Credence

He rises up, grabs me, and flips me over. Something circles my wrist, and I know what it is before I even look.

The belt he’d given me on my birthday had been sitting on my bedside table, and he takes it, tightening it around my wrist and looping it around the wrought iron headboard above.

Oh, shit. He yanks on it, pulling me up, and I have no choice but to clutch the bars with both hands for support as he secures me.

He forces my knees apart.

“Kaleb…” I start to protest.

I feel my wetness on the inside of my thigh, and every muscle inside me burns. I shake. What is he doing?

He digs his fingers into my hips and jerks me back into him, quickly sliding his cock back inside me. I squeeze my eyes shut, stinging from the rawness as he damn near punches a hole right through me. This doesn’t feel good.

“Kaleb…”

But I don’t know what I want to say, my head is spinning.

He fucks me, pounding his hips hard behind me as I hang onto the headboard and my hair bounces across my back.

He threads a hand through my hair, gripping the back of my scalp, and for a moment, I can’t breathe. All I hear is the sound of skin hitting skin as he fists his hands and makes my body hurt.

“Kaleb, stop.”

He pushes my back down more, making my ass jut out as he releases my hair and reaches around to paw my breasts and dig his teeth into my neck.

Tears hang at the corner of my eyes, and for a moment, all I can do is hang on as he pumps harder and faster.

It’s too deep, though. It hurts.

He’s taking. Fucking me like I’m nothing.

“Kaleb, stop.”

He doesn’t hear me, though, his hand landing on my ass with a loud whack and his breath pouring in and out of his lungs. I suck in a cry, the belt digging into my skin.

“Stop!” I scream.

I work the belt wider, slipping my wrist out, and then I whip around, hitting him I don’t know how many times. I burst into tears, seeing the rage on his face, and scramble off the bed. Naked, I run from the room. He catches me and yanks me back to him, but I slap him with everything I have and bolt into Noah’s room, locking the door. He pounds on the wood, and I hear Noah move in bed.

“What the fuck?”

I back away from the door, waiting for Kaleb to break through, but…

He doesn’t. I try to catch my breath, but my knees start to give.

“Tiernan?” Noah says.

I crawl in his bed, pushing him back down and spooning him from behind. I wrap my arms around him like a steel band.

“Go back to sleep,” I mutter, trying to quiet my tears.

“What did he do?”

“Nothing.” I bury my head in his back, the warm skin smelling like my bodywash that he always steals. “Just let me hold onto you.”

“Did he hurt you?” he asks, trying to turn around, but I won’t let him. “Tell me the truth.”

I can’t speak. I just shake my head. I’m the only one who hurts me. I believed it was real. Whatever was happening between us for however long.

He hates me. That wasn’t love.

Kaleb doesn’t come back to Noah’s door, and I think I hear his footfalls on the stairs at some point, but after a few minutes, my breathing calms and my tears subside. Noah just lies there, letting me hold him.

I tighten my arms around him again.

I don’t understand what’s happening. He wants me one minute and is throwing me away the next. He’s gentle and horrible. Vulnerable and hateful.

He shares me with Noah and then gets possessive. What does he want?

“He was with our mom,” Noah tells me, breaking the silence.

I open my eyes, feeling his voice vibrate against his body.

“It was a rainy, spring day, and some guy she’d been running with on the side was with them,” Noah goes on. “They had gone to the store—or so she told my dad. Instead, they went to a white house off a dirt road somewhere, and she left Kaleb in the car. Locked it and said she’d be back in a bit.” He pauses and then continues. “She went inside and the brief stop turned into a party. She got high, lost time, and fell asleep in the house.”

This is only the second time Noah has mentioned their mother. He must’ve been a toddler at the time.

“He was alone in the car with no one around for miles to hear him call out or cry when the minutes turned into hours. And hours into days.” I close my eyes, not wanting to hear the rest. “There was no food in the car and the only water came from the leak in the roof when it rained.”

