19. Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Lance
“Lance…” A whisper slinks through the darkness, flowing away from my conscious just as swiftly as it arrived. I stir, tugging at the blanket, but it doesn’t budge.
“Lance! Wake up!” Blaine whispers, louder this time, as he shoves on my shoulder. Realizing that it’s him sends alarm bells off in my brain, and I gasp in a breath as I jolt upright. I’m immediately panicking, hoping that nothing happened to Gatlin while I was trying to get a few hours of rest.
“Bla—” I have to clear the mucus from my throat before I can continue. “What happened?” I ask as I rub at my eyes, trying to force myself to wake up. I don’t know what time it is, but I feel like I’ve been asleep for an hour at most. I’m exhausted.
It’s been hard for me to get any sleep the last few weeks.
Our parents are bearing down on Gatlin and me incredibly hard.
I don’t know if it’s because I meet with the buyer tomorrow, or if they’re just pissed that we aren’t going to be around to torture anymore.
Whatever the reason, it’s been a struggle to meet their every demand lately, and it’s wearing me pretty thin.
“Mom and Mathis got drunk and passed out in the observatory. I was gonna see if you wanted to go up to the water tower one last time before you leave.”
I’m suddenly hit with dozens and dozens of memories.
They flood in one after the other, reminding me of all the things I’ve lost in my life.
Blaine being the most prominent thing in focus.
When we were younger, things were so much easier.
From the moment Mathis was born, his focus has always been on being the golden child, so it was easy for Blaine to find his place alongside Gatlin and I during the day-to-day activities.
We played games, watched television, explored outdoors, and enjoyed our lives.
Together. The three of us use to be inseparable.
It’s only been the last couple years that his mother managed to shove a wedge between all of us, putting that definitive barrier between the children she accepted and the ones she didn’t.
Most days it felt like staring through the glass of an aquarium at your favorite fish.
You can see this thing you love. It’s right there.
So close that you can almost taste it. Yet, even if both of you reach out to one another, the glass is still there.
There’s still this impenetrable barrier that bars you from creating the bond you really want, that you could have.
You can’t feel the warmth of their touch or the hope that comes from familiarity, and even if they spoke words of kindness to you, they’d be muffled by the in-between.
Losing the friendship we all had with one another has left a hole in my chest that always seems to be grieving the life we could’ve had with one another.
I glance up at Blaine with tears in my eyes.
I don’t know whether to be glad that Gatlin and I are getting out of this hell we’ve been stuck in or terrified of what lays on the other side.
I don’t know if Blaine had anything to do with this, and if he did was it because he cares or because he’s tired of dealing with us?
Living here has been like walking on a tightrope while trying to balance another person in your arms. The world I’m carrying on my shoulders has been heavy, so fucking heavy, and I’ve reached a point of physical and mental exhaustion that isn’t manageable anymore.
I know that Blaine is carrying a lot too.
It’s not like I believe his life is any easier.
He still has to please his mother. It’s just… different.
If it weren’t for being sold off, I don’t know how much longer I would’ve been able to keep this up.
I would do anything for Gatlin, truly, but he’s almost an adult now too, and it was inevitable that he was going to have to start picking up more of the slack.
I’ve been taking care of my chores and his for years, with only minimal help to keep him away from everyone.
It was easy to make sure that he stayed out of trouble when no one could ever see him.
Out of sight, out of mind. The list of things for us to do has grown month by month though.
The older we got, the more responsibilities they gave us, and now I’m doing the workload of two grown men.
On my own. That’s when I’m not locked downstairs for doing something the ‘wrong’ way, which let’s be honest, has been the majority of my time lately.
So often that they’ve hired maids again.
If they’ve figured out that Gatlin doesn’t know how to do any of the chores because I’m always the one that does them, then they haven’t mentioned it.
I assume that they don’t even bother checking whether chores have been done or not when I’m in the basement, because there’s no way that Gatlin does them all on his own.
I don’t know why their focus is always on me, but this is one circumstance where I’ve been grateful for it.
While Blaine has clearly put himself on the line for us lately, it’s hard to meld this version of him and the version that I’ve witnessed bending to his mother’s will without argument into the same being.
Trying to differentiate between whether he can be trusted or not at any given moment sends me into a spiral of utter confusion, because I never wanted things to be like this.
I wish that we could just… be. Would we have been as close as I am with Gatlin?
He’s closer to Gatlin’s age, so would they have grown close?
I think I would really love that for Gatty.
He deserves a friend, someone else to talk to, since I’m always so busy.
I don’t really blame Blaine for the shit he’s done.
I can’t. It’s impossible when he was only trying to survive the same dictator, despite him having advantages that we didn’t.
None of us chose the roles we were given, and he’s just doing the best he can.
It’s only been the last couple of weeks that I’ve started to notice just how hard he’s been working to keep the spotlight off of Gatlin.
