Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Shame in the face of reality was weird. I could feel shame and guilt all I wanted, but when the reality of the true situation was right before me—not just the one I’d made up in my mind—it was harder to ignore how baseless it was.
I was ashamed of how much of a mess I was.
I felt guilty that Emerson had walked in on me like he did.
I was ashamed of the story I’d told him, even if it didn’t make sense, which was exactly why it was fucking with me.
There was no reason for me to feel shame.
Emerson kept making that abundantly clear.
Though somewhere deep inside the recesses of my mind, my brain had decided I needed it.
It’d become a fuel to survive, in a way.
If I felt too ashamed or too guilty, there was no way I’d open up and allow myself to get hurt again. Couldn’t be damaged if I didn’t give any collateral, and that collateral was my heart.
Emerson wouldn’t let me pack my own bag, taking care of everything for me.
He’d decided we’d both call in to work and head back to his house.
I’d argued with him at first, claiming my problems shouldn’t get in the way of his job, to which he’d said I meant far more to him than his badge.
I’d shut up and sat on the edge of my bed after that, too stunned to say another word.
Knowing someone cared that much about me was…
odd. Someone who wasn’t forced to give a fuck in the name of family.
“Brat?”
I looked up at the nickname. “Yeah?”
“You spaced out for a second. Where’s your phone charger?”
“Oh, uh, should be on my nightstand. I can get it, though.” As soon as I went to move, Emerson shook his head and made his way over to it.
I couldn’t hide my frown if I wanted to, not yet ready to admit that I liked how he was taking care of everything instead of me. My knee-jerk reaction was to bristle and argue with him, refusing to let myself seem so weak.
But was it weak to appreciate the help he was giving me? A part of me wanted to say yes. Another part of me was desperate to say no and finally accept the kindness where it was.
“You kept them.”
I turned, finding Emerson holding all the notes he’d left under my front door. Looking away, I shrugged. “Of course I did. It was painful, you know? Being away from you.”
He set the notes back on my nightstand, curling my phone charger around his hand. “Then why did you do it?”
The age-old question. Why? Why had I decided to punish myself with isolation, rather than allowing myself the opportunity to know what support felt like? “I don’t deserve you, Em. You’re so fucking bright. And I’m so…” I trailed off, not sure exactly how to finish that thought.
“So what, Moon? Because, the way I see it, you’re the light between the trees in the woods at night.
You may not constantly beam like the sun, all in your face and stuff, but you’re a guide out of something thick and dark and scary.
You have light. You have the most comforting light of them all, actually. ”
He said it with so much conviction, as if he truly believed it despite the fact that he’d just watched me soak in my own bloody tub water, and he hadn’t just cleaned my blood off the bathroom floor with a towel because I’d lost my shit.
Emerson had officially seen me close to my worst, and he wasn’t leaving. He wasn’t abandoning me to deal with it on my own, just waiting for me to get better. He was taking me with him, so he could be there for me.
What a weird fucking concept.
After grabbing my toothbrush and deodorant, we headed out to his car.
Every step came with a sting—a familiar sting I’d slowly gotten used to over the years.
My thighs were just as destroyed as I felt on the inside, the artwork I’d prized for so long finally marred with a visual testament to the hatred and fury I had for myself.
After accidentally cutting across the one tattoo that’d mattered the most to me, I’d stopped caring as much.
Thought it didn’t matter anymore. If I was going to ruin one, I’d ruin them all, just like I’d been ruined on the inside.
Each step reminded me of what I’d done and what I had to look forward to.
I locked my door from the outside, turning toward Emerson, who nodded at the lock. “Do me a favor, yeah? Lock your door more often. Quite a dangerous habit of yours to forget all the time.”
“I’m not used to having to. Where I grew up, it wasn’t necessary.”
“Well, your Daddy is a cop. Most of the crimes here are petty theft or robbery. If my brat gets robbed, I’ll be going to jail right along with them for kicking the shit out of whoever did it.”
