Jaxsen had been quieter than normal when she picked him up from school. She’d kept her eye on him once they got home. He just curled up in the corner of the couch writing in his journal. Sensing he needed the time she mainly left him be, tousling his hair as she walked by, kissing the top of his head. She knew touch was comforting, and wanted to let him know he wasn’t alone.

A few hours before Sebastian was due home, Nizhoni sat in the recliner reading Steven King’s ‘IT’ when Jaxsen gently shut his journal, walked over and crawled into her lap. Closing and setting the book aside, she wrapped him in her arms and began rocking the chair gently. She kissed his forehead and noticed silent tears tracking down his reddened cheeks.

“Yanaha, my love, why the tears?” He curled himself into a tighter ball and squeezed her arm that wrapped around his center that he had encircled his arms around. He listened to her heartbeat in an attempt to calm his.

“Do you love me, Zhoni?” he asked in a strained, broken whisper. Nizhoni’s heart broke at the question. She held him a bit tighter and kissed his temple.

“My sweet Yanaha, yes, baby, I do love you. I love you very much.”

Jaxsen nodded and bit down on his lip. “I love you, too, Zhoni. Zhoni?”

“What, baby?”

“Does…does Bastian love me?” The sob that followed the question and resounding insecurity in his voice brought tears to her own eyes.

“Sebastian loves you more than you will ever know, Yanaha. I promise you that.”

“Then how come he hasn’t told me?” His voice was muffled by tears as he pressed his face into her shoulder. “I try to be good. I try to be good so he’ll love me.”

“Jaxsen, baby, he does love you, sweet boy. Has he ever told you about Daniel?” She inquired after a moment. 

He sniffled. “No. Is that the boy in the pictures in the drawer in his nightstand? He asked me to get something out of there once and I saw them. What happened to him?”

Nizhoni sighed. It was always difficult remembering her godson’s last moments. “He and Sebastian were playing baseball at the park when a car smashed through the fence and struck him. He died in Sebastian’s arms before help could arrive. Ever since that day he’s not been the same. And understandably.” She remembered for almost fourteen months, and especially after Ellie left, she’d had him on constant suicide watch. She couldn’t count the times she came home from work to find him with a pistol in his hands. “It was a very bad time.”

“Did he cry a lot?” The question was voiced in a small, unsure murmur. He wiped his eyes and sat up to look at her.

“He did,” she answered him. “Daniel was Sebastian’s whole world and when he died he took a big part of Sebastian with him. When he finally did smile again there was always a sadness subtly behind it. I know he loves you, Jaxsen, because he hasn’t smiled as brightly, or laughed as freely since Daniel’s death as he has since you came into his life. You’re bringing him back to life, Yanaha.”

Jaxsen broke eye contact, a sad expression conforming to his features. “If that’s really true, then how come he hasn’t told me?”

Nizhoni sighed again as she tried her best to explain. “Since Danny he hasn’t really said those words to much of anyone, Yanaha. Those were the last words he spoke to Daniel…and I think it scares him to say them now. Why don’t you tell him?”

Jaxsen worried the fabric of her sleeve and slightly shrugged. He paused, took a deep breath and let it out, seemingly defeated. “Because I…I’m scared.”

“Of what, baby?”

“That he doesn’t love me back. Th-that he’d get mad like Mr. Stewart.”

Nizhoni frowned. “He got mad at you because you told him you loved him?” He nodded.

“He, um, he b-broke my ribs. I-I told him ‘cause he’d been the nicest one.  He was still mean…but not as bad as the others. He would spend time with me sometimes and sometimes he’d play with me. But I was supposed to keep away when he’d been drinking.” He shrugged. “I told him when he was mad from drink…I hoped it would make him not as mad…I haven’t said it since to anyone…till you, Zhoni.”

“Oh, my sweet Yanaha.” She pulled him close to her again, wrapping her arms around him and completely engulfing him within her embrace. She smoothed his hair from his eyes and swiped away a fallen tear from his cheek.

“I love you, Jaxsen,” she said, her voice full of emotion. She knew his pain all too well. He sat up, his eyes full of tears and pain and hope.

“Really?” He searched inside her eyes straight into her soul. 

“Really, my love.”

Sebastian wiped his eyes, completely unable to formulate words to make up any intelligible sentences. He sat in silence for a long time in deep contemplation, deliberating over every moment since Jaxsen first walked through his door several months prior. He didn’t intend to make the kid feel like he didn’t love him. He just…didn’t know how to say it anymore. He looked at Nizhoni who held his hand. She’d always been his rock. Before Daniel died he told her he loved her all the time. Even growing up he made sure to always let her know he loved her. He knew she needed hearing it. 

But his son’s death took those words from him. He thought maybe those three words, once an expression of endearment and heartfelt confession, were cursed now to lose whomever he spoke them to. It was stupid, he knew. But he never could bring himself to say it as often as he once did after that. 