I’m willing to bet that when I’m stuck downstairs, he works overtime to keep their focus elsewhere.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to repay him for everything he’s done, so if this is all he’s asking of me, I’ll gladly do it.
“Yeah,” I choke out. “I’d love that, Blaine.
” I reply as I throw the blanket off myself.
He waits quietly while I slip on some sweatpants and slide open my bedroom window.
He climbs out first, standing aside while I close it behind us.
We walk side by side until we reach the field at the edge of the property.
There’s a small creek we have to hop over a few hundreds paces ahead.
I remember sneaking out with him and Gatlin during the summers just so that we could pretend we were whitewater rafting after hard rains.
He pauses when we get to the other side of the water, staring out at the tower across the field. A smile, small and regretful, crosses his face before he starts walking again.
“Do you remember coming out here the night of Mathis’ prom?” He asks with chuckle as he looks down at the ground. “That was a crazy night.”
I can’t help but smile at the memory. It was one of the first times we were able to hang out in months. We were all excited to get out the house and just come out here to catch up with each other. Blaine had been so busy with his studies that I hadn’t seen him around in weeks at that point.
“We saw some crazy shit that night,” I reply with a laugh.
It started out as just a normal night staring up at the stars while we passed cigarettes back and forth to each other, and then it seemed like all of the senior class ditched prom to have a bonfire.
Right at the bottom of the water tower. Instead of us trying to sneak back home without getting spotted by Mathis, we decided to stick it out until they all went home. Except they never did.
We spent hours watching a bunch of drunk high schoolers act like fools, just for the majority of them to pass out in the grass at the bottom of the tower.
We were like fucking delirious ninja’s trying to keep our balance while simultaneously trying not to bust out laughing as we stepped over dozens of people that were completely plastered.
We were so exhausted from staying up all night that we stumbled home like we were the drunk ones.
As soon as we made it back to the house, we all broke off to our respective rooms, and life went back to exactly how it was before.
That was the last time I remember the three of us hanging out alone.
When Blaine and I make it to the tower, I grab ahold of the ladder and glance up at the tower before I start to climb.
I can hear Blaine following behind me, but my brain is in another universe.
A place where this was something we could’ve done together all the time, where we could’ve actually been friends.
If we weren’t both confined to the same hell, would Blaine and I actually have become friends?
I want to say yes. I want to believe that the life we’ve shared with one another gave us something that can’t be replaced.
I feel a connection to him that’s soul deep, like fate knew what it was doing when it put us together.
We’re two different sides of the same coin after all; the responsible and levelheaded ones of our world.
I crawl off the ladder at the top of the tower, making sure not to look down yet.
It’s always been a battle coming up here, because while I’m not terrified of heights, I don’t particularly love them.
It doesn’t help that there’s no railing until we get around to the other side of the tower.
As soon as Blaine reaches the top, I grab his hand in mine, leading him to the safer side of the catwalk the same way I always have, except this time he doesn’t release my hand as soon as we’re to safety.
Blaine clings to me, almost like he’s afraid to let go.
I don’t know if it’s because of how high up we are, or if it’s because I’m leaving tomorrow, but the realization makes me cling to him just as tightly.
This could be it; the last moment we ever get to share with one another.
I glance over at him, wondering if he’s struggling with the same feelings I am.
He turns to me with tears lining his eyes but he still offers me a weak smile anyway.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “For everything.”
I gasp in a deep breath, one that makes my lungs ache as I open my eyes in the darkness.
It’s pitch black, and panic nearly sets in before I realize where I’m at.
My senses start coming back to me one at time.
I can smell my room, the cologne I use and the air freshener I keep in the bathroom.
I can hear my music playing softly from my phone on the bedside table, and my fan whirring in the background.
Finally, my vision starts to adjust to the darkness, and I can make out my room.
The one at the prison. Where I live now.
I push myself up and slide back to rest against the headboard as I try to readjust to my reality.
It’s excruciating living in these two worlds.
Always stuck going back and forth between the life I had and the one they forced me into.
I can’t really complain, because most of the time I love it here at Blightridge, but I still didn’t have a choice. I never did.
The dreams and memories are starting to get out of hand.
I can’t sleep at all anymore without reliving a life I’ve done my best to forget about.
I’m stuck in that place, and all I can do is hope that when Gatlin gets here in a couple of weeks, I’ll be able to let go of all the thoughts that have been plaguing my brain.
I cradle my face in my hands as the same memory from my dream replays over and over again in my head. I still feel like my brain is trying to tell me something, but I just can’t figure out what it wants from me. What am I missing?
As tears stream down my cheeks, I pull my pillows and blankets closer, desperate for any comfort I can get.
Loneliness starts to settle deep into my bones, a bitter cold that I can’t seem to shake anymore.
It’s not like I have a lot of options, but it wouldn’t even matter if I did, because there’s only one person I crave comfort from…
And I fucking hate myself for thinking of him again.