Jesse rubbed my shoulder, pushing more warmth into my bones. His voice was steady and calm with a firmness to it that reminded me of Willow. “All right, I get that. Are you still taking shit for granted, though?”
I furrowed my brows at him. “I’ve been a lot more open and shit. I plan to tell him I want to be with him.”
“Youplanto, but you haven’t yet, have you?”
Well, shit.I shook my head.
“Damn it, man.” Jesse groaned, leaning his head back. “Stop that shit! Take what’s in front of you and run with it, for fuck’s sake. If youcan’t say it out loud, say it in a way that you can. If you being in the life was for some sick form of guilt, you need to find a way to let it go. If you don’t, you’ll be stuck like me—like us.” He pointed his finger at Isaac and the other beefy dude. “You’re too young for this shit, man. I thought I’d gotten through to you.”
I swiveled my head, looking around the shitty, ugly van that that inhabited all three of them. There were clothes strewn everywhere and food wrappers tucked into a plastic bag in the corner. Beneath that, though, they’d made it their home. A few posters were taped to the ceiling, and the center console at the front was stacked with makeup and little knickknacks.
Jesse said it was too late for him. “Do you regret any of it?” I asked him.
His answer was immediate. “No, I don’t. But that’s because I found those two idiots.” He nodded his head towards said idiots with a smile. “They make it worth it. We’re all… stuck. It sucks. We wish things were different, and we’re trying our best. If we’d taken what was right in front of us, we wouldn’t be struggling so much, and we wouldn’t be rent boys.” He shrugged. “My past isn’t easy, and neither is any of theirs. We tell each other in ways we can. Like Isaac, who wrote his shit out on pen and paper for Liam and I. He can’t say it either. For now, we have our love and resolve to make the best of it.”
“He wrote it out?” I turned to Isaac, who nodded. “Holy shit.” An idea started to form in my mind. It was a difficult one, but easier than trying and failing to say it out loud. Something Jesse said stuck out to me, though. “Wait, are all of you, like, together?”
Jesse nodded, a cheesy grin on his face. “Yeah, we are. That’s something we didn’t take for granted. And look, we’re happier than ever despite our circumstances.”
Warmth akin to Price’s skin flooded my chest. I looked at all three of them—Isaac, Liam, and Jesse. They all looked lost in their love for each other.
I wanted that with Price. I wanted to feel his fire melt my ice. I wanted to share a piece of my tainted soul with him in a way I’d never been able to before.
“Is there any way you guys can take me home?”
They agreed, despite the heavy snow. Getting home wasn’t too difficult,but I was anxiously hoping Willow wouldn’t be home for what I was going to do.
Thankfully, the driveway was clear of any vehicles. It was covered in snow, so it looked like she’d been gone for a while. I thanked Jesse and his boyfriends, promising to meet up with them again soon. I also promised Jesse the next time he saw me, Price and I would be just as happy as he was with Isaac and Liam.
Trudging inside the house, I was careful not to track any snow. I removed my shoes at the front door and went to my bedroom.
I found what I needed and grabbed a stray notebook with a pen. I spent the next fifteen minutes writing the final piece to add to the black box of memories I’d carried with me to New York. I folded the paper and slid it right between three beat-up spiral notebooks and the bottle of my mom’s favorite nail polish.
And then I set off on foot to Price’s apartment, welcoming the cold because I knew it might be the last time I ever felt it.
“Are you okay?”What a stupid fucking question to ask. “Who hurt you? Why did you run away? Why didn’t you answer our calls?” Crew was still holding the mysterious black box. I couldn’t stop looking at the blood on his face, or the way his hair had darkened and turned into thick, unruly curls from the snow. The left side of his mouth turned up in a sick form of amusement, as if making me worry like that was funny to him.
I wasn’t laughing. I was fucking terrified and borderline angry at him for doing that to us. Leaving us to think he was frozen in a ditch somewhere. The dried, cracking blood beneath his nose only made me angrier. I wanted so desperately to believe he’d kept his promise.
He put distance between us, forcing me on the other side of my dinner table as he set the black box down. He wouldn’t look at me, though I began to think it was because he couldn’t with the way his eye was starting to swell. “I’m fine. Ran into some trouble, but an old… friend helped me out.”
The chair he began to pull out scraped against the ground. It burst around the room, shocking the silence between us. “Did you work?”
That got his attention. Crew’s head shot up, his face morphing into a pained scowl. I could see how much effort it took for him to do. He winced as he did it, his brows jumping down sharply before relaxing into a frown. “No. I wouldn’t fucking do that. Not after the promise I made all of you.”
“Willow was terrified. It wasn’t until we were almost out of options, and the snow was about to cave us in that she mentioned it.” I pulled a chair out for myself, never taking my eyes off him as I sat. “I didn’t think you would, but how would I know? Willow knows you better than I do, and it was that or start checking for fucking bodies.”
The anger was back, bubbling and boiling just beneath my diaphragm. Crew heard it in my voice. I could tell. He kept a strong face even when he sank further into his seat. “You scared the shit out of us. We had to imagine the unimaginable because you just ran. Fucking left without a word during a goddamn snowstorm. Seeing Tobias cry like that?” The fresh scratches on my arms burned beneath my shirt sleeves. They ached to be reopened, simmering alongside my terror. “He said it was his fault. He looked so fucking guilty.”
A soft whimper had me zeroing in on Crew. The mention of Tobias had done him in. I looked at his eyes, my chest aching with what I saw. Earthquakes and lava, tornadoes, and destruction clashed together in them. He bit down on his bottom lip as it quivered. I watched as he took a deep breath through his nose, making a sniffling sound like blood was blocking his nostrils.
“I’m sorry.” His voice wavered, ending on a cough as he tried to clear it away. “I ran because of what Tobi said. He knows me, and I didn’t recognize him until he told me some things that scrambled my stupid fucking brain. One second, Tobi was a weird stranger who avoided me more often than not, and the next, he was someone who knew some of the worst parts of me.”
He took the lid off the black box, setting it gingerly on the table. “It broke me for a while. I ran because that’s what I’m good at. I pretend there isn’t an issue, so I don’t have to remember it. I ran for a long time, and when I took a break, some dude tried to hire me. I told him no, said I wasn’t working anymore, and he punched me pretty good.”
The table squeaked beneath my grip. I was holding on for dear life, silently begging the anger to recede. Crew had been hurt again, and I wasn’t there to help him.
“I’m okay,” he promised. “A friend of mine and his boyfriends came to the rescue and talked some sense into me for the second time. There are things about my past and why I am the way I am that I want to tell you about, but I can’t. I physically can’t. My throat gets tight, and my body goes into a panic, and I just—” I could hear the frustration in the wobbly sigh he gave. “I can’t speak them. Not to Willow, not to my mom, and not to you. One of my friends said he wrote his past out for his boyfriends, and that gave me an idea.
