He stared up at me, those sexy lips pressed together in a tight, hard line. He could charm any woman out of her panties but he couldn’t talk about this. Not while he looked me in the eye.

I knew what I had to do. I sank down on his chest and turned my head to the side, using his pec as a pillow. I felt him relax. A second later, his big, warm hand stroked my head and that seemed to help, too. And eventually, the words came.

“We were poor,” he told me. “But so was everyone, in our neighborhood. My dad had a temper but we were happy enough. Then one night when I was eight, him and my mum had this huge fight: real shake-the-walls stuff. My dad marched into my room, he looked down at me…and he took his belt off for the first time.” I felt Danny shake his head. “It wasn’t seeing him take his belt off that scared me, though. It wasn’t even thinking about what he was going to do with it. It was the look in his eyes. Absolute, fucking hatred. I sat there on my bed, with these Pokémon cards all around me, and I thought: but I haven’t done anything.” Danny swallowed. “And then he started.”

I had my arms draped around his sides. I wrapped them tight around him and hugged him hard, pressing my body to him.

“After that, he beat me whenever he saw me,” said Danny, his voice numb. “Sometimes, it was worse when he didn’t beat me. ‘Cos once he did it, it was done for a few hours. But when I was waiting for it, waiting for him to notice that I was in the house….” He went quiet. “People think the worst part is the pain. And it did hurt, it hurt a lot. Part of why I flunked so much of school was because the teachers kept sending me out because I couldn’t sit still: the back of my chair used to dig into my back, right where he strapped me. But the pain wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was what he said, when he was strapping me. That I was a piece of shit.”

Danny gave an embarrassed little chuckle. “Stupid, innit? I mean, it’s just words, it’s nothing. But they kind of soak into you, they get right down inside you. And that look in his eyes, every time. He hated me. He’d loved me, and then he hated me, like he wanted to just…” Danny twisted his thumb against the bed, as if squashing an insect.