There was so much bitterness in Shane’s voice, but his touch against her skin never changed. He was gentle as he held Lia while he dived back into his past. She almost told him he didn’t need to continue, but she knew she might never get another chance to hear, so she remained silent as he paused, as if he was drawing the courage to go on.
“Their first time together was…” Shane stopped for a minute. “It wasn’t consensual. She’d been dating him for a few months, and she always put the brakes on when he tried to have sex with her. Finally, one night he’d taken her back to his crappy apartment and had a couple too many beers. She said no, but he didn’t stop. I’ll never forget the day she told me about that moment. I was so furious with her. Why didn’t she turn him in? He’d raped her, and she still kept seeing him. And when she found out two months later that she was carrying his child, her parents were furious and kicked her out. What did she do? She moved in with him.”
“She told you all of this?” Lia was horrified that a mother would burden her son with such awful knowledge.
“Yes. They both hated me. She hated me because I was the product of a very unpleasant experience in her life. I was also the reason she was forever locked to this man. She told me on more than one occasion that she should have just aborted me — that she would have if she’d only had the money. Her husband, the man who fathered me, hated me because — oh, probably because he was just an evil bastard. I can’t get inside the brain of someone like that. He liked having such a pretty wife, someone who was so malleable to his will, but he also liked having a lot of women on the side. He would even bring one home on occasion, kicking my mother out of their bedroom so he could use it with this new ‘girlfriend.’ A few times, he made her, his wife, participate with them. She put up with it, never fighting him. She said it wasn’t worth the beatings he would lay upon her if she disobeyed him.”
“Why in the hell didn’t she just leave, go to a victim center?” Lia was horrified. She’d never imagined that his story could be that bad. “Or why didn’t she call in Child Protective Services?”
“She was weak. She blamed her woes on me, on him, on everything and everybody except for herself. He was unforgivable, but she was just as bad for staying. The first time he punched me so hard that I got a concussion, she should have realized it was too much. Hell, the first time he’d laid a hand on me, period, she should have left him. If she was OK with getting the shit kicked out of her, that was one thing, but when he was knocking around his toddler son, she should have gotten me out of there. But she didn’t, and it wasn’t until I was older that I realized that what they were both doing was wrong. I was so used to the abuse that I thought everyone got smacked around.”
“Oh, Shane,” Lia moaned. She pulled him closer into her arms and held him close. Her tears fell against his shoulder as she cried for the frightened boy he had buried inside himself, and the man who still had to endure those memories.
“At sixteen, I finally had enough. I beat him nearly to death, then left the house and never turned back. I was done. The sad thing was that I didn’t even care when I found out my mother had killed him. One day, I guess she just had enough, too. She stabbed him in his sleep, then waited for the police to come. She didn’t even try to hide what she’d done. They asked her if it was self-defense, and she said no. She could have gotten off. He beat her constantly, especially after I left, but she still pleaded guilty to the authorities. She told the prosecutor that she’d just decided he wasn’t worthy of living another day. She’d grabbed a kitchen knife, stood over him with a crazy smile on her face and plunged the knife deep into his chest. She told them that she’d laughed as his eyes popped open and he struggled to catch his breath.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Lia gasped, unable to imagine what he was saying.
“I went to the trial. She didn’t know I was there, but I wanted to see what happened. I sat in the back row. It was odd, the emotions I felt. It was as if I was a different person, just a journalist there to take notes. I felt nothing when she was deemed crazy and the judge had her locked up in a mental institution. I felt nothing for the man who had been killed. No…that’s not true. The only thing I felt at knowing he was dead was regret — regret that I hadn’t been the one to plunge the knife into the coldhearted bastard’s chest.”
“You don’t mean that, Shane. You couldn’t take a life,” Lia gasped.
He was silent for several heartbeats. “Not like that. No,” he said. “At that moment, I did feel regret, though. I don’t know. If I had stayed any longer, I might have been the one to take his life.”
The certainty in his tone frightened Lia. He was so different from the abused teenage boy he’d told her of, but she couldn’t comprehend what he’d been through. It was so tragic.
“Have you seen her since she’s been locked up?” Lia was afraid to ask, but she needed to know.
“No. I don’t have any desire to see that woman,” he spit out, his body tensing again.
“Maybe you should, Shane. Maybe it would help you to heal and you could fully let go of the past. What she did was horrendous, but if you could tell her that, tell her how wrong she was, then you could let go of that burden.”
“How would that help? She’s mental,” he snapped.
Lia knew he wasn’t snapping at her. She knew he was in a world of pain right now. Having grown up with loving parents and siblings, she couldn’t pretend to know what he had dealt with, but she loved him enough to get some glimmerings.
“It doesn’t matter if you get through to her, Shane. It’s about you. She stole enough from you, your childhood, your joy, your love. She took it all, and she doesn’t deserve redemption, but you deserve to be able to let it all go.”
“Well, I guess it really doesn’t matter now, does it?” he said, shocking her as he turned toward her and smiled.
“Why is that?” she asked, completely confused.
“Because we’re lost on a deserted island and may never be found again. It may be our sole responsibility to populate this land and start over,” he teased.
“Mmm, that sounds like it could be fun,” she said and rubbed against him. The frightening thing was the tug inside her heart at the thought of carrying Shane’s child. It should terrify her. She didn’t want to be a mother, not yet, but as she looked into his eyes, she could picture a little boy with his hair and eyes gazing back at her. She was also confused because of his earlier statement. Did he want kids or not? She didn’t want them now, but she knew she would someday.