Page 26 of Burning Demons (Burning Torments #1)

Chapter 26

Tate

“Momma? Fuck. Fuck!”

“What is goin’ on in here?”

“Shhh.”

“Don’t you dare shush me. What is this? What am I seein’?”

Their voices were crystal clear in my ears, but my body wouldn’t move yet. Winnie was pissed about something, and Wren was nearly in tears.

“Wren.” I sat up like the dead springing to life and in one second had blinked my way into the horror of reality.

Wren stood near his bed and held a pillow over his crotch. Winnie was just inside his open door, one hand blanched of all color as it tightened on the knob, and staring as if I had grown two extra heads.

She stayed fixated on me, but Wren and I snapped our eyes toward the hallway as a loud bumbling noise echoed from it.

“What is it? What’s wrong, Winnie?” Dad shot around the corner and skidded to a halt. “Aww, hell.”

“Fuck.” I jumped out of bed, scrambling for sanity or excuses, I wasn’t sure yet. I was in Wren’s room, Wren’s bed , with Winnie and Dad right fucking there, gawking.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Winnie breathed, closing her eyes and mumbling something toward the ceiling.

Wren grabbed my arm and pulled me behind him. The confusion cleared in a heartbeat, and the extent of this shitshow finally unfolded. I was stark-ass naked.

“Momma—”

“How long has this been goin’ on? Huh?” Winnie didn’t seem to want an answer as she continued. “Right under our noses.”

“Winnie, let’s give the kids some privacy—” Dad said, but she interrupted him.

“Privacy?”

“So they can get dressed,” Dad said.

Fuck. Fuck. I had so fucked this up. Dad would send me packing for sure. I had ruined Wren, ruined this perfect family. I stayed hidden behind Wren’s larger frame, like a coward, as Winnie sputtered and huffed, shaking with the weight of what I had done to them.

Dad and Winnie argued back and forth for a minute, but I pushed it out, trying not to be absorbed into the darkness where my mind longed to lead me. Only when Wren stiffened, his arm behind him, keeping me in place with a backward hug, did I pay attention to their words.

“Stop holdin’ on to him like that. Right here in front of us,” Winnie snapped.

“No,” he said. “You’re mad, I get it, but stop shoutin’.”

“Oh, no. You do not get it .”

“Well, whatever. I’m not lettin’ you yell at him like this. Maybe everyone needs a time-out, and we can talk downstairs.”

“You’re not gonna let me … I can’t believe you, Wren. You don’t act like this. You don’t talk to me like this. What’s that boy done to you?”

I jerked at her accusation, Mother’s voice in my head overriding all other sound. What did you do this time, Tate? You’re a disease infecting everything you touch. I would have everything if it weren’t for you . I didn’t want to believe the ugliness swirling in my brain, but Winnie’s words brought them out swinging like jagged glass ripping my heart apart.

“Stop it. You’re upsettin’ him.”

“You will not give me orders in my house, young man.” Winnie seethed.

“It’s okay, Wren,” I said—at least, I meant to say that, but the words didn’t make any sounds. I had my arms curled between our bodies, and I bit down on my fingers to keep from screaming.

“Please leave, Momma.” Wren’s tear-drowned tone turned cold.

“Winnie, come on now. You’ve made your point. You’re pissed. Let them get dressed, and we can talk about it later,” Dad said.

“Has everyone in this house lost their ever-lovin’ minds?” Winnie stormed out the door, her normally soft steps booming down the stairs.

“Tate, you okay?” Dad asked. He didn’t wait for me to answer, just came fully into Wren’s room, pulled a blanket off the bed, and wrapped it around my shoulders. “Come on, son.”

I was reluctant to leave Wren, as if moving from this spot would change us forever, break us in ways that might never be fixed. And Dad saw some of that.

“Hey. It’s okay. You both had a rude awakenin’. Wren, go on and get a shower. I’ll sit with Tate while you do.”

Wren tracked us as Dad moved me toward the door. Finally, Wren nodded with a small smile curling his lips, telling me he was okay. I made a valiant effort to contort my own into something like a smile, but they only fell open and trembled under the weight of the tears on my cheeks.

