Maddox pushes to his feet, hands me the bottle, and grabs his bag. “And for some reason, she loves you. Hurting you will be something else she lives with. It will eat her up inside and it will kill another part of her, like Dad and Mom did. Like even I do, but she’ll keep on living. I wish I was that brave.”
I watch as her brother walks away, leaving a trail of blood behind him as he goes.
* * *
“I hiding! Find me!”
Ash’s voice echoes around me. I look at the couch, his favorite hiding spot, and he’s not there.
“Hurry! Find me!”
“Where’d you go, little man? You found a new hiding spot. I can’t find you.” I’m smiling, proud of him for finding a real place to hide this time.
I search the living room, but he’s not there. The kitchen. Our room. Angel’s room. The bathroom.
“Daddy! Find me!”
My heart is starting to hammer and I’m beginning to sweat. “Where are you, Ash? I can’t find you.”
I look in the backyard and through the house again and I’m running now. Freaking out because I can hear him, but I can’t see him. I have to find him. How can I lose my own son?
“Daddy. Hurry.” His voice comes from the other side of the front door. Everything stops. I start to shake. I can’t go out there. If I do, I’ll find him and I don’t want to see him out there.
“Ashton?” I creep toward the door.
“Here, silly,” his voice says from outside. My hand shakes as I open the door and he’s sitting there, in the yard, eating pancakes. Holding his favorite shirt on his lap.
“Ash. Get in the house. You have to come inside.” I’m fucking crying now because I know if he stays out there he’ll die. I can’t let him die this time. He’s my son. He thinks I can do anything. I have to save him.
“Can’t.” He shakes his head. “Can’t go in.”
“You have to.” I try to grab him, but I can’t. It’s as though there’s an invisible barrier around him keeping him from me. “Ash. Come on, little man. You have to come inside. Come to Daddy.”
“Can’t,” he says again, and he’s looking at me with syrup on his face, his big, happy smile.
I try to grab him again, but I can’t get within a couple feet of him. I’m panicking now. “You have to try. You have to come in the house or you’re going to die!”
At that, his little smile morphs into a frown. And I know he knows. Know he’s known since before I came out here that he can’t leave this yard. That he’s going to die.
“Sorry, Daddy.” He grabs the shirt. And then he gets up. He walks toward me and he hugs me. I don’t know what happened to whatever kept me from him, but it’s gone and he’s in my arms hugging me as tight as his little body will let him.
But I know. I know I still can’t save him. “I’m sorry. I love you. I wanted to be better for you. I wanted to protect you and do better for you than my dad did for me.” Tears are running down my face and I’m holding him, squeezing him tighter than I probably should, but I can’t let him go.
“I lub you too.”
I look at him and smile.
“Smile!” He claps his hands. “Daddy’s happy.” And he has that huge grin again. The one that makes me feel fucking invincible. “Play!”
So I play with him. We play chase and hide-and-seek and he laughs and I laugh. We tumble to the ground and I wrestle with him and tickle him. And then he just stops. Stops and looks at me with those brown eyes that are just like mine and the dark hair that’s just like mine and he climbs into my lap in the middle of the yard.
“Tell me a story,” he says.
So I do. I tell him about a boy who was the coolest kid I’ve ever known. How his smile made everyone happy and how he makes me love pancakes and how there is no one in the world as important as he is. I tell him how much I love him and how much his auntie loves him and how happy he makes me.”
For the first time in any story I’ve ever told him, Ash interrupts. “Happy?”
“Yeah, little man. Happy.”
“I like it when Daddy’s happy.”
Fuck. I do too. I didn’t have a lot of happy in my life, but those two years away from home, living with my sister and with him… I was happy. Knowing I was going to college and that I’d be someone he could look up to, it made me happy.
“I want to be happy.”
“Then do!” He smiles. Like it’s that easy. Like I should just know that and be able to do it.
“I love you,” I tell him again.
“Lub you. I like Daddy’s stories.” And he wraps his arms around my neck. Squeezes me, and this time when he goes, there’s no car. No blood. No little broken body. He’s just… gone.
I jerk upward and jump out of the hotel bed. The empty bottle of whiskey is sitting there. It sounds crazy, but I swear to fucking God I feel him. I remember how it felt to have him in my lap and to have his arms around me and to play with him and the exact sound of his voice when he said I love you.
“I like Daddy’s stories,” he’d said, and suddenly my fingers itch to write. I pull open all the drawers until I find a pad of paper and a pen and I start filling it. Writing on the front and back of every page. Writing to Ash. Writing about Ash and life and poems and stories. Whatever comes to my head, I write it.
When the paper is gone, I run out of the room across the street to the corner store and buy every notebook I can find before I’m back in the dark room again writing to my son. About him.
I’m doing it for him. For me. For Angel. Hell, maybe even for my ghost. I only know I have to do it. That I can’t stop. With each word I see his smile and I feel him again and I know I’m doing what he would want me to do.
