Page 67 of Pulse
“Lucas. What’s yours?”
“Penelope. It was my mom’s name.”
He kisses the top of my head. “It’s beautiful, just like you.”
I settle against him, relishing the contact.
We sit quietly for a long time, swaying in the water. A comfortable silence settles over the room.
I have so many questions for Troy Lucas Castelli.Where does he see himself in five years? What did he love to do as a child?Does he want children?But I don’t want to push my luck—and I’ve been very lucky lately.
He bends his leg, exposing his knee through the water. I grab it to sit up when I notice a curious mark on his leg. I follow the raised scar with my fingertip.
“What’s this from?” I ask. “Some kind of battle wound.”
“You could say that.”
“Is there a story behind it? Usually, guys have a legendary tale about these things. Like they found a lion or killed a shark.”
“That’s pretty accurate.”
I laugh. “I figured.”
“Only the monster was named my dad.”
I freeze, replaying that again.“Only the monster was named my dad.”
My throat tightens while my brain kicks into high gear.What does that mean?
“Well, I guess I know about your family, so you should know about mine,” he says, the words flat and hollow.
He laces our fingers together and sighs.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” I say, squeezing his hand.
He sighs again, longer this time, and rests his head against the wall.
“The day my parents brought Travis home from the hospital … I was so excited,” he says. “I was five. I just got home from kindergarten. I’d walked the half mile in the pouring rain. Well, I ran the last half of it because Mom and the baby were supposed to be there, and I couldn’t wait to see them. I had this idea in my head that when they got home, everything would be better.”
I bring his arms around me and pin them to my chest. “You walked half of a mile by yourself as a five-year-old?”
“Crazy, huh?”
“I … don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything yet because things did not get better,” he says with a sad laugh. “As a matter of fact, they got worse. They fought constantly. These screaming arguments that resulted in something being thrown. I was always happy when it was a lamp or picture, not Dad’s fists.”
Oh, my God.
“Of course, the screaming would wake the baby, and then he’d start crying. And the crying would set my father off about how he didn’t want fucking kids, and he’d flip furniture or throw a beer bottle across the room. I learned pretty quickly how to make a bottle and change diapers because I was scared to death that Dad was going to hurt Trav. And Trav didn’t deserve it.” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “Just like I didn’t deserve it.”
Tears pool in my eyes as I imagine what that must’ve been like. How scared he must have been. The thought of a baby Troy …I can’t.
Emotions clog my throat as I wait for him to continue. I can’t ask questions because, if I do, I’ll cry. And I’m pretty sure if I cry, he’ll shut down. Instead, I squeeze his arms as tightly as possible to let him know I’m here.
I don’t know what else to do.
“I took a lot of fucking beatings for that boy,” he says, chuckling angrily. “It got worse as we got older. Dad would come home high as fuck or drunk or both and just hit the first thing he saw, which was usually me. Because if it was me, it wasn’t my mom or little brother.”