Rolling my eyes, I took my time down the stairs. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Good to know your attitude hasn’t changed.”
Emerson’s house was a lot less sparse than it was the last time I’d been there.
Olivia and Kelly had stopped by and helped him unpack a lot of the rooms. I’d been at work, so I never got to officially meet them.
I planned to eventually, as long as I was still in Emerson’s life, once I had the opportunity to.
I was sitting on his living room couch, the TV playing something completely random as background noise while he searched for more first-aid supplies than I had readily available at my apartment.
I only ever kept a few packets of sterile gauze, some medical tape, and some bandages with a single tube of antibiotic ointment.
Honestly, the cuts weren’t that bad—there were just a lot of them.
Maybe some gauze to keep from too much irritation, and the ointment was never a bad idea, but if it made Emerson feel better to have an entire kit just in case, I wasn’t going to argue.
He sat beside me, sighing as the couch dipped with his weight. “I found more of pretty much the same stuff.”
“That’s fine. I won’t really need half of it, anyway.” I pulled my legs up, holding my knees to my chest. I tried to hide the wince on my face from the way my skin pulled. “I’ve never really gone too far with it, thankfully. But I’ve learned how to take care of myself with ones like these.”
The side of his nostril twitched as his eyes seemed to get lost in the space right between sad and utterly distraught. “Can I ask you why? I’d like to understand more, I guess. Like what it does for you emotionally.”
I stared at him, just blinking for a moment. “You really wanna know?” It was a genuine question. I never thought someone would care enough to try and understand. Hell, I barely understood, so why would someone else give enough of a fuck to hear what I had to say about it?
His eyes narrowed as he tilted his head to the side. “Of course I do.”
“Oh. Well, it’s hard to explain.” I turned my attention to my sweatpants, picking at the material.
“It’s like…the inside of my head and heart hurt so much, but it isn’t physical.
Physical pain is easier to understand and deal with.
It actually feels better than the emotional.
I don’t know. I’ve done some research on it, actually.
The pain releases dopamine to try and overwrite the pain connection in your body.
It’s the same chemical related to happiness.
” I shrugged. “And then there’s the visual component.
I’m all fucked up on the inside, so why not make the outside fucked up, too?
At least then I can see it, rather than feeling it.
Over time, it became comforting. The entire process.
I relied on it when I was a teenager, quit for a long time, and then started again after everything with Jude and Sarah.
Seeing my blood pour out, rather than the images of their blood, or marks I’d made on myself rather than the scars Jude gave me. It’s comforting.”
“A coping mechanism.”
I glanced up at him. “Yeah, I guess so. A pretty shitty one.”
“Well, when you put it like that, though, it makes sense. Emotional pain… Devastation, I guess, feels so big and overpowering sometimes. I feel like a lot of people do a lot of things for that same dopamine and almost numbing feeling to the mental gymnastics in their minds. You said you were able to stop for a while?”
I nodded.
“What got you to that point? I mean, did the emotional pain get easier for a while? Until everything with Jude and Sarah happened.”
“No. It didn’t get easier. I just shifted my focus to my siblings. Being as fierce a presence as possible in their lives. Always being there. It gave me a lot more purpose that wasn’t centered on me, so I didn’t have to think about me. I didn’t have to think about what had happened to me.”
“You started taking care of everyone but yourself.”
“Except I was never taking care of myself. I was just harming myself.”
He shifted closer to me, scooting until there was barely any cushion between us. “Moon, have you ever seriously thought about getting help?”
I scoffed, rolling my eyes. “What, like a therapist?”
“Exactly like a therapist.”
“Have you gone to a therapist?”
“I probably should. Actually, I definitely should. But no, I haven’t.”
“Oh, okay.” I glared at him. “Does that not seem hypocritical for you to say, then?”
He hung his head, taking a deep breath. “Yeah, it does, actually. But if you go, I’ll go, too.”
A bribe or an agreement? I wasn’t sure what to call it. “I just don’t like the idea of someone knowing the inside of my head. It scares me. Having someone else know. And it won’t even do anything, anyway. I can’t change the past.”
