This Is What It Feels Like

Chapter 22

22

M y mouth was painfully dry, and my body hurt so badly that I couldn’t even shift my legs without pain radiating through me in a way that made my brain ache. I could hear a beeping sound that was reverberating through my skull and was giving me a terrible headache. Where was I? Did I drink too much last night? What was happening?

“Oh, try not to move, honey,” a voice sounded above me. I cracked open an eye. My other one refused to open. A woman in blue scrubs and a ponytail was smiling down at me.

“Who the fuck are you?” I croaked.

“I’m your nurse, Sloane,” she told me. “I was told your name is Shaen?”

I nodded, and my entire body screamed in protest. How did she know my name?

“How bad is your pain on a scale of one to ten?” Sloane asked me as I squeezed my eyes shut again.

“Eleven,” I managed to say. “It’s an eleven.”

“Can I get some more morphine in here?” I heard her voice vibrating through my whole body. I felt a prick, and a delicious stupor took me back again.

Wherever I was, it was giving me weird dreams. I could hear a man shouting my name. I couldn’t see his face, but he quickly morphed into a black, intimidating cloud of smoke that was scaring me. I tried to crawl into a little hole that I found in the corner of this weird place I was in, but then I heard someone calling me Ice Queen. I wanted to tell him that the ice queen was broken and wasn’t coming back, but I couldn’t talk. Suddenly, everything shifted, and I was petrified. Of what, I didn’t know, but it felt like the whole room was watching me. A whole room of dead, unseeing eyes. Watching me, unblinking. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. Suddenly, I heard my mother's voice. The words “he didn’t want you, Shaen” began to reverberate and echo around me. Over and over and over. I could finally use my vocal cords, and I had to scream to cover up the sound of her voice. I just screamed and screamed until my throat was raw and dry. “I love you, pixie.” Who was that? I felt something that seemed safe and warm and good press into my awareness, but I couldn’t figure out what it meant. Then I fell deeper into nothingness, and everything disappeared, and all I could hear was the sound of my beating heart somewhere off in the distance.

“Shaen?” My mother's voice was urgent and high-pitched above me. Was I late for school? Why was she waking me up? She never did that. I cracked my eyes open. Her face was leaning over me. Why was she crying?

“What?” Why did my voice sound so weird? I was so tired. Maybe she’ll let me stay home today. “I think I’m sick.” I forced the words out and they sounded so rough and guttural.

“Oh, Shaen.” She was legitimately sobbing at this point. I didn’t know what to do with that, so I just closed my eyes and let the nothingness take over me again.

“Shaen.” Sloane was back again. “Hi, honey.” I opened my eyes again. My face hurt. I looked down. I had a blue gown on, I was under a white blanket, and I had a wire coming out of my arm. No, not a wire, an IV. My brain sluggishly caught up. I was in the hospital. Oh my God, I had been hit by a car! My eyes snapped back to my nurse in a panic.

“You remember?” she asked softly. I nodded. “What happened?”

“Let me get your doctor.” She patted my arm very gently, and she stepped out of view.

“Hi, Shaen.” ?I turned my head slowly to look at the tall man next to my bed. He had chestnut-colored skin and was wearing a white lab coat.

“I’m Dr. Nick. How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Like shit,” I managed to say. He chuckled. “I can imagine. You are a very lucky girl.”

Am I? I felt stuck, lying in this bed, riddled with pain and confusion.

“What happened?” I repeated. The doctor clicked his pen and then looked at me.

“Like I said, you were very lucky. The man who brought you in said a drunk driver came out of nowhere and hit you head-on.”

“What man?” I interrupted.

“We were actually not sure who he was to you. At first we assumed he was your father, but then he left pretty quickly. We didn’t even mention this to your mother,” Dr. Nick told me. “His name is…” The doctor scrolled on my chart that was housed on a tablet in his hands. “Ah, here it is, John Shane Taylor.”

Shane? That must be a mistake. Was I hearing things?

“He’s not my father… he’s…” Oh my God, Remi. How long have I been here? Had anyone let him know what had happened and where I was?

“Oh, interesting. We just assumed you were related, so when we thought you might need a blood transfusion, we asked him what his blood type was…”

“A blood transfusion?” I interrupted again.

“You didn’t end up needing it,” the doctor reassured me. “But it turns out you both have an AB negative blood type, which is the rarest blood type. Less than one percent of the population has it. I guess that was just a lucky coincidence.”

Warning bells started going off in my head. Nausea rose in my throat, but I swallowed it back down. Dr. Nick continued telling me what had happened.

“So the impact of when you were hit caused you to fly up several feet in the air and then come slamming back down on the hood of the car.”

“The driver was dead,” I murmured, remembering the lifeless eyes staring at me.

“Yes. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and his head took the brunt of the crash on the steering wheel when he hit you, which severed his spinal cord. He was dead on impact,” he explained. “Apparently, John Taylor said he saw it happen and called 911, but there was a twelve-car pileup on the highway that had a lot of emergency services responding to it, so EMS told him it would take around ten minutes for an ambulance to get to you. John didn’t think you could wait the ten minutes, so he risked moving you, and he carried you to his car. He got you to the hospital in six minutes.”

The pastor saved my life? This story was getting crazier and crazier.

“What was unique about your injuries was you came in presenting with crush syndrome. But you hadn’t been crushed. We think the force of hitting the hood of the car caused traumatic rhabdomyolysis due to a muscle reperfusion injury.”

