Rafael
Mattie was wonderful. He was my best friend—my everything. Most kids don’t appreciate their siblings, but I knew from when Mattie was born that I was the luckiest kid on the planet to have him as a brother. He had this hilarious laugh that sounded like a bird squawking. Once Mattie got on some laughing kick, everyone around him started laughing, mainly because his laugh was so fucking bizarre. He could be a little shit too. Practical jokes were his specialty, but they were never malicious. They were genuinely clever. You couldn’t help but keel over and cackle once you realized he duped you into falling for one of his pranks. That mischievous quality glistened in his eyes, and I couldn’t get enough of his little face when he was planning something—such a character. We shared a room until I was ten and he was six, not because we didn’t have a bedroom for him, but because we didn’t want to be in separate rooms. Each evening, we’d set up a tent made of bedding, and I’d tell him some gruesome ghost story that I’d made up on the spot. He loved being scared.
He was so scared that day…
I failed him. I was his big brother. Big brothers are supposed to protect their little brothers. I couldn’t do it. Sometimes, I wanted to go back to our summer house on Cape Cod, set sail in a tiny boat just like we had on that day, and wait for a storm to free me from the relentless guilt. I should have died that day. Not him. Not Mattie.
I failed him.
I’ve had that dream countless times over the years. Each time, I awoke with a pounding heart and a pain in my lungs, like I’d deprived them of air for too long. They burned, and my throat ached. Nobody ever came to wake me up in all the years I had that dream. I didn’t think my parents knew I had them. I didn’t realize my sounds were audible in real life. Cody coming into my room made me realize that my nightmares were loud enough that he heard me with two walls and a hallway between us.
He came to help me.
When I woke up, I thought I was still underwater. The touch of his hand tricked my mind into believing that I hadn’t let go of Mattie. The relief that washed over me was unlike any joy I’d ever experienced. I thought I’d held on. I thought I saved him—that the years of missing him were the actual nightmare and that, in reality, I was still in the water, fighting to save my best friend. My little guy. My heart.
But that wasn’t the case. Mattie was dead, and Cody was holding my hand.
My heart broke. It broke harder than it had when Mattie died because, this time, I thought…
If I believed in God, I would have renounced it right then and there. What a cruel fucking trick.
If Cody heard me through the walls, why hadn’t my parents? Or had they, and they just ignored it? The hurt that washed over me boiled into a potion of rage that flowed throughout my body. I didn’t even realize I’d grabbed Cody’s throat until his terrified eyes shook me out of my rage-induced blackout.
I hadn’t intended to say something like that to him. It just came out. Cody shouldn’t have been the one reaching for my hand. It burned. It burned so much that I feared it would overtake me. When he left my room, I hated myself even more for saying it. Why did I care? The hurt in his eyes did something to me.
I was never one to reflect. There was no need to ponder over the hurt I caused because pain consumed my every waking moment. Why shouldn’t everyone else be in pain? But, for some reason, seeing Cody like that made me think about how terrible I was for saying that. It scared me. That wasn’t part of the plan. I wasn’t supposed to feel remorse for fucking with him.
I decided to lock my bedroom door from then on. He’d never see that again. I didn’t care if I was drowning in that room; it would be better than giving Cody any semblance of the upper hand in our little game. He was mine to devour, and that wasn’t going to change.
Chapter 15
Cody
I barely left my room the day after the nightmare, and I avoided Rafael altogether for a week after. We operated in this strange dance where we avoided each other at all costs. When he entered the room, I left.
My world had shifted, and nothing made sense anymore.
Rafael hurt me unlike anyone ever had. I should have wanted nothing to do with him, but that wasn’t the case. Even as I fantasized about all of the ways I could hurt him back, those thoughts kept devolving into some disgusting scene where he took control and brought me to my knees.
I wanted him. My attraction to him was undeniable. Everything about Rafael turned me on.
The look in his eyes when he took control pierced me like a knife laced with opium. It was simultaneously painful and intoxicating. The whiplash from the sexual interactions we had to him choking me and calling me pathetic after his nightmare, felt like the ground had cracked beneath my feet. I’d never met anyone more twisted and complex in my entire life.
The resentment I felt toward him swelled inside of me like an infected wound. My life had run like clockwork before he arrived. Since Hank came into our lives, I had time to relax. My grades improved, and I finally made the hockey team of my dreams. I seemed perfect. I felt perfect. Now, I was uncomfortable in my own home and studied Rafael’s movements so I could avoid his brooding presence.
It wasn’t wholly because I was afraid of what he might do. I was more fearful of what I might do. What if my yearning overtook me, and I went to Rafael only to be rejected?Pathetic.
I wanted to be alone again. There was no reason to think about all of this shit when I was alone. My life had been so simple; now it was this war between wishing Rafael didn’t exist and existing to be touched by him.
I wanted to hate him. Hate was something I could logically contend with. I had every reason in the world to hate the little asshole. He was a dick twenty-four seven, and he ruined my mother’s wedding.
But I didn’t hate him.
The mixture of emotions was something I couldn’t handle. This burning rage mixed with the urge to be close to him made me feel confused and vulnerable and fucking pathetic.He was right.
I had to shake this feeling because I couldn’t handle the truth.
Did I always have a thing for him? Was that why I couldn’t stop looking at the picture?
