Chapter Eight
Kieran
The beeping on my phone brought me back down from the rage bursting inside of me. The cabinets doors were ruined, the stools overturned, and glass and fruits were scattered on the floor. And pain rushed through my hands. I clenched them. Not broken.
I needed to tend to my insulin levels. A reality check of epic proportions.
I turned off the beeping and leaned forward against the counter. Tomás still curled on the floor, covering his ears as if trying to turn off the world. It’s when I noticed his knuckles bleeding too. And that hadn’t happened when he punched me.
I fucked up.
Because like always, I had to be the dick. The asshole idiot that needed him to submit to me. To want me. To fuck me. To take control. While I gave him nothing in return. While I kept bruising his heart until I shattered it. Tomás wasn’t a hook-up. He didn’t want the one-night stand. He didn’t just want the sex. He wanted more. He’d always wanted more.
I was a selfish asshole that couldn’t give him that.
The thought of someone hurting him sent me raging before the urge to kill someone dulled.
I didn’t know how to take care of people. Taking care of them had always meant putting a bullet in their head, or a knife to the throat. I didn’t know what it meant to take care of another person because I’d never had to do it before. My mind ran through scenarios. I could leave him on that fucking floor to deal with his pain alone. The mere thought had me busting at the seams. No. That wasn’t an option. I could beg for his forgiveness. But I didn’t think he’d even have the mental capacity to understand what I offered.
No. Fuck. Kieran, think. What had I wanted when Grandfather had left me bruised and alone? When he’d left me in pain and internally screaming with no one to listen.
Listen. No one had ever been there to just listen. To be a presence I could latch on to so I wouldn’t drift away and become nothing.
I pulled all my shit inside, locked it down the deep abyss that was once my soul, and calmed the fuck down. I moved slow, kneeling beside him. He didn’t flinch under my touch, but he hadn’t removed his hands from his ears.
Defeated, I hung my head and closed my eyes. “Tomás,” I whispered. Keeping the hurt out of my voice. This wasn’t about me. I could be a pathetic loser later. Tomás needed me. “Let me help you.”
He shook his head, curled tighter into himself.
I clenched my fists. I wanted to hurt myself for what I just did to him. He’d been detoxed just hours ago from a dangerous hallucinogen. Whatever haunted him remained on the surface. His demons. I should’ve known better. But the thought of him being alone in this fucking place, unprotected, drove me up the fucking wall and I had to come see him. I hadn’t known what I meant to do when I saw him. But I’d been so pissed.
Why would he have left?
He never listens!
We could’ve worked us out.
But could we really?
I didn’t even know what the fuck I was doing.
I knew I wasn’t leaving him like this. I couldn’t. So I did the only thing I could do. I stretched myself on the floor behind him and slowly wrapped an arm around his waist, alert to the slight reactions his body made under my touch. A slight tension in his abs for a second, then he relaxed, allowing me to fit him perfectly in front of me. His back to my chest. Until he melted into my touch.
“I’m here, baby,” I whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Lies I’ve gotten so used to believing. I couldn’t stay in Arcadia. No longer a bastard, I didn’t belong here. The long shadows moved across the windows, the floor, as I watched. The only procession of time I had as I waited for him to come back to me. Finally, his hands dropped from his ears and his chest moved in rhythmic breathing. Calm breathing.
“We should get up.” His voice sounded raw, beaten. Ruined.
I released my hold over him and got to my feet.
He didn’t take my offered hand, didn’t take my help. He got to his feet alone and shuffled up the stairs and to his room as I followed like a lost puppy behind him. “Let me clean your cut,” I said once we were inside.
He started for the bathroom but stopped, then turned back and took a seat at the edge of the bed. He looked wrecked. Beyond wrecked. He looked at his knuckles as if not remembering how he got the cuts.
Without asking, I started for the bathroom and stopped. The lights were still on, the mirror shattered, shards on the floor. Blood stains on the sink. I didn’t mention it as I looked in the cabinet and found a small first aid kit. I returned to the room, dragged his rolling chair between his legs, slipped on the gloves in the kit, and started cleaning his knuckles. “It doesn’t need stitches. I’m just going to clean it and put on antibiotics.” I talked as I worked. The silent care reminded me of when he found me in the middle of a diabetic episode. How he had taken care of me, washed me, and touched me for the first time. It’d been the first time anyone had cared enough to take care of me. “Why did you punch the mirror?” I asked.
“I hate my face,” he responded, dryly.
“You have a beautiful face,” I said without looking at him. I could tell his eyes were boring into the side of my head.
“Why are you here?” When I didn’t say anything, he pulled his hand away from mine, forcing me to meet his big brown sad eyes. “I don’t need your pity.”
“I know.”
“I don’t need your protection.” His voice cracked, brittle, as if he’d ruined it by screaming. I knew that voice too. I’d sounded like it after my beatings.
“I don’t know how to be anything else.” Please take me as is.
Beautiful brown eyes searched for something in mine. I held my breath, wondering what he saw. Could he see how my soul yearned for him? Did he know I couldn’t ever let him go? My heart cracked when he pulled away and crawled under the sheets, rolling onto his side. Conversation over.
The need to do something useful crawled under my skin, so I started to clean up. The used gauze and tape went to the trash. I even cleaned the bathroom of the broken shards to make sure he didn’t hurt himself again. Then I went downstairs and cleaned up the kitchen. The normalcy of fixing things, cleaning things, erasing any trace evidence, settled my nerves. My emotions were jacked. My headspace dull. The void inside of me just kept growing. The cabinets were ruined, some hanging off hinges. Things I couldn’t fix, I threw away. Didn’t matter. Tomás did not belong here. He belonged with me, where I could take care of him. Where I could … I didn’t even know anymore.
Once done cleaning, I munched on an apple. My insulin pump working its magic. Thank you, technology.
I tossed the apple core away, washed my hands, and went back to check on him. His eyes were open, his breathing even, his hands under his cheek. He blinked a few times.
“I’m going to head out,” I whispered.
The silence that followed ruined me. I wanted him to tell me to stay.
He didn’t.
And because I was an asshole, I toed out of my shoes, took off my clothes and folded them neatly in a pile on the chair, and climbed into bed with him. He didn’t tell me to leave. He didn’t move away as I adjusted him in my arms, burrowing into him from behind. His body so cold against my heat. As soon as we were comfortable, he melted into my arms the way he always did when I touched him. As if he were a flower bending to the light, and I was the sun.
I wanted to be his sun. His world. His everything.
“If you want me to leave,” I whispered into his hair, taking a deep breath of his scent. “Tell me.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d do if he’d tell me to fuck off. Luckily, I didn’t have to test myself because he didn’t tell me to leave.
“I’m still fucked up,” he said so low I had to lean closer to listen. “I couldn’t remember at first. But the drugs, they opened something inside my head I can’t shut anymore.”
I said nothing. My body on full alert to capture everything he said and didn’t say. I needed the information to find the fucker who hurt him and kill him. I wouldn’t even bother with torture. I just wanted the fucker dead.