“Huh?” I was so lost.

“Basically, the force of pressure to your body damaged muscle tissue and released a bunch of toxins into your body, so you came in with respiratory failure and cardiac arrhythmias. At first, we thought you must be bleeding out somewhere, so we checked your blood type to prep for a transfusion during possible surgery, and that’s when we saw your potassium and uric acid levels were elevated, and we realized that your body thought it had been crushed.”

“So, what did you do?” I asked weakly. No wonder everything hurt like a bitch.

“We administered saline through a central line. The saline dilutes the toxins in your blood and protects your kidneys,” he explained.

“So I’m okay?” I felt so scared to hear his answer. The doctor reached for my hand and squeezed gently.

“You are okay, Shaen.” He smiled. “Like I said before, you are very lucky. You will be in pain as the bruising and swelling heal, but the worst is over. You can go home tomorrow.”

I nodded, trying to process everything he had said.

“Has my boyfriend been here?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. But your mom slept here both nights. She just stepped out, but she said she’ll be back. Your phone is over there if you want to call your boyfriend.” Dr. Nick pointed to the portable hospital bed table.

“How long have I been here?” I braced myself for his answer.

“Today is your third day.”

Holy fuck. I took my phone and pressed the cracked screen. It was dead. Fucking great. I wanted to call Remi, but I didn’t know his number by heart. I actually didn’t know any of my friends’ numbers. I felt tears well up in my eyes as I fell back to sleep.

I had something to ask my mom, but I couldn’t remember what it was. She was helping me climb up the four flights of stairs, which was proving to be absolutely impossible in my current state. For once, I was appreciative of my mom being a nurse because she said she would manage all of my medicine and had handled my discharge instructions. I finally made it up one flight when I heard a strangled voice call my name. I turned my head, my body protesting painfully, and saw that Remi was standing at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at me in horror.

“What the fuck happened?” he ground out. His face was covered in a few days of hair growth, he had huge bags under his eyes, and his lips were dry, looking almost like he had forgotten to drink water.

“Hey! Calm down,” my mom snapped. “She cannot be stressed or aggravated right now.”

Remi ignored her and bounded up the stairs, taking them three at a time. He stood in front of me, still staring. His hands were reaching out toward me, but they were not yet touching me. It seemed like he was too scared to or almost like he didn’t believe that I was real. I knew that I looked terrible; I had seen myself for the first time this morning. I had stitches in my hairline, the entire left side of my face was mottled with bruising, my eye socket was swollen, and my eyelid was scabbing over from a cut.

“I was hit by a car, and I was unconscious for like two days, and my phone was dead, and I don’t have your number memorized.” Tears began to flow from my eyes, tracking down my messed-up face.

“Oh baby, baby…” Remi’s voice quivered as his eyes welled up, seeming only seconds from crying with me. “Can I carry her?” He directed the question to my mother without looking at her.

“Be very careful, her entire body is bruised,” she replied sternly.

“I’m always careful.”

I could tell he was still not a fan of Amy Collins. He gently put an arm under my legs and very slowly lifted me up while supporting the side of my body with his other arm. I curled up against his chest, taking a deep inhale of his familiar scent. He carried me as slowly as possible, pausing to make sure I was okay at each landing. When we got to the apartment, my mother unlocked the door and watched as Remi brought me to my room. Surprisingly, my mother had already set up the bed with a pillow support system used for patients who were post-op, so I didn’t have to fully lay back.

“I need a shower.” I felt so gross and dirty.

“I’ll…” my mother started.

“I got it,” Remi said, talking over her. They both stared at each other until my mother backed down.

“I’m going to go buy some soup for you,” she said to me, using a gentle tone I had never heard from her before. When she left the room, I said in a half-hearted tone, “Nothing like almost dying to remind your mom that you still exist.”

“That is not funny. Don’t say that,” Remi said strongly. He was sitting by my feet, his face in his hands. I heard him make a sobbing sound, and I could see that his body was shaking.

“Remi,” I called his name faintly.

“I didn’t know where you were.” He was hoarse. “I called and called. You weren’t here. You weren’t at work. Your car was abandoned one street over. I couldn’t find you. Every time I came here, no one was home. I called the hospitals, but because I’m not family, they wouldn’t tell me anything. I was losing my mind…” His voice shook as he looked over at me. My heart lurched at seeing him like this.

“I love you so much,” I murmured because I knew there was nothing else to say. We were both traumatized, and there wasn’t anything I could say that would make it better. He leaned closer to me, and I gingerly ran my fingers through his hair.

“I can’t lose you.” He turned his head and kissed my hand.

“Never,” I promised. Something was tugging at my memory, but I couldn’t quite place what it was.

Remi cried again when he showered me. The whole left side of my body, from my shoulder down to my ankle was cut up, swollen, and bruised. I had an ugly red scar forming from where the central line had been.

“You are so brave,” he whispered to me as he gently washed my hair, avoiding the stitches. “You are so strong,” he said as he poured water down my body and rubbed away the glue left from the medical tape that had been holding the IV in place. “You are so beautiful,” he told me as he brushed my hair after I had gotten out of the shower and put on a soft, oversized T-shirt. Then he placed a gentle kiss on my lips in between each bite of chicken soup that he fed me. After I finished the bowl, he put on high-frequency music that the internet told him had healing vibes and then helped me get comfortable against the pillows. I fell asleep feeling safe for the first time in four days.

