Chapter 46 #3
I don’t know if he can tell how desperately I need it.
Maybe he really needs it, too. Even though there’s hardly any room to speak of, I curl up next to him, lying my head on his chest, keeping well away from his injuries.
He puts his right arm around my shoulders, holding me close, twisting his fingers in my hair.
After everything, having him here, solidly beneath me, feels like the greatest prize in the universe.
“You know, you don’t have to pretend everything’s okay around me,” Luke whispers against my temple.
The words twist around my heart, a tender caress over the lock and key chaining it down.
It’s a delicate invitation peeling back the numbness I’ve felt since everything happened.
“You don’t need to hold anything back. I’m not afraid to see you, Ethan. All of you.”
“I…” I start, and my throat suddenly goes tight, tears threatening to come to the surface. “I was so afraid I’d lost you forever. I didn’t know what I would do if you….” I can’t even finish the sentence. The words are too painful.
Luke understands. He brushes a kiss along my hairline, moving his fingers over my neck. “I’m still here.” It’s a promise. A vow. A covenant. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His words succeed in unraveling more layers of the protective shell, exposing the soft, damaged parts of my soul I didn’t intend to shield but got covered up regardless.
I can feel it crack around my ribcage, the sensation hurtling me into an unexpected well of emotion lurking beneath the surface.
It’s like Luke’s given me permission to feel it. It’s overwhelming.
“Fuck,” is all I manage to say before the floodgates open, and everything comes pouring out of me. Luke seems relieved, relaxing beneath me.
“There you go,” he purrs softly, hugging me tightly. Even that is enough to send me further over the edge. The amount of care behind those three little words tells me that he knew what I needed this whole time, even if I wasn’t ready to go there on my own.
I turn my face into his chest, unable to hold myself back now that the dam is broken. The weeks’ worth of stress and fear and agony I’ve been repressing come rushing out of me in a terrifying wave against my control, and I can’t stop the broken sob that racks through me.
The simple act of having him hold me through it—the physical connection—is enough to break me apart completely. Luke pulls me closer, his hands bringing life back into my numb limbs. I can feel his own rattling breath as he starts to cry, brought to tears by my visceral reaction.
“I know how hard this must have been for you to go through,” he says softly, his head pressed to mine. “And I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there to help you. But I promise you that I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here. I’m staying right here.”
I cling to his promise more tightly than I can even cling to him at this moment, afraid of hurting him.
He doesn’t even seem to care if I was. He’s holding me together, even while I unravel around him.
I let everything loose, all my damaged parts on full display, and Luke—blessed, beautiful, perfect Luke—stays with me, loving me through it.
At some point, after crying myself out, I must have fallen asleep. I don’t remember drifting off or even how I managed to stop crying, but my body must have given out from the exhaustion.
The next thing I know, I’m woken up with a little jolt as Luke freezes beneath me, and he starts to speak, the deep rumble of his voice moving through his chest beneath my head.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” he snaps, the words so harsh it startles me. “Get out.”
“Luke….” It’s a woman’s voice.
“Get. Out.”
My head feels like it’s been underwater, my eyes raw and puffy, but I open them slowly, the only part of my body that moves.
I look up to see Luke’s mother standing at the other end of the bed, studying her son with tears in her eyes.
I haven’t seen or heard from her since the incident—she never once came by to check on him in the time I’ve been here, and I never thought to ask about her.
Maybe she was too busy getting her own treatment.
Maybe she didn’t know where to find him.
But she looks like she’s been cleaned up, the gash in her cheek stitched and covered in a bandage, and her arm is in a cast and sling.
She glances down at me lying against her son’s chest, and our eyes meet briefly.
She gives me the tiniest fraction of a smile, and there’s so much emotion tied to it.
Gratitude and appreciation, but sorrow and anguish, as well.
It’s complicated and raw. Then she turns her attention back to Luke as if I’m not here, only giving me passive acknowledgment.
“I’m so sorry, Luke,” she sobs. “Baby, I know I hurt you. Lord knows how much I hurt you. But I was just trying to protect you.”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses,” Luke snaps.
