Page 204 of Wicked Angel
“Then fuck them.”
“What if they’re horrified?”
“You were just a boy, Johnny. It was self-defense.”
“What if they think I’m evil? To some people, it’s murder, any way you look at it.”
“They’re wrong.”
“What if I embarrass my parents?”
“You were achild.”
“What if my friends don’t want me around their kids? What if my sister looks at me differently?”
I knew this was his worst fear, finally expressed. I could hear it in his voice. It was a debilitating fear; one that had stopped him from getting close to people.
What if they think I’m a monster?
Because deep inside, that was what he thought he was, because of what he did.
It broke my heart to know that was how he really felt about himself. That the horrendous experience he’d been through as a child had warped and destroyed his self-worth like that, his self-image.
“Shayla really doesn’t know?” I asked him gently. He couldn’t possibly think Shayla would think he was a monster. And yet… I was pretty sure that was this fear.
“No one knows. No one but my dad and Rory, and now you, and Noah, Shane and Lex. I never told anyone because I knew my dad didn’t want me to. He changed our whole life, gave us a new home, so no one would ever know. But sometimes…”
“You wish he didn’t. So everyone would already know and then you wouldn’t have to tell them. Or fear telling them.”
“Yes.”
“We all have things that are hard to say, Johnny,” I told him. “And hard to live. I may not have a lot of experience with this kind of thing. But I know that my sister’s husband, Seth, survived being abandoned as a kid, being orphaned. And he managed to overcome addiction to some nasty drugs. I know that my best friend Courteney’s brother, Cary, survived the death of a dear friend. And he managed to overcome debilitating grief and anxiety. Both of those guys are extremely successful in their careers now, and they have families. They have love. And none of that happened overnight. So I know you can continue to survive this and thrive. Some things are harder to survive than others, sure. But we all keep secrets because we’re scared to tell people and have them turn away from us.”
“Even you, Angel?” he said gently.
“Of course.” I took a deep breath and confessed to him, “I didn’t tell you the whole truth about my breakup with Flynn. He didn’t exactly say he didn’t want to have kids. He said he didn’t want to have kidswith me.”
“I’m sorry,” Johnny said. “That’s a shitty thing to hear from someone who’s supposed to love you.”
I took a deep breath and gathered my will to be grown up about it. It had been a hard thing to do, in the end. “I don’t blame him, though. He spent three years with a woman who always had her eye on something else. I was trying so hard to figure out who I was, where I fit in, I was always looking to see what I was missing out on. And that included men. I couldn’t stop dreaming of another man, and he felt it.”
“Another man?” He considered that. “Who?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“No one specific.” I sighed. “And… a lot of specific someones. Just… someone who wasn’t him.” Then I took a breath and added, “Someone like you.”
Johnny didn’t look happy to hear it. More like he couldn’t believe I would say such a thing.
“I’m not a good man, Angeline.”
“When you say things like that to me, I know you’re trying to run away again.”
“I’m not. I’m right here.”
“But I can feel you pulling away. Trying to hide from me. If you really want to make amends and build trust, you need to open up to people. Including me. People need to know who you are if you want them in your life.Ineed to know who you really are. Not this overconfident jerk you try to be,” I added, trying to drive home my point with a touch of humor.
