Crashed(book three)(163)

Restless, he shoves up out of his seat and paces to the end of the aisle and then stops, his figure haloed by the single light beyond him. “She never changed. I guess I shouldn’t have expected to find anything different,” he says so quietly, but I can still hear every single inflection in his tone, every break in his voice. He turns to face me and walks a few feet toward me and stops.

“I’m … I’m—my head is such a f*cking mess right now I just …” He scrubs his hands over his face and through his hair before emitting a self-deprecating laugh that sends shivers up my spine. “I don’t even have any positive memories of her. None. Eight years of my f*cking life and I don’t remember a single thing that makes me smile.”

I know he’s struggling and I so desperately want to cross the distance between us and touch him, hold him, comfort him, but I know he needs to get this out. Needs to rid himself of his self-proclaimed poison eating his soul.

“My mom was a drugged out whore. Lived by the sword and died by the sword …” The spite in his voice, the pain, is so powerful and raw I can’t help the tears that well in my eyes or the shudder in my breath as I inhale. “Yep,” he says, that laugh falling out of his mouth again. “A druggie. She wasn’t discriminate though. She’d take anything to get that rush because it was what was important. Fucking more important than her little boy sitting scared as f*ck in the corner.” He rolls his shoulder and clears his throat as if he’s trying to choke back the emotion. “So I just don’t get it …” His voice fades and I try to follow what he is saying but I can’t.

“Don’t get what, Colton?”

“I don’t get why I f*cking care that she’s dead!” he shouts, his voice echoing through the empty stadium. “Why does it bug me? Why am I f*cking upset over it? Why does it make me feel anything other than relief?” His voice cracks again, his words ricocheting off the concrete.

My stomach knots up over the fact that he’s hurting because I can’t do a goddamn thing about it. I can’t fix or mend or resolve, so I reassure. “She was your mom, Colton. It’s normal to be upset because deep down I’m sure in her own way she loved you—”

“Loved me?” he screams, startling me with the sudden change from confused grief to unfettered rage. “Loved me?” he yells again, walking toward me and pounding on his chest with his words before walking five feet and stopping. “Do you want to know what love was to her? Love was trading her six year old son for f*cking drugs, Rylee!”

“Love was letting her drug dealing pimp rape her son, f*ck her little boy while he had to repeat out loud how much he loved it, loved him, so she could get her next f*cking fix! Treat him worse than a f*cking dog so she could score enough drugs to ensure her next high! It was knowing the f*cker is giving her the smallest f*cking quantities possible because he can’t wait to come back and do it all over again. Love was sitting on the other side of the closed bedroom door and hearing her little boy scream in the worst motherf*cking pain as he’s ripped apart physically and emotionally and not doing a goddamn thing to stop it because she’s so f*cking selfish.”

He cringes at the words, his body strung so tight I fear his next words will snap the tension, relieve the boy but break the man within. I look at him, my own heart shattering, my own faith dissolved imagining the horror his small body endured, and I force myself to stem the physical revulsion his words evoke because I fear he’ll think it’s for him, not the monsters who abused him.

I can hear him struggling to catch his breath, can see him physically revolt against his own words with a forceful swallow. When he starts speaking again, his voice is more controlled but the eerily quiet tone chills my skin.