Every Mended Heart (Far From Ruined #3)

1. Just a Room

1

Just a Room

Room , as defined by Webster’s dictionary: A partitioned part of the inside of a building.

It was a space confined by walls with an entrance and exit, maybe a window or two. The floor could be carpet or tile, wood or linoleum. Some rooms were small, some large; some were designed for a specific purpose, while others were multi-use. Floor, ceiling, walls… windows.

Yet, a room could be so much more. It was comfort and memories, nostalgia and happiness. It was fear and panic, hurt and humiliation. Sometimes, it was all of those things all at the same time.

Until recently, my bedroom was the best room in the house. These walls held secrets, my secrets. It was the place I truly came to terms with and accepted my sexuality on the cusp of my fourteenth birthday. It was where I watched my first porno with a friend from middle school, where I came out to my brother— unintentional as that was—where I had sex with Ben for the first time.

Where Eric Boyt watched.

I should have loved this room, but since my life had exploded into chaos a week ago, I hadn’t stepped one foot in here. I couldn’t bring myself to enter, not when Boyt—my bully, would-be rapist, and now, stalker—had spied on me in this very space.

For the past week, I had lived off the clean clothes in the basement dryer and slept in my dad’s room. Unfortunately, the endless pile of clean laundry had finally run out, and I was too embarrassed to ask Dad to fetch new underwear for me.

But since I had to go back to school today, I needed fresh clothing. As much as I wantedto hide under the covers in my dad’s bed, I couldn’t afford to miss any more of my classes. If I wanted to graduate, I had to return.

I didn’t want to. Obviously. But as The Rolling Stones so eloquently put it, “You can’t always get what you want.”

It was best to get it over with, like a Band-aid. Just grit my teeth and rip the fucker off in one fell swoop. Ignore the sting. Move on.

Easier said than done.

“Silas?”

I jumped at the sound of my name, movement in my peripheral forcing my attention from my room to my father. I hadn’t heard him climb the stairs, but I had a feeling this wasn’t the first time he’d called for me.

I rubbed my chest over my erratically pounding heart. “Sorry, what?”

Dad scrutinized me with his heavy, dark stare, arms crossed over his broad chest above his rounded belly. I never thought I would have referred to him as a “Hover Dad,” but stalkers and attempted sexual assault changed people. At this point, I was lucky to manage a piss in solitude without him standing on the other side of the door, asking if I was okay.

Not that I blamed him. I wasn’t the same Silas I’d been even last week, and I needed Dad in a way I hadn’t before. I was ill-equipped to deal with lawyers and cops, legal paperwork and criminal charges. So like a child, I clung to my father’s leg as he took on the adult responsibilities and conversations I should have been shouldering.

“Ben’s here.” Dad’s hand landed on my shoulder, jarring me from my thoughts. “Better get dressed, or you’ll be late.”

“Right, yeah.”

With a wan smile, I patted the back of his hand before facing the looming demons lurking in the corners of my bedroom. It shouldn’t be this hard. It was just a room.

My bare feet whispered over the worn carpet as I crossed the threshold and beelined toward my dresser. I refused to focus on anything but the task of grabbing clean clothes. The moment I had them, I fled the room as quickly as I could.

I changed in the bathroom and rushed through brushing my teeth. Time passed too fast to be normal as the unavoidable horror of leaving for school approached. I wanted to press Pause, to put a stop, however briefly, to this day. But I couldn’t. It was time to tear the Band-Aid from my flesh, uprooting hair and several layers of skin in the process.

With every step toward the stairs, my feet dragged, and my father bellowed a reminder to hurry twice more before I made it to the landing. I shuffled through the living room, noting the mostly closed blinds, then hovered in the archway to the kitchen. Dad sipped his coffee, mumbling something I couldn’t hear to Ben.

Ben, who—like me—barely resembled the boy he’d been a week ago. Lackluster curls lay in disarray over haunted blue eyes. The ocean of his irises, which usually splashed and swirled with life, lay dormant and still. Dark bags colored the skin beneath, and his complexion had taken on a sallow, sickly look.

