Chapter 31 Oren #2
“I don’t have a life,” I said, blinking back the dam threatening to release itself.
“My life died the moment you exited. I have no heart, no home, no purpose. I’m trying…
trying to find my passions, but it’s impossible when the string holding my heart is gone.
I don’t wish to offer sympathy, Thorne,” I whispered.
“I wish to give you a moment to grieve, to feel, to expel the thoughts and emotions you keep contained.”
“That’s what I did in your room that day, and all it did, all it led to was me making a fucking fool of myself in front of the people who I’d convinced myself had cared.
” Turning, his back greeted me, the recollection of him leaving slamming into me with a force that nearly robbed me of the air I breathed.
“There’s nothing left to talk about. What’s done is done.
The damage is already there. I wish you the best of luck during your studies, Oren Valens. ”
My hand grabbed his shirt, coiling my fingers around the fabric.
“I won’t let you leave twice. I thought…
I thought I’d never see you again, but the universe, a divine power, hell, maybe just luck decided for us to cross paths again.
I told you I’d always chase you, because I still love you.
You wish for me to loathe you, but that isn’t possible.
I do not fear you, and I do not hate you because I am yours, Thorne Graves.
I have been since the moment you kissed me in that bathroom, when you unleashed the depths of your soul to me.
You cried out for reprieve, and I was too naive to see it for its full intention.
My heart… My soul has never yearned for someone like this, and while I needed time, it always knew. ”
Glancing over his shoulder, he looked down at me. “We were done that day I walked out of that room, and we are done now. Find someone else in this life, Oren, because it certainly is not me anymore.”
I held tighter. “I refuse.”
“Refuse all you wish, but ultimately you are merely a pathetic man in denial.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not in denial, because your shoulders are tense to hide them shaking.
Your voice shakes with each lie you speak, and deep down, you wish someone would hold you.
You wish someone would stay despite the darkness you spew.
” I clutched his shirt with the devotion that remained.
“I love you, even now. Even when you try to push me away. You are worth this life and more. You are worth everything you try to hide, to desperately shove into the depths of your soul because it’s easier.
It’s easier to cling to pain than it is to love, because love is a dangerous, finite resource.
Love destroys more than pain and can render you useless, but it is the most beautiful, addicting thing if you would only allow someone to occupy that space. ”
“I allowed someone to occupy that space.” Leaning forward, he craned his head down at me. “And all I got out of it was fucking anguish.”
“I’m sorry.” The tears I’d kept at bay appeared, my soul screaming at his in the shadows.
“Your anguish is rightful. Your emotions aren’t bad, Thorne.
You have been through so much… so much that isn’t right or fair.
I do not deserve you, but I refuse to let you linger in this life alone.
Your soul is weeping before me for someone to cradle it. ”
Silence consumed the space around us, the ding of the bell marking the end of passing periods the only audible sound.
But even with its timely reminder, neither of us moved, our eyes fixated on one another.
His shoulders rose, but remained tense, his jaw feathering as he glanced down at my hand and then back up at me.
“You…” he stuttered, a brief pause and a sign of his wavering resolve. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There it is,” I said as I took a step forward, grabbing the hand he’d shattered that day in the hospital.
“Your hand is shaking, Thorne. Your shoulders are taut, and your irises are dimming. You don’t have to be afraid,” I whispered, letting the tears fall down my cheeks.
“You got out of one hell, and entered another. A hell more terrifying because to do this life alone? To let it continue to rampage and obliterate your happiness?”
His lids fluttered, sorrow flooding his lash line even as he attempted to keep his walls up. “Y-You don’t… You don’t know what you’re talking about, Oren. And I refuse to stand here and—”
“I do, and that’s why you can’t leave. You deserve happiness, Thorne.
You deserve to feel the rewards you’ve long since sown.
You are worth everything. Everything you tell yourself is impossible to relinquish, everything you tell yourself you’re not good enough for…
Lies. All of them are lies because at the center…
at your core, there is simply a broken man begging for someone to truly see him as he is. A human. Not a monster.”
Holding his gaze, I watched the barrier crack, the protective layer he’d positioned himself behind shattering beneath my words.
He stumbled back, shaking his head. His dress shoes drummed against the cement until his back greeted the opposite wall of the alcove, and as soon as that connection happened, he broke.
A sob wracked his frame as he slid down the brick to meet the ground, his entire body shaking as every pent-up emotion rolled to the forefront.
With a shaky hand, he ripped off his glasses, tossing them to the side without a single care about their condition.
His breathing intensified, hands reaching, stretching to find his throat, something I’d come to realize as a key indicator of his panic—of his desire to escape it if only someone would carry him.
But I would not allow him to go through this alone.
I settled in front of him, my steady hands unbuttoning his top two buttons to allow him deeper breathing.
Without delay, I grabbed each of his hands, bringing them to rest against my chest. “If you need to claw, you do so on me, but we’re going to breathe together. ”
He shook his head, brows drawing together. Every ounce of emotion he’d swallowed – the loneliness he’d basked in, the abandonment he’d slept beside every night – and his screaming essence cried out for my rescue, beneath the hollowness in his gaze.
“I-I-I… I…” He attempted to pull back, desperation leading the charge. “I-I need… T-To… P-Plea… I can’t… I can’t…”
“You’re safe,” I said, hoping to be the anchor that would pull him back. “We’re going to ride this together. Not alone.” My hands cradled his cheeks, drawing his gaze to mine. “You copy me. In for four, hold for four, and breathe out for four.”
“O-Oren,” he sobbed, the brokenness of my name on his lips enough to shatter my heart.
