Page 90 of Only the Small Bones
“No, you thought about what you did to me. Your pain was aboutyou,it had nothing to do with me.” He jabbed a finger at his chest, still trying to blink away his vulnerability. I couldn’t let his lie stand. Couldn’t allow him to shape the truth into something that would make walking away from me justifiable.
I took the two steps needed to enter his space and cup his cheeks. He recoiled with a sharp breath, but I held on. “You don’t believe that. You’ve looked into my eyes for months now. The truth has been right in front of you.”
Asher shook his head, rejecting my words.
“Youfeelthe truth, Asher. While my pain has been self-serving at times, it hasalwaysbeen about you. My dreams were no longer mine when I returned. My ambitions and everything I fought to achieve at breakneck speed was all about you. All about your honor. All about making a difference because your life mattered. Everything I do, everything I’ve done from the moment I met you is with you in mind.Always.”
He’d closed his eyes, not wanting to see the honesty in my gaze. It didn’t matter. The truth tended to find us in our darkest corners anyway. I traced the outline of his face, then his lips, which quivered and parted under my touch. Tears flowed past his long lashes, and when he opened his eyes, I became hypnotized by their beauty and openness.
“How could I ever forget you?” he whispered, like not forgetting me was the real tragedy.
“Trauma can make you forget things, people. Some of that can be age, or circumstances surrounding how the memory was imprinted.” I’d spent enough time researching the subject.
“That’s because you’ve never had a Malcolm in your life. You’re unforgettable.” It didn’t sound like a compliment.
“I can’t remember the color of my mother’s hair, or even if I have her name correct. But I remembered that your eyes were the color of leaves in the spring.” He raised his trembling hands to my face, holding them suspended, like he was scared of what touching me would do to him. I leaned into them, closing my eyes as his fingertips rested on my wet cheeks. He mimicked the trail I’d taken across his features, grazing his digits over my lips, feeling my breaths wash over them.
“I remembered that your hair was brown, a few shades darker than your skin, and that it was soft like mine but… spongy.”
A mixture of silk and wool my mother would say. Asher slid his hands over my short hair, sighing.
“I remembered how young you were, but how much older you seemed. Not much has changed there.” His fingers skimmed over the flat bridge of my nose. “And I remembered how good it felt to be cared for by you, to be protected by you, and then to have that feeling ripped away. I could never forget you.Never,” he swore.
“I’m so sorry,” I rasped. “I wasn’t strong. I was only pretending to be. My inner voice was eating me alive, telling me things that weren’t true. Sleep deprivation made me see things that weren’t there. I tried my best to cope, but I was just a kid then too. I was falling apart. I had no business trying to keep you together.”
Asher lowered his head but kept his hands on me. I kept mine on him too. I felt something shift in him, sensed a wall coming down. “I know,” he said. “I know.”
I exhaled in relief, pressing my lips to the top of his head. “I can’t believe you’re alive.” I’d wanted to say those words for months. I’d wanted to celebrate, to spin him in my arms and jump for joy, to fall to my knees and beg for his forgiveness.
“Can… Can you tell me what happened to you?” In a way it felt too soon to ask. Just a few minutes ago he said he still hated me. But it had been on my mind for weeks. Since I first laid eyes on him again. If I was still going to lose him, I had to know everything first. “When did you become Ryan?” When he hadn’t responded to seeing the name Asher on my back, I thought maybe he didn’t even remember his own name.
He nodded, looking around as though searching for a place to start. I led him to the couch, sitting and pulling him down to straddle me.
“I was sold into slave labor,” he whispered after several false starts. I held him at the waist, my grip steady but gentle to keep him physically moored to the present while his mind traveled into the past.
“My first owner asked me my name, but I couldn’t speak. I’d gone somewhere in my head when you left, and I stayed there.” There was no accusation in his tone. My heart throbbed with guilt anyway. “He… beat me until I passed out when I wouldn’t answer.”
Asher hissed when my grip tightened. I relaxed my hand and my jaw, apologizing.
“He kept me chained in a dark, cold cellar room while I healed, then did it again. I spent weeks healing down there. One day he finally gave up and said he’d call me Ryan, the name of the boy he bought me to replace. The boy who died screaming, he’d said. The name followed me to my next owner.”
He removed his shirt, his hair falling over his face. I brushed the strands back as I took in the scars lining his torso. “My next owner liked to h-hurt me.” He looked down at his chest, face awash with pain. “And so did his customers. I’d fall asleep wishing I could go back to the dark, cold cellar I’d spent the last few years in.”
Asher shivered, holding his breath when I ran my fingers over the rough patch of skin on his back. “That was done little by little over time,” he choked out. “Some of them liked to take their time with us.”
“Jesus,”I breathed, my vision blurring from rage, a lot of it directed inward.
“You think you’re in hell until you realize it can get much worse, then you start to think what happened before wasn’t so bad.” He swallowed a few times, exhaling before continuing.
“I was sold into the sex trade next, my body given to men who had a thing for young boys.” Asher averted his gaze, the familiar look of shame filling his face. “I can still feel their hands grabbing at my skin, forcing me into position.”
I removed my hands, thinking I may be making matters worse.
“Don’t,” he said, lifting my hands to his chest. “The closest I ever come to forgetting about them is when you touch me.”
I leaned forward to press my lips to a rogue tear falling down his cheek, and he wiped mine away in return.
Drug dealers profited off of a sale once. What made human trafficking so lucrative, was the endless revenue stream the victims brought in. And when they were no longer of use, they could be resold or traded.