I probably shouldn’t be here while they have this conversation…
Except, as I try to push myself up to leave and give them some privacy, Luke holds me firmly against him with his hand on my back, and when I turn my head up and meet his eye, he shakes his head at me.
His eyes are screaming, please don’t go.
So I don’t. I resettle with my arm around Luke’s waist, holding him steady. I can feel the tension in his body.
“He was killing you.” His mom trembles. “It was the only thing I could do to get you out of there so he would stop.”
“You kicked me out. You left me alone,” Luke replies, his voice dangerously low.
The betrayal rolls off of him in a tangible wave.
I’m immediately thrown back to how he fell apart in the shower the day it happened.
The shattered, wounded shell he was when he tried to cope with it.
Even the complicated way he looked at her from the kitchen floor…
“After everything we talked about—everything I helped you with—you still wouldn’t leave with me, even though he’d done that.
Gone that far. You chose to stay with him. Again.”
“There was no other way I could get him off you! If I’d have gone with you in that moment, he’d have killed us both before we left the driveway.”
“You could have left with me every other time I begged you to, but you didn’t.”
“I know,” his mother cries, shaking her head with remorse. “I know. I thought he could get better. He promised me he’d change. I hoped he would.”
“You’ve told yourself that lie for so many years that I think you actually believe it.
Well, I don’t believe you. You always go back to him.
You always stayed with him, even after he’d beaten the shit out of you and me.
For years. You should have left him the first time he hit you when I was still in fucking high school.
You should have left the first time he hit me.
But you didn’t. You stayed, and you taught him that it was perfectly acceptable to touch you. To control you.”
“Baby, why do you think I fought so hard to get you to New York?” His mom whimpers.
Luke scoffs, tears coming to his eyes. “Yeah. You’ve used that excuse before, too. Your hero complex must be gratified, thinking you saved me from the torment of my abusive stepfather. But what about you, Mom?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Bull. Shit. You’re just a coward. You’ve always been a coward.
So, you two deserve each other. You can be pen pals and shit while he’s rotting in prison for all I care.
Convince yourself you’ve reformed his sorry ass, and if he ever gets out, you can shack right back up with him. The cycle repeats.”
“Luke, that’s not fair,” she says, her voice tight. “I did what I had to do to keep you safe. He wasn’t going to let me go, and I knew it was the only way to make him stop.”
“I don’t care anymore.”
“Luke.” She sobs a broken, wretched cry.
Luke stiffens, turning his head away, his jaw clenched. Even I can’t help but frown, hearing the desperation in her voice. When I turn my eyes up to catch Luke’s, his resolve breaks a fraction, and I don’t know what he sees in my face. But he sighs.
“Mom…” he says, tears in his eyes. “I love you. You’re my mother, and I will always love you. But I can’t forgive you yet, and I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
She takes a step forward. “Baby, please.”
Luke snaps his eyes to her, and she stops at his glare. She deflates, turning her gaze to the floor, dejected and submissive. I can see how Luke’s expression cracks, like he’s upset being the one putting her down after years of the abuse she’s faced, but he won’t back down.
“I’m asking you for once in your goddamn life to listen to me.” Luke’s voice trembles. “I don’t know if we’ll get past this, but right now is not the time to try. Fix yourself, and then come back and see me.”
His mother stands frozen for a moment, silent tears streaming down her cheek, her jaw working as she trembles.
She doesn’t argue. She doesn’t push past the boundary Luke has erected or test the limits of his patience.
I can see the anguish on her face as she grapples with the reality that her relationship with her son might be more broken than she could have known.
But she does take the last steps forward, reaching out with her good hand.
She runs her fingers through Luke’s hair, and he doesn’t stop her as she leans down and kisses the top of his head.
“I hear you, baby,” she says as she stands back up. “I love you.”
Luke won’t look at her, but he nods slightly in acknowledgment. Then his mom gives me another pitiful smile, like, at the very least, she’s glad Luke isn’t alone right now. But she doesn’t say anything else as she turns and walks from the room where she isn’t wanted.
As soon as she disappears around the corner, I can feel Luke’s chest go tight beneath me, and he lets out a soft sob. I pull my arm around his waist a little more tightly, and he grips the back of my shirt.