16. Chapter 16
Rylen
My stomach twists like a damp knot, the more I resist this feeling growing inside me, the tighter it pulls me under.
Cold sweat beads on the back on my spine, jaw tightening, trying to contain the bile and heat rising up my insides.
What the fuck did I just do? I didn’t just…
allow it to happen, I actively participated .
“What the fuck. No. No no no. Fuck ,”I hiss.
A stinging pain blooms in my palm from where it connects with the tiled bathroom wall. I slam my hand again and again, until the shaking bite in my skin is the only thing I feel.
The sound of my thundering pulse drowns out my surroundings, and I let my head dip forward, squeezing my eyes shut, until it connects with the cooled mirror.
Just breathe.
In for one, out for two.
Repeat.
My fingers reach out to pull back the shower curtain like muscle memory and twist the tap on until the room fills with hot steam.
I let my dirty grey sweatpants fall to the floor with a soft thud and step under the steady stream, keeping the overhead light off.
The water spray massages against my aching muscles, washing away the sweat and cum from one of the biggest mistakes of my life…
was it a mistake? Fuck, I don’t even know.
Nothing feels right anymore. Everything is different and I don’t know how to deal with my whole world changing without my permission.
Things were fine before Felicia opened her big fucking mouth and got inside my head.
Now I can't tell which way is up, or what I'm supposed to do.
I want him, and his body obviously responds to mine, but Maddox has never been the relationship type, and I'd rather stop it now than risk it all for a quick fuck.
I sink to the shower floor, resting against my knees, cradling them with my arms. Beads of water ripple across my inked flesh, the warmth surrounding me in the kind of comfort that can only come from being in here.
It’s what I’ve always done, ever since I was a kid and that prick my mum re-married would get drunk and shout shit like “No faggot son of mine.”
I’m not his fucking son, I’m not anyone’s son, I never was. My face scrunches up tighter trying to shut out the memories but the abuse is still evident on my skin; A cigarette burn here, a bottle breaking on collision there, a bone that never quite healed properly.
The more I try to hold back the tears, the harder they threaten to fall.I push the heels of my palm into my eyes, trying to scrub away the memories, but they’re swarming every one of my senses until I’m not here in the shower anymore .
I’m back there. Back to when I was eleven and my step-dad was pissed off by my very existence.
My throat feels constricted from the weight of his words. It's falling over me like a leaded cloak, weighed down with cinder blocks. The voice in my head whispering to give in, to let it pull me under and let this sadness drown me—I don't want it to but I’m so fucking tired of the abuse.
The music thumping in my headphones isn't enough to drown out the edge of his voice. It’s calling my name.
Marcus can't get me in here.
I'm safe.
I'm out of his reach.
When will this ever stop? When will be the day that I'm finally good enough? Where my very existence isn't a disappointment to him? I scoff. Let’s be honest. That day was never going to come…
The first tear spills from my eyes, rolling down my cheek in prickling lines. People wonder why I don’t let my guard down, why I build my walls so high and so thick… This is why. He is why. It’s a fucking cliche but I’m so utterly broken because of my daddy issues.
The steam of the shower shifts, and for a second, I can almost feel the sweat of the cinderblock walls against my back—I'm fourteen again, finally out of that house, but the fear followed me into a cell.
I'm sitting on the edge of a thin, flat mattress in an intake cell that smells like industrial bleach and fear .
Below me, on the bottom bunk, there's a kid. He’s a shaking heap of oversized navy sweats and blonde hair that looks way too bright for a place this miserable. He’s making these small, hitching noises into his pillow—the kind of quiet crying you do when you think you’ve finally run out of air.
My eyes flick to the steel door each time that a loud whimper rips through the room, my heart thumping hard in my throat. In this block, making noise was like ringing a dinner bell. If the supervisors didn't come to shut him up, the older guys in the next cell certainly would.
"Shh... okay, you’ve got to be quiet. C’mon, kid," I whisper, keeping my eyes on the heavy steel door.