Like me, something inside him had broken.

The Silas I used to be died a week ago on a Monday morning in the very halls of the school we now prepared to attend. Ben had fallen victim as well. I didn’t know if either of us knew how to crawl out of the grave we lay in.

Turning toward me, Ben attempted to smile, but it was more of a painful grimace. “Hey, Si.”

“Hey,” I said, voice rough. “We going or what?”

My beautiful, yet weathered, boyfriend nodded, glancing at my dad with another half-smile. “I guess I’ll see you tonight, then. Thanks, Charlie.” To me, he said, “Let’s go.”

“I’ll pick you up after school,” Dad called as I backed out of the kitchen.

“Okay,” I said as I tugged my shoes on.

I shrugged on my coat, swung my backpack over my shoulder, then trailed after Ben into the bitter February air. The slushy snow threatened to soak into my Vans as I crossed the driveway and crawled into the warm interior of Ben’s silver Impala.

As I buckled my seatbelt, Ben lowered himself behind the wheel. He faltered with one hand on the keys in the ignition, the other on the top curve of the steering wheel. His lips parted, moving wordlessly for a moment, but when no sound escaped, he simply closed his mouth and shook his head.

He started the car with a determined tension in his stiff jaw. As he backed out of my driveway, he reached across the cab and squeezed my wrist. He didn’t take my hand or twine our fingers, and part of me wished he had. Instead, he rested his elbow on the center console, eyes focused on the road.

I stared at his hand, my fingers itching to close the distance and take it in mine. A week ago, I would never have hesitated, but we weren’t the same people anymore. So I hugged my backpack to my chest and stared out the window as we drove to the school in heavy silence.

“Did you eat breakfast?” Ben asked as he pulled to a stop in the back of the bustling parking lot, breaking the quiet for the first time since leaving my house.

“No,” I said simply.

He scowled. “You need to eat something.”

I snorted as I unbuckled my belt. “I’ll just throw it up later.”

He flinched but didn’t argue because he knew I was right. He knew I was barely eating, the same way I knew he didn’t sleep. More than that, we knew there was nothing we could do to fix it, so in the end, there was nothing to say.

Sitting in his car, we stared at the foreboding brick building as students hurried to escape the winter chill. Snow drifted through the air in lazy flurries, and my gut twisted as Jake Thompson and his entourage of wrestler buddies sauntered into the school like they owned the place.

“I don’t think I can do this,” I confessed in a whisper. “Ben, don’t make me do this.”

A finger grazed my cheek, and my eyes shuttered closed to hide the sting of tears welling there. “Yes, you can do this. We both can.”

“We could just leave.” I angled my head in his direction, and his palm lowered to cup my neck.

“We’ve been gone long enough, Si,” Ben said. “Let’s just get it over with. Another week and it’s old news, anyway.”

Frustrated, I ground my teeth as I glared at the school building. “Do you think he’s in there?”

Ben’s thumb pressed into the side of my neck. “Yes. But you heard what the lawyer said. Don’t engage him. Don’t talk to him—don’t even look at him.”

The lawyers had given numerous instructions over the last week, but they had flown in one ear and out the other the majority of the time. But avoiding Eric Boyt was something I could easily do. Just the thought of seeing him made my stomach heave.

Scrubbing my face with my palm, I blew a hitched breath through pursed lips as I gathered my resolve. I could list fifty terrible places I would rather be than here, but it wouldn’t change the reality. I was here, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Like there was nothing I could do about Eric Boyt, the boy who’d assaulted me, stalked me, and sent a nude picture of me around the school. Well, technically, he’d blackmailed Alice into doing his dirty work for him—not that we could prove it. We couldn’t prove any of it.

We had no physical evidence of either assault, and Ben’s and my accounts weren’t enough to prove guilt. The school cameras were ancient and had only caught the hallway view. Even then, it was blurry and too far away to prove anything. The lawyers had watched the footage, but other than seeing three people enter the bathroom, then eventually leave the bathroom, there weren’t enough details to corroborate our story.

