Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MAEVE
After settling back into our hotel room after Tate’s bloodwork yesterday, we did the math with the dates and when classes start for the new semester, and determined that I’d need to head back to Pennsylvania two days after New Year’s to be there in time.
He’d stay behind for as long as he needed, and just turn in doctor’s notes to all of his professors.
He’d be fine. At least, that’s what it took twenty minutes to convince him of before he ultimately decided to trust what I was saying.
From what I understood, he’d never missed class a day in his life.
It was something he prided himself on, so I could understand why he was fretting about this so much.
It was after that when we agreed to make tomorrow a good day.
Well, today.
Tate wanted to show me around Seattle, from places he had visited often as a child to his childhood home.
As good as we agreed this day should be, I knew that today would be the day he’d be opening up to me about his past. It just felt like the right place and time, considering I was about to see where it all took place.
But the before was good, at least. He showed me the Space Needle and the waterfront, the snow falling down on us in fluffy white flakes, clinging to our hair and eyelashes.
It was cute watching him show me something I’d never seen before, the way his eyes would dart to me every so often to catch my reactions.
Did he notice that I was only really paying attention to him?
There was a moment, a really small moment, where my eyes lifted to look at him for the hundredth time, catching him at just the right angle.
Snowflakes dusted in his brown hair, stuck to the front of his glasses, as he gazed up at the Space Needle, his mouth open just slightly, in awe of something he’d probably seen a million times. And then something bloomed in my chest.
Very minuscule at first. I just thought they were butterflies, ones I’d felt over and over again lately when I was with him, but this time was different.
It bloomed warm in the center of my chest before spreading like a wildfire through my veins, lighting up every limb, raising every hair on my skin, and making me hold my breath in anticipation of… Well, I wasn’t sure.
I’d never felt it before. Well, never like that.
I’d felt something similar with Landon, back when I was so sure that he was the love of my life.
Before I realized he was… I felt like that for him, but it was weak compared to this.
It was never this warm. I felt like I was cracking like a glowstick, glowing so bright that I might burst. It scared me so much that I excused myself to go find a restroom to hide in until the feeling subsided.
Because I’m good at avoiding things, you know?
But the feeling is also something I cling to as we sit in Tate’s truck outside of his childhood home, which sits abandoned, the roof caving in and the brick covered in dead greenery that was killed by the cold.
It’s a sad picture, just about as sad as his face right now as I peek over at him from the passenger seat.
I cling to that warmth from earlier because I know it’s about to be anything but.
“I haven’t been back here since Child Protective Services picked me up that day,” Tate mumbles after a while, though he doesn’t look at the house. “If I could get away with burning it to the ground, I probably would.”
I frown sympathetically as I watch him speak, watch the way he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose before he finally turns his head to look at the house. But it’s short-lived before he’s shaking his head and dropping his chin to his chest again.
“It’s tainted, you know?” he asks me, though I don’t expect him to be waiting for me to actually answer. “The things that happened behind those walls. I could never look at this house and feel anything but…awful. A lot of places around here feel like that.”
God, do I know the feeling. And I wish I didn’t. I wish he didn’t.
“My old school, the grocery store, the gas station at the corner down the road,” he lists off, fidgeting with his hands in his lap, “they’re all tainted.”
I want so badly to reach over and grab his hand, but I want him to be able to get this out on his own. Not with my help, but with his own strength. I know he has it and I know he needs this. He needs to overcome these feelings, and the only way he can do that is to face them head-on.
“I don’t remember a lot from when I was really young,” he says, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh. “Your brain blocks traumatic things out to protect you. Like a shield. They used to resurface in therapy sometimes, but for the most part, it’s all blank for me.”
The thought of something so evil happening to him as a little boy makes a heaviness form in the pit of my stomach.
“The first time I can remember something happening is when I was six. I went to tell my mom that I was hungry, and I interrupted her boyfriend from yelling at her,” Tate clears his throat, “so he slapped me upside the head so hard that I stumbled into the brick fireplace, cutting open my knee.”
I can’t even help it when my eyes start to blur, an uncomfortable sting before the water forms in the corners.
My parents never even spanked me or my brothers when we were growing up. I guess they were what you call “gentle” parents. They’d talk to us. Communication was a huge thing in our home when we were kids. I couldn’t imagine…
I shake my head.
“I looked at my mom for help because that’s what you do as a kid, you expect your mom to be there when you get hurt,” he swallows thickly, “but she just stood there. She didn’t move. She didn’t even look at me.”
Wrapping my arms around myself, I squeeze tight to keep from full-on sobbing. I can feel it getting caught in my throat, but I don’t want to clear it. I don’t want to draw attention to myself. His mom was his first heartbreak, and I’m crying?
The more he says, the more I feel like I know him on the deepest level you can know someone. Probably deeper than you should ever know a person. I’ve seen all the raw, personal stuff, like looking into his soul. And he just bares it all to me without question. What does that mean?
