Page 30 of The Lies We Believe

The amount of guilt I felt for feeling peace in his presence made me wonder if I was making him worse without realizing it. I wanted to hold him. Love him. Keep him safe with me always. But what if letting him go was the best way I could help him? What if I had to set him free so he could learn to fly on his own?

I hated the thoughts that perpetually churned in my mind, but I couldn’t see the light for the trees. Joelle always said I struggled to separate myself from other people’s circumstances when my emotions were involved, and River was a prime example. But even with her words ringing in my head, I couldn’t convince myself to walk away. I needed him as much as he needed me, maybe more.

River had yet to come down this morning, so I thought I’d take his breakfast upstairs to him. It had been particularly bad last night. At one point, I tried his door handle, but he’d locked it—as usual. I’d ended up sitting with my back to the locked door, crying as I listened to him howling in agony, hating myself for being unable to help him. I stayed there until the shower turned on and then passed out in my bed in a fitful sleep.

Nothing beat the smell of freshly cooked bacon in the morning. My stomach agreed as it grumbled and tightened, but I could see to myself later. I added eggs, toast, and coffee to River’s tray before topping up Shadow’s water bowl and adding a bit of kibble for his breakfast. It baffled me how looking after the pup for one afternoon meant he’d assimilated himself into my home, but he had, and he thankfully brought River some solace. Otherwise, I’d have sent him back home. Watching the way River’s dull eyes sparked like embers when Shadow licked his face was enough for me to hold my tongue on the subject.

I knocked heavily on River’s door. It opened from the force, and without thinking, I stepped inside and froze. My body flushed with incendiary heat, and fire licked through my veins. My eyes zeroed in on River’s tight ass as he bent over and pulled black boxers up his toned legs. The tip of my tongue wet my bottom lip as images of my hands sliding up his thighs, feeling the dark hairs against my palms, swam through my mind, dissolving every rational thought that should have been in my head. How I’d spin him around and bury my face in the apex of his thighs, in the crease between his legs and his groin. How my mouth would water as I inhaled his intoxicating cinnamon and orange scent. My nose would charter a course across the soft cotton until it ran the length of his hard shaft. Would he smell sweeter, or have a deeper, muskier note that would make my dick fill and tighten my pants?

River made a sound that snapped me back to reality, and I hastily locked those thoughts in a cement box, wrapped it in lead chains, and threw it into the deep dark abyss in the back of my mind.

The cutlery clattered on the tray as my hands shook. River’s shoulders tensed before he slowly straightened to his full height. My breath caught in my throat as the light streaming from my open bedroom door illuminated his back, revealing angry red welts and still-healing cuts that seeped blood. I edged forward cautiously, as if approaching a wild animal. My eyes traced the tapestry of silvered scars etched across his skin, silent witnesses to the suffering he had endured.

“R-River…”

“No,” he rasped and pulled on one of my missing hoodies.

“Who hurt you?”

River shook his head and crawled onto the far side of his bed, pulling his legs up to his chest and making himself as small as possible. He pulled his hood up and rested his head on his knees, hiding himself from me. Fear and guilt rioted inside me, making me sick to my back teeth. The taste of acid burned the back of my tongue as a million scenarios from previous cases were plucked from my memories and laid out before me. I didn’t want to contemplate him experiencing any of them, but the truth spoke for itself, plain as day. The tray clattered on the nightstand as I rounded his bed and sat down in front of him.

“Go away, Bane.” His broken voice felt like sandpaper on my skin, abrading and rough. I shook my head and reached a tentative hand toward him.

“Who hurt you?” Each word an apology. Each word a plea. I couldn’t rewrite his past and undo what had been done to him, but I could change his future. I could rewrite his stars and give him a future he deserved, no matter the cost.

River jerked when my hand started stroking smoothing circles on his back, and an agonized whimper punched its way out of him. I felt every muscle tighten like a tightly coiled spring. He was vibrating, edging away from me, but I couldn’t let him go. I needed to know who had done this to him so I could tear them limb from limb and watch the light drain from their eyes. Taking a life wasn’t something I ever thought I’d willingly do, but for him, I would. I would raze the world to dust if it meant he’d be safe.