“No, you can’t change the past. But you can let all of this emotional weight be shared, and you can learn new coping mechanisms—healthy ones. Shared sadness feels a million times lighter than sadness that isn’t.”
“Maybe I don’t want to share it.”
“You shared it with me. Does it not feel a little better? A little lighter?”
I looked up at the TV just to avoid the ever-present, caring look in his eyes.
It almost made my skin crawl—how intensely he looked at me like I meant something to him.
Right in the middle of the sea that were his eyes were two mirrored images; both of them were of me, looking right at him.
As if I was the only thing that mattered to him when we were facing each other.
There was a prison in my chest. A cage where my heart, soul, and the evils of my past were locked in strict confinement.
I’d carried its weight for so long, coming to a point where I barely noticed it.
It was just a part of me—this cold, sinking structure that sat square where love, happiness, and my understanding of myself were meant to be.
“Moon?”
I jerked my head, looking at Emerson, his hand resting on my knee as he leaned closer toward me. He didn’t say anything else, letting me watch as his attention flicked between both of my eyes. What was he searching for? I wasn’t sure there was anything to see in them anymore. I felt hollow and…
Empty, almost.
So fucking empty, yet full. Full of someone else’s genuine care to replace the hatred I held inside of me. Hatred that’d weighed me down all these years, forcing me to slow my entire life down. But for the first time in so long that I couldn’t remember the last, I simply felt lighter.
“What’s wrong?” Thank god he was whispering, or else it might’ve been too much all at once.
The understanding and realization that, yes, I felt fucking lighter.
I finally felt like I could take a step and not trip over the ground beneath me.
I took a deep breath, relishing in the fact that I could.
I could breathe, and I could hear the steel bars inside creak and whine as they shifted with me, rather than bending me to their shape.
Looking straight at the mirrored images of myself, I started to nod. “Yeah. Yeah, it feels lighter.”
He reached over, cupping my cheek in his palm. “That’s how it feels when you finally share the heavy part, rather than letting it keep getting heavier.”
My eyes started to burn, but I refused to let any tears fall. Though my voice wavered, I refused to let myself sound weak. Even if I looked scared, I refused to admit it to myself. “Can we go to bed?”
“Oh, Moon. Of course, we can. Come on.” Emerson stood, grabbing my bag.
I followed behind him to his bedroom, catching myself on a couple of stumbles on the way there.
When the lights were turned off, and I was comfortable lying on my side underneath the blankets, I listened to the rustle of the bed as Emerson got in behind me.
I watched the air from the vent beneath his window blow through the window curtain, flapping around just enough for the moon to shine through.
It was beautiful. The way it almost sparkled, only shining light on a small part of the floor. It peeled back the layers of the darkness surrounding us, but it never fully revealed anything before the darkness was ready to become bright.
The bed dipped as Emerson got situated and scooted closer to me. I could hardly hear him over the fan he always kept on high beside us. “Come here, baby. Let me hold you.”
His voice had my breath catching in my chest, coming out as a small, tired gasp. Tears made their way into my eyes, blurring my vision. He sounded so sincere. He sounded like he needed to hold me, needed to protect me so badly, it’d eat him alive if he couldn’t.
I turned around, sniffling, as I pressed my face into his chest. His arms acted as my anchor, keeping me from flying to the sky with how light I felt.
I let him hold me. I let him protect me.
I let him whisper into my hair, his lips pressed against my head.
“I’m here. I’ve got you, baby. I’m right here.
I’m holding your heart, okay? No matter what.
No matter how heavy. I’ll keep helping you. ”
Just like the notes. Just like he’d said before.
Giving my heart to someone was messy, and it was heavy, but it wasn’t as devastating when I had someone to hold it with me. I think, deep down, I already knew I’d given a part of it to him. And I didn’t think I minded being called baby as much as I thought.
I felt too light to care. I felt too relieved to think about it. I felt, for the first time in fifteen years, like maybe everything would slowly start to be okay.