I woke up to hearing him talking to my mother. He was explaining that Julia would be dropping off a red-light therapy lamp soon. Julia had several red-light therapy options at her aesthetics spa. She used them for their healing properties and for reducing inflammation. I wondered how Remi had convinced her to bring such an expensive contraption to my apartment.

“I don’t think we should have so many strangers over here while Shaen is still recovering,” I heard my mother say. Remi snorted in response.

“Julia is not a stranger.”

Remi was always so respectful and polite to people, but I knew his current attitude with my mother was due to him knowing what had gone on my whole childhood. It honestly felt like yet another way that he showed how much he would do to protect me. There was a knock on the door, and the next thing I knew, Julia was on her knees beside my bed.

“Oh lovie.” She had tears in her eyes. “I’m going to make it all better.”

After pressing a kiss to my forehead, she began unpacking all the goodies she had brought. First, she gave me a B12 shot and told me about a study that showed that B12 increased wound healing, especially in the early stages. Then she unpacked a tub of an all-natural ointment that she used to help heal bruising after injections at the spa, and she very gently dabbed it on all of the bruised areas on my face. While she was doing that, she had Remi make me a turmeric tea, and she explained how it would help combat inflammation. Lastly, she put together the red-light lamp. It had a stand that she set up at the side of the bed, and it had a movable arm that held the lamp portion, so she was able to bring it down and have it hover over my body. She placed a sleeping mask over my eyes and had me rest under the lamp for twenty minutes. When I finished, she swung the lamp back over near the wall.

“I’m going to leave this here. I showed Remiel how to turn it on, and he knows what settings to use for your face and what settings to use for your body.” She was sitting on the bed and holding my hand. “I also put some groceries in the fridge. When you’re healing, it’s very important to eat based on your blood type. Sam said you want to focus on tofu, seafood, dairy, and green vegetables. He said that people with AB negative tend to have low stomach acid, so I want you to avoid caffeine, alcohol, and deli meats for now. I also bought you a bunch of bottles of celery juice, and I want you to drink one a day.” As she talked, Julia opened a bottle of said celery juice and handed it to me with a metal straw in it.

“Save the turtles.” Remi noticed and laughed.

“That’s a very serious thing, Remiel.” Julia turned to him. “Sea turtles have been endangered since 2001.”

He held up his hands in surrender.

“Okay, okay, metal straws it is.” He winked at me. I laughed and then groaned at how much it hurt to do so. The words “blood type” were bouncing around in my head, tugging at a memory that I couldn’t quite grasp.

“How’s the celery juice?” Remi asked. I held out the bottle for him to take a sip.

“Hmm, it’s kind of tangy.” He licked his lips. I felt so bad for how tired and stressed out he looked. I wanted to tell him to lie down and take a nap, but I already knew that he would refuse.

“Are you taking any pain meds?” Julia asked me.

“They gave me some Percocet.” I pointed to the bottle on my night table. “But I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”

“They can also slow down the healing process,” Julia agreed. “I put some natural pain remedies on your dresser. If you want to try that, you can.”

For two people in the medical field, she and Sam certainly knew a lot about natural healing, which I really appreciated. All three of us looked up as someone knocked on the front door.

“Are you expecting anyone?” Remi asked. I gestured to myself.

“Who would I have invited over? Also, my phone is still broken. I can’t get it to turn on.” I tried to smile at him since I couldn’t handle laughing.

“Touché.” Remi opened my bedroom door, and there stood my annoyed-looking mother and a frantic-looking Liam. My eyes welled with tears.

“Liam?” Julia sounded surprised.

“I got on the first flight,” he told his mother. Then he got a good look at me. I had never seen Liam really cry, ever, until now.

“Shay Shay.” His voice was strangled, sounding like his throat was swollen with emotion. He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. I shrugged, my own feelings welling up inside of me because I knew that he had just dropped everything and ran to me as soon as he had heard what had happened. Liam crawled onto my bed gently and hesitantly kissed my cheek that had no damage. ?“Who do I need to beat up for you?” He wiped away a stray tear before it dripped off his chin.

“He’s dead,” I replied.

“Oh well… that’s good because otherwise I’d be in jail right now.”

“Liam!” Julia sighed.

“Mom. Look at her.” His hands were trembling as he reached over to hold one of mine. “Remi didn’t tell me he couldn’t find you until yesterday. When you didn’t answer my texts, I thought you were mad at me for spending so much money on your birthday present or something. And I was studying for a test, so I was offline a lot, but then when Remi called me and said he didn’t know where you were, I’ve been going out of my mind ever since.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You shouldn’t be. I’m just still processing.” Liam kissed my fingertips and then curled his fingers around mine. “Fuck.” He exhaled. “I’m so glad you’re going to be okay.”

I squeezed his hand as Julia leaned down and kissed my temple.

“I love you. I’ll be back tomorrow. Text me if you need anything.”

“Thank you.” I managed a small smile. “Love you too.”

I could see my mom stiffen when she heard that. I imagined it felt odd to hear your daughter say that to someone whom you had never met before. Julia stopped in front of my mother.

“Shaen is just a gem, as I’m sure you know. We adore her.”

I blushed. My mom nodded and replied, “I know.”

She did not know, and it made me angry to hear. Remi must have noticed my change in temperament because he quickly announced, “Nap time.”

