62. Declan #2
“I fell into a deep depression, and I didn't know what to do to pull myself out of it. I'd been so sure that I’d completely ruined your life. The fact that my own father had supported my attraction to you, and yours didn’t… I… ummm… Your… Your father's words about me to mine kept echoing in my head, and I knew they were the same things he’d likely been repeating to you. The thought of you hating me… It was too much to deal with. I ended up hitting rock bottom during that time, and a doctor had briefly prescribed medication for me.”
“I never knew that,” Brogan said softly.
“I know, and it wasn’t anything I’d ever wanted you to know, just as you’d never wanted me to know about the conversion therapy. We’d kept everything from each other, but those events shaped our lives and had nearly destroyed our future.”
“They’ve made us the men that we are,” he pointed out, and I shrugged.
“I suppose you're right.”
“I’m always right,” he teased, trying to inject humor into this moment, but I still hadn’t come completely clean yet.
“I’d attempted twice during that time to take my life.”
“What?” he said, and his expression changed to a more serious one. “What the hell, Declan? How?”
“The first time had been with some pills. I don’t even remember what they were, but I’d found them in my mother’s medicine cabinet and stolen a handful.
For two days, I’d carried them with me, debating whether or not to actually take them.
Each day without any word from or about you had fucked with me.
I was so lost in the darkness of my fucked-up head.
I’d finally convinced myself that your life would return to normal if I wasn’t here. ”
“That has and will never be true, baby.”
“I’d convinced myself that everyone would be better off if I were dead, so I’d taken them one night, but Edna had seen me and alerted my parents.
They’d rushed me to the hospital to have my stomach pumped.
I’d then stayed through the psychiatric hold.
Since this had been the first time I’d ever shown any signs of, or had attempted to take my own life, they chalked it up as stress over graduation.
Evidently, there are a number of kids who struggle with depression during their senior year of high school. ”
“I had no idea you ever went through that. You did say twice. When was the other time?”
“I seemed to be getting better to those around me, but they didn’t see the fucked-up thoughts still festering in my head.
Amidst them all, I kept seeing your face.
Unable to see or speak to you… I couldn’t make things right.
My dreams became vivid, and in every one of them, you were taken away from me in an even crueler fashion, although none as terrible as what you’d actually endured, but I digress.
I was breaking into even more pieces, and knowing the pain the first attempt had caused my parents, I didn’t want to put them through it again.
I’d tried to be strong, but I came across my father's gun one night. I’d wanted to blow my fucking brains out, but I couldn't do it.”
“Declan, I—”
“I’d kept thinking about everybody that would be hurt by me doing that, so I didn't. I’d finally told my father about it, and again, the second and third therapists agreed with the first and chalked it all up to stress.
I’d known it was something more, though.
I’d found a part of myself I hadn’t known existed.
I’d never even considered the fact that I was bisexual until I’d kissed you.
It’d felt so right, but mostly everyone made it feel so wrong.
I’d been struggling to come to terms with the fact that my family had been so supportive, but yours had not been.
Why could my parents love me, and your father not love you? ”
“Love involves a level of emotion that Stanley Sinclair is incapable of feeling.”
“I’d always loved you because you were my best friend, but then it became more. It became a different type of love. I couldn’t handle having you ripped away from me. It made me feel so inadequate, broken, and utterly wrecked.”
“I’m so sorry you’d ever felt that way, baby. I never knew. If I had, I…”
His voice trailed off, and I think he now realized what I’d known for some time.
“Nothing would’ve changed had you known. When you came back, you wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn't even look at me.”
“You know that it had nothing to do with you.”
“In fact, you’d gone out of your way to be cruel to me.”
“I’d been trying to protect you. If my father knew… Hell, I’d thought if I could keep you away from me, then these feelings I had for you would go away.”
“While you’d been tearing me down and ripping out what was left of my heart, how did that work out for you?”
“Obviously, not so well.”
“And recently, when I’d seen you that night with the gun, I’d thought about myself. The paralyzing fear I’d felt as I’d tried to talk you down from leaving me again made me realize what my family would’ve felt had they seen me with the actual weapon versus me just telling them about it.”
“I never knew because you’d never told me.”
“How could I? It would’ve been some fucked up form of poetic justice for you to leave this earth the way I’d once wanted to.
And what made that night worse was that it’d been because of Layla.
The guilt at knowing I’d set it all in motion had nearly done me in.
I’d given her the means and opportunity to leave town to put you on that trajectory.
Then there was another fear that gripped me too.
If you’d known what I’d done regarding the money, you might’ve turned the gun on me instead of you. And knowing what I know now…”
“You’d what?” Brogan asked me, and I could see the tears in his eyes that matched the ones trying to blur mine.
“You should’ve turned it on me.”
“Never,” he swore vehemently.
“I’d been so scared for you… for me… for us…” I whispered, this time with shaky breaths.
“I'm sorry I do things that—”
“I didn’t know then, but I do now. Knowing where the trauma comes from, I just wish you would’ve felt safe enough to talk to me about it. Knowing you told a near stranger, but not me unless you did and still do blame me for it all like I do.”
“I’d never blamed you, Declan. That was never the reason, and I need you to believe me when I say that I’d never planned to tell Enslee.
She’s so goddamn perceptive, though. She’d heard me say things in my nightmares, then put two and two together.
I could’ve lied, but it was almost freeing to finally say something to somebody about it.
I supposed it was a lot like how you had to have felt telling your father about the gun. ”
“The day you were arrested, you’d been so rightfully angry and had talked to me in a way you’d never talked to me before, not even after that summer when you’d returned to New York and bullied me.”
“I’m sorry about that, I—”
“It’s not you that needs to be sorry. It’s not you that has to pay. I’ve been directly responsible for every bad situation that’s happened in your life. I know I'm bad for you, and—”
“Stop it, Declan. You're not bad for me. In fact, you're the best goddamn thing that’s ever happened in my godforsaken life. You're the most amazing part of every day. You—”
“But everything you’ve been through—”
“Is not your fault. Do you understand that? None of those things happened because of you. What did happen is that I’d survived them solely because of you. You’ve always been the only one who could pull me out of my darkness.”
“Even though I'm broken myself?”
“Especially, because you're broken.”