30. Chapter 30
Asher
It’s a strange thing to, on one hand, hate someone for what they did to you and, on the other hand, when you see them, the world tilts back onto its axis. Everything feels right and simple again. There he is , your brain says, and that surge of relief?…?It’s staggering.
But when that same relief turns to utter horror?…?staggering isn’t even the start of it.
Blood and chaos.
A blade puncturing the most vulnerable part of the person I love the most, hate the most, care about the most. The person I need.
Even more staggering, the one who did it was my brother. The one I thought I loved and whose approval I craved so badly all my life was also the one who caused me more harm and heartbreak than Noah ever did.
I haven’t slept. I can’t.
I have to stay awake, have to be ready in case I need to protect him. I’ll do anything to protect him, if only he’d wake up.
I can’t sleep unless he wakes up.
I can’t eat unless he wakes up.
I can’t live unless he wakes up.
How is it possible to yearn so much for the same person who caused you so much pain? But that pain was nothing compared to the horror of seeing the blood pour from his body.
He’s everything now. All that is left of my life is wedged between my hand and his.
I sit with him all night, holding his hand in my palm, squeezing it momentarily, checking to feel his pulse.
Still beating. Still alive. Hope. There’s still hope.
The machines checking his vitals are beeping steadily. The nurses said his condition is stable, that he was lucky, that no organs were punctured beyond repair, but that it might take time for his body to recover and for his mind to find its way back to us.
When he wakes up, I will be here, holding his hand. I can barely keep my eyes open, but I will.
The next time I blink, I sense a presence by the door, and I turn my head.
It’s my brother.
He looks the way he always does, as if he hasn’t just wounded the one I love. As if he hasn’t almost ruined everything.
Reluctantly, I leave Noah’s side to stand like a shield between my brother and the bed. “What are you doing here?” My voice doesn’t come out as biting as I want. I’m so tired.
“Can we talk?”
“About what?”
Ethan lets out a sigh, shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry, okay? I thought he’d hurt you, and I thought he was going to hurt you again.” He gestures toward Noah’s unconscious form, and a surge of anger crowds my exhaustion away.
Snarling, I push my brother out of the hospital room, and we end up in the corridor. It’s early morning, so there’s no one around, but still, I keep my voice a hiss.
“Do you understand what you’ve done? What you almost did?”
“Is he okay?”
I scoff. “As if you deserve to know.”
“Come on, Ash, don’t you get it? I wanted to protect you from him!”
I cross my arms and look sullenly to the side. “Well, maybe I didn’t need your protection.”
“I guess I got a little carried away. I’m sorry, okay?”
“You want me to forgive you?” I huff out a laugh of disbelief. “After you almost killed my boyfriend?” Boyfriend doesn’t feel like enough to describe it, but I don’t have any words in my somewhat limited vocabulary to describe what Noah and I are to each other.
“He’s your boyfriend?” Ethan asks skeptically. “That freak?”
I surge toward him, grabbing hold of his jacket, no longer caring about making a scene. “Shut the fuck up! Don’t call him that.”
“What else am I supposed to call him? He fucking hurt us, Asher.”
My mouth drops open. “So you were there. You were there with your friends, trying to bury him alive?”
His expression softens with a flicker of guilt. “We didn’t mean for it to go that far. He was just?…?he was just so weird. He scared us. You don’t understand.”
“No, it’s you who doesn’t understand. Just because someone is different, or you don’t understand them, it doesn’t give you the right to?…?to?…” Images flit across my mind. Images of Noah as a child, trying to fend off his bullies, my brother among them. His screams?…?His mouth filling with dirt?…
Ethan sighs. “I know. I was just a stupid kid, and I’m sorry.”
I let go of his jacket, but I keep glaring at him.
“There’s something else I’m sorry about,” he continues.
“Yeah?” I mutter, feeling too tired to even process this conversation but at the same time too angry to walk away.
Ethan sighs again, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“You bullying Noah? Yeah, I know—that’s on you.”
“No, not that. Our parents.”
