His jaw tightened.
“You think I don’t know I’m embarrassing sometimes? You think I don’t know teenagers complain about parents? Fine. Whatever. But seeing you let your friends talk about me like that after everything…”
For illustrative purposes only
I stopped because tears were coming now, and I hated crying during emotional conversations.
Especially with teenagers.
Especially with him.
Ryan suddenly looked younger than fifteen.
Smaller somehow.
“They were already making fun of me,” he said quietly.
I blinked.
“What?”
“At school.” He swallowed hard. “Because of you. Because I actually listen to you sometimes. Because you come to everything. Because you care.”
I stared at him, confused.
“They said I was soft. That I was whipped by my stepmom.” His voice cracked on the last word. “I laughed because if I didn’t, they would’ve kept going.”
“And the br:uises?”
He looked away again.
“I told them to shut up.”
The room went silent.
Oh.
Oh no.
Suddenly the pieces fit together in the worst possible way.
The br:uises.
The shaking.
The refusal to explain.
He’d defended me.
Ryan rubbed aggressively at his eyes like he was angry tears even existed.
“I know what I said earlier was messed up,” he muttered. “I just get mad and… you’re easier to hurt because you actually stay.”
That sentence nearly destroyed me.
Because underneath all the attitude and pushing and slamming doors was still a kid terrified of being abandoned.
A kid testing whether love had limits.
I sat back down slowly beside him.
For a moment neither of us spoke.
Then I reached over and adjusted the ice pack on his arm.
“You really scared me tonight,” I whispered.
“Sorry.”
“I’m still angry at you.”
“I know.”
“But I’m not going anywhere.”
His face crumpled then, just for a second.
Not fully crying. Ryan would probably rather fight a bear than cry openly.
But he leaned against my shoulder for the briefest moment.
And honestly?
That tiny movement said more than “real mom” ever could.
