Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
CALEB
Caleb is losing his mind.
Asher is once again lying with his head on Caleb’s lap, and Caleb might just completely cease to exist. Poof from reality. Spontaneously combust.
Digging his fingers into the couch cushions, he tries to focus on anything but the shifting weight on his thighs as Asher hums along to a jingle from a commercial playing on the TV, to keep his body in check.
His hands want to touch Asher to know he isn’t hurting.
To feel the pulse of Asher’s heart beneath its fingertips.
His mouth wants to tell Asher that he’s been worried sick, that each time he closes his eyes, he sees Asher’s crumpled body.
There’s guilt, too. He’s riddled with it.
Asher put his faith in him, implicitly trusting Caleb to keep him safe in the ring, and he let him down.
That’s what he seems to be best at: failing the people he cares about.
His parents, Bailey, hell, even Prichard to some degree.
And now, Asher. But he doesn’t know how not to, so instead he does all he can to make Asher’s recovery process less grueling.
He knows how isolating it is to have no one but yourself to rely on. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Prichard’s blown up his phone with a dozen calls, all silenced and sent straight to voicemail. The chairman is understandably pissed at Caleb for blowing off a couple weeks of matches but Caleb just . . . he can’t. Not like this. He’ll deal with Prichard. Just . . . later.
Perhaps he’s running away from the inevitable, but at this point, what’s a little more?
Caleb does leave the apartment occasionally, of course.
It’s not as though he sits around pining for Asher in the dark like a freak.
He does plenty of other things too. For starters, he cooks.
He, unashamedly, is great at it. By necessity, not choice.
The embarrassing part is admitting that he’s cooking for Asher Ross.
He’ll take that piece of information to his grave.
He doesn’t need Asher to know what he does behind the scenes, doesn’t need a thank-you for the food or fresh laundry or anything else.
He wants to do it. What had started off as penance quickly morphed into comfort.
Caleb increasingly finds himself enjoying Asher’s easy company.
Sometimes, in quiet moments, like a trick of the light, it almost seems to mean as much to Asher as it does to him.
Now he sits in the living room again, the way they both spend most afternoons lounging in front of the television, Caleb giving Asher a play-by-play of whatever is on in a bid to prevent him from stealing glances at the screen.
Asher often has too much pent-up energy and no way to let it out. He’s everywhere—a finger jabbing into Caleb’s side, demanding entertainment; a foot kicking against Caleb’s ankle, smirking when he provokes a reaction. It’s infuriating. Caleb can’t get enough.
Somewhere along the way, after this dance of muttering and trying to pummel a pillow into submission, Asher tosses it aside, and curls up with his head resting on Caleb’s lap.
Electricity riddles Caleb’s skin, like the dazzling current that seems to constantly thrum through Asher has seeped into him.
If he looks down, he wouldn’t be surprised to see sparks rippling across his thighs.
It takes all of Caleb’s willpower not to card his fingers through Asher’s long hair.
Until—
“C’mon, man,” Asher grumbles. “Are you gonna pet me or what?”
What?
Caleb must have said that out loud because Asher huffs, reaching for Caleb’s hand and shifts it from the couch to his head.
Caleb swallows. The universe is laughing. Caleb is going to hell, and the universe is laughing.
He smooths a hand over Asher’s ridiculous fringe first, brushing flyaway strands of faded red away from his forehead, taking extra care to ensure they don’t get caught in his earrings.
Then he runs his hand gently through the length of Asher’s hair, staring in barely concealed wonder as the silky smooth strands slip through his fingers.
He doesn’t know if he’s doing this right, but Asher lets out a content noise when Caleb starts massaging Asher’s scalp, a mindlessly rhythmic circular movement of nails, scratching his fingers from the top of Asher’s head down to his neck.
A shudder ripples through Asher. Caleb tries not to think about it.
The television drones on. It takes Caleb a while to notice that he’s stopped giving commentary altogether.
If Asher minds, he doesn’t let on, because his eyes are closed and his face is pressed impossibly deeper into Caleb’s stomach.
He’s gone completely boneless, relaxed and at ease, loose limbs splayed across the couch.
He lets out a small moan when Caleb squeezes the back of his neck.
