Page 27 of A Life Imagined
“Didn’t you ever wonder”—he hurled the words at Mathias’s back, a shameful admission he’d kept buried all these years—“what I would’ve done if you hadn’t picked me up that day?”
Mathias stopped.He turned to look at Rayan, his expression wary.
“I’d have thrown myself in after him,” Rayan said.
Mathias strode forward and grabbed Rayan by the front of his shirt.He shoved him against the door.“Don’t you ever do that to me.”His voice was hard as steel, piercing through Rayan’s fuddled brain with a violent clarity.“Do you hear me, Rayan?”A wave of conflicting emotions flickered across the man’s face.“Don’t you ever fucking leave me like that.Are we clear?”
Rayan nodded woodenly.
Mathias released him, his eyes shuttering.“I’m going to take a shower.”
He disappeared into the house without another word, and Rayan stood dripping in the entranceway, his heart pounding in his chest.Then he wrenched open the front door and strode out onto the street.He didn’t know where he was going, only that he needed to escape the thoughts.He could feel them circling, coming for him.It wasn’t just his brother.He remembered the closed bathroom door, locked and silent.Always too late.
He made it to the end of the street and crossed over the road to the deserted promenade that followed the curve of the coast.Far off in the distance, he could see the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles that had gathered along the beach.Out at sea, the circle of light from the coast guard’s boat lurched side to side as the cutter was jostled by the swells.
Rayan knew it was hopeless.She was gone.He sank down onto a nearby bench, and the memories found him, no longer able to be held at bay.
The past opened, swallowing him whole.He pressed his fists into his eyes, but the sobs rose, sharp and broken, squeezing through his clenched teeth.It was impossible to see where the pain began and where it ended, the tears coming for it all—two little girls who had lost their mother and the little boy who’d never gotten over losing his.
Mathias paced the floor of the study, his mind elsewhere.The sting, as his cigarette burned down to singe his fingers, snapped him out of his thoughts.He crushed the butt in the ashtray on his desk and ran a hand through his hair, which was still damp from the shower.In an attempt to distract himself, he’d come in here looking for the company’s import-license paperwork, which was clearly in the filing cabinet at the warehouse.
After he’d left Rayan and climbed the stairs to the bedroom, Mathias had watched from the upstairs window as the man stalked from the house and down the darkened street.What had happened at the beach was a knife to a partially closed wound, and he’d thought it best to give Rayan a chance to regather.But standing in the silent, empty house, Mathias felt a twinge of unease.He’d still expected Rayan to come home.
The unease turned to dread lodged cold and hard in his chest.There was a part of Rayan so fragile it scared him.Mathias didn’t trust himself to know what to do if it broke.
He strode down the hallway and threw on his coat then crouched to pull on his shoes.Not the ones from earlier—those he’d have to throw out.Italian leather didn’t lend itself well to saltwater.
Mathias pulled open the front door and saw a dark shape on the steps outside.He reached behind him to flick on the porch light.It was Rayan, sitting hunched over on the top step.Rayan squinted as the light hit his face, and Mathias could see he was still in the same clothes, his eyes red rimmed.
“Must have locked it when I left,” Rayan mumbled.
“Where are your keys?”
Rayan turned over his palm as if to show he was empty-handed.“In the water, I guess.Along with my phone.”
How long has he been sitting here?
“Come inside.”
Rayan looked away, staring out into the blackness.After a long time, he spoke.“I could have saved her.”
The woman or your mother?Mathias stepped forward and held out his hand.“Get up.”
Rayan took it, and Mathias pulled him to his feet.He led Rayan into the house and closed the door behind them.
“I don’t want to think anymore,” Rayan said hoarsely, digging his nails into the underside of Mathias’s wrist.Sometimes he liked a roughness that bordered on pain, which Mathias was more than happy to administer.But the man was already hurting.
Mathias peeled Rayan’s fingers from his wrist and linked them with his own.“Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Rayan yanked his hand away, his eyes darkening.“Don’t coddle me.”
Mathias had become better at it—knowing Rayan.He was less a puzzle than he’d once been.Mathias wrapped his arms around Rayan and pressed him tightly to his chest.Rayan wrenched against him, but Mathias held firm.Then Rayan’s body began to sag as though he could no longer hold himself upright.He buried his face into the fabric of Mathias’s shirt and went still, his arms hanging limply at his sides.
“I won’t let go,” Mathias said quietly as Rayan’s breath hitched.
Later, Mathias ran a bath and helped Rayan wash the salt from his skin and rinse the sand from his hair.
“You think I’m pathetic,” Rayan said, his eyes closed.
