Chapter 54 #2
He was always such a fucking prick. “I fucked up. There’s no sugarcoating it or calling it something it isn’t.
All of the shit from the last few months came to a head in the locker room that night.
My adrenaline from the game did nothing to help.
I broke his jaw, put him in the hospital.
He provoked me, yeah, but I shouldn’t have snapped the way I did.
It took me until… recently to come to that conclusion.
I wanted to blame him for all of my bullshit, and he had a part in it, but at the end of the day, I should’ve walked away. ”
I’ve never said that out loud until today. Hell, I never even admitted it to myself until as of late.
Until I started to understand that as much as I wanted to be pissed at my team like they did something to me, I’m the only person responsible for my actions.
“I’m proud of you for realizing that,” Maisie says, offering me a soft, reassuring smile that pulls directly on my heart.
“Thanks, baby.” As much as I wish that was the end of the fucked-up parts of my life, it’s really only the beginning.
Or, well, the end since I’m going backward.
“I tried to talk to my coach and the owners after it happened, but it was too late. I was already deemed the liability at that point. They’d decided at that point I was no longer worth the hassle, the PR nightmare that I’d become over the last few years.
Especially because I’m close to retirement age. Just like that… my career was over.”
“I’m so sorry, Wilder. God, I’m just so sorry,” Maisie whispers thickly.
Ignoring the swell in my chest, the tightness manifesting there, I keep going to the hardest part of all.
The part that I’m dreading with every fiber of my goddamn being to tell her.
“That’s how I ended up back here in NOLA. Back where I ran from the moment I got drafted. More so, who I was running from.”
Her brow furrows with confusion, and I reach up, smoothing it with my thumb.
I swallow hard, forcing the heavy lump of emotion clogging my throat away.
“My mother was a drug addict. I think she was actively using even while pregnant with me. Probably a miracle that I wasn’t born with any issues from it.
If she wasn’t shooting up while she was pregnant, it might be the one and only unselfish thing she ever did.
” I’m fighting for air because of the lump of emotion that’s the size of a fist pressing against my windpipe.
I squeeze my eyes shut, willing myself to continue, to get the shit out so I don’t have to think of it again.
One time, and then maybe I’ll suddenly be healed from lifelong trauma.
I know that’s bullshit, but fuck, maybe if I repeat it enough, it’ll actually happen.
I feel Maisie’s hand curling at my jaw, along my cheek, and I lean into her touch.
“My first memory that I have is of her passed out on our couch after pumping herself full of drugs and the smell of burnt macaroni and cheese choking me. To this day, I can’t smell it, or I’ll vomit.
It’s one of those triggering memories that just fucking cripples me. ”
One of many.
But I don’t say that out loud.
I just push forward, the contents of my life spilling out of me.
“I was in fifteen different foster homes from the ages of six to twelve. Before I was put in Crescent House. They gave her temporary custody back six times, and every time, I left a little more fucked in the head than I was before.” I flex my fingers along Maisie’s back, trying to ground myself.
“I remember being a kid and wishing that family services would show up. Wishing they’d take me away and never bring me back.
And then I felt guilty for feeling that way.
Fuck, she was my mom, but that’s not a title she ever deserved.
” I shake my head. “It wasn’t the group home that triggered me as much as it was the physical representation of all the fucked-up shit I endured as a child.
Walking back in there for the first time was like I was stepping right back into the shoes of a seven-year-old kid who was ripped away from the only parent he’d ever known, even if she was his abuser, not a true mother.
I was too young to realize how bad it was because it was the only reality I ever knew. She was all I knew.”
When I peel my eyes open, I find tears tracking Maisie’s cheeks, mixing with the spray from the shower, and I brush them away. I fucking hate that I put them there.
I hate exposing her to this fucked-up side of the world. An ugly, dark place in the world I hope she never has to experience.
She never will if she stays with me.
But I have to keep going. I can’t give her half of me any longer. I need her to hear it all.
“I slept on the front porch of our trailer more nights than I can even count. I’d get off the bus from school, and she’d be on a bender, nowhere to be fucking found.
The door would be locked, and I didn’t know how to get inside.
I stole to eat, I fought to survive. I’ve done things I’m ashamed of, that I’m disgusted by, because there wasn’t any other option.
I’ve seen things that no child should ever fucking see.
Experienced things that haunt me every single day, things that I will never forget. Things I will never heal from.”
“Oh, Wilder.” Her voice breaks, agony tearing through my name as it leaves her lips, and she presses her small body even tighter against me like she’s going to protect me, even from the past.
I clear my throat and gesture to the spot on my forearm, a red, raised spot that barely shows anymore beneath the ink, but it’s forever ingrained in my head.
“This scar, right here? Cigarette burn.”
Next, I point to the scar above my eyebrow. “This one? The time she threw a can of ravioli at me, and the top was open, so it sliced my head up. Needed stitches, but I got a dirty rag to stop the bleeding.”
Every place I show Maisie, she follows with her fingers, gently brushing her fingers over the scars like she’s trying to erase them. To take the pain away.
It makes my chest feel fucking tight.
