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I graduated from high school with a perfect 4.0 GPA. I sprinted through advanced classes, dominated an accelerated learning program, took down Law School in only three years. The coma took its toll on my brain but I was still the smartest guy in just about any room, and still somehow with all of that I had convinced myself that this was all out of my hands. Unfixable and uncontrollable because that was the simplest solution – nothing. I wanted it to be true because I was a coward. I always had been. I always would be.

  “We get to the root or we never cure the disease,” Ben told me quietly. “You want to fix things with Jenna? You want a healthy relationship where you both feel safe?”

  “Yes,” I answered thickly.

  “Then we talk about the abuse. Today.”

  I looked anywhere but at Ben. The floor, the ceiling, the laces on my tennis shoes, but finally I couldn’t avoid him any longer. I couldn’t avoid it.

  “Okay,” I told him solemnly. “Let’s talk about it.”

  Chapter Nine

  Kellen

  “It’s Kellen, isn’t it?” she asked kindly.

  I looked up at the woman standing in front of me. She was short and thin with long red hair that hung down to her waist, ruffling in the wind as she waited for me at the front door. The house around her was small and old. The paint was chipping on the railings framing the porch and the swing on the right side was half hanging, half falling down on the beaten boards beneath it. The lawn was cut tight, though, and a small flower bed around the mailbox was blooming green and purple. Pinks and yellows. They matched the bright colors of the woman’s clothes, all of which looked new and clean. Her arms were empty, no crying babies or bottles. It was quiet. Almost silent.

  It was a far cry from my last foster home that had been overflowing with kids. The parents that lived there were nice enough but they were overwhelmed. They tried to manage all of us but there was just no way to do it. They didn’t have the manpower, and when the decision came down to choosing who stayed and who left, they were quick to send me on my way.

  I paused on the cracked stone walkway. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She beamed at me. “Look at the manners on you,” she chuckled. “That’s very sweet, but, baby, I’m going to tell you a little secret about women. Something you should try very hard to always remember. Any woman over the age of thirty hates to be called ‘ma’am’.”

  “Sorry,” I replied awkwardly. “I didn’t know.”

  “That’s okay. We just had our first life lesson.” She gestured for me to follow her into the house, pushing the front door open wide. “Come on in. We’ll see what else we can teach each other. I hear you speak French?”

  “Yes. Oui.”

  I stepped inside, moving past her and catching her perfume in my nose. It was too strong, too acidic. I tried very hard not to let it show that I didn’t like it. She seemed nice and I didn’t want to disappoint her again.

  “That is what I’d like you to teach me,” she said with a warm smile.

  “I can try.”

  “How did you learn it?”

  “My m—“ I choked back a sob as my eyes burst bright, soaked in salt. It came on so fast I couldn’t stop it. I looked away, feeling humiliated and childish.

  Her hand touched my head softly. She caressed my unruly hair. “That’s alright. They told me you were still getting over her death.”

  “It’s why they kicked me out of the last house,” I replied hoarsely. “I cried too much. They said I made the other kids angry.”

  “Well good thing there are no other kids here. Just you and me, and between you and me you can cry as much as you want. You deserve to be sad over her.”

  I sniffed in reply. For some reason her kind words made me feel even worse.

  “Is that your only bag?” she asked. I nodded silently. “Good. Let me show you your room and then you can help me with dinner.”

  That first night in Sophia’s house was quiet. It was also the first night in a very long time that I didn’t cry.

  I helped her make dinner, we watched TV together, and when I went to bed in a room all to myself I nearly died with relief. I slept in late the next morning for the first time in over a year and I almost felt bad for not missing the rough hospital sheets and hard furniture I’d camped out on for so long, watching my mom wither away.

  I didn’t feel bad about not missing my last house, though. I hadn’t made any friends there and neither of the parents had been half as nice to me as Sophia was. She smiled at me when I came into a room. She asked for help opening jars, telling me it was nice to have a man around the house. She gave me chores to keep me busy and paid me an allowance for doing them faithfully. She would ask me the French word for just about everything when we went grocery shopping, laughing and ruffling my hair when I confessed I didn’t know the word for bananas. I didn’t realize until I was in her house that I’d never had a banana before. Turned out I didn’t care for them.

  I felt comfortable and safe, feelings that had been foreign to me for too long, and I reveled in it. I even started having fantasies that Sophia would like my company so much she’d adopt me and I wouldn’t be moved again. I started to wonder if maybe I was finally home.

  Then one afternoon as I was getting ready to leave for school she leaned in to give me a hug and I flinched. Every time she hugged me she left her acrid perfume on my clothes. It was a smell that would stay with me all day and I hated it, but I’d been careful to never say it. Sophia had been teaching me more manners, more ways to avoid offending a woman, and telling her she stank was definitely something I shouldn’t do.

  But that morning I was tired and I slipped. She saw me flinch, felt me pull away, and immediately her sweet smile turned sour.

  “What’s the matter, baby?”

  I shook my head quickly. “Nothing. Sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for?”

  My eyes darted over the wall behind her. I was searching for answers, for a lie to cover my mistake, but I couldn’t find one fast enough. “I don’t like your perfume. It gets on my clothes and I smell it all day. I’m sorry,” I muttered lamely.

