Mine (Real, #2)(82)

“Does he say anything?” Pete breaks the silence. “Is he at least angry at those *s? At something?”

I shake my head.

“That’s the problem with Rem. He just takes it. Like a punch. And he keeps standing but he takes it. Sometimes I wish he’d just say what he feels, damn it!” Pete stands and begins pacing.

Riley shakes his head. “I respect that, Pete. When you open your mouth to say something, it makes it real. Whatever’s running through his head, the fact that he doesn’t voice it means he’s fighting it. He’s not letting it matter enough to spill it out.”

I drop my hair as a curtain and blink back the moisture in my eyes, refusing to let them see how all this affects me. But it does. I was depressed once in my life. It’s a big, black, dark hole. This was not some light depression where you’re sad and have PMS. It’s the overwhelming feeling that you want to die. And wanting to die is completely against all our survival instincts. Our normal instinct is to kill to protect our loved ones, to kill to survive. Just imagining that Remy is feeling all the same mess I felt when my life blew up around me pulls me so deep into the darkness that I worry about being able to get him out, rather than falling right in with him.

Whatever it is he’s feeling, I need to remind myself he can’t control the thoughts his mind is throwing at him. His mind is not him, even though right now it controls his reactions. I want to support, to be steady, understanding. Not emotional, needy, and like I will fall apart at any minute. And god, at six months pregnant, I am definitely emotional, needy, and falling a little apart without him.

“At least he’s coming down to punch those bags. You don’t know how deeply I admire him for that,” Riley adds glumly.

“Do you think he’ll pull through before the fight, Brooke?” Coach asks me. “By god, watching my boy get humiliated last season out there . . . This was his year. This was his season.”

“I don’t think he’ll fight tonight,” I admit.

“So we can say good-bye to a first place ranking,” Pete swears.

“You can’t let him fight like this, Pete! He could get hurt. He could hurt himself,” I burst out; then I drag in a breath and try to calm down.

“It would have been better if he didn’t remember,” Pete says, with an infinite amount of bitterness in his voice.

“What do you mean?”

“It would be better if he didn’t remember anything his parents ever did to him.”

My protective instincts surge with a vengeance. “What did they do to him?”

There’s something alarming about the way Pete hesitates, about the way his eyes slide across the group, and then settle back on me. My pulse flutters faster than normal by the time he finally speaks. “They committed him because he went black for the first time when he was ten, Brooke. But first, they thought he was possessed. They got all fanatic about it and had an exorcism performed on him.”

When those last words filter into my troubled brain, I am so heartbroken and torn, my heart withers in my chest. I make a sound and cover my mouth.

Diane covers her face.

Curses fall from Riley’s lips as he turns his head to the carpet.

Coach stares down at his hands.

The silence that stretches . . . it is taut with sorrow, with disbelief, and this agonizing frustration . . . of an ill little boy who was so misunderstood . . .

I think of “Iris”—the song he has played to me. The song where he wanted to be seen and understood, by me. When not even his own parents understood him.

Oh god.

“He was put in an exorcism circle in his own home,” Pete says, driving the dagger deeper inside me. “His room was stripped of everything so he wouldn’t hurt anyone, and he was roped to his bed. They went at it for days—we don’t know exactly how many, but over a week—until a little neighbor who used to play with Rem came in looking for him, and those parents intervened. The ‘holy man’ was dismissed, and Remy was just committed instead.”

There’s not a sound in the room.

I’ve stopped breathing. I feel like I’ve stopped living.

“Unfortunately,” Pete continues, “he remembers that manic episode, because at the institution, they did some experimental hypnosis to draw his memories out. See if some therapy would work. Not that it did. Worse is, his own body would have protected him from that hurtful memory if we hadn’t f*cked up with that damn hypnosis.”

There’s still not a sound.

But I can hear my heart beating inside me, so hard. Hard and ready, like those times when I could sprint like the wind. I can even hear the blood gushing through my veins, fast and furious. I am ready . . . and angry . . . and desperate to fight something. To fight for him. I remember him telling me he had a memory of his parents. How his mother crossed him at night. An indescribable pain cracks tiny little places inside me. Oh, Remy.

“So he remembers all of that?” I ask, while the middle of my body burns with impotent rage.

“I know he knows they’re wrong . . . when he’s blue. But when that black side comes, I know he thinks about it.” Pete’s frustration and despair is carved into every line of his face. “It’s only natural to wonder why you weren’t wanted.”

“But he is wanted!” I cry.