I try not to see it, but an image of a little boy alone—cold and hungry—flashes in my mind. Kaleb was a child at one time. He was helpless then.

“At some point his throat went raw from crying out,” Noah explains, “but when my father finally found him, he wasn’t crying or calling out. Not anymore. Just sitting in the seat in his own filth staring off and barely even registering when the door was finally opened.”

“How much time?” I ask. “How much time did he lose?”

It takes a moment for him to answer. “Four days.”

My face cracks and silent tears fall.

“Something separated in his head,” Noah tells me. “What goes through your mind when something like that happens, you know? When one day turns into two and two into three? You’re four years old. You can’t get out. You can’t figure out what to do to help yourself. You’re starving. You’re cold. You’re alone. You can’t stand up. You don’t know when help is coming…”

I turn it all around in my head for a moment trying to imagine how long the hours felt to a four-year-old. Minutes filled with fear feel like hours, and hours of fear feel like an eternity.

“It must’ve felt like he was buried alive,” Noah adds. “The doctors said he gave up. A wall just sprung up, and over the years not talking became the one piece of control he had when he had none during those four days in that car. His voice was the one thing no one could demand from him. It was his way of punishing everyone. A way to make the world share the pain.”

Needles prick my throat. Yeah, I know what that’s like. Denying myself anything that made me happy for so long because I couldn’t let it go. It couldn’t not matter.

Kaleb has been punishing the world his whole life, almost like me. Unfortunately, the world moves on, and then it just becomes punishing yourself.

“Don’t cry for him,” Noah finally whispers. “Especially not in front of him.”

After a while, Noah falls back to sleep, and I’m not sure how long I lie there, thinking about what he told me.

Kaleb almost died. Slowly. Painfully. That would be a nightmare for anyone at any age. How much does he remember?

Hopefully not much.

It changed him, though. He turned inward and couldn’t trust again. That’s why he doesn’t speak. Not out of spite necessarily. He doesn’t want to give anyone a piece of himself again. People hurt.

He may not even know how to talk anymore. It’s not like four-year-olds are enunciating full speeches to begin with. You can’t really lose an ability you never had.

And it’s hurt the whole family. His mother must be in prison for other things to keep her there this long, so she’s all but dead to them. Jake had to raise two boys on his own, miles away from the help that Kaleb needed, and Noah never really knew his brother. He’s never known what Kaleb could’ve been. They’ve all been alone, and somewhere in the time I’ve been here, we’ve all learned to care about each other, but I also created a whole other wedge. Kaleb couldn’t learn to live with another woman in the house, and when he tried, the lines were fucked up. How did I fit? Was I his cousin? His friend? His brother’s?

His?

I pull my arms off Noah and swing my legs over the bed, sitting up, the weight of my role in all this sinking in. He acts wrong. He treated me wrong tonight. I’m confused, too. I’m making mistakes, too.

But I don’t want to hurt him. All I know for sure is that I can be there. Maybe over time he’ll trust me as a friend.

Hopefully as someone who cares about him, at least.

I stand up, looking at the clock and seeing it’s after four in the morning. I pick up a clean shirt out of Noah’s laundry basket of clothes he never puts away and slip it on. Leaving the room, I close the door and head for the shower.

As soon as I open the door, though, the steam hits me. The shower is running, and I spot Kaleb sitting there on the edge of the tub. I stop, my heart beating fast again.

His elbows rest on his jean-clad knees, and he hangs his head, quiet. He doesn’t look up.

I almost turn and leave. I need space. He needs space. Right now, anyway.

I don’t, though. I step in and close the door.

Slowly, I walk over to him and stand in front of him, waiting. Maybe for him to make a move or for him to lash out and storm out the door, but I’m not leaving for months yet. He can’t get away from me.

When he doesn’t make a move to escape, I hold out my hand and lightly graze his soft, dark hair.

He immediately clutches it in his own and nuzzles his head into it.

I let out a breath.

