Heart As Cold As Ice | 18+ | ✓

24: jack

TW: physical violence in Jack's flashback.

"Stop it! Stop it right now please!" I watch as Momma tries to push Dad away. I hold onto the trim of the doorway as he backhands her and she falls to the ground in a puddle.

Why is he doing this? He shouldn't be hurting her.

"You don't talk to me that way, got it?" He yells at her, the echo thundering through the house and through me.

"I'm sorry baby, I love you, just not in front of Jack. Please baby. He's just a boy," Momma pleads, getting up to try and hold his face in her hands.

He laughs darkly, "Why not? He should know what love looks like. What being a man is like," Dad turns to me with a smile on his face, catching me in my hiding place. This...isn't what love is? Love is when Momma makes cookies for me and tucks me in at night. Cheering for me at hockey practice and my games. "Son, this is what love is. Pathetic and useless. You're better off without it at all."

I look at Momma to see her nose bleeding. She mouths at me, 'I love you.'

"Don't look at her Jack. She's nothing." He pulls a gun out of his pants that looks really similar to the one I was playing with outside earlier, but his doesn't have the orange tip on it. He holds it up to Momma's head as she starts to cry harder.

I don't like this.

I feel the tears start to bubble, I don't want to see Momma cry. I wipe my nose on my sleeve, "But I love you."

"You shouldn't."

I jolt out of sleep with a start, the smiling expression on my dad's face as he held a gun to Momma's head still haunting me thirteen years later. I wipe my hands over my face, noting that my shirt is drenched in sweat.

I get up, throwing the covers off and turning the shower on. I need to clear my head. The warm shower does nothing to ease the chill in my bones. I feel...empty.

That was five months before he tried to kill her and I called the cops. I've never forgotten that night and so many of the other nights.

I did nothing to try and stop him so many times before. I just let my dad hurt my mom.

How am I supposed to know how to be in a relationship when that was my example growing up? Constantly watching my dad beat down Momma?

I'm terrified to be like him. To be his version of a man.

And Al? Just knowing that she was treated like that already kills me. It fucking kills me. She deserves everything and I don't know if I can give that to her. I want to, I just don't know how.

She was looking at me earlier like I hung the moon while we were dancing and I wanted to kiss her. So badly. Alondra said she trusted me and the warm fuzzy feeling I had in my chest exploded. Being around her is like a drug and I can't get enough.

So I kissed her and she kissed me back.

It made me happy. Al makes me happy.

But I can't go there with her. It's only a matter of time until I do something to hurt her. After I kissed her, she wouldn't even talk to me. She ran away when I just wanted to keep kissing her.

It was better than I remembered.

I turn the shower off, grabbing my towel to dry off and get dressed.

My phone is on my nightstand and I dial the number of my favorite person in the entire world. She answers on the third ring, "Jack? Is everything okay?"