Page 5 of His Eternal Claim

That word. Again. Mama tried to behave carefully last night.

Papa still hit her.

I look down at my shoes. I hate listening to this. I hate seeing Mama small like this, folded into someone else’s arms.

Someone tugs at my sleeve. I turn to find her tiny fingers pulling me away.

“Come on,” she whispers. “Let’s go upstairs. Mama says we shouldn’t listen when grown-ups talk sad things.”

Her voice is small and sweet, just like her Mother’s.

She’s clumsy walking up the stairs, tripping every third step, pigtails bouncing, and I know they’re going to fly off her head one day. I grab her elbow once to keep her from smashing her face into the banister.

She looks up with the biggest, toothiest smile. “Thank you,” she says, cheeks round like peaches. “You saved me.”

Saved.

No one has ever said I saved them before.

When we reach her room, the door is pink. I hate pink. But when she opens it, something warm goes through me, anyway. Like every other time I visit her room.

I don’t know why, but for these last ten months, every time I look at her, my chest hurts. I told Mama, but she says it happens when you like someone. I don’t like Selene. She’s too bright. And I don’t like bright things.

As we enter, the chaos hits me. Dolls everywhere, paints and canvases scattered, stuffed toys on the floor, crayons broken in half, blankets tangled. But it feels alive. Not stiff and dead like my own clean, perfect room, one Papa says should look like a man’s.

She drops to the floor immediately, patting the carpet.

“Come on! Sit!”

I sit cross-legged, trying to not look awkward. She takes two dolls; one is missing a head. She hides that behind her back so I won’t see.

“This one is you,” she says, giving me the one with black yarn hair and a tiny stitched frown.

“Why am I sad?”

“You always look like that,” she says innocently, poking my cheek. “But I’ll make you happy.”

My chest goes tight.

Her eyes widen as she leans close and inspects my cheek.

“You have a bruise,” she breathes.

I try to turn away, but she grabs my face with her tiny hands.

“Who hit you?”

“No one,” I lie, because I’m a man and men don’t say when they’re hurt. Men endure. Men don’t cry.

Her small fingers trace the bruise so gently I almost jerk back. Her touch is warm as always, softer than anything I’ve felt.

I’m still looking at her face when she leans and kisses the bruise.

A tiny, clumsy kiss.

“There,” she declares. “Now it’ll get better.”

I look away, because it’s the first time someone has kissed me. I don’t like it, I think.