Bile creeps up my throat, and I have to talk myself out of throwing up. But on the heels of the fear comes a rush of something else—the comfort of knowing Nate will be here anyway.
My throat tightens. My mouth goes dry. I wrap my hands around Nate’s forearm for support.
“Do you really want to know?” I ask, my voice timid.
He lifts his head slightly as if he picks up on my hesitation.
“Of course,” he says.
I rewrap my fingers around him. “I only have vague memories about most of this. Hollis has helped me fill in some blanks.” I clear my throat. “We lived in a three-bedroom house in Indiana. We all had a bedroom, but Mom would often ask me to sleep in Hollis’s room. It was fine with me because Hollis was the coolest person I knew.”
Nate smiles against my head and presses a kiss at the crown. I don’t think about it too much. I might flip out and stop talking. And I need to tell him. I want to.
“We’d lay there in his bed and wait. Sometimes, we’d hear a scream or a voice muffled down the hall. Hollis would tell me these knock-knock jokes to distract me. I have flashes of memories about this.”
Nate blows out a breath. I wonder if he’s nervous about where this is going, but I trek on.
“Hollis apparently went back to our mother for a while in his teenage years. I had already been adopted or was getting adopted—I don’t quite know how all of that played out. She ended up losing custody of him again, but he was with her long enough to figure out that Dad was pimping her out.”
“Holy shit.” He squeezes me tighter.
I close my eyes and remember huddling with Hollis in his bed.
“It seemed like we never had heat—or when we did, it was random, I think. But I have these memories of being cold. And in the winters, if I was in my bed, Hollis would come and get me so we could sleep together.”
I pause and take a deep breath. God, I’m so thankful to have had him look after me. I wonder if it was good preparation for the new big brothers I ended up with.
“Anyway, it was always warmer when we were together. Everything was just … safer.”
Tears fill my eyes, and I blink hard so they go away. But they don’t.
“We had a dog for a while, and we’d bring him in and put him on the bed too. He’d keep our feet warm,” I say, my voice cracking.
Nate hugs me so tight that I can’t breathe. But it’s perfect. It’s exactly what I need him to do. He doesn’t say anything, just holds me, and whispers something against my hair that isn’t for me.
I take the deepest breath that I can and blow it out, releasing a load off my heart that I’ve been carrying my whole life. I can feel it lifting off my shoulders and dissipating into the night.
“It’s why I want to be a social worker,” I say, wiping my cheeks. “I want to help little Paiges and little Hollises—kids who don’t deserve to grow up like we did.”
He exhales. It’s sharp and heavy.
“I’m so fucking sorry that happened to you, Paige. Like … I can’t even process that.”
“It’s over, and I made it. I found a wonderful family to love me. I had it so much easier than my brother, and I feel a little guilty about that.”
Nate rolls me over to face him. He dries my face with the pad of his thumb. It comforts me to know he cares.
“Listen to me,” he says, staring into my eyes. “You can’t feel guilt or shame for anything that was done to you. But you can be proud of the woman you’ve become because you did the work to be her. No one else.”
He kisses the tip of my nose.
“That’s easier said than done,” I tell him. “You’re really the first person besides Hollis who I’ve even talked to about all of this. I’ve always been afraid of opening this wound. Afraid people would think I’m tainted or something.”
He drags his finger down the side of my face. “You have no idea what it means to me that you opened up to me. Thank you for trusting me with that.”
“Thank you for making me feel safe enough to share that with you.”
“It makes sense why you want to do social work now. I get it.”
“I can’t think of anything else that I ever wanted to do,” I say. “What about you? What did little Nate Hughes want to be?”
He chuckles, grinning. “Oh, everything. I wanted to be the guy in Bloodsport. I wanted to be a drummer in a band.”
“Really?”
“I have no musical talent, so that didn’t last long. What else? I wanted to be a physical therapist for a while. Mom had to see one, and I thought it was interesting.”