Chapter 29
APRIL - THE REED LAND, NORTH CAROLINA
Now playing: Same Love - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Mary Lambert
Scott made good on his promise of getting everyone together for dinner this evening. He did it swiftly, and quickly, like it wasn’t any kind of a bother, like I didn’t entirely throw off whatever the fuck he had been doing before Cal and I walked through his front door.
We hung out in the guest room for a while, just us, doing exactly what Scott said: resetting. We left the door open. We had nothing to hide anymore, not here anyways.
We lay on the bed, Cal holding onto me. He knew I needed it, and I wasn’t going to fight it right now. I couldn’t. My nervous system was fried, buzzing with a static hum that only his touch seemed to quiet.
I heard Scott on the phone in the living room some.
I knew he was on the phone with my Aunt Jayme, trying not to say outright what was going on, I’m sure to try and make it so it didn’t seem as if he was talking about us while we were right here.
But I definitely heard some kind of sentence along the lines of “Came out to me” and “Brought the boyfriend with him.”
I knew Jayme wouldn’t judge. Honestly, of all my family, Jayme was the one I didn’t fear being unaccepting.
Jayme was the only female figure I’d had in my life.
She’d started dating Scott when I was around seven, and stepped into a motherly role she didn’t ask to have, but she did it anyways, because she loved me. And I knew that for a fact.
We were laying on the queen mattress together, my head on Cal’s chest, him stroking my back. It was my only anchor in this madness, and he knew it too.
“You okay?” Cal asked, his voice a rumble against my ear.
“I think so,” I whispered. “Scott… he handled that better than I thought he would.”
“He loves you, Si,” Cal said gently, rubbing circles into my back. “I could see it. He lit up when you walked in.”
I pulled back just enough to look at Cal. I needed him to see me. I needed to say the things I had kept locked inside my mind for so many years.
“He does,” I admitted, my voice thick. “And I love him. I have a better relationship with him than I do my dad because Scott… Scott actually acknowledges it. He admits they fucked up. He admits they weren’t there. He tries to bridge that gap.”
“But it hurts,” I confessed, the words tasting like bile. “Seeing him like this. Seeing him be this incredible, present father to the twins. Seeing Maverick be this doting dad to my little brothers. It kills me.”
I looked up, meeting his hazel eyes.
“It kills me because they couldn’t do it for me.”
Cal’s face softened, his brows pulling together in a fierce, protective sorrow. He didn’t interrupt. He just listened, his thumb brushing back and forth over my shoulder.
“Scott didn’t get clean until the twins were toddlers and my aunt threatened to take them and leave,” I said, sitting up to stare at the floorboards where I used to hide my own secrets.
“He was popping pills like candy when I was a kid. And Maverick… he didn’t put the bottle down until his wife found out she was pregnant with their second. ”
My voice cracked.
“They got sober for their second chances. They didn’t get sober for their first one.”
The resentment I had been swallowing for decades clawed its way up my throat. It wasn’t hate, I loved them, but it was a deep, rotting jealousy that I had never been enough to save them.
“Why wasn’t I enough?” I choked out, tears stinging my eyes.
“Why wasn’t I enough of a reason for them to get clean?
I was right there. I was the one dragging Maverick out of bars at two in the morning when I was kid.
I was the one making sure Scott didn’t choke on his own vomit.
But I wasn’t enough to make them stop. Only the new families were. ”
Cal moved instantly. He slid off the bed and knelt on the floor between my legs, grabbing my hands. He looked up at me with an intensity that stole my breath.
“Silas, look at me,” he commanded softly. “That was not your failure. That was their sickness. You were a child. You were a child doing a man’s job, protecting them when they should have been protecting you. You were always enough. They were just too broken to see it.”
I nodded, a tear slipping free. “I know. Logically, I know that. But the resentment… it’s always there. Especially with the stories they tell. The ‘legacy’ stories.”
Cal frowned. “Like the road trips?”
“The road trips,” I scoffed, a bitter, jagged sound. “They tell everyone we went on the road to ‘train.’ That I was this prodigy learning the ropes. People think I was learning headlocks in hotel rooms.”
I leaned in, my voice dropping to a whisper, confessing the family secret I had protected my whole life.
“We weren’t training. We were running. They needed a cover for how bad the drinking and the drugs had gotten.