“Please, River, talk to me.” My voice trembled as I edged closer, drawn by a fierce, inexplicable need to protect him. I didn’t even know how, but the urge burned through me. The only threat in this moment was the one inside his own mind—or maybe, somehow, it was me, because I would fight him for the truth. I would drag it from him before I let him crumble in silence any longer.

“No.” His voice was hoarse, brittle, like shattered glass. “It doesn’t matter. I-I’m not worth it.” The words were barely audible, cracking as they slipped from his lips, but a sob caught in his throat, choking him, made it impossible to ignore. He was breaking in front of me. I could feel it. His resolve was collapsing under the weight of everything he refused to say.

“It wasn’t your fault, River,” I said, my voice soft but firm, each word deliberate, as if I could cut through the iron walls he’d built around himself. He shook his head violently, refusing to meet my gaze. His breath came in uneven gasps, chest heaving like he was drowning right in front of me. “It wasn’t your fault,” I repeated, desperate now, hoping against hope that he’d hear me, that he’d let me in before he slipped too far. But it felt like I was losing him, inch by inch. He was falling through my fingers, no matter how hard I tried to hold on.

We sat there, trapped in a silence so thick it felt alive, pressing down on us. His breath hitched in shallow bursts,while my lungs seized, like the very air had grown too heavy to breathe. Tension swirled between us, suffocating, his anxiety filling the room like a riptide dragging us both under.

“It wasn’t your fault, River,” I whispered, my voice barely more than a breath. “Look at me.”

He lifted his head slowly, his movements stiff, like every part of him fought against it. But when his eyes finally met mine, everything else faded away. The world around us dissolved, leaving just the two of us—two broken boys, stranded on a fragile bridge. One wrong move and it would break, and all the progress I was trying to make would be lost. He would be lost to me forever, and I refused to let that happen.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

His eyes, rimmed red with unshed tears, locked onto mine, and something shifted in the air. There was a vulnerability there, raw and unguarded, that cut deeper than any of the words I’d tried to offer him. River was a walking contradiction—an innocent child buried inside a man’s body, yet weighed down with the scars of someone who’d seen too much, suffered too long. Where there should have been laughter and light, there was only pain, a quagmire of suffering that threatened to swallow him whole.

He licked his cracked lips, a shuddering breath rippling through him as if he was fighting just to stay present. “I know,” he whispered, the words so faint, so broken, I almost missed them entirely.

I nudged his head up with my knuckles, needing to feel his skin under mine. He said the words I wanted to hear, but they held no weight, no truth. I shook my head, refusing to let the moment slip away. “It wasn’t your fault, River.” My voice was firmer now, each word etched with urgency. “It wasn’t.”

His face flushed with shame, eyes dropping to his hands as he picked at the broken skin around his thumb until it bled. Thefirst of his tears finally broke free, slipping down his cheeks in heavy, silent trails.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I repeated, pouring everything I had into those four words. I needed him to hear me, to really hear me—not just parrot the words back like a meaningless echo, but to let them sink in. To believe them. To feel them. To understand that his shame was misplaced, that the weight he carried wasn’t his to bear.

River trembled beneath my hands, his whole body shaking like a fragile dam about to burst. I cupped his face in my hands, my thumbs brushing over his high cheekbones. I wanted to haul him into me, to merge his pain with mine and take it from him. To set him free. Desperate for him to stay with me, to not disappear into the void he was teetering over. “River, it wasn’t your fault,” I ground out, my jaw clenched so hard it sent a sharp pain through my teeth.

His bottomless green gaze finally lifted, his tear-clumped lashes trembling as he looked up at me, eyes filled with a depth of pain that left me breathless. We stayed locked like that for what felt like forever, the world shrinking down to just the space between us. His tears fell freely now, each one a stain on my soul. Each one carrying the weight of years of silent suffering.

“I should’ve... I could’ve stopped it...” His voice wavered, breaking apart mid-sentence, as if the mere thought of what he believed to be his failure was too much to bear.

“No,” I said, shaking my head more forcefully. “There was nothing you could’ve done. None of it was your fault, River. None of it.” My voice was almost harsh now, desperate to make him see the truth.

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