He jerks his head up, his face all blotchy and his eyes an raw, angry red. He looks like he’d been dragged through the dirt.
"I'm not a kid," he snaps, wiping a fresh trail of snot and tears onto the sleeve of his sweatshirt. He looked tiny. Maybe twelve. I was fourteen, but in here, he looked like he was from a different planet.
"Well, still. You’ve got to keep it down or the workers will come back.
They don't like the noise," I try to explain.
He sniffles, his chest shaking as he tries to swallow the next sob.
He's staring at me with these wide, desperate blue eyes, like he's trying to figure out if I'm going to hit him or something.
"Maddox," he says suddenly.
I blink, confused. "What?"
"My name. It’s Maddox," he repeats, eyes drying up. I stare at him with confusion. In the system, you didn't usually lead with a name. You were just a kid in a room, so it's strange that he's telling me.
"…Okay." I say tentatively.
"Aren’t you going to tell me yours?" he almost begs. The way he asks it—like it was the most important thing in the world—makes my skin feel itchy. I let out a long breath.
"…Rylen," I relent. The second the name leaves my mouth, he lunges at me, flinging himself forward so that his small frame slams into my chest.
His arms wrap around my middle, grabbing my shirt so hard it feels like he's trying to crawl inside me to hide from the dark.
My muscles go stiff, my brain screaming at me to push him off before we both got picked on for being weak.
But then I feel the way his tiny body is shaking with a kind of terror I knew all too well.
Slowly, the stiffness leaves my shoulders and my body melts into the touch. I bring my hand up to his back, rubbing small, awkward circles between his shoulder blades.
"Hey," I murmur, my voice dropping low. "There’s no bears. Okay?"
He lets out a sound that is half-laugh, half-sob, "What?" he chokes.
"We’re safe," I lie, the words tasting like metal in my mouth, "we’re not being chased by bears, so your body can relax. Okay?"
"No bears," he repeats softly, then pulls away just enough to stare up at me, his shining blue eyes searching my green ones. He looks at me like I'm his way out of the darkness.
"No bears," he whispers again. A small, shaky smile tugs at his lips—it was the first time I ever saw Maddox look at me that way.
I'm ripped from my memory almost as sudden as I was thrown into it, back into the present when things feel even more hopeless than they did back then. Tears fall freely now, swirling down the drain, my shoulders shaking from the silent sobs that rip through my chest.
“There's no bears,” I whisper through stuttering breaths, and curl tighter in on myself under the spray, gently rocking back and forth as I attempt to self soothe.
There are no bears.
There are no bears.
There are no bears .
I don’t know if you know this, but there are no bears .
I am not being chased by a bear.
Therefore my body can relax. I don’t need to feel this way. I am safe.
I am safe, because there are no fucking bears.
I repeat the thoughts like a mantra inside my mind, praying that if I say it enough times I can trick myself into believing it's true. I stay in the shower under the heavy stream for what feels like hours, until the water runs cold and my flesh pebbles from the chill and I’m forced to hop out.
I dry off in front of the mirror and inhale one long steading breath before twisting the handle.
There are no bears.
Maddox starts speaking the moment the bathroom door swings open. He hasn’t even moved from the spot that I left him in. Was he waiting for me? No, that would be absurd. I was in there for a long time, I'm sure I was.
“If it makes you feel better, I'll let you tell people that you won,” he laughs, smug as hell then turns, heading toward his bedroom door. His voice lowers to mumble, “It’s not like anyone would believe it anyway.”
“HEY! I fucking heard that asshole,” I shout, picking up a stray cat toy to throw at him. It misses by a mile. The cackle that rips through the air as Maddox disappears from the room makes me as equally pissed off as it does warm inside.
He’s such a fucking twat, but he’s my— he’s, yeah, he’s just… a fucking twat. One that has me all kinds of fucked up. Maybe he’s a bear.