They dragged me across the country so they could get high in hotel rooms without their wives seeing.
I spent weeks sitting in the dark, watching wrestling tapes on mute while they passed out, just checking their pulses to make sure they were still breathing. ”
Cal’s grip on my body tightened, his jaw clenching. I could see the fury radiating off him. He looked like he wanted to burn the world down to retroactively save that teenage boy.
“I still have nightmares about it,” I admitted, the shame burning my cheeks. “I wake up sweating because I dreamt Scott overdosed in a hotel bathroom. Or that Maverick was so drunk and sick I couldn’t wake him up. I’m almost thirty years old, and I’m still scared I’m going to find them dead.”
Cal reached up, cupping my face with both hands, his thumbs wiping away the tears. He looked at me with such profound tenderness it made my heart ache.
“You deserved so much better, Si,” Cal whispered, his voice rough with emotion. “You deserved to be a kid. You deserved parents who put you first. And I hate them for that. I hate that they made you feel like you had to earn their sobriety.”
He leaned in and kissed the top of my head, lingering there, breathing me in.
“But look at you,” Cal murmured against my skin.
“You survived it. You built yourself out of nothing. You’re the strongest man I know.
And you aren’t alone in it anymore. When the nightmares come?
You wake me up. You tell me. I’ll remind you they’re alive.
I’ll remind you that you’re safe. I’ve got you. ”
I leaned into his touch, closing my eyes, letting his strength seep into my bones. He wasn’t trying to fix it. He wasn’t telling me to forgive them. He was just standing in the dark with me, holding the light.
“I’m proud of you,” Cal said softly, his voice a low rumble against my ear. He stroked my back, his hand large and warm, and leaned forward, kissing the top of my head.
The reality of it all still hadn’t hit me, and in a way, I was grateful for that.
Hopeful maybe I could live in this delusion long enough to make it through telling Maverick.
Then, I could go to my own damn house at the end of the dirt road, and freak the fuck out.
And maybe get fucked too, if I was that lucky.
Scott appeared in the doorway. My body still wanted to jerk at the sight of him seeing us like this, old habits died hard, but Scott didn’t flinch.
Didn’t even seem phased. I felt lucky here, because even if he did want to have a reaction to seeing his nephew cuddled up to another man, he refrained. Wholeheartedly.
“Mav just texted me back,” Scott said, leaning casually against the doorframe, sipping his tea. “Taylor had some kind of soccer thing tonight, so they’re gonna roll in a little later, but they’ll be here with all the boys.”
I sat up and smiled at the thought. Though I didn’t see or speak to my younger siblings and cousins much, it still was special to me when I did see them.
I had three younger half-brothers. Taylor was the oldest at sixteen, then there was Colin who was fourteen, and Vega, who was twelve. The boys all favored their mom, Shannon, sandy blonde hair, bright smiles, but with my dad’s dark eyes. My dark eyes.
And then there were the twins, Josie and Cadence, Scott’s girls.
They were seventeen, turning eighteen next month, and they were always the highlight of my trips home.
Josie and Cadence couldn’t be more different.
Though they were identical twins, their personality differences made them seem worlds apart.
Josie was the girly one, dresses, every day in Wilmington at the beach, blasting country music.
She was your typical coastal teenage girl.
But Cadence? Cadence was everything but.
Cadence wanted to follow in our footsteps.
She wanted to wrestle, and she was busting her ass to learn.
She was always in some outfit that looked like it came straight out of the nineties grunge era, her hair was always done in some weird way, and her sarcasm rivaled my dad’s.
And when she and Josie were on it together?
Nobody was safe from their absolute trolling.
“Come on,” Scott said, pushing off the doorframe. “Let’s get some fresh air before the chaos starts. I wanna show you guys something.”
Scott dragged Cal and me out of the guest room. He knew I was nervous, he knew Cal was too, and he was trying his best to make this entire thing easier.
We followed him out the back door, past the porch, and toward the large metal barn that housed the ring. The sun was starting to dip lower, painting the sky in strokes of violent orange and purple.
“I finally finished the insulation in here,” Scott said proudly, sliding the heavy barn door open. “No more freezing our asses off in the winter.”
We walked inside. The ring sat in the center, pristine and waiting. Scott had cleaned it up. He walked over to a corner where three brand new four wheelers sat gleaming under the shop lights.