Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
CASH
There’s a chance I may have fallen down a rabbit hole with Lie’s dirty audiobooks.
I don’t know if it’s the characters, the plot, or maybe just the filth that I’m learning.
So many times, I’ve found new sexy things I want to try, which is completely wild to me.
I’ll start a book cringing, and by the end, I’m begging Onyx to try it with me.
Currently, I’m in the transition stage between cringing and interest. The kink?
Spanking. I began the book absolutely horrified that this character was going to get off on it, but now, eighteen chapters in, I’m side-eyeing like…
am I really uninterested, or is there maybe a little bit of curiosity?
Who the hell knows at this point? I have a feeling that if Onyx wants me to try something and I’m not feeling it, just give me an audiobook.
Ten to seventeen hours of that thing might change my mind!
I’m in Laiken’s driveway with a flower trailer we borrowed from It’s Always Flower Day. By we, I mean Laiken borrowed it, and Onyx filled it with all my belongings from my bedroom at my parents’ house while I was at work yesterday.
It’s been over a month since I’ve spoken to my fathers, and I’m kind of devastated about it.
They haven’t even called or texted me since I ran from their home after Benson hit me.
I felt too weird to show back up and get my things, so Onyx did it for me and allowed me to remain a coward.
I didn’t even know he was going to do it.
It was just here yesterday when I got home.
As the days go by, I wonder if my dads blame me for Benson leaving? Are they mad at me for this situation? Do they expect me to ‘be an adult’ and apologize to them for some reason?
They’re not saying hateful, gross things like Lie’s dad, so there’s that. This situation isn’t even a little similar. It’s just… quiet. That’s okay, I think.
In an attempt not to think about the fact that my dads aren’t speaking to me, I’m listening to some unhinged, kinky, dirty book.
I keep looking at the cover because it’s a cutesy illustrated couple with googly eyes.
It so doesn’t match the weird-ass vibe that I’m apparently totally here for. Including the spanking.
No. Wait. I haven’t decided I like spanking yet!
While I listen to the book, I’m going through my things in the trailer.
Primarily, the clothing. There are a whole lot of totes whose contents I don’t even remember owning.
It isn’t until I look at the tag on this white shirt and see that it’s a Youth Medium that I realize I’ve had it for literal years.
I toss it into the box on the ground beside me with other articles of clothing I’m discarding.
This entire tote seems to be full of the same things.
Clothes from when I was young. Why are they being saved?
Where did Onyx even find them? I’d ask, but he’s not here.
He, Laiken, and Deryke are moving furniture and the contents from Onyx’s house to our new garage apartment. Lie is supervising, I think.
I doubt he’s actually moving anything. He’s too much of a princess for manual labor. Especially now that Laiken told him he can be a house twink.
It isn’t until I pull out the fourth child-sized shirt that I remember wearing one of them. This one specifically. It’s a cartoon drawing of Benson and me when we were younger. Heads bent together, laughing, arms around shoulders.
My breath catches as I stare at it. We used to love wearing these shirts together.
A tightness wraps around my heart and squeezes, and I forget how to breathe for a minute. Maybe I intentionally kept the shirt after all. I just forgot about it. Though I don’t remember these other shirts, what if I do one day and regret throwing them out?
I grab the last three and hold them to my chest as I look at the shirt in my hand.
Lie suddenly appears beside me, and I jump. I suppose that’s one way to kick my lungs into gear again. Pulling my headphones off, I glare at him. “Jerk.”
He isn’t the least bit chastised. As he looks at my face, his smile slips away. “What’s wrong? Did I really scare you?”
Huffing, I hand him the shirt with young Ben and me as anime characters. Understanding lights up his face. “Ah.”
“I feel stupid for feeling sentimental about it. Now I’m hesitant to throw away these shirts, but that’s stupid, right? He’s made it clear he hates me, so why am I keeping them?”
If anyone will understand, it’s Lie or Onyx. I think in this particular case, Lie might be a little more sympathetic. Sure, Onyx has been like family since childhood. But Benson is my brother. Was? I don’t know.
