Page 89 of Only the Small Bones
“Gargantuan will be here soon. He’ll keep you safe until I get back,” I sobbed. “I’m so sorry.” I turned, looking toward the trees. “I’ll find you. I’m s-sorry.” I ran as fast as my body would allow, driving me closer to the forest.
“Malcolm!” Asher screamed, my name ripped from somewhere deep inside him. “Malcolm! You said you would keep me.Pleasedon’t leave me.Please,Malcolm.” The fear in his voice shot through my heart.
I’d spent so much time trying to be brave that I’d forgotten I was just a boy. All the fear I’d been hiding wrapped around me now, and all the courage I’d been pretending to have floated away as I ran for the safety of my mother’s arms. I couldn’t do this anymore, couldn’t survive this any longer. I wasn’t strong enough, my mind had taken all it could take.
I was so close now, each step giving me the strength to move forward, every breath fueling the fire in my lungs. My mother smiled wider and my heart felt torn in two different directions. She stretched her arms out toward me, and I could feel her happiness crash into me.
I’ll come back for him. I’ll come back for him, I told myself.
Asher’s voice reached me again in the distance, almost too faint now for me to make out. I hesitated for a second before my feet crossed the tree line, stumbling when his last words pierced my heart.
“Malcolm and Asher forever!” he screamed, right before a gunshot rang out.
William
Present Day
We stood there with the truth out in the open now, the candle flames surrounding our pain, and the outside world forming a wall of snow around us. Neither of us could run from this. Not anymore.
“Asher,” I whispered, letting the pain of hearing his name consume me. I needed something to hold on to, something to give me strength, because nineteen years later I still lacked it.
Asher was close enough to be the pillar I needed, and as though sensing that, he went rigid, letting me know he couldn’t be my anchor.
“I-I thought you were gone. I thought he killed you because I ran. I saw him standing over you. You were so quiet, so still.” I flinched, hearing the gun go off again in my head.
“I wished he had, instead of leaving me to live with the pain of losing you. The pain of what would happen to me next.”
My knees wavered, and I willed the oncoming tears to recede. I didn’t want anything blocking my view of him.
“It was a warning shot.” He stood with his hands behind him. As though wanting to project stoicism, but his eyes gave away the emotions he tried to hide. He may have been angry, but he was also hurting.
I took a second from my heartache to appreciate every facet of him now—even the pain-filled parts—before I lost him forever. He crept closer, stopping before getting close enoughfor me to do something idiotic like touch him, but he was near enough to read my gaze, which he seemed to do now. Did he see regret? Fear? Did he see the inner workings of my heart, and how it bled for him? Or did he only see the worst thing I’d ever done to him?
I thought about last night, about the urgency in his need for me to make love to him. He hadn’t faced the truth yet. Hadn’t sat with himself—or his therapist—and weeded through the mess of our past together. But he knew he’d have to today, and maybe he hadn’t been sure we could survive it.
“How could you think I wouldn’t figure it out? Your name? Did you think I was too young when I lost you to—” he paused to rub at his throat, “to recognize you now? Or maybe you were hoping I’d forgotten the most painful moment in my life altogether.”
“Any or all of the above,” I admitted. “I prayed every night you’d forget me. That the memory of me hadn’t haunted you, the way your memoryrelentlesslyhaunted me.” Why hadn’t I done this sooner? Why hadn’t either of us done this sooner? Because losing him now would be a much harder blow to my heart than it would’ve been in that hospital room.
“And if you had remembered what happened between you and Malcolm, I prayed you never knew that Malcolm was really me.” I let out a shallow breath and rubbed at the sudden ache in my chest. Asher’s hand twitched at his side as though he fought not to reach out for me.
“Why William?” His voice sounded rough. Either from losing the hold on his act of indifference, or the physical pain of speaking. Maybe both.
“William was my grandfather’s name, and my middle name. He died shortly after I got back.” I didn’t say “home” because nothing ever felt like home again. I’d returned to a new andstrange world, one I could no longer trust to be kind to me. One that hadn’t been kind to Asher.
“I couldn’t hear the name Malcolm without hearing your screams, without feeling or seeing your fear. I had to be someone different in order to survive, even if it was only in name.” My legs were on the verge of falling now as I stood there, waiting for him to either destroy me or save me. He took in my stance, arms to my side, palms up. I stood there open to him, ready to take whatever he thought I deserved. I wouldn’t close myself off from the pain. I wouldn’t run from this.
“You’re good at that,” he breathed, his own emotions getting the better of him.
“Good at what?”
“Making me hurt for you.” A single tear ran down his cheek, he blinked toward the ceiling to hold on to the others. “I’m soangrywith you, but yet you make it so hard for me to hate you. You’ve made it hard since I got here. I thought I could let the past go. I wanted to let it go, because I knew if I dealt with it, I’d also have to deal with the anger and hate I still had for you. It’s so… complicated, because I also don’t hate you. Life has never been good for me, so that means you’ve been the best thing that’s happened to me, both then and now. How am I supposed to feel about that?”
His words gave me hope, but I cautioned myself not to get excited. We weren’t out of the woods yet. “Not a day went by that I didn’t think about you, Ash—”
“You didn’t think of me,” he snapped.
“Yes, I did.”
