Page 39 of Thorns That Bloom
I swallow past the painful lump in my throat. The bristlingthought enters my mind, and it kills me: knowing that he probably thinks I see him as he sees himself—broken.
I wrap my head in my arms, resting it between my knees. The chilly breeze is getting to me, making my body shake. Or maybe it is more than that. Maybe it’s the anger at myself.
This is all my fault. I should’ve done better.
I had no right, and I should’ve made sure this never happened.
“Shit,” I whisper, my voice breaking.
Chapter 12
Theo
Very, very quietly, I unlock the door and creep inside. I’ve sobered up on my way here, but I still feel like life isn’t quite real. My head is light and heavy at the same time, and my limbs barely cooperate with me. I just want to feel comfort. Warm, soothing comfort of home.
I shed my shoes and drag myself through the hallway. The place is quiet, as it should be in the middle of the night. I’m not sure what the time it is exactly, and I don’t want to know.
Without turning the light on, I walk straight across the small room until my feet hit the bed and I collapse onto it. With a tired exhale, I turn around to face the wall and the dozen teddy bears and other stuffed animals that have been on my bed ever since I was little.
I sink into their softness, feeling like I’m in a warm hug. My parents put them all up again after I got old enough and moved out. They said it ‘reminded them of those sweet innocent days’. I found that stupid. Embarrassing.
Now, I think I understand why they did it. I don’t do this often, but there are moments when coming here and gettingdrowned in plush takes me back to a time I didn’t have to worry about anything.
I hear footsteps in the hallway. The click of a switch, then the slow, creaky sound of the opening door.
“Theo?” Dad’s breathless voice sounds as he sticks his head in. Light from the hallway illuminates my little den of self-pity. Once he realizes it’s me, he lets out a loud exhale. “Oh my god. I thought I heard something. I wasn’t sure whether we were getting robbed. It’s two in the morning, you know?”
“Sorry,” I mumble, twisting at the waist to look at him. When he sees my face, Dad narrows his brows like I’m his little boy that scraped his knee again before he opens the door wider and walks in. I grumble at the light coming in but say nothing and push myself up to sit.
“What’s up, dork?” he asks after settling down on the bed next to me. I let him gently push me to the side so he can rest alongside me, snorting in response.
Dad grabs one of the few teddies we are surrounded by and lifts it up, gazing at it in thoughtful silence for a moment. “You used tolovethis one. Mr. Fluffers, right? Ah, you and Gail fought over it so often. You wouldn’t give up until you got it. This one time, you pulled her hair so hard to get it from her that a chunk of it stayed in your hand,” he says, chuckling.
Instead of nostalgia, my chest tightens even more. There are no happy childhood memories without thinking about what happened with Gail and the role I had in it.
I stay quiet. I don’t know what to say, or whether I should even bother him. I came here because I wanted to be alone with my thoughts and regrets.
Dad looks at me, resting the plush white bunny with longfloppy ears in his lap. I feel his gaze, so I glance at him. “It’s just— I think I ruined everything, Dad,” I whisper.
His eyes soften, the short, unstyled light brown hair falling across his forehead as he tilts it to the side to see me better. “Your dad told me about thelife adviceyou asked him for not that long ago. Does this have anything to do with that person?” he asks gently.
I don’t know how he does it. How he always knows everything.
“Maybe.”
He puts his arm around my shoulders like he’s always done. “What happened?”
Sometimes it’s hard to believe Dad isn’t the one who gave birth to us. Not like Pop is distant or anything, but Dad has this intensely nurturing, tender way about him.
“I fucked up, and he found out that I know about what happened to him. I didn’t mean to, but I just blurted something out, and now he knows, and he looked really,reallyupset,” I say quickly, so quickly it barely makes sense, because that's the only way that makes it possible for me to let it out without getting swallowed up into the ground.
Dad sighs, like he’s gathering his thoughts. “When the assault happened to me,” he starts carefully, “your father begged me to report it right away and go through all the proper channels, but I…didn’t want to, at first.” He lowers his gaze, staring at the plush toy in his hand blankly. “I didn’t want to be known as the omega who went through that. I knew it would get out, and I didn’t want people to look at me differently. The idea felt terrifying. Like they would look at me and see only that one label. That one horrible night. Picture it in their minds. Picture me suffering. Who I was would’ve been erased, over and over again, by what happened to me. Of course, that wasn’t true.” A faint smile flashes over his lips while I hang on his words with shallow breaths. “But it wasn’t easy to get over that idea. If it’s still fresh to him, he might feel the same way. He might need some time to digest that. And that time might be longer than you’d like, darling.”
There’s a surge of that endless, pure care I keep feeling whenever I think of him. “I know,” I blurt out. “I don’t mind waiting. I don’t care how long it takes.”
Dad narrows his eyes at me, perhaps wondering how deep in this hole of illogical devotion I am.Great.
“But I was stupid, and I guess others noticed how interested I am in him. Now he knows I think he’s my fated mate and will probably want to stay away from me, even if he ever gets over that idea.”