That noise, low and scraped raw, goes straight to Caleb’s gut and he has to pause for a second to compose himself, because Asher is hurt and Caleb is not a sadist. He’s just a boy with a too-big crush.
Within ten minutes, Asher is dead to the world, lost in the mist of sleep.
His breath comes out slowly and evenly and Caleb is comfortable enough to consider staying the night.
In his lap, Asher radiates the kind of warmth that keeps him grounded, that makes him want to be present.
It’s a nice change from all of the times he feels like he isn’t, like he’s an apparition on the brink of evaporating.
He reaches out to touch Asher again, but a wave of anticipatory grief turns him to scratched glass: fragile and lackluster. His fist—now pressed against his chest—trembles.
What happens when Asher recovers? When they are back on the road and this temporary truce comes to an end? When they clash in the ring and all their grievances bubble to the surface once more?
Maybe Asher wouldn’t mind if he stayed for a bit longer. If he continued living under this paper moon, this apartment away from the world made of cellophane windows and cheap origami.
And that, right there, is the problem.
He wants to just a little too badly.
Days twirl by like a gentle breeze and Asher is well on the road to recovery.
But he doesn’t make Caleb leave. If anything, bit by bit, little fragments of Caleb begin to appear around the apartment.
A pair of running shoes by the door, a toothbrush by the bathroom sink, a towel draped on the hook behind the door, a spare set of clothes in the closet.
“Got any leftovers?” Asher asks, slurping down the last bits of a bowl of mango pudding. A drop of condensed milk clings to the side of his mouth. Caleb resists the urge to wipe it away with his thumb. Asher sticks out his tongue, licking it clean, and—oh, Caleb is such a weak man.
“Chilling in the fridge,” Caleb mumbles, hands still mindlessly combing through Asher’s hair.
Now that he’s been granted access, Caleb finds himself physically incapable of stopping.
It’s maddening. Almost instinctively, his hands find their way to Asher’s hair whenever he can—a soft, rhythmic scrape of nails against scalp when he’s napping on the couch, a twirl of Asher’s hair around his fingers when they’re watching TV.
Between his fingers, Asher’s hair is soft and smooth.
Pulling himself to the present, Caleb concentrates as he sections it evenly into threes, fingers cross-crossing deftly while his heart trips desperately over itself.
Deep in his chest, it twists like the braid he pulls Asher’s hair into.
Edges blur together, each strand of feeling fragile and impossible to tease apart.
“Can I ask you something?” Asher asks. He shifts in Caleb’s lap, turning to look up at Caleb. “You do realize that a gimmick ends the moment cameras stop rolling, right?”
Caleb swallows. “Yes?”
“So, why were you also a dick outside the ring? I mean, I respect being committed to the bit, but this feels extreme. Very Jared Leto in Suicide Squad levels of method acting.”
“You’re comparing me to the rat man?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“Worse, even. Don’t argue with someone who has a concussion.”
Caleb makes a noncommittal noise.
“You’re missing the point,” Asher says, gently poking Caleb in the chest, “which is that you have been hiding behind your gimmick. Why?”
“Ah.” Caleb clears his throat. He’s made it a point of self-preservation never to tell anyone about his past. Repressing it like a well-adjusted adult helps him get out of bed every morning.
But Asher’s the first person to ask, to really see through him.
That could be worth something. Asher stares up at him, eyes unblinking and hopelessly hopeful, and Caleb’s just hopeless enough.
“It’s just . . .” The words stick in his throat like a splinter.
Curtains drawn, the television, put on mute, casts a fuzzy glow on his skin.
His bones feel brittle, body strange and alien.
“I was sixteen when I came out to my parents. They didn’t take it very well.
We were a pretty religious household, and I guess my”—he exhales—“queerness was something they couldn’t accept.
Like something about me was fundamentally wrong.
When I came home from school the next day, I found all my stuff neatly packed into suitcases left out on the front lawn.
” He’s quiet for a while. “It was methodological, y’know?
There was intent. They didn’t want me. They changed the locks while I was at school.
I begged my dad to let me back in. He refused, so I tried to shove my way through the front door. There was a scuffle.”
By his side, Asher’s hand twitches. Caleb sucks in a breath when it finds his cheek, feeling roughened fingers gently running over the jagged bumps of scars healed over. “He did this to you?”
“It was an accident.”