Chapter 41 #2
“Because it doesn’t have anything to fucking do with you!” Luke shouts, his jaw clenched in anger. “It’s not your responsibility to fix it. It’s not your problem.”
“You showed up at my door half-dead!” I snap back. “How is that not my problem?”
“I shouldn’t have come here.” He stands up from the counter as if he’s going to leave, effectively removing himself from this argument.
“Oh, no. That’s not fair, Luke.” I laugh dryly, moving to block him. “You don’t get to decide how and when I get involved and then up and leave when it’s inconvenient. I’m already involved. I’m invested.”
“You never leave well enough alone!” Luke shakes his head. “I don’t want your help with this. I’m asking you to let me handle it on my own. Why can’t you just respect that?”
“Why are you so afraid of letting me help you?”
“I’m not afraid. Don’t be so full of yourself.”
“Who did this to you, Luke?” I demand with growing impatience. “Tell me the fucking truth. Who has been hurting you?”
“It was Pete!” he thunders back, his temper boiling over the edge. “Pete did this to me.”
I frown. “Your stepdad?”
“Yes! Are you fucking happy?” he screams, putting his hand to his throat as it exacerbates his injury.
His voice is cracked and raspy as he continues.
“He was beating the shit out of my mom again, and I stepped in to intervene, just like I always do. He turned on me instead and nearly killed me in a drunken rage.”
I stare at Luke, my mind racing.
Pete.
The horrible stepfather Luke has hated from the very beginning.
He’s the one responsible for all of the bruises and beatings?
Why did that never cross my mind as an option?
When I think back on it, it should have been obvious.
All the signs were there. Whenever Luke complained about him, it was always with deep loathing, malice, and a strong desire for a hole to open in the Earth’s crust and swallow him up.
You don’t get that level of hatred for another person unless they’ve given you a reason.
How many times did Luke say he wished his mom would finally wake up and leave him?
How many times did he come over grumbling about his jackass stepfather and all the terrible ways he’d treated him?
It was there when I picked Luke up on the side of the road all those weeks ago…
The genuine fear he’s had about Misty being around him…
It all flew over my head.
I assigned all of the blame to Frank because he seemed like the obvious choice for Luke’s injuries. But Luke never once named his attacker—even last night as he was weeping on the shower floor. It was me who assumed. Me who acted on that assumption.
Luke swallows, and his lower lip trembles as tears come to his eyes. He takes a deep, shaky breath and looks at me with a depth of soul-crushing agony that runs straight through me.
“And my mom…” he continues with a sob. “She eventually pulled him off me before it was too late. She was begging for him to stop. He almost didn’t.
But once he let me go, she crawled right back into his arms like nothing happened—consoling him, like I’m the one who did something wrong.
Like it’s perfectly normal for her husband to nearly strangle her son to death.
She didn’t seem to give two shits about whether or not I was all right.
She just kicked me out of the house—told me to get away.
She should have left with me. Instead, she chose him over me. ”
She chose him. The exact words that brought him such unfathomable anguish last night.
I didn’t know the context then or how something like that could hurt him so much.
Now I understand, and the thought brings tears to my eyes.
My brain creates a perfect mental picture.
Luke, lying helplessly under his stepfather’s grasp, his mom desperately trying to pull him off.
Not being able to breathe, thinking it’s the end…
and then finally being saved only to watch his mother console his attacker first.
“Luke….” I take a step toward him, wanting to comfort him. He holds his hand up and backs away, keeping the distance between us.
“I’ve spent the last few months trying to get her away from him,” he shouts, pacing back and forth across the floor, his whole body rigid.
“I’ve wasted so much of my time helping her get her finances in order—putting a plan together to help her leave him for good.
And so many times, we were this close to packing her bags and finally doing it.
I’d almost convinced her to go. Then she’d back out at the last minute, claiming that he’s promised to do better from now on—that he loves her—only for him to turn around and beat the shit out of her again two days later because she didn’t cook dinner the way he liked it. ”
I’m frozen like a statue, listening to his painful words, watching how much it upsets him to speak, and knowing in some part that I’ve brought this out in him with my insistence that he let me in.
My body aches with the desire to wrap him in my arms and ease some of his suffering, but he’s made it very clear he doesn’t want that right now.
“I put my life on hold coming back here to get her out,” he continues. “I lost months of my happiness… I put my career on hold.”
He takes a deep, shuddering breath, gripping his hair until it looks like he’ll nearly pull it out.
His voice is ragged, his anger circumventing the pain of his throat as he bellows his frustrations.
I know he’s not letting all of this out for my benefit.
Now that the floodgates are open, every pent-up emotion he’s kept bottled in for the last few months is gushing out of him beyond his control.
“Fuck! I turned down a part in a great show to be here for her! I left my cat alone for months, even though it broke my heart. I went through my entire life savings so she’d leave him.
I did all of this for her, and how does she fucking repay me?
She chooses to stay with her abuser two seconds after he nearly murders her only son.
There’s no line he can’t cross. Even if he’d succeeded, she would probably justify it and stick with him until he kills her next. ”
“Why don’t you go to the police?” I ask.
“The police don’t do fucking shit,” Luke hisses, his words laced with venom. “Whenever they come to the house for a domestic dispute call, they just end up buying Pete’s bullshit and making it worse for her to deal with when they leave. All cops are bastards.”
“But look at what he did to you,” I say. “You can press charges for aggravated assault.”
He shakes his head, tears in his eyes. “It’s still too risky. They’ll arrest him, but they won’t keep him there. He’ll get out on bail and go right back to hurt her in retribution.” Then he takes a shaky breath, his voice rising sharply in anger. “God, why am I still protecting her?”
He drops his shoulders, tears streaming down his face, his whole body shaking again. He turns his eyes to me, and the level of anguish in his expression stabs through me like a knife.
“Do you have any idea how it feels to watch your own mother abandon you for a monster?” His voice breaks. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this sooner?” I ask softly.
Luke scoffs, shaking his head as he looks away. “Don’t you start. You’re one to fucking talk. You have no right to judge me for the secrets I keep from you when you’re keeping a pretty massive one of your own.”
I frown with confusion. “What are you—”
“The house, Ethan,” Luke snaps. “The fucking townhouse.”
I freeze, trapped like a deer caught in headlights. “Where did you….”