My mom glared at my boyfriend, but she left and shut the door behind her. Remi lay down on the bed, resting near my feet, as Liam was stretched out next to me on my right side. Then we all got some much-needed sleep.

The next morning, I already felt a massive difference in my energy. All of Julia’s magical remedies were working. Remi had already had me do two more red light sessions, and he had applied more of the healing salve, being meticulous so as not to hurt me. Liam had whipped up a mix of tofu and spinach for me to eat, and I sat in bed, taking small bites of it. The apartment was otherwise quiet since Remi had taken my broken phone to Apple to have them switch it to the new phone that Liam had bought me for my birthday. We couldn’t back up my current phone since it was so smashed it wouldn’t turn on, so we needed the professionals to do it. My mom had gone to work for the first time since my accident. Liam was sitting next to me, looking through a dating app. I appreciated that he was acting like his normal self around me. Everyone else was treating me like a glass doll to some extent.

“I haven’t fucked anyone in weeks,” he groaned. “It’s torture.”

“No possible options at school?” I asked, taking a sip of my celery juice.

“I kind of don’t want to shit where I eat anymore,” Liam told me. “I don’t want to be in a relationship. I just wanna get some and then not see them in class the next day. Ya know?”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” I peered over at his phone as he scrolled through photos. “Wait, I know her.”

“I’d tap that.” Liam clicked on her profile. “Well hello there, Sloane.”

“She was my nurse.”

“No shit.” Liam was fixated on a photo of her at the beach. “I can play nurse and patient.” He basically purred.

“Ew, if you’re hard right now, that is so gross.” I tried to push him away, but I was too weak.

“She’s hot. And she’s a nurse.” Liam grinned at me. “I’m gonna hit her up.”

“Tell her I say hi,” I said sarcastically.

“I will. While she’s riding me.” He laughed.

“You’re actually disgusting.” I rolled my eyes.

“True,” he agreed.

“Sooo,” I started.

“Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good.” Liam put his phone down.

“I haven’t told anyone this, but the reason I was standing outside of my car the night of the accident was because I had just left work and was walking to my car, and Remi’s father was there. He said he was trying to convince me to help him bring Remi back to religion or whatever.” I scoffed.

“Wait, what the fuck are you saying?” Liam sounded shocked.

“Yeah, and he saw the accident happen, and apparently, the ambulance wouldn’t come in time, so he brought me to the hospital himself. The doctor told me that he left soon after.”

“That is crazy, Shaen! Why haven’t you told Remi?” he exclaimed as his phone buzzed.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I will soon.” That persistent feeling that I was forgetting something pressed into my awareness again, and I grew agitated from being unable to figure out what my brain was trying to tell me. I suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion come over me.

“I’m gonna nap,” I told Liam.

“Okay, we’ll talk about this again when you wake up. Sloane messaged me back, so I’ll be here flirting. You sleep, babe.” Liam patted my good shoulder, and I smiled as I closed my eyes.

When I woke up, Remi was back. I could hear him talking to Liam in the kitchen. I dragged myself out of bed and very slowly shuffled my way out of my room. As soon as the boys saw me, they both jumped to help me.

“Stop.” I held up a hand. “You both have to go back to school, so I need to get used to taking care of myself. You can’t be here babying me all the time.”

“I took the week off,” Remi informed me as he took hold of my hand and began to guide me to the living room.

“I have to go back tomorrow,” Liam told us regretfully.

“I’ll be okay.” I flinched as I sat down in the chair. My body hurt so fucking bad; I was still surprised nothing was broken. “What are you guys eating?”

“Cereal.” Liam held up a bowl of Captain Crunch.

“Can I have some?” I asked as Remi gently laid a blanket over my legs.

“Nope.” Liam shook his head. “We ordered you crab rolls and a spinach salad.” He unpacked the Uber Eats order and brought me over a plate of food. “I’m pretty sure Captain Crunch is not on the blood type list that my mother left.” He and Remi laughed at how strict Julia was being with me as I recovered. I watched as they poured themselves another bowl and pouted.

Blood type. The word finally clicked inside my brain. I remembered the weird gut feeling I got when the doctor told me that my blood type was extremely rare. I still wasn’t clear on why the medical staff had asked the pastor what his blood type was when they had a blood bank in the hospital, but the fact was they had asked, and apparently, he has the same rare blood type as me. Which, I told myself, was 99.9 percent a complete coincidence. Just like the fact that his middle name was Shane. That had to also be just a weird cosmic twist of the universe telling me to go fuck myself, right? I pushed the weird thoughts into the recesses of my brain and took a bite of my food. When all the flavors hit my taste buds, I moaned because this was the best thing I had eaten in the last five days.

“Jeez, Shaen, I’m still here. Calm down with the sexy noises.” Liam pretended to blush. I gave him the finger.

“What is your blood type?” I suddenly asked the boys.

“Fuck if I know.” Liam shrugged. “I’ve never asked.”

“I know what mine is because I’m O, so they’re always asking me to donate.” Remi was slurping the leftover milk from his bowl.

“My roommate sounds like that when he eats girls out,” Liam told us when Remi put his bowl back down.

“I don’t even want to know how you know that.” Remi looked so disgusted that it made Liam crack up. While they were laughing, I had warning bells going off in my head. I remembered a bit from science class because our final had been on blood types. If Remi’s dad was AB negative, that would mean Remi would have to be A, B, or AB, depending on what his mom was. There was no possible way he could be O, even if his mom was O, because O blood type paired with AB would always end up as either A or B. Something wasn’t adding up.

