He could handle it. They shouldn’t have to.
Growing up as he had, an outcast amongst so many kids who hardly realized how privileged they were, he’d formed a thick skin. He never had the clothes other kids had or the popular toys. Hell, he was lucky if he even had food.
But it was never his envy for their material possessions that kept him up crying at night as a boy. It was the sight of their parents picking them up at the end of the day, the sound of moms and dads asking how their days were and if they had fun at school.
Most evenings, Rhett wandered home alone. The days he didn’t were the days he hid in the school and slept overnight. For years, his mom didn’t notice him missing from his bed, but when she eventually did, she beat him black and blue. That was when the questions started.
They said their meddling was out of concern, but their questions only made things worse. The closer the teachers and principal examined his home life, the more his world seemed put on display. The few friends he had started to notice all the ways he was different and then they didn’t want to be his friend anymore.
When he found his mom dead, a needle still in her arm, his first thought was how much she’d spent on the stuff that stole her life. People said children were expensive, but Rhett now knew they didn’t have to be. His mother never spent on him what she put into her addiction.
She never held him or claimed to love him, but he still cried over her body that night. She was all he knew, and the unknown loomed with terrifying possibilities he couldn’t face.
The days after her death were a blur. He remembered the blue car that picked him up and drove him to a brown building where he waited for his new foster parents to arrive. The foolish hope that these foster parents might act like the other parents at school, gave him the courage to go with the strange family.
But in a matter of days, it became clear that he would never be viewed the same as their other children. He would never be theirs. Always an outsider. Always different.
He became withdrawn, preferring to watch television or read rather than interact with people. Addicted to old TV shows where a mom and dad lived together with a family in a happy house tucked away in a safe little town, he lost interest in reality. Reality was ugly.
The idea that such a picture-perfect life could exist captivated him. It was nothing like the life he had with his mom or the one he claimed with his foster family, but it became everything he wanted.
Then things changed again, and his foster parents started fighting more than usual. They said they couldn’t keep him and he had to go back to the brown building. Their rejection hurt, because no matter how much they fought, they wouldn’t give up any of their real kids, the kids they loved.
Rhett spent a lot of time in that brown building. Over the years, the interior had changed, but the outside always looked the same and the outcomes never brought lasting relief.
No matter where he went, the people didn’t love him. They loved their other children, but never him.
When he was seventeen, on his way back to the brown building again, he’d finally admitted that he might be unlovable. Rather than suffer another family’s rejection, he ran.
He took odd jobs and stayed at boarding houses, until he crossed paths with a dairy farmer who offered him a job with free room and board. For nine years he worked on that farm, saving almost every penny he earned. He read a lot and bought a cell phone, which gave him access to the internet. He’d spent hours searching properties and dreaming of a day he might own his own home, perhaps even have a wife.
It had been years since anyone had taken interest in him, so when Adel showed up at the country fair one year with her pretty blonde hair and flirty eyes, he didn’t think it was anything personal. She said she needed a friend, someone who wasn’t tied down and could travel with her to singing gigs.
Her voice was pure gold and when she sang, he thought she might be an angel. But there was nothing pure about Adel, and the first time she touched him, she introduced him to a world of sin.
He should have known she was dangerous. Everything she did was fast. He quit the dairy farm and followed her down the coast where she’d spend the days sleeping wherever he managed to book a room, and the nights singing and partying with strangers.