Chapter 34
34
S imon sat on the floor in his living room and played with Kitten. He’d been out all day and the baby wanted attention.
He had a colorful ribbon on a stick, a small version of what the gymnasts he’d seen on TV used. Kitten chased it, executing moves he hadn't even seen the gymnasts do. Her antics made him smile. And it was good, because the rest of him was running in all kinds of crazy counteractive circles.
Part of him was euphoric. Somehow, the worst had happened. Carlisle had seen everything and, as she'd said, she was still here . Somehow, she had kissed him last night and he had kissed her back. That freedom had felt wild and crazy and almost kinky.
She had said yes to everything. He'd taken his shirt off in front of her, for the first time knowing he didn’t have to hide. She knew all of it and she was still here, still touching him, still wanting him.
His stomach had rolled with nerves. He'd flinched the first few times her fingers had roved over his shoulders. But quickly, it became clear that there was nothing different in it for her. That had made everything different for him. There was nothing left that she hadn’t seen. The worst had happened between them, his secrets were out, and she still looked at him like she wanted him, needed him.
He was still coming down from the high and the terror of having actually made love to her. It had been different before. He knew he was holding things back, but he always had. He’d had no idea he could be that connected to another person.
Carlisle had looked in his eyes as she came apart from his touch. She’d held on to him as he had. It felt like he'd seen all the way into her, and she'd seen all the way into him. As she'd said, even afterwards, I'm still here .
He hadn’t thought that was possible. Though he knew better, he still felt the things Stephen had told him. That it had been his fault. That he’d, in some way, earned the threats and the burns and the torture. Those things stuck even after he’d grown up and learned that his abuse had followed, sadly, typical patterns.
His mother had called that morning, letting him know another bill had come in. He'd reassured her he had it covered, told her it was no big deal. Then he told her to put it off until next month. The bill would be fine, he knew, but then his mother knew that his bank account wasn’t as flush as he was making it out to be.
She hated asking him for the money. He could hear it in her tone. But the alternative was for her to go to work all the time and not be there for Darcy. There were no good answers, so he worked to assure her it would be fine. He told her he had a girlfriend and that she would love Carlisle when she got to meet her.
Though his mom had never specifically said so, it was clear she’d hoped the move would give him “a more normal life.” He’d not wanted normal. He’d moved to help his family. The money had been almost impossible to say no to. But it felt good to tell his mother that he’d moved another step closer to the normal she desired for him.
She filled him in on how Darcy had come down off her euphoria and now was at the complete other end of the spectrum. His mother was dealing with it. Darcy had moved into depression, already moved through to the point that Mom was worried she might harm herself.
Simon worried too. And he wasn’t there this time. He worried despite the fact that they had been through this over and over and over again. Every single time it was just as scary.
He dragged the ribbon across the floor and watched as Kitten crouched down, her tiny butt wiggling as though she were a fearsome predator. Now he felt he understood Darcy a little better. Carlisle had said something that made his thinking shift.
He’d always known his sister was likely in the throes of a chemical depression. Her brain and her body betrayed her sometimes. Her serotonin and dopamine, or any combination of neurotransmitters, was likely stripped bare, and nothing brought her joy. All of that was chemical and medical.
But what Carlisle said had clicked into place for him. Darcy was also likely, horrifyingly, just sad and with good reason. She had been her full self for a while and it was gone. Even if no one else seemed to agree with her decision, she had let herself be . But it only lasted for a very short time before it was ripped away.
His mother raved about the art that Darcy created during her good days. She’d told him how it was brilliant and sometimes petrifying. She had snapped pictures of oil canvases Darcy had painted. His mother had not asked for money but showed him the receipt from the art store. She’d spent all her own money trying to help Darcy feed her artistic need while she was up.
He wondered then how well he would handle it if somebody stripped away his ability to be himself, to do his everyday tasks. What if he couldn't play with Kitten? Kitten was making him smile just chasing this ridiculous ribbon. What if that was gone?
What if he couldn't talk to Carlisle? What if he couldn't work? Who knew how he would feel or react if he lost all his ability to do the things that he normally did. What if he played basketball and couldn't even hold onto the ball? What if all things that he thought about himself—things he tied to his own personality—were just gone?
