I uncrossed my legs and crossed them on the other side. His eyes tracked my movements.
“We’re going to start today off a little differently.” I cleared my throat. “If you had to choose one thing to never happen, whether it affected you or the world in general, what would it be?”
He pursed his lips, then casually crossed his arms loosely over his belly. His feet were stretched out in front of him, partially covered by the coffee table that was separating us.
“Anything?”
I nodded. “Anything.”
He tapped his fingers loosely on the opposite hand and lowered his brows in concentration.
“Rape.”
“Not murder?” I asked curiously.
He shook his head. “No. Sometimes murder is a good thing.”
I tilted my head. “How do you figure?”
“Have you ever heard of assisted suicide?” he questioned.
I nodded.
I had. Texas wasn’t one of the states that allowed it, but it was definitely something I’d heard about while going to school, as well as in the news and on Facebook.
“That’s a type of murder,” he explained. “If those patients weren’t able to get help, they’d live a painful life however long they had left to live it.”
I nodded, understanding where he was coming from.
“Any other examples?”
He had me curious.
He laid his arguments out well, and had backup and proof for everything he gave me. It was an amazing thing to have a man that could verbally spar with me.
“Well, say that you were young…a kid,” he said. “Say that you walked in on your sister being raped.”
My stomach clenched.
I knew where he was going with this, and the anger at what Tate had to go through as a young child, and was then expected to live with it, was a harsh reality that I’d never been able to see past.
I hated Tate’s mother. I hated my father for not doing anything about what had happened to Tate’s sister, Alyssa. I hated the town for not forcing the police force to follow through.
Alyssa hadn’t been anywhere near our age. She’d been in high school when her boyfriend of six months had gotten tired of waiting, and had decided that it was time for Alyssa to give up what she’d been flaunting.
Alyssa hadn’t been flaunting anything. Alyssa had been a normal teenage girl.
However, Alyssa’s boyfriend had decided that no didn’t mean no, and proceeded to rape her in her bedroom. All the while, Alyssa’s brother—Tate—had been in the next room.
Tate, at age eight, had gotten hungry and went to find his sister to see if she would cook for him. What he’d found when he’d come into the room was a sobbing Alyssa, and a still in the process of raping her, boyfriend.
Tate had tried to intervene, not quite understanding the repercussions of what he saw, but he’d tried to help anyway. He’d gotten a fist to the face for his trouble, and had passed out.
Once Alyssa’s boyfriend had stopped, he’d left. Alyssa had then had to take not just herself, but her brother, to the hospital.
Then, two months later, she found out that she was pregnant with his kid.
It was rumored that Alyssa had then tried to kill herself, but nobody besides Tate and maybe his mother knew the truth.
“Walked into that room, and what I saw will forever haunt my brain,” he said. “My eight-year-old self was able to twist what I did see, and now every time I get into a similar situation that reminds me of it I black out. My rage is over the top, and off the charts. I can’t seem to control anything—not even my mouth. But here’s where I think murder can be good in certain situations.”
I paused and waited for what he’d say next. Would it make me smile? Would I agree with him? Would it be morally and ethically wrong, and would I have to delve into this further?
As all of these questions filtered through my brain, I was left blinking stupidly when he said what he did next.
“I witnessed my sister try to kill herself four times.”
My eyes closed, and my pen stopped doodling on my paper.
“The second time, I stopped her, she screamed at me. She told me that I was selfish.”
I bit my lip.
This man wasn’t selfish.
“The fourth time, she was days away from having her baby.” He paused. “And that was the day, at the age of nine years old, that I knew that sometimes killing someone was okay—sometimes this Earth can’t handle them—can’t make them whole again. Sometimes, it’s the most humane thing to do, let them go.”
“I’ve wanted to kill Duncan Trey every day for the last twenty plus years.” He paused. “He’s the reason I have never met my nephew. He’s the reason my sister refuses to have anything to do with me. He’s the reason that I am the way I am. He’s the reason that I can’t fuckin’ sleep at night.” He looked at me sharply. “I’ve witnessed seven girls get raped, as well as two men.”
My belly churned.
“Most of those I saw while I was overseas in the military,” he added. “And most of them were men doing that to their wives—though it’s okay over there. The woman is supposed to do what the man says she has to do. If she doesn’t, she can be punished for her sins.”
I bit my lip, trying hard not to interrupt him. This was the most I’d ever gotten out of him in one session.
“The good thing, though, was that all of those men were living on borrowed time. One by one, they all went down by either my hand, or somebody else’s hand, until there was only one left—my sister’s rapist.”
“You won’t…”
His smile was fierce. “I won’t. But I want to.”
I licked my dry lips. This was toeing the line for me…I was at a point where I needed to make a decision.
I needed to either allow this one to go untouched, call his probation office, and tell them that this man wasn’t going to be fixed in just twenty something sessions. Or, I needed to let it go.
“Heavy thoughts?” he teased.
I shrugged.
“What I’m thinking is that you’re a very strong man.”
He laughed and looked away, and I chose that moment to stand up and walk to my desk where a Keurig was sitting.
“Coffee?”
He grinned but shook his head. “Nah, I’m good. Thank you, though.”
I half-heartedly smiled at him and started myself a cup, waiting for the man to say he was through with this session.
When he didn’t, however, I realized that he didn’t plan on going anywhere.
He was giving me the answers today, because something had changed.
“Tate?”
He’d never once taken his eyes off of me.
“Yeah?”
His voice was rough, and for the first time today, I took everything about him in.
“Tate…”
“Hennessy.”
I took a step forward.
“Are you even a little bit apologetic?” I asked, trying to keep myself from taking that next step.
He shook his head so slowly that it was almost impossible to misunderstand.
“Prison sucked ass,” he admitted. “However, that little girl is fifteen now, has a boyfriend, and is alive right now because of me.”
I bit my lip.
“Probably should be sorry.”
I nodded.
“But I’m not.”
No, I could see that he wasn’t.