Just as the door closed with me on the wrong side, the side without him, Wren dropped his chin to his chest.

My fingers were like ice shards balled inside my sleeves. The room wasn’t even that cold with the window open so I could smoke. It was me. A frozen slush had formed in my veins, slowing everything down except Winnie’s words: What has that boy done to you?

Dad sat on my desk chair across from me. We had been talking for a while about nothing important. School, the Tate bars and my much better cranberry sauce, Sienna’s fall festival pictures of me that had come across the city’s social media, and Wren’s concert in the spring that, yes, he and Winnie already knew about.

“Aren’t you going to ask about Wren and me?”

Dad took a deep breath and leaned back in the chair. He had been eerily undisturbed about finding his son naked in not just a boy’s room but his stepson’s room.

“No. I figured you’d get to it.”

“Don’t hate me,” I blurted. He was too calm, and I braced for the blow, verbal or otherwise. He had to be so pissed.

Dad cocked his head to one side, brows drawing in as if he needed to think about his reply.

“I’m not trying to ruin him.” Winnie’s words had hurt more than I wanted to think about. Wren had never acted this way before? What way was that? Standing up to her? Not hiding himself? Being himself? Or was it something I couldn’t see? Some sludge as disgusting as the Tate bars that had infected Wren?

Dad snorted. “I’m not your momma, Tate. I don’t know what she taught you all these years, but I’ve got two eyes and a brain. I can see for myself.” He leaned forward again, elbows on his knees. “And I could never hate you, not for anything, and certainly not this.”

“Mother didn’t teach me anything,” I snapped, then, much quieter, added, “Except how to hate or how to ignore the things she didn’t want to see.”

“What do you mean?”

I shouldn’t have started what I couldn’t finish. An ache set up quickly in my throat as I fought the tears. “I … She …” I shook my head. One more word and I would lose it.

“Tate, I’ve kept a pretty light hold on you since you came down here, but don’t think that means I don’t care or that I don’t notice shit. Your smokin’ is out of control. You’ve got Wren buyin’ packs off Pete. And don’t think for a second he’s the only one who heard your nightmares or the only one who checked on you every night that had you screamin’.” Dad wiped a hand over his mouth and jaw. “Now this? I think it’s about damn time you tell me what the hell you was runnin’ from when you left New York.”

And I lost it anyway. I slipped from the window seal and crashed to the floor on my knees. In no time at all, Dad had an arm around my shoulders and lifted me to sit on my bed as I ugly cried against him.

“Get it all out, son,” he soothed and patted my back, my arm, and my hair. “It’ll be all right, but you gotta open up, okay?” He rocked me back and forth. “Shh, now. Come on. Take a deep breath. There we go.”

Once the worst of it passed and I was reduced to hiccups and wiping continuous drips of snot with my sleeve, Dad patted my back again and said, “I promise you can’t say nothin’ that’s gonna make me send you packin’. So go on and have it out.”

I opened my mouth, but a giant hiccup came out.

Dad huffed. “Was it your momma?”

I nodded. She wasn’t all of it, but it started with her.

Dad signed. “I figured.”

With a deep breath, I blinked away the sting in my eyes and fumbled my way through a long explanation of how it all started. My grandmother raising me for years, then Mother grudgingly taking over when she had to.

“I never knew what to expect. When she was drunk, she was mean, and when she was high, she just forgot I was there.”

Dad’s face had fallen early on, and it hardened to stone with every word.

“She blamed me for her first marriage ending. The guy didn’t know she had a son. She hadn’t even told him.” I took a shuddery breath. “The second one was better. At least he knew about me from the beginning. He had other children, though. They hated Mother and hated me because they thought I was like her.” I twisted to face Dad. “I was ten. How could they think I was anything like her?”

Dad nodded. “I remember the second one. Was he mean to you? Did he hurt you?”

I shook my head, which was the truth. “No. He traveled a lot. I never saw him much. Then …”

“I always wondered why she reached out to me like she did. Now I’m thinkin’ she probably wanted me to take you on full-time until she found a man who was okay with her having a son.”

