Collapsing to my knees, a shattered sob tumbled from my chest. Its pitch heightened as I shook my head, sinking to the ground again, just like I had in the fucking hospital room. With trembling shoulders, my chin met my chest, an ear-piercing scream ripping my throat raw as I drove my knuckles into the tile floor.
Matt fell to join me, that firm voice I’d come to rely on piercing through the darkness. “Oren, tell everyone to go outside.”
“But his hand?—”
“Oren!”
“G-Got it,” he said, muffled voices leaving the house as the click of a door sounded.
He’d left me again.
He’d left me again.
H-He’d…
Reeling back, I raised my arm, my once-battered hand slamming back against the ground just as it had the concrete over a year ago.
I went to pummel my hand once more, but Matt grabbed it, stalling the motion. “No. Not this time. Not when you have me and Oren.”
“Let me go!” I screamed, attempting to rip myself away from him. “Let me go… Let me go… Let me go…”
“No,” Matt replied, that same edge to his tone remaining. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you were left to deal with this on your own in the hospital. I’m sorry, I was a coward. I’m sorry I was unable to… tohelpyou, but you are not alone. You are not?—”
With trembling lips, I lifted my chin, my watery gaze finding his. “Y-Y-You… Left… Y-You left me… Just like… J-Just like everyone else… And you… You promised… Y-You promised!”
“I did… I left you. I let you leave?—”
“Y-You…” The single word shattered as I dove forward, burying my head in his chest as the unrelenting wave of sorrow I’d kept buried inside of me unleashed itself.
There were no words. No pleas. No screams. Instead, it was an unfiltered brokenness, the same brokenness that’d consumed my heart since that day. And even though Oren had filled so many holes in my soul, there was one spot he’d never be able to fill because it belonged tohim.
To Matt.
To mybest friend.
“I did.” A mirrored sob left his lips. “Ifuckingdid, and I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry, Thorne, but I refuse… I refuse to make that mistake again. I hurt you. God, I did, and my ignorance left you broken.”
I couldn’t form a sentence, couldn’t articulate any of the thoughts roaring through my mind. All that tumbled from me was a steady stream of fractured cries, a collection of emotions that I’d never allowed myself to experience, and a level of guilt I’d swallowed hoping it’d somehow vanish into a nothingness I’d never have to deal with.
But none of it ever had.
It’d simply continued burning a black hole in my essence, darkening the edges of my existence until I’d become the hardened man I so deeply wished I never had to be while the child inside me screamed for someone—anyone—to hear him.
Wrapping his arms around me, he tugged me close as a fractured cry of his own accompanied mine. “Fuck, I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry, Thorne. For all of it. For the deceit, the betrayal, for contemplating a plan to protect you despite knowing it would hurt you in the process. For abandoning you in the hospital room and letting you walk away. For refusing to push past my weaknesses to carry your burdens. I’m sorry.”
My fingers gathered his shirt, balling it until my bloodied knuckles whitened. It was an action that spoke everything I wished I could, but that my sorrow prevented me from expressing:please don’t leave me.
It wasn’t a surprise when he said the words I couldn’t. “I’m not leaving. Not again…Never, because we made a pact in Iraq. We promised to hold each other accountable… to lean on each other when the pressures of this life consumed us… When our thoughts become too heavy a burden to carry alone.”
Every recollection of our time at war flooded my mind, moments so tangled in both loss and happiness. But there was always one thing that remained through the chaos and desolation that seemed to follow me, and it was him.
Through shuddered breaths, two words slipped out between my pitiful attempts to gather oxygen. “I-I’m… s-s-sorry…”
“No apologies. Not to me, because I don’t deserve them. I don’t deserve a fucking thing from you.”
I shook my head, my chest aching with every need to tell him that I was sorry for hitting him, sorry for blaming him, sorry for expecting him to be the only one to reach out, sorry for all the times I’d failed him… But the fucking words lodged themselves in the back of my throat, threatening to suffocate me with each fleeting breath.
“O-O-Oren… I-I need…”
