His head tilted, brow furrowed in a type of pain that I wish he didn’t show. It made me feel like I was in the wrong. “Isn’t that your name?”
“I hate it when you call me Lucky.”
“Ethin.” That sounded right, like him. The darkness around his eyes worsened as he looked to the ground. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. He bit through his candy. The sound relieved me, a reminder that he didn’t have the synthetics to replace that sweetness.
“This is the part where you invite me to your room,” I said, leaving the door open for him to go, even if I didn’t want him to. Even if he should, this could end. We’d be done because, clearly, I couldn’t be the one to end it.
“Will you come if I ask?”
“Try it and find out.”
A faint smile graced his features, gone in a flash, as if he didn’t have the energy to maintain an ounce of joy. “Will you come to my room?”
I answered by walking away. Roys followed. His bedroom door opened onto wreckage. Torn bedsheets draped over the edge of the mattress. Drawers hung open, clothes strewn about. The night I visited, he hid a handful of personal effects because a holo picture lay on the bed of him and his son, as well as some drawings. They were the only objects that didn’t receive his wrath, tucked carefully away like little treasures.
“I thought we had to keep our bunk areas clean,” I said.
“I suppose I am slacking in that regard… and many others.”
Picking up the clothes, I folded them over my arm. “Do you remember what happened?”
“You don’t need to do that.” He helped clean the carnage, though maintained a distance.
I stashed the clothes in the dresser. “You didn’t answer my question.”
The quick look toward my nose answered.
“You used the cradle?” He gripped his arms, both of them bare where the veins darkened and skin reddened.
“I did. People would have noticed otherwise.”
“Why didn’t you let them notice? Why didn’t you tell anyone? You should have. I should…” He shoved a shirt into the drawer, closing it too roughly, then dropping his head in his hands. His shoulders shook in a way I never imagined they could, as if he were carved from the toughest stone. Immovable. Unchangeable. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Ethin. I didn’t mean to… to hit you. I fucked up. You shouldn’t have… I… I’m so sorry.”
His sobs made him short of breath, and I couldn’t stand the sound. I took his hands. His eyes were red and cheeks wet. The voice remained, telling me to run, to leave him to rise or fall on his own. His problems weren’t mine to tend to. His secrets weren’t mine to hold. He wasdragging me from the pedestal I expected to stand upon until the end of my days.
But that pedestal had become lonely. Once my haven, a fortress that I constructed bit by bit. I coveted my sanctuary more than anything, for it was what kept me alive. But through all the hardships, that sanctuary became cold and desolate, no different from the Colony from which I crawled out of.
I didn’t really want to be on that pedestal anymore.
I kissed the tears on his cheeks. Roys whimpered as if he expected far worse. His arms draped around my waist, hesitant, then crushing. He cried, clinging with a fear that even the cave hadn’t put in him. I hugged him, awkward as it was for me. Nothing outweighed intimacy, feeling his every strangled breath and hiccup. My muscles ached, so stiff in this realm of unfamiliarity that had my mind running. Tears wet my neck where he muttered apology after apology. The apologies weren’t entirely for me; I sensed.
“It’s fine,” I said while patting his back, because what the fuck else was I meant to do?
Roys chuckled, the sound remaining somber and unsure. He retreated enough to meet my eyes, his having a semblance of hope in them. “All you have to say isit’s fine?”
“What else is there to say?”
He crushed me against him where I was left unsure whose heart was racing so rapidly. The tension in me eased enough that the embrace was more comfortable than uncomfortable.
“Get angry. Call me an asshole. Tell me I’m a fool, that I’m pathetic and weak. I thought I could handle it when I never could, so please give me your usual attitude and worse because I deserve it. I,” he swallowed hard. “I hit you.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Ethin,” he hissed, searching my eyes like he expected to find something. “You’re…you should care. You should yell, get angry—”
“But I’m not angry.”
That had been the problem. I should have been angry. Weeks ago, I would have been. I’d have thrown Roys to the stars without a thought, would have let him take as much moira as he wanted, likely gotten him in trouble for it, too. I would have watched him be shipped off, on his feet or in a body bag, and I wouldn’t have felt much. Just cold and desolate and dragging myself to the next day.