“I know that…Danny, he…” He failed at his communication attempt and looked her pleadingly in the eye. “I am sorry, Nizhoni. I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to tell you that I love you as much as I always had. I’ve wanted to. God…I’ve wanted to…I’m scared, baby. God, I’m so scared.”

She kissed him and thumbed away his tears. “I love you, Sebastian. I know you love me, baby, and I won’t press you to tell me until you’re ready. Until that fear isn’t there anymore. I’ll understand if you can’t say it to me like you once did. I know you’re scared to say it to me…but don’t be scared to say it to him. Don’t be scared to love a child…even after you lost one…you both deserve this chance, my love.”

“Jaxsen, come on, it’s time for school.” Sebastian called, taking one more gulp from his coffee mug. Jaxsen was supposed to have gotten dressed and come back down, but had yet to return. “Jaxsen!” he called a bit louder this time at the bottom of the stairs, frowning when he still did not inherit a return refutation. With a sigh he started up the stairs.

“Jaxsen?” He knocked before entering and any irritation he may have felt was vanquished in an instant. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, his backpack between his feet, torn fragments of paper clutched in his hands. He wasn’t crying but Sebastian could see he had been. He stared into the nothing, completely lost in his own mind.

“Jack?” He said kneeling down, his hands on the boy’s.

“I’m sorry, Bastian. Is it time to go?” His voice was monotone, but his eyes reflected an amount of pain that it made Sebastian’s breath catch.

“Jack, what’s wrong? What happened here?” Sebastian asked, indicating the mess in his hands. As if just remembering the shredded paper Jaxsen looked down at his hands.

“They did this. Th-they destroyed it.”

“Who, Jack?” Tears spilled onto his cheeks unbidden. Somewhere in the far reaches of his mind there was screaming in response to the aforementioned tears. Whispers about how no one wanted a damaged cry-baby.

“Billy Jessup, Kenny Greensleigh, Michael Bishop, and Collin Marcus.” 

Sebastian thought back long and hard. He’d never heard those names before. “What’d they do, sweet boy?”

Friday began quietly. The quiet spanned mostly through lunch. Jaxsen sat against his favorite shade tree alternating between bites of lunch and writing in his journal when a shadow suddenly appeared over the paper. Jaxsen looked up with a sense of foreboding. 

“Whatcha got there, mamma’s boy?” Billy Jessup, the apparent leader, taunted. 

“Nothing.” Jaxsen watched all four of them at once. Michael Bishop flanked to the right, his brown hair falling into his eyes. He stopped next to Jaxsen’s lunch tray. Without a word and an evil sneer of disdain, he flipped over the tray into the grass, stamping his sandwich into the ground. The bell signaled the end of lunch, halting anything else they’d planned.

“See ya later, mamma’s boy. We’re not done here, you little bitch, remember that.”

His last three classes came and went in a blur of anxiety and hyper-tension. With each class ending and the end of the school day coming to a close, the tight ball in his chest only metastasized. It wasn’t until the end of the day that it all came to a head. On his way to meet Sebastian he stopped at the restroom. He was in the stall when he heard the door open. He knew who had just entered. The dread he’d been feeling all day blossomed like a summer flower. He took a deep breath, flushed, and turned to face his fate.

As soon as he unlocked the door it flew open and he was jerked forcefully out. Billy Jessup threw him into the bench against the wall, losing his backpack in the process. 

“I told you we weren’t done.” The look the older boy was giving him brought back so many unpleasant memories of ‘the Before Time’ that it took what little breath he’d managed to gain. His airways refused to allow oxygen into his lungs and he felt like he was suffocating. It was all he could do not to panic. Movement to his left behind Billy made him drag his gaze from that odious and shudder-some black look of hatred on Mr. Jessup’s face. 

Kenny Greenleigh and Michael Bishop had his backpack and were rooting through it.

“Hey, look, it’s the fucker’s diary,” Michael Bishop exclaimed.

“No…” Jaxsen didn’t mean to vocalize the protest, but he did, and Billy Jessup heard. His sneer turned into something altogether darker. It was clear to Jaxsen at that moment, when he turned, snatching the precious book from his comrades’ hands, that this would be his undoing. Billy Jessup began shredding the journal. Page by page. Words of moratorium stuck in his gut as the sound of ripping pages morphed into his mother’s screaming before the abrupt cut-off that signaled the end of her line. Once he’d eviscerated the pages from the leather bindings, Billy Jessup dunked it into the fresh toilet bowl.

The boys laughed and for good measure, Collin Marcus kicked the ruined pages into the air, his bright red Chuck Taylors standing out against the sand-colored paper. Then they all filed out, their laughs and his mother’s screams echoing through his head.