the crook of my neck. “For everything. For listening to me. For not running. For being here.” His eyes were shining with unshed tears as he pulled away from me. His strong hands came to my face, holding strong to my jaw. “For loving me,” he muttered with a quiet strength that nearly cracked my heart in half.
I didn’t have to say it again to make him believe it. He already knew it. And I knew he loved me, too. Because despite the chaotic randomness with which the world seemed to operate, his hand in mine grounded me, steadied me, made me feel more complete than I ever had.
As we walked to the car, Liam asked me to drive. Our hands joined together over the center console for the ten-minute ride to the shopping center where Brendan told me he was hiding out. And, even though we said nothing to each other, we communicated so many emotions. A wordless I love you with a tender stroke of a thumb over a wrist. A silent I’m here for you with a gentle squeeze. A hushed I’m not going anywhere with a sweet half-smile.
Approaching the line of stores, the nervous anxiety grew to a palpable level. Liam’s leg bounced wildly as he scanned the lot for signs of his younger brother. Pulling the car into a parking spot, I thought to myself how unlikely this entire situation was. Yet, there was something so purely right about it, too. Sometimes life worked out in the most unlikely ways. Could I have possibly known when I met Liam, demanding that he help me fix my car that we’d be here? Could I have known that he would alter my world so much I’d finally grow the backbone I’d been missing for years and finally stand up to my father?
Could he have known that linking his life with mine would bring his past to the surface, bringing him back to the family he’d left so many years ago?
No.
We could never know those things. And we never would. We’d never know how our past would affect our future. We’d never know how today would tumble on into tomorrow. All we could ever do is hold on tight and have faith that somehow it would all work out the way it’s supposed to.
And Liam—and whatever our future would bring us—was most certainly my supposed to.
“There he is,” I announced when my eyes landed on Brendan, huddled on a bench in front of the grocery store.
Insti
nctively, Liam reached for the door latch, but stopped just short of actually opening it. “I . . . I don’t . . . What do I say?” he stuttered. “What do I do?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Killing the engine, I looked over at him, certain the look on my face reflected his confusion. “But whatever you do decide,” I said calmly, “just know that I’ll be right there with you.”
Liam sat there for a minute, thinking through his options, I was sure. Neither of us knew what to do, but I spoke first with what I thought was the best idea. “Since he already knows my face, why don’t you let me go out there alone? If he sees you, he might run. And he’s freaking fast.” Laughing, I recalled how he’d schooled me in the fine art of sprinting.
The small joke was all we needed for me to take the step out of the car while Liam stayed behind. “It’ll be okay,” I promised, somewhat halfheartedly, not entirely sure how Brendan would react. Liam nodded his unsure approval. As I looked over my shoulder, I saw Liam, his face pressed up so close to the window I thought he’d smash through the glass.
Brendan shot up from the bench when he saw me walking toward him. “It’s okay,” I calmed him, his eyes roving over my shoulder to make sure I was alone.
“You didn’t call the cops?” he asked suspiciously, but quietly so as not to garner any attention from anyone who might be walking past.
Shaking my head, I walked us back over to the bench. “Where did you stay last night?”
Keeping his eyes glued to the ground, he shrugged. “Right here,” he grumbled. “I only had five bucks left so I grabbed something to eat and just stayed here. The place is opened till midnight, so it was well-lit.” There was more than a touch of fear in his voice, making it quiver and shake.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, pretty much knowing the answer anyway.
“Starving.” He wrapped his hoodie tighter around his body as if he’d suffer from a bone-shattering chill on an early June night. “But I didn’t want to go too far from here.” He didn’t have to say it was fear of being seen by the cops that kept him laying low at a local grocery store.
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