Kneeling down, I come in and circle my arms around his waist and lay my head on his chest, hugging him. I wish I knew what he wanted. I wish I trusted him, and I wish he trusted me.

Friends is a better way to start. Can we go back?

His arms hang limply at the side, and while he lets me hug him, he doesn’t hug me back. I let go, letting him have his space.

Looking up at him, he doesn’t meet my eyes. He pinches my shirt, staring at it. At Noah’s T-shirt.

“It’s okay,” I tell him softly. “I didn’t do anything with Noah.” I glide my hands down his arms. “I’m not going to…”

My right hand comes to his right hand, and I notice he’s holding something in it. I stop, bringing it up and taking the piece of wood from his fist.

“What is this?” But it doesn’t even take a second to realize exactly what it is.

The blue-green leg of my chest I painted with gold accents. I turn it around in my hand, my heart pumping so hard that a cool sweat breaks out on my forehead.

“What happened?” I dart my eyes up to his, breathing hard. “What did you do?”

Tears spring to my eyes, and I drop the leg, running to the door. No. I race from the bathroom, down the stairs, pain and anger curdling in my stomach as I bolt into the shop. The frigid air hits me as I see the bay door open, and I leap down the stairs, into the shop, and spin around, frantically searching for my chest. My first piece. The one he helped me design.

And all at once, it’s not there, and I see the barrel outside in the snowy driveway, spitting fire, remnants of the colored wood I painted sticking out of the top.

My hands shoot to my head, everything going blurry in front of me as silent sobs wrack through me.

No.

I stand at the open door, watching sparks fly into the black night and any traces of my piece quickly deteriorate into the barrel. My hair blows across my face, and I cover my eyes with my hands, unable to stand the sight of it.

But in my head, all I see are my stupid, kid drawings in the trash.

Stupid, stupid… I cry into my hands.

The stairs creak behind me, and I clench my teeth, wanting to kill him. I want to hurt him. Why would he do that?

Spinning around, I head over to the wall in my bare feet and grab a pipe from the collection of parts. When I turn around, he’s there within reach. I raise the pipe like a baseball bat, glaring at him, and ready to kill him. I’m done. I can’t take anymore.

I swing, but instead of smashing his head, I slam the fucking steel into the bookshelf I finished today. The side splinters, giving way, and I’m gone. Lost in my rage, I beat the fucking piece—slamming the bat as hard as I can into the sides, on the top, and moving to the desk I started a few days ago, too.

“You can’t hurt me!” I scream. “There’s nothing you can take from me! I don’t care about anything. I’m nothing!” I growl, destroying everything I made and beating it as hard as I want to beat him, because this is it. Now he fucking knows there’s nothing he can do to me. There’s nothing anyone can do to me. No one gets that power anymore. No one matters.

I cry, covering it with another growl. No one.

I’m stronger than you. There’s nothing you can do to me.

“What the hell?” I hear someone shout. “What the fuck is going on?”

Someone grabs me, pulling the pipe out of my hands, and I whip around, seeing Jake. His shirt is open, and his feet are bare, and Noah hangs back by the door, watching in horror.

Jake looks between his son and me, breathing hard.

I clench my fists, a beautiful numbness seeping down over me.

Kaleb holds my gaze for a moment, the pulse in his neck throbbing, but then turns and grabs clothes off the dryer, finishing getting dressed. He doesn’t even have his boots tied before he slips on his coat and grabs his stocked pack, heading for the door.

“Wait, what the fuck is going on?” Jake grabs his son.

Kaleb jerks out of his hold and continues walking.

“You’re not going anywhere in this weather!” he yells at Kaleb.

Kaleb stops, turns, and looks at me. His eyes falter for a moment, looking sorry or some shit, and for a moment I think he’s going to come back.

He simply holds my eyes, lays his hand flat on his chest, and taps it twice.

I don’t know what it means, and I don’t fucking care.

Without sparing another moment, he turns and leaves, disappearing into the cold night.