Page 16 of Watch Me Turn
"You don't know what I—" He stops, swallows. "What happened. What I did."
"Then tell me."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because!" His voice cracks. "Because if I say it out loud, if I let you see it, then it becomes real. And I can't—" He presses his palms against his eyes. "I can't let you look at me the way everyone else does. Like I'm broken. Like I'm exactly what he made me."
Oh.
Oh, Angel.
I'm quiet for a moment, just holding his legs on mine. Feeling his pulse under my fingers—still slow and irregular.
"You want to know something?" I say finally. "We all have things we're too ashamed to say out loud. Things we thinkmake us monstrous. But shame is a poison. It sits inside us and corrodes us like battery acid. It convinces us that we're unlovable."
He's listening now, even if he won't look at me.
"But here's the thing about shame," I continue, softer now. "The only cure for that kind of darkness is sunlight. You have to pull out the darkest part of the root and hit it with exposure. Let it breathe. Let someone else see it and tell you that you're still human anyway."
His laugh is bitter. "I'm not human anymore."
"You know what I mean." I squeeze his ankle gently. "And hey, that's the only kind of sunlight a vampire should be messing with anyway. The metaphorical kind."
That gets a small, broken sound that might be a laugh.
I wait.
Then I say the most important part: "You don't have to impress me, Angel. I'm not keeping score. I'm not judging. And I'll never tell another soul about what happens in this room." I meet his eyes when he finally looks at me. "Why don't you use this once in a lifetime opportunity—here in this luxury jail—to release yourself from it? Just this once."
He stares at me for a long moment. His throat works. His hands are shaking slightly.
"I was thirteen," he says finally, and his voice is barely above a whisper.
I don't move. Don't speak. Just stroke his calf and listen.
Angel's laugh is hollow. "He brought me to a warehouse outside Monterrey. Told me to wait in the car with one of his men while he went inside. I could hear shouting, screaming. Then this popping sound." He opens his eyes but doesn't look at me. "After maybe twenty minutes, he came back out and told me to come inside. Said it was time I learned what happens to people who betray our family."
My hands still on his feet, but I've stopped rubbing them. I hold them steady with a simple grounding touch. Just enough to keep him here whilst his mind wanders to darker places.
"There were three bodies on the floor. Two men and a woman. They'd been shot in the head, execution-style. Blood everywhere—on the walls, pooling on the concrete. The metallic smell..." He swallows hard. "I threw up right there. Couldn't help it. And my father—he just stood there watching me. He waited until I was done, then made me look at each body. Made me memorize their faces."
"Fuck. I'm so?—"
"He said, 'This is what happens to traitors. This is what happens to people who think they can steal from us, lie to us, betray us. You need to understand this, mijo. This is our world. This is who we are.'" His voice cracks. "I was thirteen years old, Sophia. Thirteen. And he made me stand there in that room with those bodies for an hour. Said I needed to get used to it. That this was my future and I'd better have the stomach for it."
I shake my head, my throat tightening as I shift closer to him on the couch.
"I cried all the way home, but he told me to stop being a little bitch. Said men don't cry over necessary work. That if I couldn't handle it, I wasn't his son." He finally looks at me, and his eyes are brimming with tears. "So when this happened, when I was kidnapped and drugged or turned into whatever I'm turning into, my first thought was him. I thought maybe he'd done it to teach me another lesson. To punish me again somehow."
The silence hangs between us for a long while. I don't know what to say. What comfort can I offer for pain like that? What words would be sufficient?
I reach for his hand, and even though it feels massive in comparison, I hold it in mine and stroke his knuckles with my thumb. He doesn't flinch, just lets me.
"For what it's worth," I say finally, "you didn't deserve that. None of it. You were just a child."
He avoids my eyes, and his voice becomes small, Almost childlike. “But maybe I deserve what's happening to me right now."