  She sucked in a sharp breath as she stood up rigidly. “I think you’d better get to school.”

  I ran for the bus, eager to get away from the awkward situation, but it stuck with me all day. I felt guilty for upsetting her and I swore to myself I’d make it up to her when I got home. I’d find a way. Somehow.

  When I got off the bus she wasn’t there to greet me like she usually was. I went in the house and couldn’t find her. Just a note on the table next to a peanut butter sandwich that said she wasn’t feeling well and that this was my dinner. She was in her room and she didn’t want to be disturbed.

  I ate my sandwich, did my homework, and quietly got ready for bed. I wanted to tell her I remembered to brush my teeth without being reminded but I didn’t dare knock on her door. Instead I went into my room and clicked on the light.

  It was empty. All of the furniture was gone. The bed, the dresser, the mattress, the blankets. Nothing but another note in the center of the room.

  You were cruel to me today.

  Cruelty does not deserve niceties.

  You’ll get your things back when you show me you know how to be sweet.

  I nearly cried that night as I went to sleep in the dark on the cold, hard floor. I was angry I’d disappointed her. I was hurt that she was punishing me so sternly.

  And when the bedroom door opened slowly, yellow light spilling in behind the glowing red figure in the frame, I was afraid.

  I just didn’t know why yet.

  ***

  “Do you want to stop?” Ben asked gently.

  I looked at him hard as the animal breathed in steadily and my entire body rested like stone in the couch of his office. “I want to be finished with this forever,” I reminded him calmly.

  “That won’t happen in one session, Kellen.”

  “It won’t happen in none either.”

  He nodded. “
Agreed. Please continue.”

  “She came into the room and explained to me how wrong I’d been. How hurtful I was. What a hateful little boy I was. Not a man after all. Then she asked me if I thought I could be sweet. I wanted my bed back so I told her yes. She asked me if I wanted to be a man. I wanted to stop crying, to stop feeling so fucking small and powerless, so I told her yes.” My heartbeat spiked, my body going hot everywhere then cooling almost instantly. Like lava hitting water. Obsidian, sharp and shining. “She laid on top of me. She touched me everywhere and not just with her hands. I was old enough to understand what she was doing. I’d seen it on TV and movies. I knew what sex was. But my body wasn’t ready for it and when she didn’t get the reaction she was looking for she accused me of insulting her again. She left me there on the floor – shaking and scared. So confused by my own body that when the sun rose I pissed myself instead of going to the bathroom.”

  “Kellen—“

  “It went on for nearly a month,” I continued, ignoring him. “I slept on the floor every night and every night she came to the room and told me to be sweet. To be quiet. That it would feel good if I let it, if I was a man. But I wasn’t so it didn’t and she started getting angry at me. She was more forceful. It started to hurt. Finally another kid moved into the house. An older guy. Miguel. He was sixteen, cocky, and not shy about walking around the house with his shirt off all day. Sophia loved him. She gave me my furniture back when she moved him into the house and stopped talking to me altogether. She stopped coming to our room but I heard Miguel sneak out a few times to go down the hall and laugh and moan with her. Then he’d come back reeking of her perfume and I’d dream of crawling out the window into the dark and never coming back. He ran away before me, though. He beat me to it and with him gone it was just Sophia and me again, and without explanation my furniture disappeared. That’s when I started getting into fights at school. That’s when the animal was born.”

  “The animal?” Ben asked. His voice was hushed, almost reverent.

  “It’s the anger,” I explained. “It’s the only thing that keeps the doors closed.”

  “What doors?”

  “The doors on the cages for the demons. For Sophia and all the others.”

  “All the other people who hurt you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The animal, the anger, it protects you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You feel like the animal right now, don’t you?”

  I looked at him dispassionately. “It’s the only way to talk about it without losing my shit.”

  He nodded slowly. “I can see that. It’s good.”

  I laughed. “I’m going to have to go straight from here to the gym and beat the hell out of my own body to calm down. I won’t feel human until I do. None of this is good.”

  “Yes, Kellen, it is. The animal is very, very good.”

  “How?”

  “It’s a coping mechanism. Exactly like the hollow feeling you get during sex, only it’s the exact opposite. The animal as you call it, the anger, that’s your emotional response to what happened to you. I can see it in your eyes. If you had that woman in front of you right now you’d—“

  “I’d murder her with my bare hands and I wouldn’t be sorry.”

  Ben pursed his lips tightly. “Yes. I believe that to be true. And while morally we both know murder to be wrong, that response, that emotion you’re feeling is good. The fact that you’re feeling anything in relation to those events is good. Burying your emotions is dangerous. Feeling murderously angry, believe it or not, is healthy.”

  “Not for her.”

  “We’ll pray you never see Sophia again.” Ben scooted forward eagerly in his chair. “But this is your solution, Kellen. This is your first step toward recovery.”

  “The animal?” I scoffed. “He’s a feral monster. He’s insane. He’s no good to anyone.”

  Ben cocked his head to the side, studying me. “He’s you, Kellen.”

  “You want me to be the animal?”