“You okay, pixie?” Remi noticed the confused look on my face.

“Oh yeah, I’m fine. I just never understand what Carter is saying.” I lied and referenced our group chat, where our friends had been checking in on me constantly. Now that my new phone was activated, I had been able to catch up and respond to everyone’s well wishes.

“No one does,” Liam assured me. “Hey, guess what? I’m meeting up with Sloane tonight.”

“To fuck?” I asked.

“No, to do my taxes,” Liam replied sarcastically.

“That was fast but here is to getting some! Hell yeah!” I tried to show that I was excited for him without moving my face too much because it still hurt.

“You think she’ll wear her stethoscope while she…”

“Nope, nope. Blah blah,” I quickly drowned him out.

“Fine.” Liam pouted. “But if she does, I’m telling you about it after.”

“Or don’t.” I grimaced, already knowing that we would definitely be getting a fully detailed description when he came back. “I need to pee.” I changed the subject, and Remi came over to help me up and then waited for me in the hallway while I used the bathroom. As I washed my hands, I avoided looking at myself in the mirror. The swelling was already coming down, but as the bruises healed, they were turning all sorts of colors, and I was still too banged up to want to look at myself. When I came out and Remi helped me back into the main part of the apartment, I saw that my mother was standing in the kitchen.

“You’re back early,” I observed feeling surprised.

“I came home to check on you.” She was pouring me some celery juice, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had already had some. I stood uncomfortably in the kitchen sipping the juice when Liam came out of my room with his wallet and keys.

“We’re going to my mom’s spa to pick up an ultrasound facial machine from her other location. She wants us to bring it here, and then she’ll come by later to do it for you. She said it heals bruises really fast,” Liam told me.

“Okay.” I waved. Remi kissed my cheek and left with Liam.

“Mom,” I said, holding myself up against the kitchen counter. “Am I the result of a rape?”

She literally tripped over nothing as she walked toward the living room. Then she spun around, her eyes wide with something unspoken.

“No. Why would you ask that?” She seemed suspicious.

“Am I named after him?” I whispered. My body was beginning to tremble. My mother’s eyes narrowed.

“Why are you asking me that?”

That wasn’t a no. My stomach plummeted.

“Mom. I’m nineteen, and you have always avoided this topic. I mean, to be honest, you’ve been avoiding me my whole life too.” I breathed in and out slowly, trying to avoid a panic attack. My mother looked at me with an unreadable expression on her face.

“I wasn’t avoiding you on purpose.” She swallowed heavily.

“How do you avoid someone by accident?” I retorted. I slowly walked to the living room and lowered myself down into one of the chairs as gently as possible.

“I-I wasn’t avoiding you. I was just trying to work so I wouldn’t give you the life my parents gave me.” She was more flustered than I had ever seen her. “Growing up, we never had enough food, and sometimes the electricity would be off when I came home from school. I never had anything that I needed, and I just wanted to make sure that we never lived like that.” She shrugged. “Clearly, I fucked up.”

I gaped at her, silent. We never had conversations like this. I had never heard about her childhood, ever.

“I didn’t name you after him. I just naively thought that if I named you Shane, but I spelled it differently, maybe his wife would realize what he had done and would leave him. I wanted to punish him.” She said it so quietly that looking at her, I could see the fifteen-year-old who had been hurt and abandoned, and I was flooded with empathy for her.

“Did she?” I asked. My mother shook her head, and after a minute of silence, her posture changed, and she seemed resigned to tell me what she had been keeping from me all of these years. My heart was beating so fast that I felt nauseous.

“I grew up in this area, but my parents sent me to church camp about an hour from here. The youth pastor and his wife were in their twenties and lived at the camp for the summer. When Shane found out that I didn’t believe in God and that my parents had only sent me to a religious camp because it was free, he took a special interest in me.” My mom wrinkled her nose like she could smell something bad. “He would meet with me at night to talk about God and read the Bible. All the girls thought he was cute, and I was already an outsider because I wasn’t from their area. I didn’t have stylish clothes, and I knew nothing of their religion, so I used it as…”

“Clout?” I offered.

“What’s clout?” she asked.

“Like influence or to be popular,” I explained. My mother nodded.

“Yeah. The girls were all jealous that he spent so much time with me, and when they would say something about it to him, he told them that Jesus had told him to help me.” She rolled her eyes. “The first time his hand accidentally brushed across the side of my chest, I thought it was an accident.” Her eyes lowered in shame. “Once I realized that it wasn’t an accident, it had happened so many more times that I felt scared to bring it up. I was stupid.” She sighed.

“You were groomed, Mom. You weren’t stupid,” I spat, feeling so angry for her. She shrugged once more, and again I could see that scared fifteen-year-old trapped inside of her.

“The accidental touching turned into running his foot down my leg or resting his hand near my chest, but I never stopped him.” My mother couldn’t even look at me. “Nothing else more than that happened that summer. But then I went back in December because the camp was doing a weekend event for Christmas. At that point, I could see that Shane’s wife was pregnant; she had a small bump, but I didn’t know how far along she was. Anyway, I wasn’t… I wasn’t raped.” She could barely say the word. “What happened was the night before the weekend was over, Shane told me to come to his office. I went willingly. He told me that I was so beautiful, and that meant that God favored me. He wanted to know if I would do something with him to honor God.”

