His words cut like a knife. I have to keep reminding myself that this isn’t about me. Still, it stings because I’m trying so hard, and I feel like I keep failing him. For every step forward we take, we’re pushed back three.
Braeden tries to roll back over and lie down, but I don’t let him. Instead, I pull him against me. He fights it. Fights me. He doesn’t want to be hugged, but I want him to know he can trust me to be there. I need him to know that I care about him.
“I know you’re not happy. Now, something’s happened to make it worse. Talk to me,” I say again. “Tell me what’s going on. I can’t fix it if I don’t know. If you tell me, there’s a good chance I can get whatever is happening to stop.”
Braeden eventually settles down, resting his head on my chest, but he doesn’t hug me back. He doesn’t break down either. “You can’t fix it. No one can. I hate my life.”
My eyes closed to those last words. His pain is palpable. I fucking ache for him.
“Trust me. Iknow you don’t have any reason to, but I’m pretty damn smart. I’m sure I can figure it out.”
He sits there for so long, I wonder if he’s ever going to say anything, but I wait him out.
“There are these boys on the bus,” he finally says. “They’re so cool and popular.” I already know where this is leading. It’s a tale as old as time itself. “When they started talking to me, and being like nice and shit, I doubted them at first. I mean, I’ve never been popular. But the more they talked, I started to trust them, ya know?”
Fuck. I see it all playing out in my head. They gained his trust, then fucked with him. “Then what happened? What changed today?”
“This boy named Bryce invited me over, along with the other boys, to hang out and swim. I told him no at first because I didn’t have swim shorts, but they talked me into it. He said he had some I could borrow.”
I breathe through the anger as it starts consuming me. This poor kid has had enough shit dumped on him. It will affect him for the rest of his life. No kid deserves to be fucking tormented, period.
“I-I went over there. I was happy, ya know? Like these boys actually wanted to be my friends. I thought… I thought maybe this school would be different.”
Flashes of memories hit me from when I was in high school. A couple of friends would pick on a band kid like Braeden, or someone who was smarter than them and didn’t fit into our mold. I never bullied anyone because I got it at home, but I didn’t exactly hold my friends accountable either, and was complicit. Peer pressure can be powerful.
“Let me guess, they pushed you in.”
He nods on my chest. “It’s worse. After I got shoved into the pool, I tried to get out, but they jumped in and dunked me. They held me down and I…” His voice chokes, and I can feel how hard he’s trying not to cry. I hold him tighter. “I couldn’t breathe. I fought them, but I’m not strong at all.”
I’m going tofucking strangle those boys. Fucking hell. They could’ve killed him.
“T-they finally let me climb out. As I ran home, I could hear them all laughing and laughing. I don’t wanna go to school. I-I hate it here.”
I don’t blame him one bit for feeling that way. Now, he’s going to have serious trust issues with other kids who will genuinely be nice to him. “I’m so damn sorry, Brae, but I swear to you, I’ll take care of this. You can stay home tomorrow, while I’ll get this fixed. That’s a promise.”
He sniffs and sits up straight, but he doesn’t look at me. “How? You can’t make mean people nice.”
Damn, he’s intuitive, exactly like his mom.
“No, I can’t, but I can get them to leave you alone. Trust me,” I say for the thousandth time, even though the boy has no reason to.
His huge blue eyes meet mine. “W-what do you plan to do?”
I give him a reassuring smile as a plan starts to formulate in my head. “You let me worry about that. The less you know, the better.” I wink at him for added reassurance.
“Okay.”
Before I can climb out of his bed and put my plan into fruition, his fingers grab my arm. “Cal?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s… ah, even worse?”
I fucking tense again. What’s worse than those boys nearly drowning Braeden? Asswipes. “What is?”
He lets me go and looks down at his hands, picking at his cuticles. “I-I thought Bryce was cute. T-they don’t know. I never said anything, but…”
I don’t know whether I should be even more in a rage at his situation or jumping up and down for joy that he literally came out to me, that he trusts me enough to tell me.