  “I want you to be yourself. All of you. The fear, the anger, the love you have for Jenna. What I don’t want you to be, what Jenna doesn’t want you to be, is nothing. Be angry or be enamored, but don’t be vacant.”

  “You want me to feel my feelings.”

  “Yes!” he replied excitedly.

  I stared at him for a long silent moment, trying to decide if I should take him seriously or not. “Did you pick that advice up from your receptionist because it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard?”

  Ben grinned. “I think it’s totes brilliant.”

  Chapter Ten

  Jenna

  “You watched what?”

  “Dirty Dancing,” he replied, swatting at my hand as I reached over and stole a strawberry from the cutting board.

  I frowned when he succeeded in knocking it from my hand. “Why? Did you lose the remote again?”

  “No. I saw it in a movie.”

  “You saw a movie in a movie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like a turducken?”

  He looked over at me where I sat perched on the counter next to him. His hand hovered the knife steadily over the strawberry I was eying. “No. Nothing is like a turducken.”

  “How do you know? When did you eat one?”

  “I haven’t yet. It’s on my bucket list.”

  “Of course it is.”

  I dove my hand in to take a strawberry. He knocked it away again because dammit Kellen was fast.

  “Give me a strawberry,” I demanded on a laugh.

  “Can’t. They’re for desert.”

  “But I want one.”

  He smiled, turning back to the cutting board. “I see that.”

  “Just one, Kellen. I’m so hungry.”

  “One strawberry won’t fix that. It’ll make you hungrier.” He nodded to the chips and salsa sitting on the kitchen table. “Go snack on those.”

  “Those aren’t what I want.”

  “Sucks to be you.”

  “You’re so mean.”

  “I know.”

  I glanced around the kitchen, in awe of the delicious smells coming from the oven. He was making some kind of roast with potatoes bubbling and boiling happily on the stove. A can of whipped cream and a plastic wrapped angel food cake waited on the counter on the other side of him.

  “I can’t believe you cooked. You hate cooking.” I paused, examining his face as reality began to dawn on me. “I also can’t believe you watched Dirty Dancing. You hate chick flicks. What’s happening here? What’d you do?”

  “Nothing,” he chuckled.

  “Something’s off.”

  “Nothing’s off.”

  “Are you a pod person? Be real. You can tell me. I’ll still love you. Aliens? Is it aliens? Did they take over your body and make you watch Dirty Dancing?” I took his face in my hands, forcing him to stop and look at me. “I’ll avenge you. Take me to their leader.”

  Kellen smiled that breathtaking, heart shaking smile he had, dropped the knife on the counter, and came to step between my legs. He leaned back, looking down his nose to appraise me. “You’d kill for me, huh?”

  “In an instant.”

  “You think you can take an alien king?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never met one.” I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “Do you think I could take your king?”

  “You wouldn’t stand a chance,” he laughed, leaning in and kissing me softly. “But I love that you’d try.”

  Kellen kissed me again, more slowly this time, and I scooted forward on the counter to get closer to him. His arms wrapped around my waist loosely, his hands in no hurry.

  When I pulled back I draped my arms over his shoulders, smiling contentedly. “What movie was the movie in?”

  “Crazy Stupid Love.”

  I scrunched up my nose. “The Ryan Gosling one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “No. I hate that guy.”
/>
  “He’d probably hate you too.”

  “I would hope so.”

  “Let me have a strawberry.”

  He laughed at my persistence. “No.”

  “Why?”

  “You didn’t say please.”

  I linked my fingers behind his neck, shaking him gently. “Kellen, please, please, please can I have a strawberry?”

  He grinned, leaning in again. “No,” he murmured, his voice so low and so deep, reverberating through the room. Through my blood.

  When his lips met mine I didn’t let him take it slow. I didn’t encourage him to be patient or gentle. I kissed him hard because I missed him harder. I missed the feel of him against me, the touch of his hands, the adoring look he got in his eyes when he laid out on top of me – loving me moments before he left me.

  It would hurt when he went under. There was no getting around that, but the build-up was too much to escape. I wanted it, I wanted him, and even though I’d lose him and a part of my heart in the end it was worth it be that close to him. To have him body and soul for one moment before he disappeared entirely.

  When I wrapped my legs around the back of his and pinned our bodies together I felt him groan in the back of his throat. I could feel him hesitate, unsure what to do. Unsure of what was right.

  “Jenna,” he mumbled against my mouth.

  I wove my fingers into his thick brown hair, denying him an escape. “It’s okay, Kel. I know. It’s okay.”

  He hesitated for one breathless second before descending on me. Before taking my mouth with his, my sides with his hands, and my heart with his heat. He missed me too – I could feel it in the rush of his skin over mine. He stripped me down so quickly I wasn’t sure I’d been wearing clothes in the first place. I felt like ice there on the counter, cold and exposed and transparent, my desire etched in every vein under my skin. Written across my face in swirls of red and pink, screamed through the quiet room under every exhale. Every whimper that escaped me as he mastered me. As he touched me from head to toe, warming me. Thawing me. Puddling me in his hot hands and molding me to something smooth and fluid, so sinuous I felt like a song being sung by his lips.