“Mom…” I whispered. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“I’ve never told anyone this before, and now that we’re here, I’m going to say it.” She seemed determined. I nodded, clutching the blanket in my hands.

“I didn’t know what I was agreeing to, but once I realized what he wanted, it was too late.” She winced at the memory. “But I didn’t say no, so… I wasn’t technically raped.”

The trauma was obvious in her words.

“Would he have stopped if you had said no?” I asked gently. She paused, and suddenly, tears appeared in her eyes.

“No,” she said breathlessly.

“No, he wouldn’t have,” I agreed softly.

“Well.” She sighed. “The one good thing I got out of it was you.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had grown up wondering if she wished she hadn’t had me.

“When I realized that I was pregnant, I looked him up in the phone book, and I called him on his work number. First, he tried to pretend that he didn’t remember me, but then he got furious with me. He told me never to call him again and to ‘take care of it.’ That confused me because he always preached about choosing life and taking care of the less fortunate. Yet he hung up on me after he told me to abort you. I have never wanted to hear another word about God ever since because I realized it was all a facade.”

“But you didn’t abort me.” I said it like a statement, but it was really a question. She shook her head.

“I could never,” she said simply. I was feeling like I needed to cry, so I took some deep breaths to shove the emotion back down until I was alone later and could process in the safety of my room.

“When I gave birth to you, I tried to contact him one more time. I wrote him a letter telling him that I had you, but I never heard from him, and I never contacted him again.” She was silent for a moment, and then she added, “If you want to change your name, I will understand. I now see how strange it was to name you that.” My mother looked defeated. Tired. Unsure.

“I actually like my name,” I told her. She smiled wanly.

“I like it too. I’m sorry I never told you about this, and who your father was. It’s honestly really hard for me to talk about Shane Taylor.”

My world began to spin. She never called him John, but I was a million percent certain that I now knew who my father was, which meant that I was in love with my brother.

This is what fear feels like.

After ending the most life-changing conversation my mother and I have ever had, I faked needing to use the bathroom so I could leave the room before I had a complete breakdown in front of her. I locked myself in there, turning on the sink to mask the noise before I fell to my knees and began to wretch into the toilet. My face was aching from the effort, and when I finally rested myself against the cold, smooth seat, I felt so weak that I could not even move. I had sex with my brother. Remi was going to leave me. I was going to be alone. I would never recover. Maybe I shouldn’t tell him. He would never know. I almost listened to myself and my jumbled mess of thoughts. But then I realized if I don’t tell him, then we will never be able to have kids. No, I’ll have to tell him. Maybe he’ll love me enough to stay with me? Could his love for me change that fast? Am I disgusting for even considering this? He’s going to leave me. He’s going to leave me. He’s going to leave me. I am going to die from heartbreak. How was this happening? How was this terrible, evil, misogynistic man my father?! A man who had raped my mother. It felt like the universe was conspiring against me. This was so unfair! I felt the bile rise in my throat again. It burned as my stomach churned endlessly. I lay there unaware of how much time had passed when, suddenly, my brain sluggishly remembered two very important details. For one, Remi had type O blood, and two, last week, I finally got the results of the DNA kit Dee had given me, and I had not received any matches. Since I knew that Remi was registered on that very same website, that could only mean one thing: the man Remi called Dad was mine, not his.

This is what sadness and confusion feel like.

When Remi and Liam came back, I pretended to be asleep because I didn’t yet know what to say to Remi. “Hey, I thought you were my brother for a second, but it turns out your dad, who is actually my dad, raped my mom when he was twenty-six and she was fifteen, so I have no idea who your dad actually is, but at least we’re not blood siblings,” just didn’t roll off the tongue very well. After about an hour of faking sleep, I felt Remi shake me gently.

“Baby, Liam left to meet Sloane and it’s time for a red-light session and some Motrin,” he said quietly. Was this going to be it for us? Even though we weren’t related, would it be too weird to know that his real mom was married to my real dad, who he had thought was his real dad up until I would tell him that he wasn’t? Would this destroy our relationship? Would he be mad that I didn’t tell him about his dad being the one to save me after my accident? Well actually, my dad.

“Fuck,” I said out loud.

“I know it hurts. I’m sorry to wake you,” Remi said sweetly, having no idea what was actually bothering me. I blinked up at my beautiful boyfriend, trying to savor the moment before I had to absolutely wreck his current reality.

“We have to talk,” I said, knowing that my tone sounded ominous. His face paled.

“What’s wrong?”

“Can you help me sit up?” I asked. He gently lifted my body, so I was sitting up but still leaning against the pillows. “Okay, I need to tell you something, but I need you to listen to the entire story before you freak out.” I was twisting the blanket nervously between my fingers.

“You’re already freaking me the fuck out, babe.” Remi’s eyes darted over my face, looking like he was trying to read me.

“Sit down,” I said hoarsely, patting the bed next to me. He sat immediately.

“Are you breaking up with me?” He looked like he was going to cry. Tears flooded my eyes.

“No, I will never do that.” I gulped out. “But I need you to listen.”

He nodded anxiously.

“I love you. I love you so much, and nothing I’m about to tell you will change that, but I hope it doesn’t change it for you. Please promise you won’t do anything out of anger. Okay?” I begged. Remi didn’t answer, his lips were now squeezed in a thin line. I took a deep breath.

“The night of my accident, I worked late, as you know, so I was walking to my car after I closed up, and your…” I paused and swallowed loudly. “The pastor was there, and he called my name.”

