Page 67 of Daddy's Mail Order Mate

I feel like dry bleached bone, brittle to the touch. At this moment I feel scattered in broken pieces across the years of my life; I’m not here, I’m not there. I’m nowhere at all and trapped in the terrible oppressive shadow of my traumas being unearthed. And just like before, whenever I attempt to approach them, it consumes me. But at least this time I was able to force my way through enough to tell Gwen. It even poured out of me at points, spilling into places I had no intention of sharing, as though part of me has been waiting years to finally speak these words aloud.

There’s an urge to cry; that’s been such a foreign feeling. Saving Gwen and Rowan was the first time I’d cried since all that had happened.

And I let it happen. I sob and bend over, hiding my face in my hands in shame. Not only for crying, but for everything. All of the guilt and grief and shame open themselves up again, rotted and necrotic from years of me neglecting these memories.

There are no words that come to form in my mind. All I am is sorrow and tears. There’s the sensation of her hand on my leg, but the comfort it might provide turns sour in me. I don’t deserve her care or affection. But I so desperately want it. So I don’t pull away or stop her from touching me. All I can do is cry.

Chapter 22 - Gwen

I’ve never Thorn cry. And he clearly has so many reasons to. I watched the guarded and cynical man I’ve spent the few days with dissolve away into the raw bleeding heart of the boy I’d adored all those years ago. At times in his recounting he was slow and staggered, and others he had seemed possessed with how overwhelming it all was. He’s never been so expressive as he is now.

I don’t interrupt him, not even when the story stops and all he does is cry. I just rub his knee and try to offer what silent comfort I can until he comes back up for air. I need the silence myself to try and let my own emotions settle. Eventually, he quiets down and he lowers his hands from his face to rest on each thigh.

“I,” he begins in a hoarse murmur, “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t deserve it. And your forgiveness wouldn’t even make a difference. Because even if you tell me you understand why, and that it’s alright,it’s not.It was never okay and I should have—I should have—... I failed you, Gwen. I failed you in the worst ways and I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve to be redeemed. I don’t deserve a chance to have you in my life again, even if it’s the one thing I want most. Isacrificedyou to save myself and my sister. And you deserved so much better than that. Youdeserveso much better than that. I can’t offer you the life you should have because I threw what we had away. I’m no better than my parents. I’mworse. I’m the monster they made me into and I’ve been fighting my whole life to be more than that but I—”

Thorn chokes on his own words, the tumult of emotion lurching to a stop as he hitches a breath and tries to get his wind back. I’ve never seen him talk so much or so quickly that heruns out of breath. He starts again, each syllable intentional and strung out as though he is fighting for control of even his own speech.

“Nothing I can ever do now can make up for what I’ve done to you. I abandoned you. I could have found you after I left Portsmill and begged for another chance. I thought about doing that so many times. But I couldn’t—I couldn’t bring myself to. And each year I buried you deeper, to the point I could forget you most of the time. I didn’t deserve your forgiveness then, and I certainly don’t deserve it now. No matter how much—how much I love you, I can’t make up for my mistakes and all I will ever do is hurt you. All I can do is hurt people, Gwen. And I’ve already hurt you so much that it broke me. I can’t bear the thought of hurting you again. But I keep doing it anyways, because that’s…”

His words taper off, and I sense that he’s falling back within the grey torture of his trauma again. I reach out and grab one of his hands and squeeze it tight enough that his eyes lose their dull glaze and focus back on me.

“Thorn.”

He nods mutely.

“It really does seem like both of us had died that day.”

Thorn nods again, slower this time.

“Squeeze my hand,” I softly coax him. “Stay here with me.”

His hand is so much larger than mine, and calloused from years of what I know without a doubt is the darkest sort of labor imaginable. I give his hand a good pulsing grip, but he doesn’t mirror it.

“Can’t,” he mumbles.

“Why?”

“I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t. I’m pretty tough, if you haven’t noticed,” I tease in soft sarcasm.

That does get his shoulders to move in what must be a deadened chuckle, and after a moment of delay he squeezes back.

“There we go.”

We both sit in silence for a moment as I try to find the words.

“Thorn, I… After you rejected me, I was heartbroken. And not just that, it became clear just how useless I was to pack society. I was a third class citizen in my own life and made to feel like I was garbage meant to be thrown away. The one person who was supposed to always love and accept me rejected me, and I was unable to connect with our kind in the way that is supposed to be innate to all of us.”

I can see him start to dim and withdraw just from his expression, but I squeeze his hand so tightly that it even hurts me until he looks back at me again.

“Thorn. Please listen. Don’t close yourself off from me again. I listened to you with an open heart—do the same for me.”

A silent pulse back is his wordless assurance, and I look him over for a moment before continuing on.

“It’s true that what you did hurt me in profound ways. It’s true that it significantly impacted my life and caused me a lot of suffering and loneliness. But repressing those emotions has hurt us both even more. Sharing our truth, helping each other—This is how we get to heal, Thorn. This is how we get to be happy. I’m tired of being trapped in a painful past while the world keeps going on. And I know you are too.”

Thorn nods once again and rubs his thumb shakily over my knuckles. I huff warmly and smile at the gentle affection, and the look of vulnerability he gives me then makes my heart ache.

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