“Look at me, Michael. Take a really good look.” He started stripping the shirt off his chest. I gasped when I saw the jagged pink lines running from his left shoulder all the way down to his right hip. He unbuttoned his jeans and lowered them just far enough that I could see the scars and mangled skin on his hip. “I know that man has a better life now than he did before the accident, because I’m him.”
“Don’t.” I forced myself off the couch and began pacing. “Don’t try to compare your accident to that night.”
“Michael, answer me one question. After that, I promise I’ll let it drop, depending on how you answer.” I stilled but didn’t otherwise acknowledge him. “Did the accident happen on April twenty-sixth of 2010?”
“Did Justin tell you that?” I asked, my voice cracking the way it had when I was going through puberty.
Dax’s hand landed on my shoulder and I realize how much I needed his touch. I placed my hand over his and leaned back into the embrace.
“No, I know because that’s the night I got these scars,” he admitted. “I haven’t told you about what happened to me before because the whole story is fucked up and crazy, and honestly, I’m not proud of the man I was before the accident.”
He turned me so I was facing him and I realized he’d put his shirt back on. He placed his hands on my hips, caging me from running away again.
“You don’t have to believe anyone else when they tell you it wasn’t your fault, but you need to believe me,” he pleaded. “You know half the story. Now, let me tell you what you don’t know.”
I allowed Dax to pull me back into the living room, and this time he sat down right next to me. I felt the heat of his thigh against mine, savored the warmth of his hand in mine.
“I’d gotten into a fight with everyone that night,” he began. “First, my best friend, the one I told you I’d been crushing on, told me he was leaving and I wasn’t coming along. We’d dreamed of hitting the road and starting a band together, and he was leaving me behind. He said he couldn’t deal with the drugs and irresponsibility anymore.”
“None of that fits with anything I know about you,” I said quietly when he stopped talking. And it didn’t. He was the responsible, steady one. He liked everything to go according to a plan and didn’t appreciate when it didn’t.
“I told you,as much as you think that night ended your life, I know without a doubt, that it saved mine.” He looked up at me and ran his fingers along the raspy stubble on my cheek. “I’d had a crush on Caleb for years, but I couldn’t tell him. Looking back, I think he’d known for a while that I was gay, but not that I wanted to be more than his friend or bandmate. One night, we were at a party and someone saw me staring at Caleb as he practically fucked a woman in the corner of the room. He draped his arm over my shoulder and told me he knew a way to make it stop hurting.
“By that point, the pain was a normal part of my life,” he admitted. I wanted to kiss him again, this time to keep him from going on with a story that was obviously causing him pain. He squeezed my hand and offered me a weak smile. “It’s okay, really. Logically, I knew Caleb would never feel about me the way I did about him, and that night I was so tired of the stabbing pain in my chest that I followed a stranger into one of the bedrooms.
“We made out for a bit, but he knew I wasn’t really into it. He stopped and pulled a bottle of pills out of his pocket. I was hesitant at first, but I was also desperate.” He shook his head and didn’t speak for a while.
“The night before the accident, Caleb confronted me. I’d been walking around like a zombie, which was great for me, but not so much for him. He offered to help me get clean, and that’s when I lashed out at him.” Dax jerked away from me and I let him go. “I told him I couldn’t stop because the drugs were the only thing keeping me from doing something stupid. It got ugly and ended with him shoving me out of his apartment.”
“And that’s why you pulled away from me,” I said. Everything made sense now. Dax always seemed to have it all together, so I’d never considered that he had his own pain that he’d buried.
“Yeah, it is.”
“Did you know I was the EMT that night before Justin brought it up?” I asked. I wanted to get back to hearing what he had to say about the accident, but everything else depended on the answer to this question. If he knew and he’d been keeping this from me, there was no way we could move forward.
He shook his head. “I had no fucking clue,” he admitted. “I swear, if I had, I probably would’ve never talked to you. That might sound pretty shitty, but you’re not the only one who has issues because of that accident.”
“Then why’d you come back here?” I asked. We’d eventually get back to what we were talking about, but honestly, I no longer cared when that happened. All that mattered was he was here, living and breathing in front of me. And he knew better than I did what the outcome of the accident was for him, so I had to accept that as fact.
Dax laughed. “You know, when I got the job offer, I actually laughed at the irony. The last time I’d been here, I’d been hoping to die. I thought the world would be a better place without me in it. But that night, or more like seventeen days later, thanks to one stubborn doctor after I woke up, I realized that I was worth something. He told me I was a fighter. So even though I thought about turning down the job, I couldn’t. it seemed like the world’s fucked-up way of reminding me just how far I’d come.”
I lifted our joined hands to my mouth and kissed his fingers. “I’m glad you accepted the offer,” I admitted to him. “I want to hate you for being here, and I’m terrified that I’m going to wind up pushing you away the way I did everyone else, but I’ll never regret this time with you.”
Dax bristled. “Damn, we haven’t even talked about what that hot-as-hell kiss meant and you already have me running away? Well, I’ve got news for you. I don’t scare easily. I used to, but not anymore. The way I see it, there has to be a reason I was brought here. A reason Jagger ran away from you the day I got to town and I was the one who found him. A reason I heard the panic in your voice when you thought he’d run off on you that day you had to try and get him out of the tree.”
“Yeah, maybe someone figured I suck at being a father and needed an angel right here in Marshall watching over us,” I retorted.
Dax pressed a finger firmly against my lips and narrowed his eyes. He used to goad me into realizing how incapable I was of raising Jagger, or at least it felt like he did, but lately he got pissed when I talked down about myself.
“No, don’t do that,” he warned me. “Part of your problem is you tend to look at the worst in everything. Rather than trying to find the silver lining, you’re out there with your umbrella in the sunshine, just in case a downpour comes. You have to stop that shit before it eats you alive.
“So back to what I was saying before we got off on a tangent…” He squeezed my thigh to make sure he had my attention. He did. Fully and completely. “When I left home that night, I had no clue where I was going, I just knew I wasn’t coming back. The fact that I hadn’t grabbed any clothes or personal belongings should tell you something about how I thought my night would end. I purposely rode deeper into the country because I wanted to go on a dark, country road where no one would see me. I didn’t want to be found. Didn’t deserve to be saved.”
“And I screwed that up by my inattentive driving,” I grumbled.
“No, you didn’t,” he assured me. “The longer I rode, the more uncertain I became. I don’t think I ever really wanted to die, I just felt so damn hopeless that night. I’d come home and my mom saw how distraught I was over Caleb leaving. She played the part of the good mom well, but she’s actually a bitter, angry woman. I told her everything that night. I told her that I loved him, that I’d made the mistake of telling him when I was high. That I’d started using because it made me numb. And you know what she did? She told me it served me right. She flipped like a switch and told me I should know better than to run around thinking about shoving my dick where it didn’t belong. She told me I was just as worthless as my father and that I’d never amount to anything.”
“Oh, baby,” I soothed him. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the affectionate nickname had passed my lips. I ran my fingers through his hair and pulled his head down to my shoulder. “No one should make you feel that way. I don’t know how anyone could fail to see what a good man you are.”
