“Yeah, but she made lousy choices over and over again. She could’ve fought for herself, for us. Taken a stand, made a commitment. Why not? I did. Every fucking day, I did.” His voice was harsh, loud. “You did!”
I cradled his face with my hands. “Baby—”
“I killed my uncle—my mother’s only brother—and I became an animal. And then I was groomed to become a higher grade of animal. I only got us deeper into the filth, and there was no way out, but I’d never abandoned her. No matter how shitty things got, how rough, how ugly, I never did. But she made her play, and she abandoned me.”
“Have you talked to her or seen her since?”
He pulled away from me, his head jerking back, his hair covering a flaring green eye. “No.”
The savage wild child.
Yes, just like the young boy I’d once read about who had been discovered in a French forest in the eighteenth century. Deprived of human contact all his life, living alone, he’d become a wild animal. But after being taken in by a man who cared for him and patiently taught him language, gave him the affection and tenderness he’d never known before, the wild child had proven to be an ordinary boy—not deaf, not mute, not mentally handicapped, not a savage as everyone had initially assumed.
Simply a boy.
Santiago.
I threw my arms around him and pressed my face to his chest. “Don’t hate her anymore. Don’t. It’s been long enough. God, enough.”
His chest heaved under me, and he dug his hands in my hair, yanking my head back. “You fight. Over and over again. You fought for yourself to get over your hell. You’re still looking for a better way, a good day.” His wet sea-green eyes loomed over me, taking my breath away. “You don’t complain. You fall, you pick yourself up, you go on, and then you give to those around you—to your kid, to Rae, to Grace, the baby you’re carrying.”
“It’s not easy,” I said.
“That’s right. It’s not.” He let out a rough breath. “You’re bright, Jill, so fucking bright to me.”
“I have to live in that bright, or I’m going to break.” Tears spilled down my face, his grip on me tightening.
I had to stop him from slipping back into the emotional hell of his past that he’d been clinging to, to that futility.
“I want you there with me,” I whispered. “With me and Becca.”
He let go of me and pressed his fists into the sides of his head. “I keep trying to fix it in my head, but it won’t fix.”
“You are not these pieces, Bone. They are a part of you, yes, but you are not these fragments, these pieces of scrap paper crumpled, rolled into a ball, shoved in between books, and stuffed into drawers or forgotten pockets.”
I held up the one poem.
“You write because your heart is aching. It’s full. It needs to deal with all that rage, all that broken love. You’re in pieces, and you can’t bear it.”
“Stop it.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Tears spilled down his face. “It’s always been this way.”
His broken voice shattered me. Despair, shame, hopelessness.
My muscles tightened. “You are a good person. You take care of your friends, your brothers. Mr. Dependable. You being the eccentric one works for you, doesn’t it? You lay low. No one worries about Boner, do they? Boner—he’s a fun guy, a little strange, but you can count on him when you need the nastiest job done right. You don’t want to get on his bad side though. He might pull a knife on you, flip out at a moment’s notice. That’s just the kind of crazy he is.”
“I am crazy,” he rasped.
I leaned in closer to him. “Your heart is so full that you keep it close to your ribs and only share it with a chosen few. I’m proud to be one of those few. I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again. I can feel that heart of yours, baby—in your hands, in your mouth, in those eyes, in your words. And I love what I feel.”
“Jill—”
“Inès was the last one to call you Santiago, wasn’t she? That’s why you had that reaction when I said your name that night on the sofa.”
His eyes flashed. “Yes.”
My heart ached.
“I love your name. It’s beautiful,” I said, my voice shaky.
I stroked the side of his face with my hand, and his eyes fluttered closed.
“I wish I could make it better for you. I wish I could call you by the name your mother gave you and make you happy to hear it again. But if it’s nothing but pain for you, I won’t. Ever. I promise.”
His eyes opened and held mine. Green fire. “Say it.”
A chill raced down my spine as his fingers dug into my upper arms.
“Say it.”
I stood on my toes and gently brushed his lips with mine, my eyes never leaving his. “Santiago,” I whispered. I kissed him again on the corner of his mouth. “Santiago.” Another kiss. “Santiago.” I swept my tongue over the seam of his full lips, and they parted, a ragged sigh escaping his mouth.
“Santiago.”
Absolution in the utterance, the declaration, the kiss of his name.