3. June
June
I rarely see them all at once, let alone for more than five minutes. I see Dom and Magnus more than Co, but even then, it's not much. One of them is always hanging back and waiting to pass me off to Simon, the man who I spend most of my hours with these days.
At one point, we all ate dinner together every night.
Not with Simon, but with me and the rest of the men.
It was nice getting those guaranteed moments with them.
But one skipped meal turned into another, turned into nothing at all.
I'm grateful for Simon's company, annoying as it is, but it's not what I truly want.
I want to be with the men who supposedly love me.
And with each passing day where they’re less and less present, I start to wonder if that was ever true at all.
I believe they care about me, but more in an obligatory way than anything else. I feel more of a burden, or a distraction, than the woman they claim they’d lay their life down for.
If I’m being honest, Simon’s the only one who’s actually proven that.
Even when Co had gone on his murderous rampage to avenge me, it was for his own satisfaction to fuel that rage, not because he thought it might bring me back.
I miss the old days, when it was pining and proving and groveling and wanting to be around me.
I don’t think I’m asking for that much. And that’s why I think if they were to at least include me in their business dealings, I could co-exist in that world while they’re busy doing whatever it is they’re doing.
They wouldn’t have to pick sides because I would willingly join them on theirs.
Footsteps sound from behind me, a presence from a man I’ve been missing far too long.
Co places his firm hands on my shoulders and presses his lips to my temple.
“J, what’re you doing up this early? You’re freezing.
” He takes a few strides to the sitting area and snatches a throw blanket from the couch, coming back and draping it over my back.
“You okay?” He leans against the counter and stares at me. “What’s wrong?”
If my eyes weren’t so damn dry from being tired, I’m sure they would water. The emotions rolling through me threaten to overflow in whatever capacity they can.
“I just wanted to see you,” I tell him.
“Aw, J…” Co grazes his thumb over my cheek, then pauses at the scar on my chin. He pulls away but latches onto my hand. “I’ve been busy lately, I’m sorry.”
“Busy is an understatement, Co. You’re gone when I wake up, and you don’t get back in until I’m already in bed. I know you come in and kiss me sometimes when you get home, but I’m starting to wonder if you’re avoiding me on purpose.”
The beautiful, golden-haired boy shakes his head. "J…never." He sighs and squeezes my hand. "Things have been…less than ideal. But I promise it doesn't mean I love you any less."
His eyes dart to the watch on his wrist briefly. Something I’m not sure he wanted me to notice.
“See, right there. You’re already about to bolt out of the room to whatever it is you have to do. Where do you go this early? Where are you in the wee hours of the night? When do you sleep, Co? I’m seriously concerned.”
Despite his gorgeousness, his eyes are a bit sunken in.
New wrinkles form in places that weren’t there six months ago.
My sweet, innocent boy is no longer. Instead, here stands the broken man who stole my heart all those years ago, a darkness to him that was never there before.
One that was built from a decade of illicit activities and what felt like an eternity of lost love. No, not lost—stolen.
The tiny, delicate red thread connecting us was never really severed.
It was stretched and twisted and pulled and even when I was certain it would snap, it remained steady.
A slow and labored heartbeat that would forever remain ours.
An impossible force that could never be breached.
A torch that would never be snuffed out.
We had bonded over trauma when we were just kids—both of our mothers dead. Two children who spent more time in a cemetery talking to ghosts than other people their age.
I had been collecting wildflowers the day we met. Vibrant purple, some the color of sunshine, white, and crimson. I picked so many my fingertips were raw from accidentally going after too many with bristly edges. A sad reality that even pretty things can be laced with the ability to hurt you.
I saw the pretty boy with blond locks there before, but I had never spoken to him.
I let him exist in solitude, to mourn over the woman buried in the grave he spent most of his time.
The same thing everyone else did in cemeteries.
It’s not a place to socialize, it’s a place to pay respect.
Or whatever else people do there. I never really understood it, but I felt called to the solemnness and despair, like it was calling me home.
Nobody judged me for my lack of smiles or the heaviness I exuded.
