Chapter 33
33
T he moment was gone, and Carlisle knew it. She still sat on the kitchen counter, her shirt still on the floor, her bra hanging open. It wasn’t sexy anymore. She was just exposed. Simon’s shirt was still rucked up under his arms. Hopefully no one would walk in. It was a disaster.
He stepped back, ran his fingers through his hair as if he wasn't going to answer her, but then he turned around and nodded.
They were cigarette burns . Her heart twisted.
She’d so hoped he would tell her she was wrong, that it was something she didn’t know, didn’t recognize. But she’d been right.
When he didn't say anything else, she weighed her options. She could leave it at that, click her bra shut, hop down and pick up her shirt, put herself together and . . . leave? But she didn’t want to do that. She needed to know even if she wasn't sure why.
The silence hung heavy between them. Even Kitten was quiet from the other room .
When she could no longer wait, Carlisle opened her mouth but Simon wasn’t looking, and he beat her to it.
“It’s impressive that you can tell. They're so old.” He looked up at her then, his expression blank enough that she wondered if he was testing her.
She shrugged as if it were nothing. It was so far from nothing . She wanted to vomit. Someone had put their cigarettes out on this man's skin when he was a child. But she had been trained in the ER to never react, so she kept her face neutral and said, “I'm a nurse. We have training on what to look for.”
He nodded and the silence fell between them again. The gulf between them made by the clear marks of abuse that she'd seen almost a week ago. She consoled herself that even this little bit was more than she’d had before. He was finally beginning to talk to her even if he wasn't really talking at all.
Despite her discomfort, she still didn't pull her clothing together. She could handle it if he could.
“Foster Care?” she asked. Again, she schooled her expressions to stay flat when he shook his head. Not foster care .
Oh no. Not . . .
“Your mother?” she whispered.
She shouldn't have been surprised by the violence of his outburst.
“No! Never!” He almost yelled it, staring her down, angry that she would dare even suggest it.
It made her wonder what he was covering up. But again, she kept her expression neutral. She'd been trained specifically in this, too: How to not flinch in the face of somebody angry at you.
She knew Simon wasn't really angry at her—he was mad at the suggestion that his mother could have done this. She wasn’t sure she believed him yet. Abused kids hid all kinds of things. She nodded, accepting his answer, but pressed just a little more. “Then when? ”
“Stephen.”
Carlisle had put a few pieces together through previous conversations, but they'd never directly talked about it. She asked now for clarification, “Darcy's father?”
Simon was five when his mother found him on the park bench. Six when she had managed to formally adopt him. Then seven when she'd fallen head over heels in love with a man and had gotten married. They’d had a daughter together: Darcy.
She’d divorced Stephen by the time Darcy was four, but Carlisle just assumed that—like many marriages—it hadn’t worked out. They’d married quickly, and divorced quickly, too. It hadn’t struck her as odd, but now . . .
She didn't know what question to ask next. His mother had married the man who did this to him? She couldn't quite make those pieces go together.
Once again, Simon wouldn’t look at her anymore. He'd moved a few paces away, one hand tugging his shirt down as if that could hide everything that had already been revealed. The other raked through his hair, as if he could pull it from his head. But he didn't tug too hard. It was just frustration, she thought.
“The stupid thing is,” he finally broke the silence. “Mom asked me if I thought she should marry Stephen and I said yes. I adored him. He was wonderful to me. Then.”
The then was telling.
Cigarette burns were a severe form of abuse. And abusers often knew how to charm—at least the ones who got away with it did. They groomed their allies as carefully as they groomed their victims.
“Did he hurt your mother, too?” Carlisle asked, then added, “Darcy?”
It took everything she had to not let tears form in her eyes. He didn’t need that. She was trying to be what he needed, something she couldn’t do if she didn’t know him.
Simon shook his head .
Holy shit . Darcy would have been too young, but was his mom Stephen’s ally?
What a horrifying question. Carlisle couldn’t even bring herself to ask. His mother had completely saved him from the foster care system—one he’d run away from at five. But had she coddled Simon’s abuser after that?
