20. PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
Now playing: Praying - Kesha
The first fifteen minutes of the drive once we landed in Philly were consumed by a heavy silence.
I stared out the window at the passing trees, watching the familiar landmarks of my youth blur past like a countdown running through my brain.
I knew what was coming. Walking into David’s office to handle Ewan’s estate meant I was going to have to crack open a vault I had sealed shut with steel and concrete over a decade and a half ago.
And there was no way I could survive the memories without Silas to anchor me.
“Si?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“First, do you mind if we stay at the Donovans’ house instead of our place?
” I asked. Our vacation house was the beautiful, modern home I bought in Philly a few years ago.
It was where we usually stayed when we visited the city, a quiet, private sanctuary.
But right now, the thought of quiet terrified me.
I wanted to be surrounded by my parents and sisters.
I needed the noise. I needed the safety net.
Silas didn’t hesitate. He reached across the center console, taking my hand and pulling it to his lips. “Of course not. We’re going straight to David and Cindy’s. Whatever you need.”
With a slow, jagged breath, my fingers tightened around his. “And second… I think we should talk.”
Silas immediately reached over and turned the radio off, giving me his undivided attention. His eyes stayed on the road, but I saw the way his shoulders tensed. “Okay, I’m listening.”
I swallowed hard, my throat feeling like it was lined with sandpaper.
“I never really elaborated on what it was like…before David and Cindy took me in. I’ve told you the bare minimum because, in my mind, it had already happened.
There was no changing the past. I survived it.
I got out. Talking about it just gave him power.
But…you’re going to hear things over the next few days, and I want you to hear the truth from me first.”
Silas squeezed my hand. A silent, steady promise of safety.
“My life was relatively normal at first,” I started, my eyes fixed blindly on the glove compartment.
“Or as normal as it could be for a poor kid in a bad neighborhood. But everything shattered when my mom left. Fiona walking out the door was the catalyst, but the drinking started long before that. When she left, it was like someone took the leash off of a rabid dog.”
My heart rate spiked and my hands went clammy, but I pushed on, reciting my childhood trauma as if it were a grocery list. “At first, it was just verbal. He was a mean drunk. He always used to corner me and spew shit about how he wished Fiona would’ve taken me with her.
I got told I was a burden, a mistake, and that he wished they’d never had me.
At ten, I believed every word. Then it progressed, I think because the words weren’t enough to satisfy his rage anymore.
One night, when I was eleven, he was completely wasted.
He threw a beer bottle at the wall, which made me flinch.
He got so mad at my reaction, he backhanded me.
The force was so hard, I lost my footing and fell into the sharp corner of the wooden coffee table.
” My finger subconsciously traced the faint, faded scar which cut through my left eyebrow.
“I was bleeding everywhere, but he left me there and went to sleep.”
Silas’s grip on my hand became incredibly tight. His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel, but he remained silent, letting me purge the poison.
“From that night on, the physical abuse was part of my daily routine,” I continued, memories flashing behind my eyes in brutal, violent bursts. “The more he drank, the worse it got, but it didn’t end with his fists.”
I closed my eyes as a sickening shudder rolled down my spine. The phantom sensation of choking had my throat seizing.
“By the time I was twelve, he moved on to things that were significantly more sadistic. If he felt I misbehaved, looked at him wrong, or if I didn’t clean the house how he expected, he wouldn’t just hit me.
I’d be dragged by my hair into the bathroom and thrown into the shower.
The water would be freezing, and he’d hold me down under the spray.
I was essentially waterboarded until I passed out from panic and lack of oxygen. ”
The SUV swerved slightly, the tires hitting the rumble strip on the shoulder for a split second before Silas corrected it. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t.
“When he wasn’t doing that, he’d lock me in my bedroom.
Sometimes for two or three days at a time without food or water.
I’d drink out of the bathroom sink whenever he passed out.
There were never groceries in the house anyway, and he certainly never gave me a dime to buy any.
The only time I ate was if I stole food from the corner store, which I did almost every day.
