"How old were you when he told you this?" I asked, wanting to change the subject instead of agreeing to the truth of the statement.
"Twelve. When he first suspected I was gay and I had told him that I wasn't going to be friends with Jenny anymore."
"Because you had feelings for her," I guessed.
"Exactly."
"I think I'd like your father," I said, meaning it. It was so rare to find a parent who not only accepted their kids as they were, but tried to convince said kid that it was okay to be how they were amidst a society that was telling them anything but.
"He is a wise man," she said with a nod. "As such, maybe you should think on that, yeah? Because I think you're mad right now because you have been yanked right out of your little comfort zone and you are scared and unsure of yourself. But you need to stop and consider that in twenty-someodd years, nothing and no one has been able to do that, to drag you out of that comfort zone. So what does it say about Renny and your feelings toward him that he was able to do that?"
With that, she stood and walked out.
I was apparently surrounded by very wise people without knowing it. And they were all really good at that 'say something awesome and walk off like an action hero walking casually away from an explosion they just set' thing.
The worst part was she (and her father) weren't wrong. I knew enough of people to know that love was rarely pretty. Love was a murder-suicide. Love was slit wrists. Love was a depression that never went away.
Because love, well, love was scary. It was so terrifying that your knee-jerk reaction was to hide from it or go toe-to-toe with it and ultimately blow it up from the inside out.
Affection was easy. Comfort was too. Then because somewhere along the way, we learned it was better to not feel too deeply about anything, we began to take those two things and call it love. And, to be fair, many people pulled it off. Many people built lives and new generations on the back of affection and comfort.
But affection and comfort weren't love, they were safety.
Love was brutal and bloody and, above all, risky.
When faced with it, too often we realized we weren't willing to take that risk.
We were cowards.
I was a coward.
I threw myself back onto my bed, pressing my palms into my eyes.
As a whole, I wasn't one for regrets. Though that, for the most part, was because I never acted without thinking. I never said something without weighing my words. My entire life was a expertly played game of chess.
Then Renny came, grabbed the board, and shook all the pieces out of their places.
I found out something about myself when he did that too- I found that I didn't so much like my life neatly arranged as I didn't honestly know of any other way. Until he showed it to me.
Had he given me some time, I would have given him what he wanted- my past, my scars, my damage. I probably would have given him anything he wanted. I had already given him more than I had given any man before.
My heart, I realized as I felt the hollow spot in my chest.
He had ripped it out and shoved it in his own.
As I lay there, I started to wonder if it would always be there, if I would never get it back.
I had a sneaking suspicion as I slowly drifted off sometime late that night, that I was just going to have to get used to no longer feeling that beating in my chest.--"Mina," Ashley called, making me jump. I had been entirely too focused on writing down my notes on Cyrus, Lazarus, and Reeve for Reign. Just because I had needed to leave the compound didn't mean I was going to leave the job unfinished.
I was better than that.
"Yeah?" I asked, looking over at her, slow-blinking a few times because, I tried to convince myself, I had been staring at my own writing for too long. The reality was my eyes were swollen from all the crying from the day before. But I didn't want to admit that, not even to myself.
"Lo wants to see you in the spare room," she said, walking away before I could even question her.
The spare room?
As a whole, we all slept in the barracks. It was what was most familiar to most of the ex-military members of Hailstorm. And it was just prudent. But Lo kept a spare room with a single bed and a nightstand and a dresser off all by itself. Occasionally, she would find someone who was suffering some severe form of PTSD and had raging nightmares that would keep everyone awake. Or sometimes we would even need to offer a safe haven for someone we had come across in an operation who couldn't be expected to sleep in a barracks full of strangers. So that was why we had the spare room.