Page 129 of Raven

“He loved flying and learned new things, despite others’ scorn. Even his parents. Do you know your parents?”

Sonny looks up at me almost apologetically. “I… I don’t remember much about them?”

He’s apologizing for not remembering the shitty people who left him living in a cardboard box behind a dumpster.

And the moment he says quietly, “Sorry,” and lowers his gaze, my heart twists.

Sorry. One word. I used to say sorry all the time as a kid. To my foster parents, many of them. To my case workers, all of them. To everyone. Apologizing for wanting a family, a meal, a bed to sleep in, for being an inconvenience, a burden to the state.

My chest tightens so hard that I want to roar in anger at this world that deserved to be blown up because it took so much for granted and left so many behind.

There’s a reason it’s called a system. Systematic abuse. Systematic negligence. Despite a few people who care about their job, it’s a conveyer that pushes unwanted goods farther into the dismal future. I was never a child. I was a case file.

Sonny throws careful glances at me from under his eyebrows.

He is no one’s child, just like me.

My arm feels heavy as lead when I lift it, about to do something I haven’t done since Emily, because I learned to hide my emotions, to cradle them deep inside, making sure I don’t share them with anyone, because they were all I had, only mine, and I wanted them to stay mine.

I wrap my arm around Sonny’s little shoulders.

“It’s all right, kiddo. You’ll be fine,” I murmur.

My body is tense at this forced display of friendship, or something of the sort. Forced yet comforting, almost scary. It feels like I’m baring my soul to this little guy, and when he moves—a tiny movement as he leans into me and tilts his head to let it rest against me—I can hardly breathe.

Marcel Proust said, “It’s our imagination that’s responsible for love, not another person.”

What a load of bullshit. Isn’t it peculiar how we trust famous and notable people with philosophical insights as if they have a degree in life experience?

“True love has to be earned. It has to go through hardships and pain to prove itself.”

I don’t know who said that, but he must have been a miserable man.

There’s love, period. Shades deeper. Degrees of obsession. Passion. Those don’t have to be mutually exclusive. If someone tells you their love is true and yours is just a phase or an infatuation, punch them in the face. There are always those asshole experts who think they have a true insight into the human psyche and know better than you how you feel.

Whatever I feel for the little dude—he doesn’t need to earn it. I’m willing to go through fire for him and give him my attention freely, without asking for anything in return. The last thing I want is for him to go through hardship to earn love.

Maddy? You see, my feelings for her, whatever that fuckery is, are genuine, deep, and in their singularity are the most alive I’ve ever felt in my life.

Her rejecting me is a different story. That hurts. That cuts me deeper than my stiletto. It’s not love that hurts but her walking away from me. It’s astounding how one person can completely obliterate your sanity with a gentle brush of her slender fingers.

Love doesn’t hurt. A broken heart does. That’s why I always preferred dealing with dangerous men, not women or children. Broken bones can heal. A broken heart can crush your entire life.

I was a man in control before I met her. But I was an empty shell. She filled me up with so many emotions that I try to throw them up to get better. But I can’t. Not unless she is by my side again.

It’s been weeks of staying away from her. Weeks of surviving, of grim days filled with work on autopilot, of dark nights, staring at the ceiling and drowning in the memories of her.

I never liked people, but she made me see them in a different light. There was light. Now, I look at faces in Port Mrei and want to carve them out. When there’s no light in your life, everything disgusts you with mediocre grayness.

Before, I had books, the ocean, my sanity. But nothing compares to her now. Poetic words seem bland. Wisdom is silly. The ocean is just a mass of water. And her name pulsates in my head every fucking waking moment, wiping away my sanity.

My only light these days is this little guy.

“I have something for you, kiddo,” I say to Sonny.

His eyes light up with curiosity.

I nod to the unopened package.

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