William may have hurt my body and drew blood, but those fucking memories hacked at me, ripping open old wounds I thought had healed. Wounds I was beginning to think may never heal.

38

Tatum

“Dust to Dust” by The Civil Wars

I’d just put silverside on to cook when Nitro turned up at my place, bloody and beaten. I’d seen him like that before, but I flinched as he stood on my doorstep looking at me through eyes full of pain. It wasn’t the wounds or the blood that caused my reaction; it was the torment radiating from him.

Pulling the door wide open, I let him in and watched as he walked to the kitchen. While he held himself like the warrior I knew him to be, there was something completely off about him.

Facing me, he said, “Are you good?”

It was such a simple question, but those three words were all Nitro ever wanted to know. He always wanted to make sure I was okay. They may have been plain words, but they held depth. And I knew they were words he reserved only for those he cared about.

I nodded, cupping his face. He was asking if Joseph had shaken me up. When I’d called to tell him what had happened, he’d been furious. But he’d also been concerned about Joseph scaring Renee and me. “Yeah, but you’re not. Let me clean you up.” Memories of the last time I cleaned him up surfaced. It wasn’t that long ago, but everything had changed since then.

After I’d gathered what I needed, I sat him down at my kitchen table and stood in between his legs while I gently began the task of carefully cleaning blood from his face. Darkness had fallen outside and the only sound I could hear in the quiet of the night was Nitro’s laboured breathing. I didn’t initiate conversation, figuring he’d talk if he wanted. But I also figured he probably wouldn’t.

He surprised me when he did speak. His words came out so quietly that I almost didn’t hear them. “Ever had anyone in your life who scared the absolute fuck out of you, Vegas?” His hand gripped the back of my thigh. I not only heard his agony, but I also felt it in the way his hand clung to me.

“Yes.” It was almost a whisper. I didn’t want to remember this. But I knew that for Nitro, I would if he needed me to.

His fingers dug in to my leg harder. “Who?”

My eyes closed for a moment and I swallowed hard as my heart threatened to crash through my chest. “We used to have these neighbours when I was thirteen who had a son a couple of years older than me. He liked me, but I wasn’t interested in him. For two years, he tried to get me to go out with him. At first he was harmless, but then he turned nasty. He started stalking me, always turning up where I was and letting me know he was watching. My parents were too distracted with their marriage that they didn’t notice what was going on. And I didn’t want to burden them by telling them.”

“Even back then you didn’t like asking for help,” he murmured.

I held his chin and tipped his face up to me so I could wash the blood off his neck. “Yes, even back then,” I said as our eyes locked. “So when I had just turned fifteen, he upped his game. He started confronting me more and touching me when he did. He’d whisper shit in my ear and tell me the things he wanted to do to me. The guy was seventeen then, and I’m pretty sure he already had psychopathic tendencies. The shit he wanted to do to me was violent. I told my parents who spoke to his parents. Of course, they didn’t believe it. Dad took it to the police, but there wasn’t anything they could do without proof.”

“What happened?” Nitro asked through gritted teeth.

I stared at him, not wanting to go on. He moved his hands to my waist and held me there, his touch reassuring. Protective. It said, “I’ve got you.”

Taking a deep breath, I shared one of my greatest regrets. “The threats went on for weeks, until the point where I was scared out of my wits. I wasn’t eating, hardly slept, and spent my days too frightened to leave the house. This was during the school holidays and Chris was away during those weeks. When he came home and found out what had been happening, he beat the guy up and tried to protect me. A few weeks passed and I didn’t see him anywhere. We thought he’d backed off. And then there was a party at the end of the summer holidays. I went with my friends and told Chris I’d be fine because it was a party and the guy usually only approached me when I was alone. We all drank a fair bit that night and my friends all got trashed. And that’s when the guy took his shot.”

“He attacked you?” It was like Nitro was holding his breath while he waited for my reply.

I shook my head as a single tear slid down my face. “No. I was walking down the road to go home when he pulled up in his car. He trailed me for ages, not saying much, just staring at me like a crazy guy. I called Chris to come and get me, and in that time, the guy tried to actually run me down with his car. I ran into the bush to get away from him and he came after me. But that was when Christ arrived, so he didn’t get to me before Chris started punching him. They fought for ages, until Chris had beaten him so badly that he didn’t walk for over a week.”

I’d stopped washing Nitro’s face as I told him the story. He stood and pulled me into his arms when I finished. I hesitated to embrace him, though, because I didn’t want to hurt him.

Pulling back a little, he found my eyes. “Put your arms around me, Tatum,” he said gruffly.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

He gave me a look that told me just to do it, so I did, and he held me tighter. We stayed like that for a long time until finally he let me go and said, “What happened to the guy after that?”

“His parents agreed with mine to keep quiet and not go to the police with what happened. They didn’t want Chris to be charged with assault. Their family ended up moving away after that, and we never saw or heard from that guy again.” I dropped my eyes as I thought about what that assault did to Chris. When I found his gaze again, I said, “The thing was, though, that one of the local gangs took notice of Chris after that. They saw him as a fighter and wanted him on their crew because of his fighting ability. And from then on, he was always tied up with crime and violence and drugs.”

“Fuck,” Nitro swore, his hands cradling my head. “You can’t blame yourself for that shit. He made his choices, and you couldn’t control them.”