Page 89 of Love What's Left
I didn’t deservehim. I should’ve forgiven him years ago, not because he apologized, but because he did the work to be better. I’ve been through withdrawal. It was nothing compared to what he’d have faced. Alcohol is harder, the withdrawal longer and more dangerous. I didn’twantthe drugs they gave me, and it was still hell.
Then Gabriel had to face the part of himself that thought he needed to go numb to cope with the memories of childhood trauma so horrific it makes mine look like a scraped knee next to it.
Gabriel made it through all of that. He fought for me through years of a relationship with a woman who didn’t believe in him. He held on through my captivity.
Only for me to wake him in the middle of the night and tell him I still hated him. That none of it meant anything. I kicked him out of his warm, safe bed and back into a life that will kill him.
Dad was sweet as pie when he was drinking and mean as hell when he wasn’t. When he was sober, he was a dry drunk, never healed but superficially scabbed over.
Gabriel didn’t have scabs. He had scars. And I tore through them in minutes.
The terrible truth, no matter what Henry says, is that I’m not good for Gabriel. I never have been.
I move to the desk in the corner and search through the drawer for a paper and pen. When I find them, I begin:Dear Gabriel . . .
31
Gabriel
One Hour Ago
My parents and Henry warned me about ignoring my own needs for too long. James Mellinger said the same thing when he and Clarissa came to the penthouse in Manhattan after I first brought Sydney home.
Leaving her alone was the kindest thing I could do for either of us.
“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”
I can’t shut off the memory of those words or close the spigot on the pain pouring through me. In our home gym, sweat sheens across my naked torso, and I grunt with exertion. The rhythmicslap, slap, slapof sound reaches my ears through a haze, but I barely hear it over her words echoing in my head.
Physical release has always been what works for me. Once, it involved drowning myself in alcohol, then drowning in random pussy and ass.
It took therapy and getting sober to understand why I’d been incapable of refusing sex with a woman. But no child could be branded, carved up, and told bya laughing man holding a bloody knife that his cock and balls were next, and not take lasting psychological damage.
I was proving to myself that they hadn’t taken my ability to be a man. I drank and fucked to forget the guilt of nearly getting my brother killed, the brand and blades carving into my skin, the threat that my little ten-year-old pecker was next. The blood and gore as Henry acted as a sniper and took them out, his bullets turning human monsters into corpses falling against me and around me. My brother, bleeding out with a bullet in his gut. Reaching my own slippery, bloody fingers for the weapon still held in a dead man’s hand and pulling the trigger on a woman who looked like somebody’s mom because she was. Henry threatening to kill me himself if I didn’t leave him behind to get help.
I’ve done enough therapy to have robbed the story of its immediate brutal impact. I can talk about it without flinching, and I’ve forgiven the child I was for my mistakes.
The addictions I used to self-medicate afterward were different. I deserve every bit of recrimination, self-inflicted and otherwise. Sydney wasn’t even close to the worst of my collateral damage, but she was the one that got through to me.
The red leather bag beneath my fists absorbs my blows. Sweat burns my eyes. I land a roundhouse kick, then another, before resuming my punches, directing my strikes for maximum impact.
I stop only when I have no choice and land on my ass on the blue mat, unwrapping my knuckles and draping my arms over my knees, breath sawing in and out of my burning lungs.
When I straighten, I catch sight of my reflection in the wall of mirrors. Sweat drips down my face and body. Soaking strands of hair cling to my head. Only black athletic shorts cover my body.
The tattoos on my arms are for Sydney. But the ink that stretches across my pecs is there for me. To remind me that my choices affect others.
When I got them, I never imagined Sydney would see them, let alone look straight at them and miss the most important part. Zack was confused when I asked for it, until I explained. It was for me, in those moments when I stood in front of the mirror and reminded myself of the man I’d been and the one I had to become.
The weekend I met her is a blur of drunken stupidity in my memory.
I’d stepped out the kitchen door and onto the sprawling back porch of my sister’s house in central Pennsylvania. A sober person would have noticed the warmth of the sun, colorful foliage, and the scent of autumn. Not me.
It was barely past noon, and I’d already been drinking for hours. A tumbler of bourbon on the rocks dangled from my fingertips. The squeak and rattle of the porch swing chains drew my attention.
There she is.It was the oddest thought. It’s not as though I was looking for her, but I knew her name by process of elimination. She was the only one of my sister’s friends here that I’d never met.
Cute. Hard to say for sure since she was sitting with one leg tucked beneath her, the other gently pushing off the floor to keep the swing rocking, but I’d guess she was somewhere around five foot eight or nine. Muscle flexed in her thigh beneath soft black cotton pants. Her green sweater hung loose off one shoulder, and her hair . . . God,that hair.Long, dark, and wavy, it was so thick if she attempted a ponytail it would be the size of her wrist at the base.