The picture shared around the school was near impossible to trace. It had been sent to Alice from a burner phone—a fucking burner phone! When had my life turned into some CW espionage drama?—and Alice had been the one to share it with her contact list. Apparently, Eric had blackmailed her, and even though she’d confessed to starting the chain of messages, it wasn’t technically illegal.

Ben and I were eighteen, so it wasn’t child pornography. And since Alice hadn’t taken the picture herself, there was nothing we could technically charge her with. Not that I wanted that. As much as I hated her for her part in all this, she was a victim too.

No, it was Eric who deserved to pay, but there was no way to pin any of this on him. Dad, Aunt June, and Uncle Henry were working tirelessly with the lawyers for any angle we could exploit, but I feared the worst.

Eric Boyt was going to get away with it. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

“Si?” Ben’s thumb rubbed the nape of my neck. “We’re gonna be late to class if we sit here any longer.”

I shrugged. “Detention doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Putting it off won’t make it easier. We can do this.” His confidence was inspiring, yet bile laced the back of my throat as I fingered the door handle.

“Can we?”

The question wasn’t meant to be voiced, but it cut through the car like gunfire. Ben’s grip tightened on my shoulder, bruising, painful. I couldn’t bring myself to face him, so I studied the brick and mortar of the building before us.

“Yes, Silas, we can,” he said, voice cracking.

I didn’t think he was talking about school anymore.

Heaving a deep breath to fortify myself, I nodded, meeting his eyes fleetingly. “Okay, let’s go.”

Without another word, we exited the car, and I wrapped my coat securely around my body to shield myself from the February chill. Ben locked the car, then slung his backpack over one shoulder as he rounded the nose of the Impala where I stood waiting.

Hesitantly, he offered his hand, lifeless blue eyes clashing with my slate ones. I swallowed thickly and reached across the chasm separating us. Our fingers twined, interlocking like a rusty key in a long-forgotten lock.

He smiled. It was a pale imitation of his normal smile, but it was something.

I tried to return it, but the trembling thing dropped before it could fully form.

Hand-in-hand, we entered the school. Ben dutifully ignored every inquisitive face we passed as his expression hardened to one of intimidation. Since I could never pull off the dark brooding he could, I did my best to appear apathetically aloof.

We were cool, confident, and completely above it all. We were unforgiving. The farce bolstered my courage as we walked through the halls with our heads held high, even as our palms slicked with anxious sweat.

Of course, I didn’t miss the wide-eyed stares or the hushed words whispered behind palms, but I ignored them the best I could. Behind my stone exterior, I was untouchable. If only my trembling fingers agreed.

Parting with Ben at my first class was harder than I expected. Without his steady presence, my bravery threatened to cave. As we stood at the door to my psychology class, my heart lurched in my chest, my palms breaking into a cold sweat.

Reading my unease, Ben cupped the back of my neck and drew me in until our foreheads met. I was lost to the ocean of his eyes as I breathed in his spring soap and spearmint.

“I’ll see you at lunch, okay?” He phrased it as a question, but I grasped onto it like a promise.

“Yeah, I’ll see you.”

“I love you,” he murmured so quietly I almost missed it.

It took me an extra second to say it back, but I did, forcing the words past broken lips. “I love you too.”

He smiled again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He pressed a hard kiss to my forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut, fingers tightening in the front of his shirt. But then he was turning away, my grip ripping free as he trudged down the hall.

I stared after him, even after he disappeared around the corner, until a throat cleared behind me. “Silas?” Mrs. Schrock, my psychology teacher, tapped my shoulder as the tardy bell trilled. “You coming or going?”

Turning away from the empty hallway, I entered the classroom. “Oh, uh, I’m coming.”

“That’s what he said last week,” someone sniggered, and my steps faltered, the back of my neck burning.

As a few soft chuckles buzzed around the room, I ducked my head and glared at the carpet as I hurried to my seat.

Ignore it, Silas. Just ignore it.

Easier said than done.