Free SafetyInNumbers-Final by Jessie G

want her to go to jail for being too afraid to do the right thing, so I told her to keep quiet.”
    Liam had no problem imagining Chris protecting his mother the way she hadn’t bothered to protect him. “You’re blaming yourself, aren’t you? Chris, whether anyone predicated it or not, we did go to jail and she had the power to get us out . At some point she needed to mother-the-fuck-up!”
    “It’s not gonna happen. She’s dying.” This was news to Liam, though he knew Martha sent the occasional letter. Chris stopped letting him read them when he lost his mind over Martha’s insistence that her son should support her, even though she knew he had nothing. Now knowing she was complicit in her son’s abuse, he would do everything in his power to stop Chris from sending her money.
    “You’re planning to go see her, aren’t you?” Liam asked, but he already knew the answer. Of course Chris would go see his dying mother, that’s what a good son would do. “If you think for a second we’re going to let you see her alone, you’re out of your damn mind.”
    For a long moment, they stared at one another until Chris finally nodded. It took another moment for the anger to recede enough that he could continue. There was one question that haunted him the most and he still wasn’t sure he was ready for the answer, but they needed this to be over. Chris couldn’t go on believing the answers would make them lose each other, and had he known that was his fear, Liam would have forced this conversation sooner. “Did he ever…you know…did he sexually abuse you?”
    Chris took another step closer and shook his head. “No, never.”
    “Swear it.” The police tried to get Liam to denounce his father as a serial abuser and pedophile, but until they threw that word at them, Liam hadn’t even thought it. There was no denying his father was physically abusing Chris and had been for a long time, but was his father a rapist too? It was selfish to even think one was worse than the other, some last ditch attempt to believe there was some good in the man who raised him, and knowing that kept him from ever sharing that fear before.
    “I swear it didn’t happen.” Everything in Chris’s tone and expression said he was telling the truth, and Liam had to believe he wasn’t lying to protect him.
    “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped you.” They’d sworn to be brothers no matter what and that they would be there for each other. Did Chris think he wouldn’t believe him the way the cops hadn’t? Or that he would stand back and let it happen the way Martha had?
    “Or he could have hurt you too. I couldn’t take that chance.” Chris took his hands and squeezed them gently. “I knew you would try to help me if I told you, but I didn’t know what he would do to you if you tried.”
    That he’d been living some idyllic childhood while Chris was suffering in silence to protect him made him want to hurl. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”
    “I’m sorry for that, but I’m not sorry for trying to protect you. It won’t stop me from always wanting to protect you.” Chris looked at him expectantly and Liam knew there was only one question left to ask. The one that Chris believed would change everything.
    “What’s going to change if I ask?” Liam knew Chris wouldn’t need him to elaborate. The big why had been looming between them since the night Liam walked in and found his father beating Chris into oblivion. He’d never asked and the answer Chris gave the cops hadn’t explained anything.
    “I don’t know. You might hate me.” Chris took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “If we walk out of here right now, without you asking, you’ll always wonder and it will eat at you. It would be easier, but we’ll be stuck right where we are now.”
    He hated that Chris was right, but there was no way he could ever hate Chris. The answer wasn’t going to make him feel better, but his response would