It was there that I didn’t have to put on an act to exist in the real world.
Nobody questions why you’re sad when you’re surrounded by the dead.
But that day, I couldn’t stop looking his way.
And when I saw his shoulders quiver, and how he wiped at his cheeks, my body gravitated toward his.
My feet took one step after another, until I was next to him, sitting cross-legged on the ground with a bunch of flowers in my hand.
I set them in his lap and sat there with him, not speaking, just being there.
I'm not sure whether he cared or not, but he didn't tell me to leave, and I found myself not wanting to go.
I stood to walk away, to sit with my own ghost, and it was then that he finally spoke.
“Thanks.”
One single word and that thread wrapped its way around my heart.
It was a different kind of love then. Not necessarily romantic. But visceral. I was too young to really understand the grown-up kind of love. Instead, it was this yearning to be near someone who understood what loss felt like. To share a common denominator—death. And to do so without judgment.
I was the sad loser girl at school. But there, with him, I was someone else.
That love grew and continued to blossom with each passing day. That thread binding us tighter and tighter. He was my constant. My safe space. My best friend.
We had picnics in that cemetery, we played hide and seek, we made it ours.
We talked about the past like it was a lifetime ago, when things weren’t always covered in darkness, and we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable.
We shared things that we had never shared with anyone else.
Not our remaining parent, not our so-called friends, not the school counselor that we were both forced to visit.
Everyone else just wanted to fix us, to figure out how to put us back together.
We didn’t expect that of each other. Not then, not ever.
And when the time finally came for us to part, it was like I lost the glue that had been holding me steady for all those years we were friends.
I didn’t just lose my best friend, my first kiss, my first love…
I lost a piece of me. With the days that turned into weeks that morphed into months and months, I lost hope, too.
I lost faith that I would ever feel again.
I was numb and hurt and I was so fucking mad.
Angry that I allowed someone the power to wreck me after I gave them my heart.
Furious that I was dumb enough to think he would eventually come back.
We were kids, but our connection was everything.
At one point, I almost convinced myself it was never real, that it never happened.
That I had created it as some weird coping mechanism to deal with the loss of my mother.
To distract me from my abusive, alcoholic father.
But there was proof, reminding me that what Co and I had shared wasn’t a figment of my miserable imagination.
Old polaroids of us at the beach, seashells we had collected, a tattered necklace he had made me out of string, a faded sweatshirt of his that he let me borrow one cold night that I never gave back.
And the biggest reminder of them all—the gaping hole in my chest.
Plus, massive trust issues.
Now, a decade later, that same beautifully broken boy, the one who helped me nurse a butterfly back to life we had found in the grill of his dad's old truck, stands in front of me, those ocean-blue eyes staring into mine.
“Don’t worry about me.” Co breaks off a piece of the muffin and pops it into his mouth.
That’s all I’ve done since the moment I laid eyes on him when we were just kids.
“You’re right, though.” He cups my cheek. “We haven’t gotten enough time together lately. What can I do?”
A throat clears from behind us. A bit of chatter following the interruption. I glance behind me to find Magnus and Dominic coming down the stairs and into our line of sight.
“Actually,” I say loud enough for all of them to hear.
“What are you doing up?” Dominic’s brows pinch together. “Did something happen?”
Magnus rushes around him to get to me first. He pulls my face between his hands and presses his lips onto mine. “God damn you’re gorgeous in the morning.”
I kiss him back. “But not in the afternoon?”
Dom reaches me, smoothing the hair that Magnus had tousled off my forehead. He plants his lips in the spot that he had cleared. “Really though, is everything okay?”
“Since I have you all here, and I have no idea for how long. We need to talk,” I tell them.
“Oh shit, this is serious.” Magnus hops onto the stool next to mine and holds his tattooed hands around one of mine. “Are you breaking up with us?”
The door to the garage area creaks open and Simon steps through.
“Am I interrupting something?” Simon stops with one foot still outside.
“Yes,” Co tells him.
“No,” I say louder. “You can come in.”
Magnus leans in closer and whispers, “Are you going to break up with us in front of Beckett?”