“T-They… T-They let me l-l-leave… N-No one… N-No one c-cared… N-No one f-followed… I’m n-not…
I’m not… E-Enough… Never e-enough… To f-f-fight for…
A-And y-y-you… You…” He cried harder, struggling to slip away from me as his feet slipped against the concrete, the wall behind him caging him in from escape.
“Because I love you,” I echoed back that voice I knew resided inside him. “Because you are worth the fight. You are worth—”
“N-NO I’M N-NOT!” he cried out, his bottom lip quivering as he looked at me. “I-If I was… My best… My b-best… Best… F-Friend… Would’ve… H-He would’ve… God, why… W-Why didn’t he…?”
“You are, Thorne. You are.” A sob of my own mirrored his. “I don’t… I don’t know, but you are more than enough for me. I am not leaving you.” My thumb brushed over his cheek with a gentleness I hoped portrayed every ounce of longing and yearning I had for him.
His next movement caught me off guard, not because he tore himself away from me, but because he did something I often resorted to when I was spiraling.
Craning his head forward, he reacted before I had the chance to stop him, driving his skull into the wall behind him.
He shifted once more, his chin tipping to greet his chest.
“N-No, baby, no.” The words tumbled from my lips as I pulled him in for a hug, angling myself between him and the wall.
I knew the pain of trying to mask thoughts with a controlled substance—a controlled hit when everything else was falling apart, because at least that would be agony of my choosing. It would give me a moment of reprieve, one I could determine when my world felt like it was crumbling.
And his was.
But as soon as his forehead met my chest, every breath he held streamlined, filtering out of him in an endless flood of sobs.
His body trembled against me, anguish purging itself from him in the only way it knew how: through his tears.
Each pitch and whimper that tumbled from him became a convoluted array of sounds I never imagined a man so strong, so put together, would ever be capable of making.
This was a release of years of pent-up trauma.
Of loss. Of fear. Of an anguish I didn’t wish upon my worst enemy.
And watching the man I loved fall apart at the seams, in a state of heightened disarray, only made me wish to hold him tighter.
To run my fingers through his hair and remind him that he had always been worth it.
To apologize endlessly for the ways I’d failed him, the manners in which I’d overlooked him when his plate had been this full, this fucking heavy for… God… Even I didn’t know.
“I-I-I’m s-sorry… I’m sorry… I-I’m so… so sorry…
I-I’m sorry…” he whimpered, each apology coming out more broken than the last. It was an utterance of pure desperation, one that came from a place of fear and a conditioned belief that he always had to extend that portion of himself to mend whatever wrongdoing he’d convinced himself he was responsible for.
“I-I’m sorry… S-So… S-Sorry… I-I’m so s—”
“Baby… Baby, look at me,” I said, catching a glimmer of that darkness in his eyes. “I’ve got you, now and always. You don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to say anything, but feel. Feel for the first time in years, and I will carry you through it all.”
My arms tightened around him, angling his forehead to my neck as one of my hands cradled the back of his head. “I’ve got you.”
“I-I don’t want… I can’t… b-be… without y-you…” he cried, his chest heaving as he reached for me.
Unsure of what he needed, I allowed his hands to explore before they found the one I’d wrapped around his shoulder.
Freeing it from its hold, he brought it to his chest, his thumb and forefinger stroking the length of my second digit, another effort he allowed me to see as a means to ground himself.
With each twirl of the pads of his fingers, he danced down my hand, continuing the same pace, and with it, his breathing slowed slightly.
It was a coping mechanism so child-like, so fragile that I desired nothing more than to sit there with him for as long as he needed, allowing him to settle into the side of himself that I knew had been shoved off far too many times.
“P-Please… P-Please… I-I… I need… I can’t… I c-can’t…”
“You won’t lose me, because I’m staying here with you… always.”
With hitched breaths, he continued, his touch working its way across every inch of skin on my hand.
After four passes, he settled into me more, his head tucking into me tighter as he lulled himself back from his heightened state.
Each breath came easier as he toyed with each of my fingers, and in that moment, I saw the Thorne Graves who’d never been able to be a child.
The Thorne Graves who had to grow up far faster than he deserved.
The Thorne Graves who harbored a gentleness I wished to pull from him more, no matter what it looked like, so long as his inner child felt seen, heard, and understood by me.
So long as I became his safe space.
“I’m here… I’m here,” I repeated, holding him close. I wanted nothing more than to ease the burdens he was facing, but if I couldn’t remove those emotions, I’d linger beside him until they subsided.
The single word that left him brought me back to the night he’d rescued me from my meltdown, even after I’d destroyed everything he held dear. “S-Stay…”
“I will never leave you again,” I cried out. “O-Of course… I’ll stay. A-Always. I will always stay.”
“S-Stay… Y-You promise… You promise you w-won’t… break i-it…?”
“I promise.” No hesitation because there was none. He was my soul, my heart, the very definition of the air I breathed. Without him, I remained in a rotting state, a corpse of a man who succumbed to loneliness.
His coaxes stopped, his touch falling still against me, and when I looked down, he hadn’t pulled away.
Instead, his lids had fluttered closed, a peacefulness overtaking his expression regardless of the tear stains that coated his cheeks.
And curled around two of my fingers were his, my hand tucked tightly against his chest as if the mere thought of letting me go became something even his subconscious had grabbed onto.
He was asleep in my arms, clinging to me with pure and utter fear of losing me again.
A fear I would never let come to fruition again, because this was my promise to him…
to the life we would build together. A life filled with the happiness we’d deserved from the beginning, not plagued with my father’s torture or trauma.
A life Thorne deserved, one where he could rest safely beside me until he was comfortable.
A life teeming with the beauty we thought non-existent because it had never been given to us.
That would change now and for the future. A future where both of us would heal and learn to grow, to overcome the hardships of our pasts, because at the center of it all, the foundation that held us together was simple.
Love in its truest fruition.