“The way you help your brother is amazing,” she says.
“Do you know how many times he’s helped me?” I lift a brow.
“You always say that, but I see you giving way more than him.”
I bite back my next words. My throat squeezes closed, my annoyance at her perceived understanding of my relationship with Nate making it hard to breathe. As I watch her face shadow with the realization that there might be more between my brother and I than she comprehends, I war with whether to bring up the past.
If I don’t, I’ll continue to have this worry in the pit of my stomach. If I do, it could be the end of all this like the flip of a switch. I don’t know what will happen when she sees all of me.
“I like your brother. I do. A lot, actually. But you shortchange yourself when it comes to him. If he asked you to give him this apartment, you would. And that’s awesome of you, Dom,” she says, placing a hand on my chest. “It’s one of the reasons I like you.”
Her palm flexes over my heart and she looks at me so earnestly, so tenderly, that I know I have to tell her. Now. Before I lose the courage. If she walks, at least she does it before she gets in any deeper.
Shifting under the blankets, I move so I’m sitting upright. “When I was sixteen,” I say, clearing my throat, “my father beat the shit out of my mother.”
She gasps, her hand flying to her mouth. “Why would he do that?”
“Because it was a Thursday,” I say, emotionless. “Because we had ham sandwiches for dinner. I don’t fucking know. But it happened a lot and this particular night in June, it was really bad.”
“Did he hurt her?”
“Most nights he did. Usually a few bruises, a few chunks of hair missing, things that became almost normal to us. Isn’t that sick?”
Her eyes fill with tears as she watches me recant my childhood.
“Then, one night, things were different.” Forcing a swallow, I take her wrist in my hand and hold it. She slips it down so our fingers interlock and lays them, together, on my stomach. “I was in bed, my room just below my parents and it began. It was almost predictable, which is crazy. It started with yelling, then crying, then he’d throw her around until he was done.”
“You had to hear that?”
Ignoring her question and the tears slipping down her cheeks, I stare at the glow of the television power switch across the room. “It got bad. And it didn’t end. And I heard her cries turn to screams . . .”
Camilla squeezes my hand so hard it almost hurts.
“I went up the stairs, seeing Nate behind me at the foot of the stairs when I got to the top. He came up as I opened the door to my parents’ room.”
“What happened?” she asks quietly.
“The sick fuck had her on her back, on the bed, a gun pressed against her temple,” I say as calmly as I can. “I, um, I was afraid to move. Afraid to speak. Afraid that something would cause him to pull the trigger and shoot her in the head. She looked at me, her hand sort of halfway reaching out in an attempt to keep me back.”
“Oh my God.”
“He had a hand around her neck, holding her there. He must’ve heard me because he turned and I remember his eyes were like he’d been possessed or something. They almost glowed,” I recount, shaking my head. “He was demonic.”
“He told me to stay back,” I continue, “rattling off how my mom was a whore, all this bullshit. It ended with the gun being pointed at me.”
“Dominic!” The panic in her voice only feeds the frenzy in my body as I recall the scariest few minutes I’ve ever experienced.
I don’t bother giving her the details about how he called Nate and I the biggest regrets of his life. That he blamed us for his bottle-a-day vodka habit or told us we’d grow up to be just like him. There’s no point in going through all the movements of the next few minutes that only seemed like seconds. None of that matters.
“The gun eventually went off,” I say, still looking at the television button. “It was supposed to fire at my mom, but the bullet hit the wall instead. I can still hear the wood splinter, the pictures that hung near the spot dropping to the floor and the glass shattering everywhere. Nate and I lunged towards him. Nate tried to hold him down and I worked on getting the gun away. His breath burned with cheap vodka . . .”
Tearing my gaze away from the television and to Camilla, I see the tears dotting her face. Reaching up, I brush them away. “The second bullet went through his neck. It was supposed to hit Nate, but I moved his arm just a micrometer to the left and it got him instead.”
Cam rests her forehead on mine, her body shaking as she cries. I hold her to me, reassuring her that it’s all okay. Maybe me too.
“My prints were on the gun,” I say, more clearly now. “We were afraid we’d go to jail for killing our father. Nate was going to take the rap for it. He was in my face, telling me what to do, what to say. We were so scared. We sat there, blood pooling around us, our mom sobbing, crying over this asshole until she was covered in his blood too. Then, you know,” I gulp, “we had this feeling of almost relief.”
“What happened?” she sniffles, pulling away.
“I wasn’t letting him take the fall. It was an accident. So when a neighbor called the police, I told them I did it. I wasn’t letting Nate take the fall.”
“Did they believe you?”
“Yeah, I mean it was investigated, but with mom’s injuries they ended up letting it go. It was self-defense.”
She stills, absorbing what I’ve just thrown on her. I hold her, finding some comfort in the feel of her body against mine as I wait for her reaction.
“Dom,” she chokes, pulling away. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
Holding my breath, I try to steady my heart. “Why would I?”
She searches my face, but without the suspicion I expect. In its place is a look of resolution, of consideration, that steals my voice.
“Then why did you tell me now?”
I squeeze a swallow down my throat, wondering the same thing. “I don’t know. I guess it felt like the right time.” Looking at the floor, I feel a burst of panic. “It was an accident, Cam. I know it—”
She reaches out, her fingers cupping the sides of my face and halting my words. Her touch is so tender that I don’t really know how to react. I wait for some outburst or question or a shove to get more answers, but none of that comes. Instead, her eyes fill with tears as she strokes my cheeks.
“I can’t believe that happened to you,” she breathes. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. There’s nothing fine about this,” she fires back, getting situated beside me. “How dare you have had to go through that. How dare he do that to you!”
“He’s dead,” I point out.
“And you have to live with it.”
Her consideration for me, that her first thought is of me, sends a warmth shooting over my entire body. I don’t even feel the pain in my side, nor the headache I’ve battled all evening. It’s all numbed from this relief.
“Babe, Ryder’s asleep down the hall,” I say, a smile gracing my lips. “Keep your voice down.”