Chapter 22 #2
He never had anyone to begin with, so he let himself start to believe that nobody would want to have him around.
He built up walls, reinforced them with steel, kept everyone an arm’s length away.
It took him a long time to learn and accept that he was wrong.
Because he found someone and they did stay.
And even when they had to leave, they always came back.
They believed he was worth fighting for, down to the bitter, bloody end.
Because he is. That means he has always been.
You can start a family who will always show you love, whenever you want, wherever you need.
He sees it now, what Asher meant about what a family can be. The one he’s deserving of and the one that is being offered to him. He accepts the love, drinks it in, lets it bubble up like sweet fizzy champagne.
“Forgive me?” Caleb echoes. “I’ve said and done some awful things before, but this time, I know I have nothing to be sorry for.”
His mom’s voice comes back clipped, a dagger dipped in a bitter poison, one that used to make Caleb’s insides decay.
“You can’t even imagine it. The things said to our faces, the lies spread behind our backs.
My friends no longer return my calls, Caleb.
They’re embarrassed. You can’t imagine what we’ve been through. ”
“Actually, I can. You did the exact same thing by kicking me out. You left me to fend for myself when I was a fucking child. Think about what that did to me. What it continues to do.”
“Caleb,” his father orders, quietly and with resignation. “Stop this.”
“Sweetie,” his mom says. “Don’t be difficult. You miss us, we know.”
It tunnels into painfully sharp focus then, all those voicemails he’d left.
A fragmented trail of his heart littered across the world.
Nights spent hoping his parents would pick up the phone.
A cycle of hoping and hoping and hoping and getting let down every single time, but never learning and doing it all over again.
Convincing himself that they’d changed their numbers to ease the pang in his heart.
The mental gymnastics it took, that fell on his shoulders, to absolve them of every awful turn they took.
Turns out they were there all along, listening on the other end of the line. They just never bothered to come.
“No,” he says. He pushes past the waver in his voice.
The chair lets out a screech, legs scraping against marble as he stands.
“I’m not going. I am not who I am because of you, but in spite of you.
I needed you then, but not any longer. I don’t need your permission, and I sure as hell don’t need your forgiveness.
So, if that’s all you wanted . . .” Taking a breath, Caleb gestures at the door. “Leave.”
There is a long, horrible moment of silence as his words sink in, Caleb replaying it over and again in his head.
His parents rise to their feet. They follow him to the door but make no effort to convince him that he’s mistaken.
They do not fight for him. That is how Caleb knows, in the stillness that stretches out far and wide, that he won’t regret it.
“You’ll have no one,” his father warns, halting by the exit.
Caleb flinches like he’s been slapped, but recovers. His chin wobbles when he sticks it out. “You’re wrong. But even if I don't, I’ll learn to make it on my own.”
“We love you, sweetie,” his mom says. It lands like a stake through the heart.
Before, Caleb would have been desperate to take that love regardless of how hollow it was. He knows better now. He has a long road ahead, but he can start to learn to let it go.
“I’ll always love you both,” Caleb says. “But I love myself too. It doesn't matter if no one chooses me; I choose myself. That counts for more than you'll ever have the fortune of knowing.” He smiles kindly. Sadly. “If you’re ever ready to listen, I’ll pick up the phone.”
Perhaps it’s baffling or even stupid that he would keep the door open like that.
Caleb gets it. He knows his boundaries, knows he doesn’t owe his parents any airtime.
If the day comes where his phone rings, he will answer on his terms. But as his parents walk away and Caleb touches trembling fingers to his aching heart, he knows that regardless of what has happened to him in the past, his heart’s capacity for love will always remain intact. He refuses to let that ever be a flaw.
But then, without warning, comes the rumble of the ocean in his ears.
Caleb is not a crier.
He didn’t cry when he skinned his knee teaching himself to ride a bike.
He didn’t cry when he came out to his parents, didn’t cry when he found his bags dumped outside his home, and didn’t cry when he left.
He doesn’t cry when he misses his parents, and he doesn’t cry when the world hurls sticks and stones at him.
He didn’t even cry when he kissed Asher goodbye.
But now he’s leaning against a wall, fresh off from what may well be a final severed thread, from telling his parents that he deserves better, and his fingers start to tingle, rapidly going numb.
