Page 80 of Reckoning

I tried to hold onto the anger that had propelled me this far. The pure fury that made me unafraid of any blow that either of these men could have dealt me faded when I saw him so broken.

But my lover, my tormentor, my mother’s other child was on the floor holding his broken hand with tears streaming down his cheeks, eyes boring into the floor as if the pattern on the carpet might hold the answers he was looking for. He made no effort to clear his face or hide his emotion. I’d seen enough vulnerable parts of him now that it didn’t matter. He’d fallen apart in front of me a little bit every day since I met him, and that house of cards he’d been so precariously balancing had finally become too unstable to stand any longer. He needed help. I was a helper. I had no choice.

I walked to the desk and pressed the button on the intercom on the phone, hoping someone was on the other end to hear me.

“Get us ice,” I barked, hoping my voice sounded deep enough that they would believe it was him speaking, not me. Walking back to Meyer, I reached down and touched his face.

He jerked back at first, then leaned into me. My fingers slipped across his wet skin. “Stand up,” I said, trying to sound like I had authority over his actions. When he did get to his feet without protest, the face that looked down at me was completely broken. Every rational thought fled my mind. I would have done anything to put him back together, even if it meant killing Conrad myself.

But murdering his father wouldn’t fix his hand right now. He needed a doctor, and he wasn’t going to get to one without my help.

“Get the door,” I said. My throat was scratchy from screaming, and I swallowed. It didn’t help; my mouth was bone-dry. “Don’t let them see you like this.”

Some part of us that was still removed from this situation realized the dynamic that had to be maintained. There had to be no doubt that Meyer was holding me in fear. He had to win this battle because there was no option for me to succeed. It would mean death.

Meyer took the ice from the stranger at the door, hiding his bleeding hand behind him and opening the door as little as possible. When he got back to me, he just handed me the ice and fell back to the floor. I sank to my knees beside him and took his hand.

“Don’t,” he hissed, jerking it back, but I held firm.

“Let me help you.” I bit the words out through my teeth. I didn’t owe him this. He had hurt me so deeply, so many times, beyond the point where I should ever forgive him.

But his words shed new meaning on his anger. Conrad’s twisted worldview hadn’t corrupted him. He didn’t hate my mother because she left Conrad. He hated her because she left him behind when she escaped. Left him to take the brunt of his father’s anger.

I saw every scar in a new light. The hematoma in his ear not from school wrestling but from having his face ground into the carpet for every infraction. I suddenly recalled Anita’s comment about his arm from the night she tried to kill me—Conrad broke it, then toyed with it for her amusement. His aversion to being touched by his father, even seemingly affectionate gestures.

I was still angry, but there was another emotion there now too.

Shame.

Shame that I had been unable to see the true source of his pain and fear. I always considered myself so empathetic, focused on identifying those in need of help and then bringing it to them. This man had suffered in front of me for weeks, and I didn’t see it. I didn’t notice how he always put himself between me and his father and then ducked his head if Conrad raised his hand even a fraction. He had shown me more mercy in those moments than I had shown him in the entire time I had been here.

We were quiet for several minutes while I iced his hand, ignoring the burning cold in my palm. It was a paltry penance for my refusal to see past the lies that had been fed to me by a man who I should have known I couldn’t trust to ever give me an ounce of truth. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I set it aside and instructed him to make a fist. He did, but his little finger still stuck out with unnatural stiffness.

“You should get an X-ray.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes focused behind me, wading through memories he’d long since locked away. “She left me behind.” His voice was quiet. This wasn’t business mogul Meyer I was talking to. This was the broken young man fresh off a suicide attempt who had been dragged into my birthday party by the collar, looking confused and embarrassed. The one who mouthed an apology to me as his father threatened my mother and then pulled him away when my own father put himself between them.

“She took care of me,” he moaned. “She got between us when he came down on me. Then she disappeared, and she left me with him.”

If I thought he was broken before, the Meyer I saw now was completely shattered, his hand in pieces and tears in a free-fall on his cheeks.

Moving around him, I sat so that our knees were touching and took his unharmed hand in mine. He withdrew it almost immediately, and I felt an unexpected pang of rejection. But he just moved his hand to my neck, drawing me to him and putting his forehead against mine.

“It’s okay that you’re mad,” I said, barely aware of the words as they came out of my mouth. “You didn’t deserve to be abandoned.”

He dragged in a ragged breath but didn’t speak. His eyes were all over the place, never settling on one spot for more than a second. But there wasn’t much he could see with our heads pointed down, and eventually, they fell on my hands and stayed there. He placed his injured hand in my palm, fingers twitching slightly as he fought to hold it still.

“Meyer,” I whispered. I beckoned with one finger, still holding him, willing him to look at me.

“No, no, I can’t.” Fresh tears fell on our joined hands.

For the next several moments, the only sound I was aware of was our breath. I felt every centimeter that separated us, a pulsating space that I was suddenly desperate to cross. This confession, the truth, was a victory. It said that Meyer was not bound to his father’s way of life. He had shown me kindness when everyone else around me had sought to destroy me. He had taken physical abuse meant for me even though he desperately wanted to pay back my mother for leaving him to that mistreatment so many years ago. He was still the son of the man who had wrecked my mother, stolen her childhood, and now sought to destroy me too; but he was also a broken little boy who had made my mother his enemy only because there was no escaping his true attacker. He had coped in the only way he knew how.

I suddenly knew the truth of why he had kept his hands off me after his first attempt to take me. Why he had shied away from touching me unless it served a purpose. He had seen himself becoming his father at that moment, and the thought had repulsed him. I wanted to show him, so desperately, that he wasn’t anything like that evil man.

Just like the day in the barn, before my vow to destroy him and everything he held dear, I took the first step. I tugged him toward me and captured him in my arms.

The kiss wasn’t what I expected. His lips pressed easily against mine, not seeking anything except to let him stay there. On the first night he tried to take me, everything had been about power. He had held me like a thing, not a person. Right now, he clung to me like a life raft. He was drowning, and I was the air.

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