Remi’s body jolted in shock.

“Did he hurt you?” he hissed. His fists were clenched by his sides. I shook my head.

“No. He was there to try to convince me to bring you back to God,” I explained.

“How does he know where you work?” Remi sounded skeptical.

“I have no idea.” That knowledge had creeped me out too. “But he was waiting for me. I yelled at him to stay away from me, but suddenly, a car came out of nowhere, and I tried to run.” My eyes filled with tears again. “I couldn’t get away fast enough. I remember getting hit and being thrown in the air, and then I fell onto the hood of the car. I felt like I was dying, Rem.” A sob escaped, and Remi took my hands in his.

“We don’t have to do this right now, sweetheart,” he told me gently.

“We do.” I sniffed. “I don’t remember this happening, but the doctor told me that the pastor brought me in because the ambulance couldn’t get to me fast enough.”

Remi looked shocked.

“Who knew my dad had it in him?” he said sarcastically. My heart skipped a beat thinking about what I was about to tell him and not knowing what the outcome would be.

“So when I came in, I had weird symptoms that ended up being due to crush syndrome, but before they knew that, the doctors thought I might have internal bleeding, and they checked my blood type. The hospital didn’t know who the pastor was to me, so they had asked him what his blood type was. The doctor told me that we were a match.” I paused, gauging his reaction. Remi looked confused.

“Okay. So?” he asked, running his hand through his hair.

“What is your dad’s middle name?” I suddenly inquired.

“It’s Shane. I know you would think I’d hate the name, but honestly, no one calls him that anymore,” Remi told me. I nodded.

“Yeah, well, the doctor called him John Shane when he was telling me the story, and something felt weird to me. Like while I was so out of it and in crazy pain, my brain latched onto this information and just wouldn’t let it go. So earlier today after we talked about blood types, I finally asked my mom if she had been raped and is that why she never told me who my dad was. I knew I was definitely going out on a limb, and everything could have been some weird cosmic coincidence, but I asked anyway.”

Remi’s eyes bore holes in me as he stared.

“And she finally told me who my dad is and the story around it,” I whispered.

“Who is he?” Remi’s voice rasped. The fear growing in his eyes was mirroring how I felt inside.

“My mom went to a church camp when she was fifteen, and the youth pastor groomed her until one day, he convinced her to have sex with him. When she told him she was pregnant with me, he told her to have an abortion. She wrote him a letter when she gave birth to me, but he never responded.”

“Are you my sister?” Remi’s voice was strangled, and his face held so much anguish that it made me want to cry again.

“Please tell me that my dad is not your dad, Shaen. Please don’t do this to me. I love… I love you so much. I-I can’t…” He hiccuped as tears began to run down his face. I reached out to take his hand, but he flinched and pulled away.

“Shane Taylor is my dad,” I blurted out. Remi let out a painful breath and turned his body away from me.

“But he’s not yours.” I completed what I felt was the worst part of my story; my body was so tensely wound up that the physical pain running through me was excruciating.

“What?” Remi choked out. “What the fuck are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I ran the DNA test that Dee gave me, and you did not pop up as a match, and your blood type is O, but your dad’s is AB negative… like mine.” My voice trailed off as Remi sat up straight.

“I can’t have O if he’s AB negative.” He also remembered our science class. I shook my head. “No,” I agreed.

“So, who is my dad?” Remi sounded so lost that I wanted to comfort him.

“Can I hug you?” I asked tentatively. Remi paused.

“You’re really not my sister?” he asked, biting his lip nervously.

“Your mom is married to my mother’s rapist, but no, I am not your sister,” I confirmed; my tone sounded bitter. Remi seemed to space out as he tried to process what I was saying.

“For the record, I wouldn’t be able to stop loving you even if you were technically my brother,” I admitted. That caught his attention, and he stared at me, his face unreadable.

“Could you?” I asked. “Could you have stopped loving me? After everything we have been through?” My voice broke, and my heart was racing in my chest. I knew what I was saying was extremely taboo, but I couldn’t imagine being forced out of love with someone who felt like my soul mate.

“Well, you’re not my sister.” Remi’s voice sounded strained, like it was painful to talk. “So it really doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. It matters to me because, for me, I would always keep you. I wouldn’t care. I’m in too deep,” I confessed. I was thankful we weren’t actually being faced with this terrible reality, but I needed him to know the truth, no matter how crazy it may sound. Remi closed his eyes and pressed his hand against his forehead as if he were in pain. After what felt like an eternity, but in actuality was probably just a few minutes, he choked out, “I could never stop loving you.”

I couldn’t stop the tears then. They rolled down, making tracks on my face. My lips quivered as Remi leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to them.

“Honestly, everyone can go fuck themselves, Shaen. I am keeping you forever, no matter what.” Remi sounded so certain that I started crying again. He rocked me gently.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart.” He kissed me again. When I finally calmed down, I looked up at him.

“Remi, you need to call your mom.”

He sighed.

“I know, and I need to do it now because if I don’t, I’ll never do it.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket; his hands were shaking slightly. I squeezed his shoulder silently, telling him that I was here to support him. Remi pressed the button to FaceTime his mother. After three rings, her face appeared on the screen.

“Remiel?” She sounded shocked. “Is everything okay?”

“I know that your husband is not my father, and I need you to tell me the truth. Who is my father?” Remi just laid it all out there without skipping a beat. I could see his mother’s face pale, and her eyes opened in complete shock.