What does it mean when I feel like I can do the same?
“Most people turn a blind eye, you know,” he says. “They see someone nodding off in the car in a store parking lot, kid in the backseat… No one says anything. They mind their business.”
I do know that. Firsthand. Toward the end of our relationship, Landon was more comfortable acting out in front of his friends, who did absolutely nothing. Those cowards.
“As a kid, you’re looking out of the window,” he clears his throat, “just hoping someone will make eye contact with you. That someone will notice. Say something. Help you.”
My heart feels like it might crush under the weight of his words.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps after a moment, rubbing his hands on his jeans as he glances over at me. “I feel like I’m talking your head off—”
“No, no, keep talking. Talk as much as you want. I’m all ears, of course,” I assure him in a weak voice, shaking my head.
“I just…don’t know what to add. Sure, I’ve had my experiences, but not nearly as long as you did.
I don’t feel it’s my place to throw all of my baggage on you with everything you’ve got going on right now. ”
Tate frowns at me. “Just because yours didn’t go on as long as mine doesn’t mean yours is any less traumatic, Maeve. Trauma is trauma. I…want to hear about it, if you want to talk about it. I’m here to listen to you, too.”
Do I want to? Do I want to bare my soul to him?
“Sorry,” I mumble,” I think I’m just so used to…only talking when I’m told that I feel like it’s never my place to talk.”
“With me, it’s always your place to talk.”
I swallow, thinking of how I want to word what I’m about to say. I’ve only ever opened up to my therapist, never anyone I know. This is all so new to me, and it scares the shit out of me to consider the possibility that he might look at me differently after this, if he hasn’t already.
But I’m ready for this, I think.
For him to see all of me. Even if he decides he doesn’t like what he sees.
“When it happens the first time, it’s like you don’t really know it’s the first. You don’t know that’s what’s going on until way later, you know?”
He nods.
“Because it doesn’t start off as…physical,” I sigh, rubbing my arms, “so when they’re yelling at you, or calling you names, or telling you that you’re not allowed to do certain things anymore, you don’t think it’s abuse.
You think…they’re having an off day. It’s just an argument.
Things’ll get better; it won’t be like this forever. Couples fight.”
Tate is the quiet one now, letting me have the floor, but how he feels is written all over his face. He looks like I’m about to say the worst thing he’ll ever have to hear.
“And then one day, he backhanded me.”
Tate’s intake of breath is audible.
“He’d been going to party after party, every weekend, and I had asked him to just this once stay in with me. Told him I felt like we never spent time together anymore, and he took offense to that.” I take a deep breath. “I never even raised my voice, but he hit me, anyway.”
Tate balls his hand that’s sitting on his leg up into a white-knuckled fist, but still, he says nothing.
“He was so apologetic afterward that I thought, surely, he would never do that to me again. I mean, he cried, more than I did.”
Thinking back on that day, for some reason, I feel humiliated. Embarrassed that I stuck around after that. That I caved in so easily when he said he was sorry. Like I’m some idiot for not just leaving after the first time.
“But then, the next time, he shoved me back into the wall, and I hit my head so hard that it gave me a concussion…” I swallow thickly as I recall that day. “He took me to the emergency room, said that I fell. And I…went along with it.”
He flexes his fist out, like it’s physically hurting him to clench it as hard as he is.
“I don’t know if I did it out of fear or because I genuinely thought I could fix him…but either way, it was stupid. So, so stupid.”
“Hey,” he rushes out, shaking his head at me, “no, Maeve. You’re not stupid.”
“Felt pretty stupid when he choked me out the next time.”
“Maeve,” Tate whispers.
I blink through my tears over at him, giving him my most reassuring smile. “I’m okay now. Everything is okay. It’s over. So…you know. I’m okay.”
He doesn’t look the slightest bit convinced, but he bobs his head faintly, scooting over to put his hand on my thigh, giving it a comforting squeeze.
“Was it the last time?” he asks.
I nod. “It was the last time.”
“What made it the last time?”
“I thought I died,” I rasp. “I saw stars, then I saw nothing. There was just…nothing for a while.”
There’s a look that flashes across Tate’s features, one that I realize is fear, just before he reaches over to cradle my face in his hands. He’s searching my eyes for something, his eyebrows knitted deeply as he sucks in a deep breath.
“Are you gonna be okay?” he asks, blinking rapidly. “When you go back? Without me there, without someone to… Are you going to be okay if he shows up again?”
I grasp onto his forearm. “I will be fine, Tate. I promise.”
“And you’d tell me if something happened?”
“Yes,” I whisper, “you know I would.”
He nods in acknowledgment of my response, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones as his gaze flickers down to my lips. My stomach dips at that, sending that fluttering feeling to my core, but before I have a chance to process it, his lips are on mine.
And like I’m kissing him for the first time, I feel that warmth again. The watching him staring up at the Space Needle with snowflakes in his hair warmth.