I write that I’d always wanted to be a good dad to him, better than I had been, but I haven’t been doing it. I tell him how young I was and I didn’t think I was ready to be a father but that I want him to know how much I wanted him. Even if I wasn’t ready to at first, he stole my heart and made me wish to be a better man. That if I had it to do over again, I would be different. Would be what he deserved. That all these pages and all these words and my hands that cramp and hurt are my apology. They’re my way of being the person he deserved for me to be.
* * *
For the first time in four years, I stand in front of the house I shared with my sister. I look like shit. I haven’t slept much. I’m screwed up from my fight with Maddox, though in the week I’ve been writing and then driving here, the bruises are fading.
But I’m here. Looking at a new fence around the yard. The new speed bumps on the street and at the signs that say to go slow. That say traffic fines are double and children are at play.
They have my son’s name on them. They’re for him.
And I know that’s what my sister has been doing to be okay. That’s how she’s been fighting for Ashton. While I’ve been running and… fuck, dying, she’s been living for him. It’s not like she’s ever had much. The house is tiny and it’s in a shitty neighborhood, but she still did something. She fought, probably with all she had, for my son.
It took me long enough, but the notebooks full of our story are the start of my fight.
I let myself in the gate and walk up to the front door. That ache in my chest spreads being here. Looking at that spot I held him last and where I played with him in real life and in my dream. I almost can’t breathe.
The steps still creak like they used to as I walk up them. There’s a weight fighting to pull me back because I need to do this. I have to. For Ashton.
My fist comes down on the door in a knock. It’s only a few seconds later I hear my sister say, “Hold on!”
Four years. I haven’t talked to her in four years. I left her right after she lost her nephew. What was wrong with me?
Less than a minute later, she opens the door. Her hand shoots to her mouth, covering it and it’s shaking.
“Hey,” I say. She doesn’t look much different. I notice her hair’s a little longer and that she has her ears pierced. She never had them done before.
“Hey…,” she replies. And then she flies at me. Her arms wrap around my neck the way Ashton’s did in my dream. I hold her back and she cries into my neck. “Adrian… you’re home. I can’t believe you’re home.”
“I’m sorry, Angel. So fucking sorry.”
She laughs, still hugging me. “You still have a bad mouth.”
“I can’t help it.”
And then we go inside and we sit on the couch. We talk about Ashton and our lives the past four years. We cry and I tell her everything. How I wanted to get lost. How I wanted to forget and live this façade that wasn’t real. I even tell her about Delaney and the book in my hands. Then I picture the little boy with my eyes, and I think I’m finally giving him a reason to be proud of me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
~Delaney~
When I hear the front door opening, I run for the living room. I skid to a stop right as Maddox is closing the door. The urge to hug him bubbles inside me, but I shove it away. I missed him and I love him, but right now I’m pissed.
“What the hell, Maddy? I can’t believe you’ve been gone for two weeks!”
He flinches and I feel a small amount of guilt, but then I think of all the times he’s given me a hard time. How he punched Adrian when he spent the night and how often he’s tried to run my life.
“You disappeared recently too,” he says before he falls onto the couch. He looks tired. Bruises are fading on his face.
“For two days, not for two weeks! And not after having the kind of conversation we had before you left. Seriously!”
I’m still mad, but I sit next to him on the couch anyway. “I was worried about you.”
“I texted.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Shit.” He shakes his head, but then looks at me. “Sorry, little sister. I had something to take care of. It was important and then… I don’t fucking know. I just wasn’t ready to come back yet.”
It’s impossible to stay mad at him. I know I should, but he’s my brother and out of anyone in my life, I know I will always be able to depend on him. And I know he’s hurting. Know he’s been hurting for years. Reaching over, I hug him. “I’m not going to say it’s okay because it’s not. I’m glad you’re home, though… and don’t do that again. Things have to change with us, Maddox.”
I take in his dark, messy hair. The set of his jaw. It looks like he hasn’t shaved for a couple days, dark stubble on his face. He looks like my dad. Only with Maddox, there’s a kindness in his eyes I don’t remember with Dad.
Maddox gives me a small nod.
“You can’t keep taking responsibility for me. For Mom or Dad or anyone.”
“Neither can you,” he answers back in that rough voice of his.
“I know. I saw Mom last week. We got into it and I told her how I felt. She kicked me out and I said I wouldn’t be back. I haven’t and I won’t.” It still hurts to remember, and the urge to call her, to check in on her is there, but it’s hard giving out love to people who shove it back in your face. That’s not what love’s supposed to be about. No, it’s not perfect and people get hurt, but it’s a give and take. And it should be comfort, not pain.
Maddox takes a deep breath and I know he’s trying to calm himself. That he wants to say something about Mom but is trying not to.
“You’re growing up,” he says, which is ridiculous.
“I’m eighteen. I’ve been grown up for a while.”
“It’s different now. Good for you.” He tries to stand, but I grab his hand and keep him next to me.