Thirty-Two
Blake
He comes to check on me often like he promised he would every day that I’m in the barn, not leaving at the end of the night until I’m fast asleep.
Then when his roommate is gone again, he brings me back into the house but to a different room.
The blanket is a dark blue, thicker, and has that new smell when I lift it to my nose.
The walls are bare and only wooden blinds cover the window, no floral curtains like the other one.
He has only a bed, two nightstands, and one tall dresser in here.
His TV is anchored to the wall. The drawers closest to me are empty, but I can’t move my legs much yet.
At least the new leg splints are better than the ones his friend made with what they could find around the barn. More comfortable.
Breaking my legs bought me more time here, and I can’t believe I’m thinking of other ways I can delay him setting me free. Twisted, fucked-up things. My body hurts from what I did, but the ache in my chest from him not wanting me here was worse pain.
No one’s ever tried this hard to keep me somewhere before, and I’ve never wanted to be anyone’s this long so badly.
I don’t care what he is anymore, or that he probably didn’t have the best intentions at first. I don’t care about any of that.
I care about how he carried me everywhere, how he did things for me when they felt like too much without batting an eye, and I care about how he cares for me.
He wants me to stay too. I can feel it. He doesn’t have to say it for me to feel it.
Yes, I want him to. Of course I do, but it never meant anything when the others said it.
It was empty words when they said it. There’s too much endearment in his eyes for him to mean nothing. I’m his sweet boy when he says I am. I’m his perfect piglet. I’m his. He’s been adding “my” in front of everything more and more, no longer correcting himself. Yes, he wants me too.
“How was your day, piglet?”
“Good,” I say, scooting my hip to the right. “Long.”
He laughs. “Yeah, mine too.” He sits on the edge of the bed by my legs. “All my days are tough.”
“’Cause of your job?” I prop myself up on my elbows and he leans forward, stretching his arm to stack pillows behind me.
“Yeah, and ’cause I keep wanting to get to the next part of our book with you.”
“You’ve read it before.”
“I know, but it’s been a while.” He rests his hand on my ankle. ““And before, I read it alone. It’s a better experiment when there’s someone to talk to about it afterwards.”
“It’s my favorite part,” I beam.
“Aren’t you going to ask me today?” His head leans more to the left, his eyes holding onto me.
“Ask you what?” There’s something weighing heavy on his mind. I can tell. He has the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen. They tell me so much whenever he can’t.
“If I’m going to let you go soon.”
“Are you?”
“You won’t be better for a while . . . so . . .”
“So, after that, then?”
“Maybe.” He sighs, lowering his eyes. “I . . . I . . .”
“You want me to stay,” I sputter.
He rests a hand on my ankle and lightly squeezes. “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter what I want. It should matter what’s best for you.”
“Since when?”
“Since now, Blake. It should always have mattered, but I had everything wrong all this time.”
“The voice changer is off.”
“Yeah,” he deflates. “It is.”
“Did you forget to turn it back on?” My chest rises and falls heavily.
“No. I wanted you to hear me.”
“I like your voice way better.”
“It makes things a lot easier when I get to use it.”
“Going without the mask will too.”
“I can’t take that off. Then you’ll know what I look like, and then—”
“You can’t let me go,” I finish for him.”
“It won’t be ideal, no.”
“Then don’t.” I lift myself higher, reaching for his face.
“Don’t take off the mask?”
“No. Don’t let me go.”
“But I should,” he retorts.
“But do you want to? Answer me honestly.” I pinch the thick material of the mask between my fingers.
“No,” he says with his voice trembling.
“What do you want?” I wait with bated breath for his answer.
He lifts a hand over mine. “You . . . I want you.”
“You do?” My head spins and his face inches closer to mine.
“Yes. More than anything.”
“Then don’t let me go and I can always be yours.”
“It’s not real.” He shoves my hand away. “What you’re feeling for me isn’t real. You’re confused.”
“I was confused at first, but I’m not anymore. I’ve given you so much trouble but it never deterred you. It didn’t matter what I did. You wanted to keep working through it with me. You wanted to still be here for me. What would I even go back to at this point?”
“Your family,” he says.
“What family? No one is really looking for me, are they?”
“No.”
My throat tightens. “Then if I don’t matter to them, why should they matter to me?”
“What about all your friends?”
“They only cared about what they could get from me. The only person who cared about what I got from something was you.”
“What about Logan?”
My hand lands on his neck again. “What about him?”
“You two had something going on between you, didn’t you?”
“I . . . I don’t know what we had. Whatever it was . . . I fucked it all up.”
“Maybe he messed up too.”
“He was a bit cruel at times, but I deserved it.”
“No. I thought you deserved it at the time, but you were just being the only way you knew how to be. What others showed you to be. You give what you’re given. It’s hard to treat other people right when you don’t know what that means. You’ve never had it before.”
“I thought,” are the words I’m stuck on the most as I tug on the bottom of his mask, slowly lifting it up and off his head. I gasp. I already knew, didn’t I? I kept going back and forth in my head, but deep down I knew. “Logan.”
“Yeah.” He takes the mask from my hand, looking down at it. “How am I supposed to let you go now?”
“You aren’t.” I tug his face to mine, pressing our noses together. “If I want to stay here and you want me to stay here, then I will.”
“This is crazy. I hated you so much.”
“And I wanted to be angry with you so many times. I tried to hate you, but you kept doing things that made me go the other way. Sounds like we’re both complicated people.” I chuckle, leaning my forehead on his.
He huffs a breath. “I don’t think this is the right time to joke.”
“I don’t think there’s a perfect time for anything when it comes to us. Maybe there doesn’t have to be.” I really did know it all along, didn’t I? My body did at least. It wanted him before the rest of me did.
“Maybe there doesn’t. That would be too simple, and simple is easy, but people like us need to be challenged.”
My breaths pick up when his do. “Logan?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I touch you?”
“Yeah,” he says with his mouth parting over mine. “Please do.”
I didn’t think I could possibly want to touch him more than I already did, and then he proved me wrong by begging for it.