"Travis!"
I'm obviously the last person Taylors mom is expecting to see this early in the morning but as she finally closes her mouth she seems to grow more comfortable with my presence
"Taylor isn't in, in fact she went to breakfast with a friend" she says it in such a way that is obvious she expects Taylor to have kept me in the dark but i just nod at her
"With Liam, I know. We don't keep secrets from each other Mrs. Swift"
"So I assume that means she knows that you are here"
"She does. May I come in?"
"My husband isn't home right now"
"It's you I would like to talk to"
She steps into the house but doesn't say a word so I assume that's her invitation for me to follow. We move silently into the kitchen and she sits at a seat at the table, she doesn't invite me to join her so I remain standing and just dive right in to what I want to say to her.
"You um... you have judged me pretty quickly and pretty brutally Mrs. Swift so if you don't mind I would like to tell you a few things about myself"
She doesn't answer but I see her chin lift slightly as though she's preparing herself for what I'm about to say and that's probably a good Idea because what i'm about to say isn't pretty
"Do you know how I was potty trained? Well when i was a baby I had diapers like every other kid but once I got a bit older my dad decided he was sick of spending money on diapers when he could use it to buy beer instead, so from about the age of one I would wander around the house in just my pants or nothing at all depending if my mom came out of her room that day or not. I was one year old, still a baby so I had no Idea what the hell I was doing,I would just poop and pee whenever I needed to which obviously pissed my dad off so he would punish me by pushing my face into my 'Accidents'"
"Travis!"
I keep my face down, recounting the events but trying not to relive them in my mind, keeping them close but not close enough that they can hurt me anymore
"Even at that age you learn pretty quickly that you don't want that sort of stuff on your face or in your mouth so you start to hold it in, afraid of what will happen if you don't and then it begins to hurt and it hurts more and more until you just can't hold it so you have another accident and you're punished again so you tell your self you have to do better, have to hold it longer, by the time I was two he'd lost patience so instead of pushing my face into it he would punish me with violence"
"But your mom!"
"My mom spent most of her time in her room avoiding my dad"
"But you were her baby"
"I was my dads baby. I'm no fool Mrs. Swift, I know why my mother left me behind. I was my fathers son. I was the way he vented his fury and his frustration, if she had taken me he would have come looking for us, he would have wanted me back, he wanted to be the man who could dominate another man"
"You weren't a man you were a little boy!"
"I had a dick, I was male, that's all he cared about. He spent his youth in Portugal being dominated and abused by my grandfather and he told me one day when he was completely wasted that the only thing that got him through those beatings was the hope that one day he would have a son of his own and he would know what it felt like to be the strong one and not the weak one lying on the floor crying for a mother that never came"
"Travis please sit down" She reaches for my hand as though an act of kindness now will fix everything but that's not how it works. I don't trust, i don't soften for anyone and if I do and you betray that then your are dead to every part of me that feels anything. The only reason i'm giving Taylors mom any part of me or my history is because i'm desperate for her to give me her daughter.
"No thank you. I have a few more things to say then i'm going to go, I have work soon. When you met me, you liked me, enough to invite me to dinner, enough to allow me to spend time in your house with both of your children, two words from Mr. Quinn and I was gone"
"He was Taylors teacher Travis, we trusted him blindly, If we could go back, God how I wish we could go back"
"Taylor told you about my dad"
"Travis..."
"When you are raised by violence you become violent. You feel sad, so you lash out, you feel frustrated so you lash out, you feel scared and lost, you lash out, and then as soon you begin to feel anything and you lash out. Being raised by violence is like raising a dog to fight and then putting it into a world where if it fights it is punished, its cruel and it's confusing but by the time you go out into the world its not a decision it's an impulse and that's how it was for me until Taylor"
"My sweet Taylor" She whispers and I feel a sudden rush of protectiveness
'MY Taylor'
"By the time Mr. Quinn turned you against me Taylor and I were too far in love to be able to be separated without any consequences. I know you don't like me, understand me or want me to be with your daughter but you can't take her from me. No matter how many boys you force her to date it's always going to me that she wants"
I tap my fingers on the kitchen table and stare at the older woman, hoping she sees in my eyes everything I want her to see in my heart
"I love Taylor" I whisper "Please, please don't take the only good thing I ever had in my whole, entire life"
* only a few more chapters of this story left, like and comment and I'll try and post the rest of it today
