“My father was an abusive prick who broke my mom’s spirit until one day she took a tumble down the stairs. I often wonder if she fell because of the sprained ankle she was nursing or if she stood there at the top of the stairs and realized nothing would get any better and let herself go.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m weirdly contemplative tonight.”
Normally he would be sitting in front of a monitor playing online games with his buddies.
“Because of Jessica?” She sat down on the sofa across from him. “Sorry. Kyle mentioned something about her being a trigger.”
He chuckled, but it wasn’t an amused sound. “I hate that word. Trigger. To some people it’s come to mean a person’s not strong enough to handle life. I’ve often found those people haven’t had much trouble with life, though they think they’re tough. It’s funny. When Tag asks me if something’s going to trigger me, he’s the one sarcastic asshole in the world who isn’t being a jerk. He knows what a trigger is and that even when we don’t mean to pull it, we still do so much fucking damage.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it in a bad way. If there’s anyone who understands what a trigger is, it’s me. I still freak out in storms sometimes. Especially if I’m driving and it catches me unaware. It’s one of the many reasons I don’t like to drive.” She looked up at him, her eyes shining in the starlight. “I would never make fun of anyone who gets emotional because of something that happened to them. I got caught in a storm driving from Papillon back to Austin a couple of years ago. I got so scared I blacked out. I apparently managed to get to the side of the road and park the car, but I swear one minute I was driving in the afternoon and the rain started to fall, and then I heard the thunder crack and I was fifteen and sitting next to my mother watching the lights come at me and feeling my body break.”
He moved closer to her. “It was a car accident?”
She studied him for a moment. “You didn’t ask about why I can’t walk?”
“You can walk.”
She sighed. “Why I can’t walk properly?”
Did she think he was playing around? How often did she have to justify her existence to people who thought the word normal meant anything at all? He’d learned normal was a word humans tossed around to describe something that didn’t exist.
“You walk the way you walk, Noelle. There’s nothing proper or improper about it.” Except the way her ass swayed. That gave him perfectly improper thoughts. “Your walk is a part of you. I didn’t ask why because it doesn’t matter.”
She stared at him for a moment. “I can’t quite believe you’re real. Of course it matters.”
Hutch didn’t see why. “Would my knowing why change my acceptance of you? Would it be different if the reason you walk the way you do came from a congenital defect? If you want to talk about it, I would love to. I would love to know how any incident you want to talk about affects you, but it doesn’t change the fact that there’s nothing wrong or damaged about you.”
“Hutch, I assure you I was damaged,” she said. “I couldn’t walk for a long time. I probably wouldn’t walk today if my stepmom hadn’t come into my life.”
“All right. Then how about I say it’s typical to be damaged. Being human and damaged go hand in hand. I assure you I’m as damaged as a person can be.”
Even in the low light he could see her eyes roll.
“Yes, you look damaged.”
He would love to have the right to put her over his knee for all that sass. “Most of mine is on the inside. My dad was good about not leaving scars. A good punch to the gut can put a kid out of service for a while without a ton of visible damage.”
“I’m sorry,” she sputtered. “It’s just you’re so comfortable talking about it. I still don’t like to.”
“I’ve gone through ten years of weekly therapy. I’ve learned that I can talk about it or I can let it eat me up inside. I ended up on the streets when I was a teen. Oh, there were group homes I could have gone to, but I rather enjoyed finding my own space. I got into a lot of trouble. I ended up meeting a man who I think saved my life. Tennessee Smith. He’s the reason I went into the Army and joined the Agency and eventually landed where I am. Big Tag pretty much chucked my ass into therapy after a particularly long op, and I learned how to talk about my feelings.” He knew there were guys out there who would call him weak, but he knew how strong a base knowledge of his own soul made him.