“Our parents? What the fuck are you talking about?”
He makes a frustrated noise. “The reason I changed. Why I started acting differently around you. Why I said all those things to you before I left for college.”
Oh.
That.
About how I was hopeless from the start. About how our parents didn’t want me. Every time I remember that day, something dark sinks into my stomach, making it hard to breathe. My eyes burn, and before I know it, words spill from my mouth, voice low and miserable.
“You mean why you just started hating me for no reason?”
“It wasn’t for no reason.” He scowls, shaking his head. “Our parents. Our teachers. Everyone. I’m not even a year older than you, but they expected me to be everything you weren’t. Piano lessons. Extra homeschooling. You remember, right?”
“I remember.”
“While you were out with your friends doing God knows what, Mom and Dad were hounding me about my grades. All that weight on my shoulders?…?You have no idea what that was like, and I started hating you for it. You had a life I couldn’t even dream of.
Mom and Dad loved you, even though you didn’t do jack shit to deserve it. ”
“But?…?they didn’t love me. They didn’t give a shit about me.”
“Isn’t it better that they didn’t give a shit about you than having them hound you about your accomplishments every second of every day? Isn’t it better to be left to roam free than get grounded when you got a B instead of an A?”
“I-I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was like that for you.”
I thought he enjoyed making our parents proud, but?…?maybe it didn’t really work out that way. Maybe he was suffering, quietly, under all those expectations. I wouldn’t know what that was like; no one ever expected anything of me.
“Yeah, maybe you didn’t notice the extent of it,” he says with a scoff.
“Too wrapped up in your carefree little life. You know I didn’t have a girlfriend until I left for college?
When have you ever had to struggle like me, huh?
When have you ever had to perform? When you’re shooting up heroin with your girlfriend?
Or when you’re letting some freak have his way with you? ”
“Shut up,” I snarl, fists shaking by my sides. “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“Yeah, and you have no idea about my life, Asher.”
“Why did you come here? Just to blame me again for what Mom and Dad did?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, as if I’m being unreasonable. “No. Blaming you took some weight off my shoulders, but I’ve thought about it a lot since. Being away from our parents sort of cleared my head, and?…?Over the years, and as I talked to Emma—”
“Who’s Emma?”
“My girlfriend. Anyway, I realized it wasn’t your fault. And I’m sorry.”
Tears press to the back of my throat, but I swallow them down. “I would’ve done anything for you, you know,” I say, voice shaking. “Anything?…?for you to love me back.”
“I know, little brother. I’m sorry.”
I nod, letting the words sink in for a while.
So this is what he wanted to tell me back at our parents’ house?
I couldn’t grasp it at that time, and I’m not sure I can grasp it now.
A few months ago, I would’ve been thrilled to hear it.
I would have forgiven him then, but now?…
I don’t know. There’s nothing I want to even say to him anymore.
It’s too late. Too much has happened. The divide between us is too wide.
Despite that, I say, “Okay,” and nod. Mostly because I just want him to leave so I can go to Noah.
He puts his hands on my shoulders. “So we’re okay? We can be friends again?”
“Friends?” I glance into Noah’s room. “I don’t know.”
“I’ve been thinking of coming home for the summer holidays. We could hang out.”
I shrug, still focused on Noah’s room, trying to hear the beeps of the machine telling me he’s still alive. “Maybe.”
Ethan waits, as if he wants me to give him more, but I can’t give him more. Not right now, at least. I can’t consider the future right now; I can’t think about anything but Noah, and my brother seems to figure as much.
“All right.” He shrugs, but I don’t miss the tension in his shoulders, nor the stiffness of his expression. “Guess I’ll see you around, then, little brother.”
Before I get a chance to reply, a nurse emerges from Noah’s room.
“He’s awake.”
Sunlight filters through the blinds, giving the room a dreamlike glow, which is fitting, I suppose. It feels like a dream stepping inside and seeing him there, alive.
Despite his face being paler than usual, he looks as much like a nineteenth-century photograph as the first time I saw him. Beautiful like one, mysterious like one. But he’s not as much of a mystery anymore; he’s mine.
