“It would be better if he didn’t remember anything his parents ever did to him.”
My protective instincts surge with a vengeance. “What did they do to him?”
There’s something alarming about the way Pete hesitates, about the way his eyes slide across the group, and then settle back on me. My pulse flutters faster than normal by the time he finally speaks. “They committed him because he went black for the first time when he was ten, Brooke. But first, they thought he was possessed. They got all fanatic about it and had an exorcism performed on him.”
When those last words filter into my troubled brain, I am so heartbroken and torn, my heart withers in my chest. I make a sound and cover my mouth.
Diane covers her face.
Curses fall from Riley’s lips as he turns his head to the carpet.
Coach stares down at his hands.
The silence that stretches . . . it is taut with sorrow, with disbelief, and this agonizing frustration . . . of an ill little boy who was so misunderstood . . .
I think of “Iris”—the song he has played to me. The song where he wanted to be seen and understood, by me. When not even his own parents understood him.
Oh god.
“He was put in an exorcism circle in his own home,” Pete says, driving the dagger deeper inside me. “His room was stripped of everything so he wouldn’t hurt anyone, and he was roped to his bed. They went at it for days—we don’t know exactly how many, but over a week—until a little neighbor who used to play with Rem came in looking for him, and those parents intervened. The ‘holy man’ was dismissed, and Remy was just committed instead.”
There’s not a sound in the room.
I’ve stopped breathing. I feel like I’ve stopped living.
“Unfortunately,” Pete continues, “he remembers that manic episode, because at the institution, they did some experimental hypnosis to draw his memories out. See if some therapy would work. Not that it did. Worse is, his own body would have protected him from that hurtful memory if we hadn’t f**ked up with that damn hypnosis.”
There’s still not a sound.
But I can hear my heart beating inside me, so hard. Hard and ready, like those times when I could sprint like the wind. I can even hear the blood gushing through my veins, fast and furious. I am ready . . . and angry . . . and desperate to fight something. To fight for him. I remember him telling me he had a memory of his parents. How his mother crossed him at night. An indescribable pain cracks tiny little places inside me. Oh, Remy.
“So he remembers all of that?” I ask, while the middle of my body burns with impotent rage.
“I know he knows they’re wrong . . . when he’s blue. But when that black side comes, I know he thinks about it.” Pete’s frustration and despair is carved into every line of his face. “It’s only natural to wonder why you weren’t wanted.”
“But he is wanted!” I cry.
“We know, B, calm down.” Riley rises to his feet and comes over.
He hugs me to him, and I realize my hands are on my stomach, and the image of my Remington as a boy enduring such a thing because of something that was not his fault rocks in my head. Oh, how I wish I had his f**king evil parents in front of me now, and at the same time, I’m glad they aren’t here, because I don’t know what I would do or say to them. But I want to hurt them for hurting him! I want to hit and scream at them and run after them with a pitchfork. I clench my hands and ease away from Riley. He and Pete are like my brothers now, but Remy doesn’t like them to touch me, and I don’t like to do things that hurt him—even if he can’t see. I want comfort, but the only comfort I want is from the man in the bed in the master bedroom.
Quietly, I head to the master. “I’ll see you guys later—thanks for checking up on him.”
“One of us will be around,” Pete calls.
I don’t want to make noise, so I wave from the door and shut it closed behind me, and my heart does all the crazy stuff it does when I see Remy. His big muscular form is on the bed, sprawled facedown, like a lion at rest. My playful boy, my protective man, my jealous boyfriend, my cocky fighter. My misunderstood little boy.
My eyes run down the length of him, his spiky hair dark against the pillow, his jaw beautiful and square. He’s quiet and resting. Resting like he’s wounded in some place my hands can’t reach and my eyes can’t see.
Reaching behind me, I turn the lock, then ease away and start stripping off my clothes. It’s not for sexual reasons I want to be naked, but because I need to feel his skin on mine. He has never, ever slept a night with me with anything between us.
He likes feeling me, and I ache to feel him.
Climbing into bed, I spoon him from behind. “Look at you,” I say, imitating what he says to me sometimes as I buzz my lips across the shell of his ear and slide my hand around his shoulder and to his chest, spreading my hand where his heart beats. He groans as I kiss the back of his ear.
“Look at you,” I say lovingly in his ear. I lick the back of his ear softly, like he does to me, running my hands down the length of him, petting him like he pets me. “I love, adore, cherish, need, and want you like I never thought possible to love and adore and cherish and need and want another human being or anything in this world,” I whisper. He growls softly as if in gratitude, and my eyes well up, because it’s so unfair he has to deal with it. Why does anyone have to deal with something like this? Why does a beautiful person who doesn’t want to harm anyone feel chemical impulses to hurt himself? To feel life is worthless? That he is worthless? To think he might rather die?
He doesn’t need to tell me. I’ve been there. But I’ve been there only once. He is there so often, and no matter how many times he pulls himself back up, he will always know with certainty that in the future he will be dragged back down. He’s such a fighter. Lovingly, I trace my tongue over the grooves of his abs, his muscled arms, his throat, at the seam of his lips.
He turns away. “What am I doing, Brooke?” he asks.
I stiffen at his blank tone of voice.
“Do I think I can be a father? That I could even be a husband to you?” He turns with a strange, pained noise and buries that sound in the pillow, his muscles bulging as he slides his arms under the pillow to hold it to his face.
“Remy,” I say, forcing my voice to stop trembling and the pain inside me to shut. The f**k. Up. “I don’t care what your mind is telling you, how it’s making your body feel—you know. Remy. You know. You are good and noble and you deserve this. You want this.” I slide my arm around his waist and press closer.
“I deserve to be put down. Like a dog.”
The tears that had formed only moments ago slide out of my eyelids. “No, you don’t, no, you don’t.”
He shifts away from me but I don’t let him. I twine my arms around his shoulders and stop him from rolling farther away, and I run my fingers through his hair and caress his scalp. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you like a crazy f**king lunatic. If you’re a mess, I want to be a mess with you. Just let me touch you—don’t pull away,” I whisper, sniffing. He groans and turns his face into the pillow again, and as I touch him, he almost winces. But I touch up his arm, trace the B on his bicep, the Celtic tattoos. The noises he makes, like a true lion, like a wounded lion, make me feel as desperate and fierce as a lioness trying to lure back the interest of her mate.