“Bro needs his eyes checked. No baby I’ve met would have survived what he’s put you through,” Luke said.
A startled breath hitched in my chest, and to my astonishment, it broke into laughter—small, and accompanied by pain in my ribs, but laughter all the same. Luke’s comment wasn’t particularly funny, but the irreverent delivery punctured Vincent’s suffocating hold on me.
“Now that’s what you deserve,” Luke said. “He stole your laughter, Ollie, and no one should take away someone else’s joy. Joy’s like life fuel. Choosing yourself and choosing to be safe is not weak, it’s not running away. That’s one of the bravest things a person can do. Especially when someone’s spent forever messing with your brain, trying to make you think you don’t deserve good things. You do. You so do.”
“On a fundamental level I know what he said isn’t true, but I can’t seem to bridge the gap between logic and the reality he’s written for me. A part of me still believes what he says.”
“He got his meat hooks in you, and that’s not gonna go away overnight. I can tell you what he gave you wasn’t love. Real love is supposed to make you feel larger than life, not crushed like a sad soda can someone stomped on. You don’t gotta keep his words in your head. They weren’t truths. They were emotional nerf darts designed to make you feel tiny. I’ve seen more strength from you in one day than some dudes manage in their whole lives. You are strong. Mega strong. Don’t let anybody tell you different.”
“I don’t feel strong,” I murmured.
“That’s okay. You’re still growing your wings, testing ’em out, doing flappy little practice runs. Takes time. Takes patience. But you’re already moving forward. You’re doing the work. One day it’s gonna click, and you’ll know in your bones, ‘Oh yeah, I can fly.’ And when that day hits? You’re gonna take off so hard we’ll all need binoculars just to keep track of you.”
“You don’t think there are people who are ruined beyond repair by their experiences? Like there’s only so much a body, a heart can take before it can never be whole again?”
“After Carrie died, I thought that. Grief was this giant sinkhole trying to swallow me whole, so deep and so dark I couldn’t picture ever climbing out. It was like her death took me with her. ’Cause the version of me who existed before... that guy only existed in a world where my sister was alive. I had to meet myself all over again. Figure out who I was in this new reality where she wasn’t around.”
“That’s sort of what this feels like for me. I’m trying to figure out who I am in a world where I’m not constantly bracing for a punch or managing someone else’s anger.”
“It’s like that for sure. Trauma and tragedy mess with your head. They take your sense of self, shake it, and suddenly nothing looks familiar anymore. You’re left in pieces, trying to put the puzzle back together with half the picture missing.”
“Yeah,” I said, stunned once more over how much Luke got it.
“But here’s what I’ve learned,” he added. “Some wounds don’t close the way we wish they would. And yeah, the scars, they change us. But that doesn’t mean we’re broken beyond fixing. Changed? For sure. Weathered? Absolutely. But ruined? Nah. We’re only ruined if we decide we’re done fighting.”
“I don’t know if I believe that about myself, that I’m not ruined,” I said.
“You don’t have to believe it yet. I’ll believe enough for the both of us. In the meantime, you just gotta allow yourself to keep moving forward. You’re experiencing your own brand of grief, and with that comes finding yourself again and figuring out who you are.”
“How? How do I do that?”
“I think maybe it starts with recognizing the moments where you feel a little less broken. Note when you’re relaxed, whenyou’re happy, when you can do things without fear. Celebrate the stuff you do for yourself.”
“Like baking pretzels?”
“Exactly! Or taking a week off work to recoup. Putting yourself back together doesn’t happen with a flip of a switch. It’s more like tending a garden.”
“You garden?”
“Definitely not. My only contribution to a garden is my face on a wanted poster for serial plant murder, but my mom has a green thumb, and so did Carrie, so I know what I’m talking about in theory.”
“Ah, okay then, please continue.”
“Right, so when you first plant something you check the soil, looking for the tiniest signs of life. You water it every day, even when that voice in your head tells you nothing will ever grow. Then, one morning, a sprout peeks from the ground. But that sprout doesn’t appear from nowhere. It’s there because of all the care and effort you put into it. Before you ever see it, there’s all this growth happening beneath the surface. Change starts on the inside, where no one can see it, and then one day it finally breaks the surface.”
“I want to block his number,” I said, the need coming to me fast, Luke’s wisdom compelling me into action. “I don’t want to stay stuck.”
“That right there tells me you aren’t ruined. Maybe you’re still wandering through the rubble, still picking your way through the wreckage, but you’re not destroyed. You’re moving forward. You’re finding your way out. It might not always be the clearest path, but I have no doubt you’ll come out the other side.”
Chapter 9
Luke
Iloved my job, most days I woke up rearin’ to get out there and dive in, but leaving Oliver this morning sat wrong in my gut. Forty-eight hours hadn’t been enough time off. Every instinct in me wanted to stay, hover, keep watch. But he needed quiet. Maybe a few hours alone would help him reclaim a little of himself.
Still, before heading out, I did everything short of bubble-wrapping the guy to make his day easier. I made breakfast, packed his lunch, and lined pain medication on the counter right where he’d see them, with a full glass of water. I double-checked the living room, putting anything he might need in reach. Things like the remote, chargers, blankets. I even slapped a Post-it on the coffee table that said:Everything here is yours, food, TV, books, whatever you want.
I’d told him that like fifty times over the last few days, but without me there I figured he might feel like an intruder. The last thing I wanted was him sitting there, hurting, too scared to touch something because he thought it wasn’t “his.”
