Covered Part Two by Mina Holt, Jaden Wilkes Page A

pained look passed as soon as it appeared, but I could see it in his eyes.
    “Your family isn’t your biological family?” I asked, incredulous. From the outside it had all seemed like a fairy tale.
    “I was adopted when I was four,” he said, “I haven’t told anyone this, love. I want you to know that, this is how important you are to me.”
    “Oh Gavin,” I said, exhaling in wonder at the trust he placed in me, “I can’t believe you shared this, thank you.”
    “You were too young to remember it, and I’m not sure how much coverage it got over here, but I was found in a terrible situation. My father was an abusive drunk who went after my mother one night,” he said and his voice caught in his throat, “I had two older brothers. They…”
    “It’s okay,” I said, “you don’t have to tell me everything.”
    “I want to,” he said, “I feel like I need to. One night the police were called, the neighbors heard them fighting. My father had gone nuts and beaten her so badly she was almost unrecognizable. My brothers…they didn’t make it. She died later in hospital and I was given up for adoption.”
    “Oh my god,” I whispered, “I am so sorry.”
    “The press apparently called me Baby Charlie, it was all that was on TV for the entire year. My family saw the story and my mother decided she absolutely had to have me. Strings were pulled, and I became theirs, all aspects of my past was erased from the record and nothing more was said about it.”
    “Do you remember anything about that time?”
    “Not at all, thankfully.”
    “Did you know you were adopted?”
    “I sensed it, but my family is the traditional stiff upper lip sort. We didn’t talk about it really.”
    “Did they ever come out and just tell you?”
    “When I turned eighteen, my mother and father sat me down and told me the story. They had a box of items, some newspaper clippings, my adoption papers, that kind of thing.”
    “Where did you get the idea for the tattoos?”
    “The symbols are from my birth mother’s sketches. She had these books and books filled with these intricate, abstract drawings so I had some turned into these tattoos,” he said and indicated the lines wrapping his arm. “The animals each represent one of them, my mother and two brothers. Tied to the meanings of their names.”
    I was speechless, I hadn’t expected him to tell me such a deeply painful and intimate story and I wasn’t certain how to react, what to say.
    Instead of saying anything, I laid my head on his chest and listened to his heart, put my arms around him the best I could and said, “Thank you for sharing that with me, I love you for it.”
    “I love you too, Sarai,” he said quietly.
    He started rubbing my back again and we fell into a comfortable silence, the crappy kung fu movie on in the background and the sound of the city from down below on the street was the backdrop to our deep thinking.
    I felt a communion with Gavin that was growing by the day. Every moment I spent with him tightened the bonds that were growing between us.
    Each beat of our hearts put more distance between who I was then, and who I had been. The fear was being left on some distant horizon as we moved towards something new together.
    “Thank you by the way,” he said.
    I looked up at him, “What for?”
    “For not looking at me differently, for not flinching while I told you,” he said, “you don’t know how much that means to me, love.”
    “Why would that change what I thought of you?” I asked.
    “I don’t know,” he said, “I’ve had it bottled up and hidden for so long I didn’t know how it would sound once it hit the light of day.”
    “It sounds atrocious,” I said, “and shocking, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. If anything, it makes you more human to me.”
    He seemed to pull back slightly, raised an eyebrow and said, “More human?”
    I blushed and stuttered, “Yes, not to sound rude but it makes you more