Page 132 of Honeysuckle
“Let him do it,” Silas warned Cael, who stared at me with concerned blue eyes. “Go call Arlo, Van, Jensen... We’re going to need help.” I heard him say as I started inside, I took the stairs as quickly as I could, only to freeze in the apartment doorway.
I couldn’t see him from where I was standing, but I could hear him rustling around inside. It immediately smelled of death and trash, the entire room was putrid enough to make my eyes water as I wandered inside.
“Josh,” I called out to him. I looked around the disgusting living room and continued back down the hallway to the bathroom. His mother’s bedroom door was shut but the hinges on his were blown off completely and the door was lying across the floor, splintered into pieces.
Not so calm.
“Hey, Logan,” I called out again and heard a trash bag snap open from my left. He was squatting on the floor, shoving garbage from the bathroom floor into a bag, completely disassociated from everything around him. I called out to him one last time, but he didn’t stop; he pushed off the floor and floated past me like I wasn’t even there.
Silas was right; whatever was going through his head wasn’t like what happened to Cael at all. There was just quiet rage and a lot less crying as Josh tied off the bag and started a new one. He moved around me like a ghost, never stopping to make eye contact with me as he went back to the bathroom to keep cleaning.
“Stop!” I shouted. Josh flinched.Good, I thought, it meant he knew I was here. “Stop for one second and look at me!”
“There’s too much to do, man.” Josh kept his back to me and started to throw more garbage away. The bathroom was a pile of old bottles, cans and magazines… used tissues and sticky laundry that crunched as Josh picked it up and chucked it away.
“We’ll do it,” I huffed, trying to reach out for him but knowing it would only cause him to shut me out more. “Just stop for a second.” I stepped into the bathroom, blocking his path as he tried to leave again.
“Move,” he said, eyes fixed on the floor. He was avoiding the confrontation, which was the least Josh thing he could have done and simply the most alarming.
“No,” I argued. “Not until you look at me.” My shoulders filled the door frame as I settled between the small sink and door in the cramped space.
“Tucker,” Josh sighed. I hated that it was Tucker or man…It was Tuck now, or Dean. But never Tucker or weird things like man or dude, and the sound of it was grating against my skin.
“Don’t call me that. Look at me,” I snapped.
Josh looked up at me, and I watched the dam break inside of him. I reached out to him, meaning to pull him closer. “It’s necess-,” I barely got the words out before he crashed into me, his fingers digging into my skin around my shoulders and neck.
The sounds of his cry broke my heart as my arms curled around him in protection and squeezed him so tightly that it became nothing but muffled sobs that soaked my shirt. I didn’t ask permission or wait for his cues, I just held him as close as I could for as long as I could. I held most of his weight, keeping him grounded while he shook. It felt like his body was fighting against my hold, buthewasn’t against me. Josh was struggling against himself. Warring with the guilt and rage that was coursing through his veins and threatening to explode from him.
He wasn’t used to losing control, and he had never been further from having a grip on it than he was in that moment. I let my hand rake up into his hair and pressed him closer to my chest until he melted into it and his sobs slowly became softer, dissipating into sniffles.
“Okay,” I said, but I didn’t loosen my arms until he released me from his intense hold, the marks that his fingertips left behind stinging as he pulled his hands away. “We do this together,” I said to him, my hand still holding onto the back of his neck firmly.
Josh nodded, his eyes bloodshot and his cheeks red from the crying, but he was listening. He swallowed tightly with a clenched jaw as he stared up at me. It was killing me how sad he was, and for a woman who would have used him until his last breath. But he had taken responsibility for her, and her death felt like a failure.
“This isn’t your fault,” I said to him, and he flinched in my grip. “No, don’t do that, look at me,” I warned when his gaze flickered away, and tightened my hand around the back of his neck. “You did everything you could. You were a better son than most would’ve been.”
“I’m a horrible fucking person, Dean.” His voice broke.
TUCKER
“Farfromit.”Ilaughed—didn’t mean to, but it slipped out so easily I couldn’t stop it, and Josh stared at me like I had lost my mind. “I held something back that day when I asked you if you would be mine, my boyfriend,” I said to him. “Van said something else to me, and at the time I knew saying it would scare you, so I kept it to myself, but today… when I got the news about what happened, it was like my entire life had stopped. All I cared about was getting here to you,” I explained, and Josh watched on in curious horror that only made me more nervous.
“Maybe now isn’t the time…” I seized up.
“Out with it,” Josh said, his voice gritty.
“I stopped myself from saying that I love you that day, that I’m not hurting anyone by loving you,” I said, my chest feeling like someone had sucker punched me. Josh’s head tilted sideways, confusion darkening his features in a way that terrified me. My heart was racing faster than it ever had on first base, and for a split second, I thought he might flip out, but he stayed eerily quiet.
“Okay so usually you’re all talk, and I know today has been rough but uh…you not talking is freaking me out so if you could, like you know… talk?” I begged him in a rambled, breathy sentence. His fingers tightened in my hair, and I winced from the pain. “Josh?”
“Say it again,” he said after what felt like an eternity, his hand curled around my face and into the hair at the back of my head. The entanglement was rough, like he couldn’t control himself from doing it.
I stared at him and I couldn’t stop the smile that curled on my lips. "I’m not hurting anyone by lovingyou.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought you said,” he grumbled, his eyes never leaving mine.
“I fucked this up didn’t I?” Fear gripped my muscles, and suddenly my knees felt like rubber. I wanted to sink into the floor and disappear out of his sight, but his grip on my hair was relentless; he was the only thing keeping me upright.