“I have things like this,” Lie says quietly, leaning his hip against the trailer. “They’re hidden in a box with Laiken’s things like this on the top shelf of the closet. Things we can’t bear to get rid of because of the memories attached to them.”
“You kept them, though?” Maybe I’m looking for permission to keep these shirts.
“Yep. Not everything. I kept the things that were the most… special? Some things I threw away even though there were memories with them. Some things I stuck in a box and left it on the back deck of my parents’ house to decide if they wanted to keep them.”
“Did they?”
He shrugs. “Dunno.”
I stare at the shirts that hold no memories for me. They’re just little kid shirts. One has a butterfly on it. One is plain white. One has gray and black stripes. “Do you remember these?” I hold them up so Lie can examine them. “I understand why that one was kept, but why these?”
Lie hands me back the anime character one and looks at the others thoroughly. “I don’t. Maybe keep them for a while. You can throw them away later if you want.”
“I wonder if my parents kept them. Maybe they have memories that my dads remember, and I don’t.”
He nods. “Maybe. That makes more sense because it’s your parents who cleaned out the clothes that you grew out of at that age.”
Sighing, I set all the small shirts aside.
The tote has more small clothes that span various ages, and I think I’m looking at a keepsake of clothes.
Maybe my dads did pack this up, and it’s been in my closet, I just didn’t know it was there?
That isn’t all that surprising, honestly.
There have been boxes on the top shelf of my closet for as long as I can remember that I’ve never even opened.
“I feel stupid for keeping them.” I look at the shirt with Ben and me. “He doesn’t deserve the sentiment.”
“Okay, don’t judge me, but I’ll tell you how I justify it internally,” Lie says, and I meet his eyes.
“I’ve told myself that my dad died.” His voice is quiet.
Maybe a little distraught. “The worst part is I don’t even feel it’s a lie.
The dad I knew, the dad who is attached to the things I kept, isn’t here anymore.
As much as I hate it and wish every day that it wasn’t true, that dad isn’t coming back.
So, in a way, my dad is dead. Even if he’s still alive. ”
I wrap my arms around Lie, and he turns into the embrace to hug me in return. There’s something strangely settling about his words. He’s right. I feel it in my gut how much it makes sense.
“The Benson who loved me is dead,” I agree. I hate the swell of emotion that momentarily overcomes me. “He’s been dead for nine years.”
Lie nods, his arms tightening almost painfully around me. “He has been.”
“There’s something kind of… freeing in adjusting my thinking to that. Like I’m giving myself permission to mourn a man that’s technically still alive but has been dead to me for so long.”
“Right? It’s a weird kind of internal reconciliation. I bet for you, it’s incredibly liberating since you’ve lived with it for so long.”
It is. My chest feels lighter. My shoulders don’t feel so heavy, either. The knot in my gut is untwisting. I’m not sure I even feel guilty for thinking of Benson in this way. Benson is dead. I don’t know who the man who’s taken over his body for so long is. Whoever he is, he’s not my brother.
“Look at this group of hotties walking down the road,” Lie says, and I take a step away from him.
Laiken never has a shirt on unless he’s working, so I’m not in the least bit surprised to see that he’s without a shirt.
Onyx, on the other hand… good god, the way my stomach flips and my dick jumps.
He has his shirt wrapped around his head and hanging down the back of his neck.
I’m not even sure how he pulled that off.
The third man with them is gorgeous, yes. He’s wearing a shirt, though it’s a tee without sleeves. He’s probably the most muscular of the three of them. I can see his muscle tone and thick biceps and thighs through his clothing. Under different circumstances, I’d be staring at him more.
But Onyx has all my attention. He always has.
The island knows about us. Not because we practice PDA now that Ben’s gone.
Onyx held my hand on the ferry once, but it was too weird having people look at us.
I’m not sure anyone was actually looking at us, but I felt like everyone was.
People who knew us and people who didn’t. In my mind, everyone was staring.