His chest tightens, turbulent, like a current is dragging it in opposite ways—his head tells him he’s all alone, for good this time, while his heart says with an immovable certainty that he isn’t.
Caught in the middle, he’s helpless against the wave that crashes down, saltwater filling his nose and lungs and—oh, God, he can’t breathe.
He can’t feel his hands. He’s going to die. He’s going to—
Everything goes fuzzy.
And then the ocean drags him under.
There is a hand squeezing Caleb’s when he comes back to his body and warm brown eyes when he cracks his open.
“Asher?” Caleb manages to croak out.
Asher kneels on the floor beside him looking worse for wear. Dark rings circle his eyes. He looks like he hasn’t slept at all. And yet, somehow, still as beautiful as the day Caleb left him. “Can you breathe for me?” Asher asks.
A laugh—crackling and wrought with emotion—rises up Caleb's throat. What would he not do for this man? Asher might as well hold Caleb’s heart.
It’s beating for him anyway. His breath turns unsteady again, shuddering, hiccuping gasps as he cries, decades of his life pooling on his thighs.
But there is this too: relief and pride.
Eventually his shoulders stop shaking, calmed by the match of Asher’s steady breath and the grounding pressure on his hands. He feels it all, from his molars to the soles of his feet: a bone-deep exhaustion.
“How did you . . . ?” He spots Asher’s unlocked phone on the floor. “Right.”
“I can be very persuasive.” Asher’s smile is wry. He starts to lean forward but must think twice about it as he rears back just as quickly. “What do you need?”
Caleb stares at his feet. Why is it so fucking hard to ask for things? He tries anyway. “Can you hold me for a bit?”
Asher exhales, long-suffering and loud before he settles down next to Caleb. Their thighs press together side by side. Asher’s jeans rustle as he reaches over, closing the space between them and pulls Caleb in by the shoulders. Caleb goes easily. He always does. He turns his face into Asher’s neck.
They stay like that for what could be two minutes or two hours, crammed along the small entryway. One of Asher’s hands cup the back of Caleb’s head and stroke his hair gently. Caleb listens to the rhythmic beating of Asher’s heart and breathes.
There is a long span of silence before Asher shifts, needing to stretch out his legs. Caleb reaches for something to say, and what comes out is “I told my parents to go fuck themselves.”
“What?”
Caleb laughs shakily. “They found me. They wanted me to quit the business and go home with them. So I said they could shove it.”
“That . . . that must have been hard.”
“It was.”
As if wired into the crux of his being, Asher’s hand rises to touch Caleb, but draws back at the last second. “Why are you telling me this, Caleb?”
“Can we . . . can we get some fresh air?” Caleb asks.
Asher turns to look at the balcony door. “You are aware that people might see.”
Anxiety spikes through Caleb’s chest, but he pushes past it. “If you don’t mind, I don’t either.”
Asher doesn’t answer, but offers Caleb a hand up. Caleb smiles at that. He doesn’t take it though. Instead, he grips the countertop above and hauls himself to his feet.
“I told you once,” Caleb says as a blast of cold air hits him in the face, “that if my parents ever came for me, I’d go with them. Just drop everything in a heartbeat. They were all I had. Or so I thought.
“For over a decade, I lived an aimless life believing I couldn’t rely on anyone but myself.
I never felt safe. And I didn’t think twice about it as I figured that was just the way I was meant to be.
Then you waltzed into my life and flipped it all upside down.
With no expectation of anything in return, you gave me everything I felt I didn’t deserve—somewhere to belong, a purpose, a family—and said, ‘Thank you for letting me give you this gift.’ You had the audacity to choose me when no one else did.
” His words come out thick with emotion. “I was so lonely before you.”
Chewing on his lip, Asher scrunches up his nose in a grimace and looks out over the horizon. “Where are you going with this?”
“I—Asher, I want this. I want you. And . . . and I didn’t believe that I could have it.
But you are always running through my mind, even when we’re apart.
And I never want that to change. I want you to be there forever.
You belong there. You always have. I want to wake up to your wicked smile and fall asleep to your ridiculous jokes.
This whole time I was searching for a home, but it isn’t a place.
It’s not the hotels or shitty cars or planes or rental apartments—it’s you.
I think my heart has been looking for you. You’re my home.”