Maybe she missed the signs. Or, as many parents did, ignored them because they didn’t want to believe.
“Did your mother not believe you?” She tried to look relaxed, as if this were just a normal everyday conversation. It was one she'd had in the ER with patients before but not with a man that she was falling head over heels in love with. And not with a man whose reaction could turn her world upside down.
“She didn't know.”
He must have hid it well, Carlisle thought. Then she put the pieces together. “He threatened you.”
“All the time. It was perverse.”
She breathed as deeply as she could without revealing that she was about to lose it. She reminded herself what she had learned: Abusers weren’t original. It was as if they had a handbook; they pretty much all worked the same. The abuser was charming, then once they were ensconced in the relationship, the abuse would start gradually, then escalate. There were always threats: something bad the child had done that would be revealed if the child reported the abuser.
It put the abused kid between a rock and a hard place. There were almost always threats about the child themselves. The abusers made certain that the kid had done something they could use as leverage. They said their family wouldn't love them if they knew. So how did that child go to that same family and explain what was happening?
“He threatened me with all kinds of things. Things I didn't fully know at the time were . . .” he paused, “sexual.”
Oh God, her stomach rolled. She fought the urge to vomit on his kitchen floor. It was always hard hearing these things from a child or even an adult in the ER. It was difficult from someone she didn't know. But from Simon?
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t process it. But this wasn’t about her, and she could lose it later. Not. Now .
He looked at her. “He didn't carry any of his threats out, but I was petrified he would. He would grab me by my hair and whisper in my ear what he was going to do.”
She didn't have it in her to ask for details.
“When I was nine, I told my mother I wanted a buzz cut. It was so Stephen couldn't grab me by my head and hold me anymore, she didn’t ask why. It was just a haircut, and I thought I had gotten the better of him. When we came home and he saw it, he just laughed at me. Mom didn’t see it, but I did. It was like, don’t worry, I can still get you. ”
Carlisle swallowed and nodded as if this were any conversation they might have over the dining room table, as if this was about Kitten maybe needing a dewormer or such.
“The burns started after that.”
Holy fuck. Simon had made a move to get away from the abuse and the abuser had made it worse. Also a typical pattern, she knew. A kid in that situation basically could not win.
“He would do the burns?—”
Do the burns, Carlisle thought, what a casual phrase for something so horrifying .
“Then he would put his hand on my shoulder and squeeze, and I could not let my mom know.”
Carlisle nodded again. That had to be so painful. But Simon was talking, rolling with it, and she was not going to interrupt. But he didn’t say more.
She couldn’t imagine getting burned like that, so viciously. Then having this man put his hands on the spots and dig his fingers into the recently damaged skin. She pushed that thought aside. She would do what she did with a lot of painful things: deal with it later.
“How did your mom find out?”
The silence hung between them again. Apparently, he'd said all he was going to say, and it was more than enough. She absolutely needed space to process this, but this last part—hoping like hell his mother was the good guy in this scenario—Carlisle needed to hear that.
“She just walked in one day when I was changing clothes. I almost never had my clothes off. I swam with a T shirt on, things like that. It was just timing. But she figured it out.”
“And?” Carlisle prompted.
“She filed divorce papers the next day. She did everything she could to get him thrown in jail.”
“Good for her.” The words didn't come out as forceful or strong or even as supportive as Carlisle had hoped.
She’d understood before why he was devoted to his mother, but now she understood nothing would ever break that bond. She figured it probably shouldn't.
Only then, did he lift his gaze and meet her eyes. He stared her down as if daring her to walk away, as if knowing this would mean this was the end between them.
So Carlisle stayed where she was, sitting on his counter. She held her hand out to him, thinking he would lace their fingers together or something.
He walked slowly forward, though his hands stayed at his sides. As if reaching out to her was too much risk.
When she could, she grabbed the front of his shirt, twisted her hand into it and held on tight. She pulled him closer, reaching up to lace her fingers behind his neck and hold him there. It would have been easier not to look him in the eyes, not after such a confession. But she didn't let him look away, as she whispered to him, “I'm still here.”