My hand grabbed his shirt, coiling my fingers around the fabric. “I won’t let you leave twice. I thought… I thought I’d never see you again, but the universe, a divine power, hell, maybe just luck decided for us to cross paths again. I told you I’d always chase you, because I stillloveyou. You wish for me to loathe you, but that isn’t possible. I do not fear you, and I do not hate you because I am yours, Thorne Graves. I have been since the moment you kissed me in that bathroom, when you unleashed the depths of your soul to me. You cried out for reprieve, and I was too naive to see it for its full intention. My heart… Mysoulhas never yearned for someone like this, and while I needed time, it always knew.”
Glancing over his shoulder, he looked down at me. “We were done that day I walked out of that room, and we are done now. Find someone else in this life, Oren, because it certainly is not me anymore.”
I held tighter. “I refuse.”
“Refuse all you wish, but ultimately you are merely a pathetic man in denial.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not in denial, because your shoulders are tense to hide them shaking. Your voice shakes with each lie you speak, and deep down, you wish someone would hold you. You wish someone would stay despite the darkness you spew.” I clutched his shirt with the devotion that remained. “Iloveyou, even now. Even when you try to push me away. You are worth this life and more. You are worth everything you try to hide, to desperately shove into the depths of your soul because it’s easier. It’s easier to cling to pain than it is to love, because love is a dangerous, finite resource. Love destroys more than pain and can render you useless, but it is the most beautiful, addicting thing if you would only allow someone to occupy that space.”
“I allowed someone to occupy that space.” Leaning forward, he craned his head down at me. “And all I got out of it was fucking anguish.”
“I’m sorry.” The tears I’d kept at bay appeared, my soul screaming at his in the shadows. “Your anguish is rightful. Your emotions aren’t bad, Thorne. You have been through so much… so much that isn’t right or fair. I do not deserve you, but I refuse to let you linger in this life alone. Your soul is weeping before me for someone to cradle it.”
Silence consumed the space around us, the ding of the bell marking the end of passing periods the only audible sound. But even with its timely reminder, neither of us moved, our eyes fixated on one another. His shoulders rose, but remained tense, his jaw feathering as he glanced down at my hand and then back up at me.
“You…” he stuttered, a brief pause and a sign of his wavering resolve. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There it is,” I said as I took a step forward, grabbing the hand he’d shattered that day in the hospital. “Your hand is shaking, Thorne. Your shoulders are taut, and your irises are dimming. You don’t have to be afraid,” I whispered, letting the tears fall down my cheeks. “You got out of one hell, and entered another. A hell more terrifying because to do this life alone? To let it continue to rampage and obliterate your happiness?”
His lids fluttered, sorrow flooding his lash line even as he attempted to keep his walls up. “Y-You don’t… You don’t know what you’re talking about, Oren. And I refuse to stand here and?—”
“I do, and that’s why you can’t leave. Youdeservehappiness, Thorne. You deserve to feel the rewards you’ve long since sown. You are worth everything. Everything you tell yourself is impossible to relinquish, everything you tell yourself you’re not good enough for…Lies. All of them are lies because at the center… atyourcore, there is simply a broken man begging for someone to truly see him as he is. A human. Not a monster.”
Holding his gaze, I watched the barrier crack, the protective layer he’d positioned himself behind shattering beneath my words. He stumbled back, shaking his head. His dress shoes drummed against the cement until his back greeted the opposite wall of the alcove, and as soon as that connection happened, he broke.
A sob wracked his frame as he slid down the brick to meet the ground, his entire body shaking as every pent-up emotion rolled to the forefront. With a shaky hand, he ripped off his glasses, tossing them to the side without a single care about their condition. His breathing intensified, hands reaching, stretching to find his throat, something I’d come to realize as a key indicator of his panic—of his desire to escape it if only someone would carry him.
But I would not allow him to go through this alone. I settled in front of him, my steady hands unbuttoning his top two buttons to allow him deeper breathing. Without delay, I grabbed each of his hands, bringing them to rest against my chest. “If you need to claw, you do so on me, but we’re going to breathe together.”
He shook his head, brows drawing together. Every ounce of emotion he’d swallowed – the loneliness he’d basked in, the abandonment he’d slept beside every night – and his screaming essence cried out for my rescue, beneath the hollowness in his gaze.
“I-I-I… I…” He attempted to pull back, desperation leading the charge. “I-I need… T-To… P-Plea… I can’t… I can’t…”
“You’re safe,” I said, hoping to be the anchor that would pull him back. “We’re going to ride this together. Not alone.” My hands cradled his cheeks, drawing his gaze to mine. “You copy me. In for four, hold for four, and breathe out for four.”
“O-Oren,” he sobbed, the brokenness of my name on his lips enough to shatter my heart. “T-They… T-They let me l-l-leave… N-No one… N-No one c-cared… N-No one f-followed… I’m n-not… I’m not… E-Enough… Never e-enough… To f-f-fight for… A-And y-y-you… You…” He cried harder, struggling to slip away from me as his feet slipped against the concrete, the wall behind him caging him in from escape.
“Because I love you,” I echoed back that voice I knew resided inside him. “Because you are worth the fight. You are worth?—”
“N-NO I’M N-NOT!” he cried out, his bottom lip quivering as he looked at me. “I-If I was… My best… My b-best… Best… F-Friend… Would’ve… H-He would’ve… God, why… W-Why didn’t he…?”
“You are, Thorne. You are.” A sob of my own mirrored his. “I don’t… I don’t know, but you are more than enough forme. I am not leaving you.” My thumb brushed over his cheek with a gentleness I hoped portrayed every ounce of longing and yearning I had for him.
His next movement caught me off guard, not because he tore himself away from me, but because he did something I often resorted to when I was spiraling. Craning his head forward, he reacted before I had the chance to stop him, driving his skull into the wall behind him. He shifted once more, his chin tipping to greet his chest.
“N-No, baby, no.” The words tumbled from my lips as I pulled him in for a hug, angling myself between him and the wall.
I knew the pain of trying to mask thoughts with a controlled substance—a controlled hit when everything else was falling apart, because at least that would be agony of my choosing. It would give me a moment of reprieve, one I could determine when my world felt like it was crumbling.
And his was.
But as soon as his forehead met my chest, every breath he held streamlined, filtering out of him in an endless flood of sobs. His body trembled against me, anguish purging itself from him in the only way it knew how: through his tears. Each pitch and whimper that tumbled from him became a convoluted array of sounds I never imagined a man so strong, so put together, would ever be capable of making.
This was a release ofyearsof pent-up trauma. Of loss. Of fear. Of an anguish I didn’t wish upon my worst enemy. And watching the man I loved fall apart at the seams, in a state of heightened disarray, only made me wish to hold him tighter. To run my fingers through his hair and remind him that he had always been worth it. To apologize endlessly for the ways I’d failed him, the manners in which I’d overlooked him when his plate had been this full,thisfucking heavy for… God… Even I didn’t know.
“I-I-I’m s-sorry… I’m sorry… I-I’m so… so sorry… I-I’m sorry…” he whimpered, each apology coming out more broken than the last. It was an utterance of pure desperation, one that came from a place of fear and a conditioned belief that he always had to extend that portion of himself to mend whatever wrongdoing he’d convinced himself he was responsible for. “I-I’m sorry… S-So… S-Sorry… I-I’m so s?—”
“Baby… Baby, look at me,” I said, catching a glimmer of that darkness in his eyes. “I’ve got you, now and always. You don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to say anything, butfeel. Feel for the first time in years, and I will carry you through it all.”
