believe that?”
Another teardrop landed beside the first. Her sniff was scarcely audible, as if she’d learned long ago how to cry in silence.
He reached to tuck her hair behind her ear so he could see her face, and her tears didn’t bother him half as much as the bruise on her cheek did. His fingertips hovered over the mark, but he didn’t touch her. He had no business touching her. He dropped his hand and clenched it into a fist on his knee. How could he reach this woman? He knew what it was like to be a bullet train on a collision course with a reinforced brick wall. And yes, he’d often thought that everyone would be better off if they let him run headlong into it. Jacob had tried to stop the inevitable crash, but he hadn’t been able to reach Adam. Only Madison had gotten through to him. What had she done that was so different from what Jacob had done? He thought back to their early sessions, when he’d been too angry with the world to even answer her questions, and then to the session when he’d finally opened up. What had she done differently?
She’d been patient. She’d found common ground. And most importantly, she’d listened without judgment. Adam could do that for Nikki if she was willing to open up. He knew it wasn’t the guy who’d bruised her face that had broken her spirit. Her wounds were deep and emotional. They’d been scored into her soul long ago.
“Sometimes I think I hate my mother more than I hate my father,” Adam said. He rested his hands against the dry wood of the table on either side of his hips and leaned back, just shooting the breeze.
Nikki wiped her face on the hem of her T-shirt and angled away from him. “Why’s that?” she said after a long moment.
“Maybe he’s a twisted son of a bitch, but at least he was there. She knew what my father was like, knew he was an addict and abusive. She ran, and I’m glad she got away from him, but she didn’t take me with her. She just left me there with him, knowing he’d hurt me. I always hoped she’d get her shit together and come back for me and make it all better, but she never did.”
It had been Madison who’d made him face the hatred toward his mother that he hadn’t even recognized and move forward. What was he going to do without Madison in his life? Go back to being bitter and angry and high out of his fucking mind because it was the only way he could function through the pain? But that wasn’t functioning at all. That wasn’t even living.
Without Madison’s direction, he didn’t know where he’d end up or where was headed. He didn’t want to be that guy anymore, but that guy was who he was used to being. That guy was the person he knew how to be. He knew how to avoid reality. He knew how to be a junkie. He still didn’t know how to be clean. He was clean, but he had no idea how to feel normal in this new skin. It seemed too small for him, like he needed to climb out of it.
He glanced at Nikki, wondering if sex was how she dealt with her pain, if sex was her narcotic. “Did anyone know what your father was doing to you?”
Her head jerked slightly in his direction, and she peered at him out of the corner of her eye.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said and lay back on the tabletop, his feet still resting on the bench. He threaded his fingers together, put them behind his head, and stared up at the sky. Puffs of white floated lazily across a field of azure. He searched the heavens for familiar shapes in the clouds. “That one looks like a turtle.”
“What?”
“That cloud,” he said. “It looks like a turtle.”
Nikki turned her face upward, her eyes scanning the sky. “Where?”
“Right there.” He nodded toward the turtle-shaped cloud above.
“I don’t see it.”
“Come down here.”
She offered him a look of uncertainty, her brows drawn together, split lip puckered out slightly. He supposed she thought he was trying to make a move on her, but really, he just wanted her to let her guard down. He had no idea why he wanted her to confide in him. Maybe he was full of himself, thinking that he might be able to offer her some comfort by showing her that he was as fucked up as she was and hey, that was okay, everyone was fucked up in one way or another. The two of them just happened to have an extra pound or two of baggage to deal with.
He turned his attention back to the sky. “Rabbit.”
She lay back on the table beside him, mimicking his position, her bent elbow inches from his. “All I see is a cupcake,” she said after a moment.
“Where?”
She pulled one arm out from under her head to point at a cloud. “Right there.”
“Are you blind?” he said. “That’s a turtle.”
“It doesn’t look anything like a turtle.”
“It does if you squint at it like this.” He squeezed his eyes completely shut, and she laughed. Music to his ears.
“There’s a carrot!”
He opened his eyes and followed her pointing finger to a cloud obviously shaped like a bunny.
“That’s a rabbit,” he said.
“No, it’s not. It’s a carrot.”
He took her wrist and traced the outline of a rabbit around the cloud.
“Rabbit,” he insisted.
She retraced the shape of a carrot in what he’d seen as the rabbit’s ears. “Carrot.”
They lay there for a long while, disagreeing on cloud shapes. He always saw animals. She always saw food. After a while, she took his hand and held it gently. He let her hold it. Her touch wasn’t sexual—he knew the difference—it was a hand in need of something to hold on to. A hand in search of something solid and real. He knew that feeling well. He remembered the first time Madison had held his hand during a session. It had been innocent on her part, but it had completely changed his mindset. For the first time, he’d craved someone’s touch to remind him that he wasn’t alone in his struggles. She was there for him. Eventually that craving had turned sexual, but it hadn’t started that way. He had to tread lightly here, with Nikki. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. He didn’t want her to think he could be interested in her. Not because she was unworthy, but because someone else already owned his heart, even if she didn’t want it. He turned his head to look at Nikki and found her staring at him intently.
“My mother knew,” she said.
She didn’t need to explain further. He knew she was answering his question from earlier. And he’d figured that would be her answer.
One wounded beast recognized the wounds in another.
Something clicked in his mind, and he could see the two of them lying side by side in the sweltering desert sand watching things far more sinister than clouds above them. And then words echoed through his brain as if someone was whispering in his ear.
One wounded beast recognizes another
Together we watch the buzzards circle
Who will be the first torn to shreds?
I can’t watch
Close my eyes
Behind blistered eyelids I see nothing but red
I still feel the pain though I must be dead
Eaten alive
I’ll take the coward’s way and beg it ends
I’ll go first; say goodbye, my friends
Devoured from the inside
Never to finish life’s ride
Better dead than outliving your screams
Better dead than forgetting your dreams
Better dead than lying in wait
Kissing the devil might change my fate
I’ve touched brimstone; why hesitate?
She’ll wait for me at the pearly gates
But will only be disappointed
When she realizes she’ll spend her eternity alone
As I rot in Hell