Page 90 of Dallas Rivals

The nurse was smiling, but there was something wrong with his smile.

“I was just adjusting the sheets, Oliver, that’s all.”

“Liar! You were...you were...” I couldn’t repeat it; I didn’t want to say it.

“I was taking care of you.”

“No! No, you were with...with your mouth there.” I couldn’t modulate my voice properly, and I suspected it was the medication they were giving me.

It couldn’t be real, could it? This couldn’t be happening to me. He was an adult, and adults don’t do these things to children, right?

“Well, clearly your fever has returned, because you’re delirious. Come on, let me give you something to bring your fever down.”

“No!” My feet dug into the bed as I tried to create as much space as I could between that man and me. “Call my brother, Silas!” I shouted.

“Oh Oliver, they’re not here. Remember, they can go to school. We’re alone in your house.”

Something about his tone was wrong; what he said and what he did didn’t match. I was too scared to contradict him.

“I want to sleep, go away.”

“Okay, but first you have to take the medicine that...”

“No, I don’t want anything, go away.”

The smile faded from his face, he pressed his lips together, and his eyebrows knitted together in the middle of his forehead.

His voice was deeper than before.

“I’m not asking, Oliver.” With the strength of ten men, he threw himself on top of me and squeezed my nostrils so I couldn’t breathe. I immediately opened my mouth, and taking advantage of my inability to breathe through my nose, he stuck his hand deep into my throat. “Swallow the pill, now.”

I had no choice.

I swallowed it and went back to dreaming the same dream as before.

Three weeks like that.

Three weeks where I knew my dreams were real, that an adult was abusing me. I didn’t know what to do, and when my brothers came to me, I couldn’t find the words to explain what was happening.

All I wanted to do was get out of the bedroom.

My brother Kill broke the lock one night and took me to the garden of my house. We sat on the grass and looked at the stars. I knew Kill was worried; he knew me better than anyone else, he knew something was wrong with me. Luckily, he never asked questions.

I only asked him for one favor, which was to tell our parents that I was fine and that the nurse wasn’t necessary.

Kill got Silas and Luca involved, and they took care of firing him and took away the key to my bedroom. We had two more weeks before our parents came back, and I begged my brothers to let me sleep outside. So, the four of us carried the bed into the garden, and that was my bedroom for two weeks.

The happiest two weeks of my life.

Although the nightmares never went away, sometimes they came back worse than before, the good thing was that when I woke up, I was alone, there were no hands on me, no smiling man.

When Oliver stops talking, silence hangs between us like thick fog—heavy and suffocating.

Tears slip quietly down my cheeks; the pain feels like a crater opening in my stomach.

There isn’t much to say.

No words could ever heal the kind of wounds he carries, but actions might. And I’m willing to offer him shelter.