While he knew, or at least he believed, that all these things would come back for Darcy, he wondered if she could look at it statistically. Could she reassure herself that it would loop back around, that she would be okay again?
But he had to admit his own part in her treatment. What if—while all these things had been stripped away from him, and he was trying to climb out the other side—everyone was telling him to take the medications that would stop him from finding himself again?
Simon took a deep breath, his eyes pulled wide enough to make them tear. How did Darcy survive that? She was as strong as anyone he’d ever met.
He whispered to the tiny cat, even as Kitten sat and cocked her little head and big ears at him, wondering why the ribbon had stopped moving, “What have we done to her?”
He knew. He knew they had only done what they could. The medication would stop the depression, too. But Holy Hell, Darcy had to choose. She had to choose to stop all the highs, lose what she saw as her artistic ability, lose at least some of the things that she defined as herself, in order to have the stability.
Would he handle it with any grace if his sense of self had been taken away from him?
He saw Carlisle in a new light, too.
A tiny meow brought him back to reality and he wiggled the ribbon again, delighted at Kitten’s tiny cat’s desire to catch it. She acted as if she were in the woods and this was her food. He flipped the ribbon and watched as she launched her little fuzzy body into the air, claws out, trying to catch it.
Carlisle had experienced something that he had to imagine was akin to Darcy’s experience. Only her feelings had come from an entirely different source. Carlisle didn't have medical or chemical issues like that, at least not as far as he knew, but everything had been almost ripped away from her.
His head jerked up at the sound of the back door opening.
He saw her then, smiling in the doorway as if his thoughts had conjured her.
“I brought dinner.” Carlisle held up the brown bag.
He smelled it then: burgers and fries. Her favorites.
Was she trying to normalize everything after last night? Had it been as intense for her?
He stood up, trailing the little ribbon behind him and letting Kitten follow along. He met Carlisle by the table that no one ate at. Taking the bag from her hand, he set it on the table, not worrying about the greasy spots.
She hadn't bought drinks. Neither of them bought drinks because it was extra money and they had drinks at home and . . . Holy shit. She fully understood him.
She bought him dinner even though she had no real income yet. They had had a number of orders for her kit, for which she was incredibly excited. As she pointed out, it didn't even begin to put a dent in what they’d invested. But she’d still spent her money on him, even though he’d spent his on his mother and his sister.
Leaning forward, he grabbed at her waist and tugged her into his arms, his eyes falling closed as he did. She worked some kind of spell on him. The stress and tension of his day—his worried thoughts and all the needs that he could never quite get ahead of—drained out of him as he touched her .
He was left with only the core of who he was. And he could be that with her.
Simon’s hands moved of their own accord, coming up on either side of her face, holding her to him. He kissed her until she was kissing him back, until she was wrapped around him, until she finally pulled away and said, “Food first or Kitten’s going to eat it.”
“She can't get on the table.” He grinned at her but out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Kitten hopped her way onto a chair and then from the chair onto the table. Before he could grab the bag, she was trying to climb in with the food.
“Hey!” He snatched the bag away. He conceded to Carlisle, if not the small cat. “Okay, you win. But food is second.”
She frowned, about to protest, but he didn’t let her. “First, I need you to know that you can tell me anything about what you went through even though it was awful. I know that it was awful, and I’ll be here. I hear you sometimes at night and I know you still haven't shaken it.”
She looked at him for a moment, her expression odd before it seemed to click that their conversation last night was still sticking with him.
“I need you to know that I am so grateful to you.” The words choked as he tried to say them, but he had to. “You are so smart and so brave. I don't know if I could have saved myself in the same situation.”
“I didn't save myself,” she protested as she usually did. Stepping back, she raised her hands up as she always did. “Ever saved me.”
“No.” Simon pulled her back. Let Kitten get into the burgers if she was going to because this was too important. “You saved you. Ever dove into the water and she pulled up what was there. If you hadn't done what you did, she would have only seen a dead body. ”
Carlisle blinked at him as if putting those pieces together for the first time.
He pushed harder. “I will not deny that I owe Ever so much. She is my hero because she saved you. And I want to believe she saved you for me.” The last words came out in a whisper. “But you also saved you. And I want to believe that you saved you for me .”