Page 10 of Dirty Nasty Billionaire: Part 4

He’s already pulling me from the living room as I hear his mother struggle to her feet behind us.

“What are you doing? You don’t have permission to just traipse around this house like you own the place,” she says, indignant.

But Nixon ignores her, taking me through the dining room and into the kitchen, where he stops in front of a closed door.

“Don’t you go down there,” his mother snaps, shuffling into the kitchen behind us. “You have no right. No right!”

“Like hell I don’t,” he mutters, reaching for the knob. It sticks at first, the wood swollen, the dingy white paint sticking. But Nixon gives it a quick tug, and it shrieks open. There are steps down, but it’s dark below.

The basement. The quiet room.

Oh my god.

“Nixon, maybe this isn’t—“ I say, pulling him close to me.

“You’re not going down there!” His mother cries, growing hysterical.

Nixon wheels around on her, until he’s towering over her, his fists clenched. “Yes. I. Am.” He seethes, and then he takes me by the hand and pulls me down into the darkness.

He flips a switch as we make our way down the stairs, the action a complete reflex pulled up from his youth spent in this nightmare house and how many trips down these stairs he made over the years. The fluorescent lights buzz to life, casting a sickly yellow glow over the room.

Which is completely empty.

The floor is concrete, and though it was probably once polished, it’s now dull and dusty. The walls are cinder block, and completely bare. There’s a bathroom in one corner, though it has no walls. Just a sink set into the wall, a toilet waiting beside it. There’s a threadbare mattress on the floor in the middle of the room, no sheets, and there are aged water spots staining the top.

It looks like a prison.

It’s so much worse than what I imagined when he described it to me. And that’s when thinking of an adult, powerful, strong Nixon in there. Thinking about Nixon as a defenseless child has my eyes welling up. Before I know it, the tears are spilling over and rolling down my cheeks.

Nixon, still clutching my hand, surveying the room, says nothing. His mother is hobbling down the stairs, her oxygen tank clutched in one hand, still screeching about how he has no right. And before I know what I’m doing, I spin around and point a finger at her.

“How could you have done this to him? He was just a little boy!”

“You don’t get to judge my parenting, you … whoever you are,” she snaps.

I point at the dirty, bare mattress. “This isn’t parenting. This is abuse.”

“We never laid a hand on him!” She cries, as if it makes a difference.

I’m seething, my shoulders rising and falling visibly with each breath, the tears rolling freely down my cheeks.

Nixon pulls me to him, his arms wrapped tightly around me, like he’s shielding me from having to see any more. He rests his chin on the top of my head. “It’s ok, Delaney. It’s ok,” he says, over and over.

“It’s not ok,” I sob into his chest. “This should never have happened to you.”

We stand there like that for a long time, until I feel wrung out. There are no more tears. And when he finally releases me, neither of us looks around the room again. We look only at each other.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says. “Ok?”

I nod.

We push past his mother, still standing there glaring at us, as if we’re the ones who did something wrong. And as we make our way back through the house, I’m careful not to take in any of it. As soon as I leave this house, I want it gone.

Forever.

* * *

We’re halfway backto Boston before he finally speaks. First, he reaches across the center console of the car to take my hand in his. I’m surprised to find that there’s no tension there. And when I study him, I don’t see a clenched jaw, or a furrowed brow. There are none of the telltale signs of his usual panic. He’s utterly at ease.

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