Chapter 15 #4
They chat for a while more following the blatant disregard of personal boundaries and breach of mother-son confidentiality.
She updates him on a C-drama she’s watching that never seems to end and reminds him about coming home for Christmas.
He shows her the view from Caleb’s balcony, downtown Miami, the ocean glittering like a tray of sapphires, rolls his eyes when she tells him that he doesn’t have to take her there one day when she can watch it all on “the YouTube” instead, talks about how the grass ponds when it rains for too long, and reassures her the hotels he stays in all have round-the-clock security.
After he hangs up, he shuts the balcony door behind him, crawling into bed where Caleb awaits with open arms.
“That went decently,” Asher muses. He pecks Caleb on the corner of the mouth.
Caleb makes a noise of agreement. His hands are already tangled in Asher’s hair. “She seems nice.”
“One of the best. Once you’re in, you’re in forever. Your lifetime membership card should arrive in three to five business days.”
Caleb frowns, deflating slightly. “Is this what it could have been like?”
“Hmm?”
A long drag of silence makes Asher’s stomach somersault uneasily. Then it all comes out in a rush.
“I think of my parents all the time,” Caleb says.
“Isn’t that pathetic? How are they doing?
Have they ever bothered to look for me? Do they know I’m on TV?
Do they listen to my voicemails and think about asking me to come home?
It’s not fair. What gives them the right to continue holding so much power over me?
” A pause, his voice splintering. “What made me so difficult to love?”
Asher presses himself into Caleb’s side and rests a palm over his heart. He’s been wondering when Caleb would open up about this. It’s bugged Asher since the beginning, but it didn’t feel like his place to pry. The line between being concerned versus nosy is a fine one.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I’m sorry they took so much from you. It’s not your fault.”
“Yeah,” Caleb says, quiet and heavy. “I guess.”
It hangs around Caleb, the same denseness that stifled the room when Caleb first opened up about his past.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Asher asks.
“I told myself I’d never become like them, but with each passing day, I see more and more of my parents in me. And it”—Caleb thuds his palm against his temple—“makes me take psychic damage each time. What if it’s just in my blood? What if my soul is inherently rotten and irredeemable?”
“The fact that we’ve having this conversation is proof that it isn’t,” Asher says, trying to put every fiber of his belief into it.
God, he’s so bad at this. How does he verbalize the feelings that run beneath the layers of humor he slathers on?
He wants to tell Caleb that he’s kinder and braver than he knows, that anyone who crosses paths with him is so lucky, because he’ll go down fighting for them.
The lengths he’ll go to ensure they aren’t treated the way he was.
He’s like a kintsugi bowl. He sees himself as his broken thing, scarred and cobbled back together, but that is what makes him so beautiful.
Everything boils down to one simple fact: he’s worth fighting for.
Blowing out a breath, Caleb curls into Asher’s space. “I miss them.”
“Sometimes we can’t help but still love those who hurt us. It’s a mindfuck, but that makes us human.”
“It just—it sucks.” The muscles along Caleb’s jaw tense. Asher strokes Caleb’s hair. If he could, he would banish every hurtful thought with sheer affection alone. “If they ever came for me, I’d go in a heartbeat. I’d throw it all away to have a family again, no matter the cost.”
Caleb shuffles around, turning over and looking away from Asher.
Asher regards his back, each stretch of pale skin an ocean, every scar a glacier.
And still, the knobs of his spine remain soft, insistent on stitching itself together.
A quiet, unseen rebellion. If only Asher could reach in, tend to his heart, kiss it better, and coax something new from the ashes, but he doesn’t know how.
“If it helps,” Asher says finally, “I don’t believe you get only one family. You can have as many as you like, made out of whoever you want. Blood isn’t a necessity. You can start a family who will always show you love, whenever you want, wherever you need.”
“What is love without expectation?”
Wrapping an arm around Caleb, Asher finds Caleb’s clenched fist and squeezes it. “The very best kind. It’s what we all deserve, without needing to earn it.”
Caleb is quiet, considering. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
Caleb’s shoulders tense and relax in Asher’s arms. “For seeing me and not giving up.”
“Thank you—no, shush—let me thank you. For being brave and letting me see that part of you.”
The bedsheets crinkle noisily as Caleb flips back around, and Asher lets himself be manhandled into the little spoon bracketed by Caleb’s powerful arms.
“Sleep,” Caleb says. His voice is low and rumbly in Asher’s ear. It sends a bolt of lightning down his spine. “Thea and Alexei are leaving early tomorrow morning.”
“I wish I could stay,” Asher says softly, just loud enough for Caleb to hear. Although Caleb is too afraid to put that weight on him, he needs to hear it. And above all else, Asher needs to say it because it is true. He shivers when Caleb presses a kiss to the nape of his neck.
“I do too.”