Our eyes meet, and he gives a weak smile. “I lived.”
My vision is swimming with tears already. Fuck, I feel so vulnerable around him—raw and aching, not able to withstand the lightest whisper of emotion, let alone the wave of relief currently washing over me.
“Do you wish you didn’t?” I ask.
Noah doesn’t reply, and it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking.
I try to keep it together, to keep my voice steady. “You lost a lot of blood, but they pumped some back into you.”
“Feels like it.” He grimaces, but his lips turn back into a smile.
I guess they’ve pumped him full of painkillers too. There’s a Band-Aid on the side of his forehead, covering the swollen bruise where I struck him. I want to kiss him there, but I imagine it would hurt.
Instead, I sit down by his side and take his hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, I?…?I promised I’d be here.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, while you were asleep. I talked to you. Did you hear me?”
Noah shrugs, but the motion seems to tug at his stitches, and his pained expression returns. “Maybe. I don’t know. Everything is very?…” He gestures weakly with his free hand. “Dreamlike.”
“But you know I’m here? You know you’re not dead?”
He smiles. “Yes, Goldilocks. I know that.”
Tears roll down my cheeks, and Noah frowns.
“Why are you crying?”
“M?…” I wipe my stuffy nose with the back of my hand before I try again. “My brother was here.”
Noah’s expression tightens. “Oh.”
“He’s sorry for what he did.”
“Is he?”
I wipe my face, but the tears are like a broken faucet; they just keep coming. All the hours and hours of worrying spill out in the form of silent tears I can’t keep inside anymore.
“You’re free to go,” Noah says suddenly.
“What?” I choke out.
He looks into the opposite wall, not meeting my gaze as he takes his hand away. “I have nothing to give you, Asher. You might as well leave.”
“But?…?But I have nowhere to go. Nothing to return to.”
“That doesn’t mean you should be with me.”
“Then why else should I be with you?” I reach for his hand again, squeezing it. “Because I love you? Is that what you want me to say?”
“I don’t?…” He swallows thickly. “I don’t want to make you say anything.”
“But it’s the truth, okay? Maybe it’s wrong, and maybe I hate myself for it, but it is.”
“You hate yourself for loving me?”
I smile wryly. “I hated myself even before loving you, so it’s not really news, is it? But?…” I grip his hand tighter. “I hate myself even more when I’m not with you.”
“Me too.”
“Does that mean you don’t hate yourself anymore?”
“Maybe,” he says with a tired smile. “I don’t know.”
We gaze into each other’s eyes for a good long while, and I catch myself smiling.
“I’m sorry,” Noah says. “For trying to make you stay.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s?…” He grimaces when he tries to shift positions. “It’s not. It was selfish of me.”
“I understand why you did it. Doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do, but I?…”
“No.” He squeezes my hand, and he looks into my eyes, determined. “It was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
“Is that why you came to the party? To say sorry?”
“Yes. But only because I wanted to tell you. Not because I wanted you back.”
“But you do want me back, don’t you?” Please tell me you want me back.
His face grows pale, and that pained expression returns. “I don’t want anything more,” he says, struggling to get the words out, “than to?…?to be with you?…”
I shoot to my feet. “Do you want me to get a nurse?”
“No, I’m okay.”
I sit back down and grab his hand again. “Because you’re with me?”
“Because I’m with you,” he mumbles, eyes sliding close.
“And you won’t ever not be with me. And I won’t ever not be with you.”
He nods weakly, but I need to hear it from his mouth before he drifts off to sleep.
“Noah,” I coax. “Isn’t that true?”
“It’s true,” he mumbles. “Always.” And he squeezes my hand, the grip weaker than before.
“I’m yours,” I say, too quiet for him to hear now that he’s slipping into sleep, but it’s mostly for myself anyway, to cement these feelings within me. “Always.” My eyes fill with tears even though I’m smiling, and I watch the one I love slide into sleep—tired, bruised, and wounded, but alive.