“It’s been—”

I laugh once, cutting him off. “Two years. Trust me. I know.”

“And you haven’t—”

“Not once,” I interrupt. “Swear on my father’s grave. I can’t.”

He leans back, running a hand through his hair, but he doesn’t speak, so I add, “I realize I’ve made mistakes, horrible ones, but I’m human. I’m flawed. I’m working on those flaws, but I’ll never be perfect. I know that. So if it’s those mistakes that prevent me from living the rest of my life without the person I’m insanely in love with, I’ll wear that.”

“I appreciate that, Josh. Really I do,” he says, his voice soft. And I wonder what his angle is, what he could possibly expect from me. “But Becca’s so fragile and…”

I ball my fists, and he must see it because his words die in the air, and he waits for me to speak, both of us knowing my words come from deep frustration and regret. “It’s like you think I don’t know that.” I exhale loudly and try to keep my emotions in check. “She had these nightmares. She’d jerk in her sleep and wince like she was in actual physical pain. She’d cry, even when her eyes were shut tight, somehow tears would still come. And that was on a good night. Other times she’d scream, but it was silent, you know?” I turn to him, making sure he sees me. “Because even though she could speak before”—I swallow the pain of the past—“it didn’t always work.”

“You don’t need to…”

I ignore him and keep going. “She’d bite down on her thumb so hard it would leave marks. She’d kick at me, hands covering her head, and she’d plead for it to stop, and the only way I could do it was physically.” I disregard the knowledge of who I’m speaking to and tell him exactly how it is, exactly how I feel. “She wanted me to take away her emotional pain by replacing it with physical pleasure. And I’d do it. For her. I’d regret it as soon as it was done, but I wanted to make it stop just as much as she did. I didn’t know any other way.” My breath leaves me in a shudder, the ache in my chest making it almost impossible to inhale and painful to exhale. “And somewhere along the lines, she needed me and I wasn’t there,” I say, my voice lowering. “Truthfully, I wasn’t anywhere. I was lost. She needed me and I was lost. She broke because of me. She tried to kill herself because of me. So you don’t need to tell me how fragile she is. Believe me, I was there. I fucking know.” I gasp for air, wishing the words back, but it’s too damn late. “I used to walk around with a chip on my shoulder… poor me; single dad at seventeen, completely alone and forgotten. But then I’d look down at Tommy in my arms, a baby boy who was mine and mine alone, and I’d wake up every day grateful we had each other. Swear, I thought it was impossible to love anyone as much as I love my son.” At the thought of Becca, air fills my lungs, slow and steady. “Then Becca showed up and she completed the gaps in my life that I didn’t even know were missing. And I’d give anything to go back in time, back to even before we met. Because I know I’d see her in ways the others hadn’t. I’d do anything to fix her. I’d take care of her the way she deserved to be taken care of. Not like how her—” I choke on a sob and push it down. “I don’t understand how a parent can do that to their child. How anyone can do that to a kid… I look at my son and I see the way he looks at me, the way he relies on me to guide him through this world and—” I’m crying, tears falling fast and free. “Her mother should thank God she’s dead, because if she wasn’t, I’d fucking kill her myself. And I’d make her hurt a thousand times worse than she ever did with Becca.”

I realize Martin’s watching me with a look on his face I can’t decipher. He takes a sip of his beer, and then another. And another. We go through an entire beer each, a comfortable silence somehow keeping us together until he finally says, “I’m lost, too.”

I bite my tongue, confused by his words. “We’re all lost here, sir.”

“Yeah,” he says through a sigh, kicking out his legs. “But I feel out of place. Like I have no purpose being here. Becca—she at least knows Chazarae. She lived with her for a while. You’ve been here for years. I only spoke to her a few times on the phone, met her once when I picked up Becca from that ‘Personal Development’ place and took her to St. Louis, and then again when we came here for her birthday. But I don’t know her. I mean, yeah, she’s my mother, but… I don’t know her at all. And I see Becca getting all worked up, and you fighting her battles for her and I know I should be feeling something but I don’t know what it is…” He takes a sip of his beer, his head dropping forward. “It’s like Becca all over again.”