So yeah, we don’t do PDA. Not really. He’ll kiss my forehead or cheek or something. And we don’t avoid contact, of course. But most of our affection is saved for moments when we’re alone or maybe with our close friends and family. We’re just private people, and that’s okay.
So yeah, that’s not why everyone knows. They all know because Onyx added my name to the garage lease.
The garage apartments are a little better than studio apartments, which means, generally speaking, one bed.
Also, the lease asks for the relationship between those living together, and he declared BOYFRIEND in big, bold letters.
Maybe that was his way of announcing that we’re together without having to make it a thing. It’s a thing. Because everything on Kala is a thing, no matter how little or big that thing is.
Lie practically leaps into Laiken’s arms when they get near us. It’s so weird. While they’ve only been together for a short time, it feels like they’ve been together for years. Like… I’m seeing an echo around them of years and years’ worth of memories that aren’t actually there.
But they kind of are, right? Just in a different capacity. Is it strange to think that this is just a natural progression of their relationship? It was always meant to be.
Onyx grips my hand briefly. Not quite as fleeting as when we’re on the ferry or walking down a path, but the hold doesn’t last long either. Long enough that I lean into his side, and he kisses my head.
“Ready to take this?” Laiken asks, one big hand under Lie’s ass to hold him up, where Lie clings to him like a koala.
It doesn’t look like I’ve weeded through this crap at all. Yet, as I look around at the boxes and totes overflowing with things to donate, I know a lot of it is mine. Onyx, Laiken, and Lie’s old things are mixed in, too, but mine linger all around the top.
Still, the stupid trailer looks overflowing. “I’ll never understand how this was all in my bedroom. There’s not even a single piece of furniture to account for how full the trailer is.”
“It is a small trailer,” Deryke says in his amazing accent. I could listen to him talk all day long, and though he speaks English well, there are times I don’t understand what he says. That doesn’t stop me from listening to him like he’s hypnotizing me.
“Thanks for the justification,” I say. “Yeah, I think I’m ready. I can always spring clean in the spring.”
“I’ll grab the cart from Kellan,” Laiken says. He kisses Lie and sets him on his feet. “Be right back.”
Kellan is the owner of the flower shop from which Laiken borrowed the cart. It’s on the other side of Bane, so I have more time to weed through the contents of my trailer of bedroom shit.
“You know what I found under my bed?” Onyx asks as I continue picking through the clothes. I meet his eye, and from his pocket, he pulls out a baby sock. Not the sock of a toddler but that of an infant. I grin. “Apparently, my bed has always been in the same spot, and before that, my crib.”
“That’s wild,” Lie says.
“Right? This has been lying right there for twenty-two years.” He shakes his head. “Crazy to think we spend so many years and see so many milestones in a single room.”
“Unless you move around a lot,” I say.
“Which we haven’t,” Lie says.
We all look at Deryke.
He shrugs one shoulder. “I have childhood bedroom at parents’ house still. I sleep there when I go home to Germany.”
“So it’s a cross-cultural thing,” Lie notes. “You should look under your bed the next time you go home.”
“The idea frightens me.”
I laugh and pull out a baby towel. The kind with a hood. “Yep, I think this is a keepsake box,” I announce and shove everything back inside to put the lid on. “I think I’ll just keep it all right there.”
“Maybe add to it beginning from the years your dads missed,” Lie suggests.
I probably do have things I’ve kept as I grew up. Things that I never knew why I was keeping, but couldn’t bear to part with. Now I have a place for them. And when I reconcile with my dads, I can ask about the other things.
My gaze drifts to Lie’s parents’ house next door, and I feel really sad because I know that the single relationship that’s meant the most to Lie over his lifetime is truly gone for good. He’ll never get it back, and that sucks. I wish I could do something to fix it.
It also makes me want to fix things with my parents.
The quiet hum of the cart coming down the road pulls my attention away from my thoughts. Today isn’t the day I’ll be reuniting with my parents. Today, I’m moving in with my boyfriend!