“Wh-what are you talking about?” she stuttered. “Come home, Remiel. Let’s talk in person.”

Remi surprised me by laughing. A cruel, sharp sound.

“Yeah, no thanks. That is not my home. I’m going to ask you one more time, or I’m going to tell D-Dad.” He fumbled over the word. “I’ll tell him what I know.”

His mother sighed, looking resigned.

“He did this to himself.” His mother’s demeanor suddenly changed from docile and submissive to that of a scorned, angry woman.

“What do you mean?” Remi spat.

“Your father has a thing for younger women,” Miley told her son in a matter-of-fact way.

“He’s not my father,” Remi corrected. His mother sighed again.

“Like it or not, he raised you, Remiel. I’ll call him what I want to.”

She said it with an element of sass that I never expected from her. She continued telling her story.

“Soon after we got married, we were the youth pastors at a camp, and I caught him touching one of the campers inappropriately. When I confronted him about it, he told me he had never done something like that, and how dare I accuse him of something so terrible. Then, of course, he quoted Ephesians 5:22-24, where it says, ‘Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.’”

Remi clenched his hand. I knew how much he hated his father and how he used his stupid Bible quotes to abuse the people around him. Oh, my father, I corrected myself in my thoughts. Wow, this was going to be very complicated. Either way, Remi hated when the pastor used religion to control and gaslight him and his mother. Miley herself seemed to grimace at the memory.

“I was so angry, especially since your father rarely touched me. He was never interested in intimacy with me, and whenever I asked for it, he used to tell me I was being needy and that was not behavior worthy of a divine woman.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I heard Remi say. I was startled at his immediate change in mood. He seemed less angry and more empathetic toward her now.

“I did something bad, Remiel, and your father can never know. Promise me.” His mother seemed hesitant. Remi nodded. “I promise,” he assured her.

“I was so lonely in my marriage and starved for intimacy. I knew what I had seen him do with that girl, and I was scared that I didn’t really know what kind of man I had married.” Her voice wavered in obvious shame. “What you don’t know is that I knew Dermont first. In fact, I had met John through Dermont. We had gone to school together, and it had always been Dermont that I wanted, but he wasn’t religious, so my parents would have never approved. When I met his friend, Shane, that’s what everyone called him back then, who wanted to be a pastor, I knew my parents would love him and it would keep Dermont around, so I ended up going out with him and not Dermont. Well, after we were married for a little bit, your dad was off on one of his church business trips, but I was always so suspicious of them, and I worried that he was really meeting up to hang out with girls or even worse. Anyway, that night, Dermont was in town, so we met up for dinner. I usually never drank, but I did that night, and I ended up confessing to Dermont how I felt about him and what was going on with Shane… John.” Miley paused to take a drink of water with a shaking hand. Remi seemed glued to the phone.

“One thing led to another, and I stayed at Dermont’s hotel. It was that night that I conceived you, Remiel,” his mother confessed.

“What?” Remi’s voice was barely a whisper. He looked over at me, his whole face showed his disbelief. “Do they know?”

Miley shook her head. “Your father can never know, but Dermont knows. I made your father sleep with me the next night in case I wound up pregnant, and for a while, I pretended that maybe you were really John’s baby, but once I saw you, I knew. With your dark hair and facial structure…” Miley’s voice trailed off for a moment, and then she refocused. “Dermont can’t stand your father. He has begged me to leave but you know I can’t. The only reason he pretends to still be John’s friend is so he can continue being around you and have a relationship with you.”

“I can’t believe you,” Remi bit out.

“I know I should have remained faithful,” his mother cried. “I never did it again.”

“No, not that,” Remi corrected her. “I can’t believe you stole a happy childhood from me, and for what? It’s obvious you aren’t happy, and you saw how he has always treated me. Did you stay with him even when you knew that Dad raped a fifteen-year-old girl when you were two months pregnant with me?” he all but shouted.

“How do you know that for sure, Remiel?” she demanded. It seemed that she was still in denial.

“Because I know who his real kid is, and I will never tell you or him who they are.” Remi shut down her question immediately. I was so happy that he didn’t even say “she” because he had to know that I never wanted them to figure out who I really was.

“I honestly just feel sorry for you, Mom. I wish you would leave him because I don’t plan on coming home if he’s there. Ever,” Remi told her. She started to sob and kept saying she was sorry, that she didn’t think she had any other choice.

“I have to go, Mom.” Remi hesitated, then quickly said, “Thank you for telling me.” Then he hung up and looked over at me.

“I don’t even know what to say.” Remi sounded numb.

“I know.” I reached for his hand, and he held it tight. We were interrupted before we could say anything else by Julia knocking on the door.

“Hi, lovie.” She came in with a smile. “Ready for a nice little face massage?” She gestured to her facial ultrasound machine. I nodded.

“Thank you, Julia,” I told her.

“Anything for you, Shaen. You’re family.” Julia smiled. I flinched at the word. The meaning of family had gotten rather clouded today. Remi helped me get comfortable while Julia set up the machine. He was typing on his phone while Julia worked her magic, and then when she was done, they both left the room to get some food ready for me. His phone sat next to me and lit up with a text from Dermont, which said, “We need to talk.”

I closed my eyes. Today was starting to feel like too much for me to handle. Only sex or sleep could save me from this emotional mess, and since, obviously, sex was off the table with my body still in so much pain, sleep would have to do.