Page 149 of Maybe You

Even if he breaks the things he loves.

The knock on the door startles him out of his very important task of aimlessly staring out the window. He’s been occupied with this for days now, so it must be important.

Gayle peaks her head around the door and sends him that pitying look she’s been laying on him for the last few days. He told her he wasn’t feeling well a week ago, and she’s been relentlessly bringing him soup he pretends to eat, and suggesting different home remedies to battle the fake cold while he nods and promises to give it a shot.

“Feeling better?” she asks hopefully.

“Getting there,” he says with what he fucking hopes is a convincing attempt of a smile.

“Good.” She nods, and Sutton should feel bad about lying to her, but he just doesn’t have the energy.

“There’s somebody here to see you. He doesn’t have an appointment,” Gayle continues.

His heart goes haywire immediately.

He can barely get the words out.

“Did he give you a name?”

“A Mister Remy Wilsson?”

Hope crashes and burns.

“Send him in,” he manages to say.

Gayle gives him a funny look and disappears from the doorway, only to be replaced a moment later by Remy’s familiar figure.

It’s the second time he’s seen him since that night. He’s still not sure, even after all these years, how he ended up on Remy’s doorstep. Their houses were in the same neighborhood. That’s the only connection. And he doesn’t remember a single thing after stumbling out the front door once his mother had managed to tear him off his father. There’s just a big black hole where those memories should have been, and he’s never particularly wanted to get them back.

He's never particularly wanted to look back at anything that’s labeled ‘past’ in his brain. It’s all been buried under a mountainous pile of deep, dark shit, and he has no wish to dig around in there and retrieve anything at all.

That includes Remy.

Remy saved him.

That puts him firmly in the past.

“Remy,” he says in greeting.

The man nods in acknowledgment and comes closer. Takes a seat in one of the chairs Sutton has in front of his desk.

He leans back, elbows on the armrests, the tips of his fingers pressed together, calmly taking Sutton in.

Neither of them speaks for a long time.

“What brings you by?” Sutton asks once the silence gets too loud.

“Kid, I’m too old to play this game.”

Sutton swallows hard and looks away.

“How’s Wren?” falls from his lips without him planning to actually say it.

“Sad.”

He’s not sure why that simple answer rocks him to the core. Maybe because nobody ever just comes right out and says something like that.

Your fault, his brain whispers.

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