I thought the same but didn’t say as much. My brain snagged on something else he said and wouldn’t let go. Dad was correct in thinking she found a man who didn’t mind me. She even did one better than that. Mother found a man who wanted me more than her. Mother was only the gateway. The means to his ends.

Just as I wondered how much further I could go, how much more of my shredded past I could puke up, Dad saved me.

“Thank you for confiding in me, Tate. I hope gettin’ this out gives you a bit of peace over it.”

It didn’t make it hurt any more, that was for sure, but made anything better? I’d have to wait and see. Today was too much of a shit swirl to figure that out.

“Like I said before, don’t worry about leavin’ here unless you want to. And in fact, I don’t even want you thinkin’ about that woman again either. You let me handle that.”

I gripped his arm. “What’re you going to do?”

“Well, I ain’t sure just yet. But you can bet your ass I ain’t leavin’ it to dry in the wind.”

“Are you mad? A-about this thing with Wren, I mean.”

Dad took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks when he let it go. “Yeah, but only because y’all didn’t tell us up front. I see a lot more than I let on, and I had my suspicions about it. Before today, it had only been a passin’ thought, but nah, I’m not too upset over it. Wren’s a great guy. You won’t find me talkin’ you out of it.”

“He’s your stepson,” I reasoned as if trying to force him into realizing why he should be pissed about this.

“True, but he’s not legally anything to you. You aren’t blood, and you were both practically eighteen when you met. You know I ain’t one to judge.” He grinned a little lopsidedly and snickered. “I’ve not had much say in your life, but you deserve the best. I think you’re good for each other.”

Exactly how I had hoped he would see it, but still …

“You’re not disappointed because I’m gay?”

Dad sighed and shook his head. “It’s sad that we live in a world where you’ve been taught to even question that. It’s a precious thing to love someone, whoever they may be, so no, son, I’m not disappointed. Never crossed my mind.”

“Then why are you keeping me in my room like I’m grounded? You’re kind of freaking me out.”

Dad chuckled. “I’m keeping you out of Winnie’s hair until she calms down. She’s taking this harder than she should. In all honesty”—he leaned in and lowered his voice—“I’m actually avoiding this inevitable conversation with her too.”

I smiled for the first time since I woke up. Small and fleeting, but with it, the first layer of guilt and despair lifted.

Wren kept to himself with his door closed, and I didn’t see him until a very quiet and awkward dinner of Chinese takeout had us all seated at the table. No one so much as smiled. Dad didn’t try to make conversation. Winnie didn’t have anything snippy to say. And what really had me all kinds of off-balance was when Wren only took one serving and didn’t finish it.

Cleanup was easy, and I followed Wren to the second floor right afterward.

“Wren,” I called as I raced to catch up to him. “Wren, stop.”

At the top, he paused and turned, shoulders slumping forward.

“Can we talk?” How weird was it to even ask? But I couldn’t deny the tension wasn’t only from Winnie. Wren had closed himself off. The second I had stepped out of his arms earlier, I feared this. I dreaded it. I had caused this fracture between him and his mother, so I was the piece that needed to go, the wedge to be removed.

He shrugged and glanced down the stairs. “Yeah.”

Well, now what? I wanted to talk. I wanted him. I wanted his arms and his soft kiss and his promise that everything would be fine, but at his prompting, I couldn’t say any of that.

Wren lifted his tilted head after a long moment of nothing. A deep crease sat between his brows.

“A-are you okay?” I stammered.

Another shrug.

“Can we …” I gestured to his room, hoping if we were alone, he might break out of this funk.

Wren glanced down the stairs again, then ran a hand through his hair. “Not a good idea.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah.”

“Look, Momma’s pissed, and maybe it’s well deserved. We should, we should, you know, back off a little.”

“Oh.”

His eyes snapped to mine, and then he grimaced. “I just, fuck, I dunno.”

“No,” I said, backing up and rubbing at my chest. “No, I get it.”

“Tate …” If I had hoped that was going to be followed with something more, something to give me hope, I was terribly disappointed. Nothing more came. Wren half turned, facing the bathroom door, and said, “Good night.”

“Good night, Country Boy,” I whispered to no one. Wren was already behind his closed door.