“And this one?” I drag my fingers along the uneven, raised line on my throat.
“I didn’t think I’d live through that one.
One of the last times I saw her before CPS permanently took me away.
Probably wouldn’t have survived it if one of the men she was sleeping with for drugs didn’t have the smallest semblance of humanity left in him.
He called the ambulance so I wouldn’t bleed out. ”
Maisie’s sobbing now, and I knew she would be when she finally heard it all, when she finally understood that I’m truly as fucked-up as I said I am.
“It was a childhood of horrors, and I relive it… every single day of my life. In the way I treat other people, in the behaviors I learned and I can’t seem to unlearn.
In the way that I think of myself, the people around me.
The future.” I laugh, hating how devoid it sounds.
“I’m thirty-four, Maisie, and I can’t even imagine being a father.
When I imagine it, I think about how my child will end up just as fucked-up as I am, and then I’ll have to live with the guilt that I brought a kid into this world, knowing that I’m rotten, that I inherited it from the people who brought me into the world.
The only way to stop it from spreading is to kill it at the root. ”
When she opens her mouth to speak, I shake my head. “Just let me… let me get it out, baby. I need to tell you all of it. If I stop, I might never be able to finish.” After a beat, she nods, and I drag in an uneven breath that feels as unsteady as I do.
My back presses to the shower wall, and I drop my head against the chipped tile. This is the first time I’ve said most of this out loud, ever, and it’s fucking hard.
Opening up to Maisie, even with how badly I want to, is still the hardest thing I think I’ve ever done.
I’ve kept so much buried away for so long that it feels like I’m ripping it out of the places it’s embedded inside of me, and fuck, the wounds are busted open and gushing.
The only thing that grounds me is Maisie.
Her fingers dragging along my skin. Her warm body pressed against me.
It’s hard, but she’s here, and I have to believe that she’s not going anywhere.
That she’s going to stay.
“I left New Orleans because I thought it was poison, passed down from my parents. But that’s the thing, Maisie. I realized once I left that the poison is running through my veins. It’s inside me. It fucked up the only thing I ever had, and I’m terrified it’s going to ruin you too.”
“No,” she says, vehemently shaking her head. “There’s nothing rotten about you, Wilder. Nothing. You were abused and neglected, and none of it was your fault.”
“You’re right. Your mother is the one person in the world who’s supposed to love you unconditionally.
But my mother abused me. Neglected me. She abandoned me because she loved drugs more than she ever loved me.
She loved getting high more than her son.
My mother showed me just how unkind the world was before I was even old enough to understand it. ”
I pause, finally losing the death grip I have on my emotions, and I feel my eyes burning.
“If everything she put me through wasn’t enough to scar me…
I’ve always thought that because I loved my mother, even after everything she had done to me, that it made me weak.
She hurt me, mentally and physically, and made me feel unworthy of even fucking living, yet I still couldn’t stop myself from loving her.
I would lay down at night, and the prayers I said weren’t for new toys or food that I didn’t have to steal.
It was that, when I woke up the next morning, my mother suddenly wanted me.
That she would finally love me the way a mother was supposed to.
And each morning when I woke up and she was still the same nightmare I’d endured for so long…
that’s when I realized love is a weakness.
A weakness I couldn’t hold hope in any longer. ”
I drop my head back against the tile behind me, trying to pull it back, to rein it in, but it feels fruitless.
“I was just a fucking kid who should’ve been playing with toy cars and climbing trees, but instead, I was hiding in closets from the men she brought home and trying to learn how to use the stove before I could even read.
All I wanted was for her to love me, Maisie.
A fraction of the way I loved her even though she never deserved it. ”
My breathing is labored as I sink down to the cold shower floor, hanging my head between my knees, which are still shaking.
Maisie follows, lowering herself beside me.
She pulls me into her arms, cradling my head against her chest like she’s not half my size, and she just… holds me.
“I’m so sorry that you’ve had to endure so much hurt.
I wish that I could take it away. I know that I can’t, but I’m here, Wilder, and I promise I’m never going to leave.
” The words are whispered against the top of my head.
Her arms tighten as far as they can around my body, and Maisie holds on. She just holds on.
“What if I fuck it all up?” I swallow. “I’m scared that if I… if I love you, that this poison inside of me is going to ruin you. I can’t fucking ruin you, baby.”
“Oh, Wilder, you’re not going to. I see what’s in here.
” Her hand trails over my heart, stopping there.
“I see you even when the only thing you’ve wanted to do is hide.
Your past doesn’t define you, but it did shape you.
It made you into the incredible, resilient, strong man you are today.
And I’m so proud of you, for all of the things that you’re facing, even when they feel like more than you can handle.
I’m not leaving you to face them alone. Never again. ”
All I can do is nod because there aren’t any words that feel like they’ll be enough to thank her for this.
To tell her what it means to me.
To somehow explain that right here, on the shower floor, the water turning cold with my head buried into the soft place between her sternum, I feel more at peace than I’ve ever felt in my entire existence. Thirty-four years on Earth, and never once have I felt safe enough to stop running.
Until her.