Page 162 of My Lovely Tragedy
The second—you were never meant to be the one to find me, so if you are reading this alone, without Charlie, please know that was never my intention. But I accept pieces fall where they may, and you, my beautiful boy, are turbulent. That is not a slight against you. In fact, it is one of the pieces I admire most about you, but it also means this will be harder for you, and for that, you own my regret.
It was never my intention for you to know—not because you deserved ignorance, but due to my own selfishness, which you know I possess in staggering degrees, especially when it comes to you. But I cannot allow myself to go forward without giving you all the information you need.
And you need to know this.
I have a rare brain tumor that has invaded my central nervous system. The prognosis a year ago was not optimistic, but the very day we met, I received the news that I would die. Soon. Much sooner than I planned, and it… unsettled me.
I felt unfinished. Incomplete and utterly empty. But as fate would have it, that very night you stumbled into my arms, bleeding your pain into the air around us—into me. You tantalized me with your ethereal beauty and changed everything. The very ground beneath my feet shifted into place. Why I was there, in the state I was in. Our short, but brutally intense foray into the depths of consumption and love.
An echoing haunt written in the essence of a tragedy.
You were why. And as I sit here writing this, I feel nothing but wholesome gratitude and reverence for even knowing your name, let alone the privilege to possess the memories I do.
Every moment with you is one I will cherish and carry with me through my lifetimes. Your beauty and your laughter. The smell of your essence and probes of your cultivated mind. The drag of your roughened skin against mine. Your mouth and damp air. Golden hair and azure irises…
You kept my heart beating long past the time it was meant to stop, and it may be too late for what could have been, but that is why I am giving you this. An eternal piece of us. Our story.
Our lovely tragedy.
You set my soul free, my darlingcorvus.Your existence saved my life, even as it was ending, and for that, I am truly sorry. But I will not ask your forgiveness. Hate me, if you must. Berate me and end my life with your own hands a thousand times if that is what you need.
I am long past wishing, but I do regret not doing better by you. By exposing you to something I know will lacerate. But my only hope is that you are taken care of, which is why I have left you everything. What is mine is now yours to do with as you please. Keep, sell, destroy. The choice is yours.
In the end, all I ask is you read this story. See and know yourself through my eyes.
You are the loveliest being I have ever encountered in my life. Your beauty and intelligence go far deeper than the surface. They are your core. Wired utterly different. Unique and bold. And when you saw my darkness, my love of the unorthodox, you did not shy away. You opened your arms wider, allowing me inside. To fester and melt within you, which is where I will remain until you deem otherwise.
So, while I will not ask for your forgiveness, I will beg. If only for you to know just how deep you are inside me.
I will love you through every universe, Brooklyn Crow, just as I hope you will love me.
Do not forget your promise.
Please forgive me.
—your Tobias, endlessly
CHAPTERFORTY
BROOKLYN
“W-what?”
Black swarms around me, a dark cloud morphing into destruction. Heavy and choking and consuming. The journal slips from my fingers. Flutters to the ground. The air whistles around it as it floats, sinking. Like a feather, soft and gentle and not at all like the weapon it is.
Tobias’s name stares up at me. Thick and bold on the page left behind.
My Lovely Tragedy by T.L. Rike (your Tobias).
I take a step back. Another. My feet move, but I can’t feel them.
I’m stopped when my back strikes the window, rattling the glass. It’s cold as it seeps through my thin shirt, condensation against my scalp, but the numbness spreads quickly.
My eyes never stray from the bound book, lying so softly by the bench.
A stain as it burns into the floor.
My head knocks against the glass, solid and fragile, as flashes of his elegant scrawl flicker through my mind like a movie, words in bold, drawing closer, bordered by a softer, more translucent backdrop.