I was starving and practically a skeleton. ”
The shame of it, the deep, rotting weight of being a filthy, starving kid, burned in my chest. “That’s how I met April,” I whispered, a sad, fond smile touching my lips as I thought of my sister.
“I was thirteen and had tried to steal a loaf of bread, but the cashier caught me. April was in the store. She paid for it and also bought me a hot meal. When I met her… Si, I didn’t even have clothes that fit me.
I was going through puberty, and the clothes I had from when I was ten were practically cutting off my circulation.
I didn’t own any underwear. Hell, I hadn’t worn a pair of socks in six months because the ones I had ripped through. ”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, the tears finally spilling over and falling silently down my cheeks.
“We got closer after that, so much so that David and Cindy bought me clothes for my fourteenth birthday. It was the first time I had a new shirt in years, but when I brought them home…Ewan found them. He assumed I’d stolen his liquor money to buy them.
He beat me with a leather belt until I threw up, and then burned the clothes in the backyard. ”
A choked, ragged sound from Silas ripped through the quiet cab of the car. It twisted my gut into knots, halting my words, but I knew I needed to press on.
“The last time he ever put his hands on me was a month later,” I said as my voice dropped into a hollow whisper.
“That night… I genuinely thought I was going to die. He’d been on a three-day bender and came at me.
I tried to fight back for the first time, which was a mistake.
He picked me up by my throat and threw me into the hallway wall so hard, my body went completely through the drywall.
I was disorientated and didn’t see him coming when he dragged me into the kitchen and slammed the back of my head repeatedly against the ceramic tiles. ”
The memory was so vivid, I could smell the cheap beer and copper tang of my own blood.
“I couldn’t feel from my waist down for a solid hour.
All I could do was lie there, bleeding onto the floor, while he sat at the table and drank.
It wasn’t until he finally passed out in his chair that the feeling in my legs finally started to come back.
I knew if I stayed until he woke up, he would inevitably kill me.
So, with whatever strength I had left, I crawled to my bedroom and jumped out, well, more like fell out the window.
It was December, and I didn’t have shoes or a jacket, but I ran through the snow until I found an open gas station down the road.
I used their payphone to collect-call April, and David and Cindy showed up about ten minutes later.
I’m not kidding when I say they picked me up off the curb, wrapped me in a blanket, and took me home.
After that night…I was theirs. They took me in, and I never looked back. ”
Silas turned his blinker on and pulled the SUV off the highway. He threw the car into park on the gravel shoulder and looked straight out the windshield, his chest heaving.
When I finally looked at him, my chest tightened.
Silas was crying. He was openly and violently sobbing, his shoulders forcefully shaking in distress.
With frantic movements, he ripped his seatbelt off, reaching over the center console to grab me.
Hauling me into his arms, he crushed me against his chest with desperate strength.
I buried my face in his neck and wrapped my arms around him. And there, on the side of the highway, we sat crying into each other. Silas shook his head as his hands gripped the fabric of my jacket. The air was still, and I could tell he had no idea what to say.
“That’s why I have night terrors sometimes and wake up swinging,” I mumbled into his skin, ready to finish the puzzle now that the pieces were unboxed. “It’s why… Fuck. I was terrified of showers until I was twenty-two and got signed to the UWF.”
Silas pulled back just enough that I could see his tear-filled eyes go wide.
“The only reason I got over it was because I was afraid that the other guys would think I was weird or gross if I didn’t shower after training.
” A hot flush colored my cheeks. “I forced myself to do it. I white-knuckled it every day, standing under the water having silent panic attacks until my brain was okay with it, but I avoided it any other time.”
Silas stared at me, his lip trembling. “But…when we were younger you showered with me all the time. How…?”
I cupped my hand around his tear-stained cheek and gazed at him with devotion that bled from my pores. “Because it was with you. You made me feel safe, Silas. From the day I met you, I knew you wouldn’t let anything hurt me. When I was with you, the water was just water.”