Page 19 of My Best Friend Is Broken
I reach into my pocket and pull out a spare key, setting it on the floor between us. “In case you... in case you need to leave. But please, please don’t. Just wait for me, okay?”
His eyes focus on me then, just for a moment. “What if you never come back?” He says again with even more feeling than last time.
The question once again hits me in the chest like a sledgehammer. What if I don’t? What happens to Liam then? He can barely handle the outside world on a good day. How would he survive completely alone?
“I will,” I say fiercely. “I promise you, I will come back.”
But promises are cheap things in my world. Easily broken by a bullet or a blade or a moment’s hesitation at the wrong time.
“I love you,” I say suddenly, the words tumbling out before I can stop them.
Liam’s eyes widen, and for a moment something flickers there, surprise, maybe. Or recognition. But then the shutters come down again.
It is on the tip of my tongue to blurt something like, ‘No homo,’ or, ‘Like a brother.’ But Liam knows. He always has.
“No, you don’t,” he whispers. “You love who you remember me being.”
The words cut deeper than any knife Dante’s ever shown me.
I want to argue, to tell him he’s wrong, but there’s no time. My phone is buzzing again, insistent and demanding.
I stand up, my legs feeling like they might give out. “I have to go.”
Liam doesn’t respond. He’s already retreating back into that unreachable place, pulling the walls up around himself brick by brick.
I make it to the front door before I have to stop, my hand gripping the handle with white knuckles. The metal is cold under my palm, solid and real in a way that nothing else feels right now. Everything in my body is screaming at me to turn around, to go back to him, to choose love over loyalty for once in my goddamn life.
I could do it. I could walk back down that hallway, gather Liam in my arms, and run. We could disappear, change our names, move to some small town where nobody knows our faces or our history. I have enough money saved to last us years if we’re careful. We could have that amazing life we used to dream about, far from the violence and the fear and the weight of impossible choices.
But even as the fantasy plays out in my mind, I know it’s just that, a fantasy. Men like Dante don’t let you just walk away. Men like Dario don’t forgive betrayal, no matter how long you’ve served them loyally. They would find us eventually, and when they did, Liam would pay the price for my defection. He’d die because of my choices, just like Olivia died because of his.
The parallel hits me like a punch to the gut. We’re both trapped by the weight of our past mistakes, both prisoners of choices we can’t undo. The only difference is that his cage had bars, while mine is made of obligation and fear and the blood on my hands.
My phone buzzes one final time, and I know there’s no more time for hesitation. Dante’s patience has limits, and I’ve already pushed them further than is wise.
I open the door and step out into the cold night air.
The walk to my car feels like the longest journey of my life. Each step echoes in the empty street, bouncing off the elegant facades of buildings that suddenly look like mausoleums. The MX5 waits for me under a streetlight, its black paint gleaming like oil. It’s the car I dreamed about as a teenager, the symbol of success and freedom that was supposed to make everything worthwhile.
Now it just looks like a hearse.
I slide behind the wheel, and the leather seat embraces me with familiar comfort. The interior still smells faintly of the expensive cologne I wear to impress people whose opinions don’t matter, mixed with something else, something that might be regret, if regret had a scent.
My hands shake as I start the engine. The familiar purr of the motor used to fill me with pride, but tonight it sounds like a death rattle. Everything that once symbolized my success, my escape from the poverty and powerlessness of my childhood, now feels like evidence of my corruption.
I pull out onto the empty streets, and London slides past my windows like a fever dream. Neon signs blur into smears of color, and the few people I see look like ghosts, pale and insubstantial in the harsh light of the streetlamps. The city that raised us, that shaped us, that offered us suchdifferent paths out of our circumstances, suddenly feels foreign and hostile.
As I drive, my mind keeps circling back to Liam pressed against that wall, trying to disappear into the very architecture of our apartment. The way he flinched when I moved too quickly. The terror in his voice when he asked if I was going to come back. The broken certainty in his words when he said I didn’t really love him.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe the boy I fell in love with under that overpass really is gone, replaced by someone I don’t understand and can’t protect. But as I navigate the bustling streets toward whatever fresh horror awaits me, I realize something that cuts through all my self-doubt and rationalization:
It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter if he’s different now, damaged, harder to love. It doesn’t matter if he pushes me away or if he never forgives me for what I’ve become. It doesn’t matter if the boy with the cocky smile and the impossible dreams is gone forever.
I love him anyway. I love the wounded man who trembles at loud noises and finds comfort in cartoons about talking animals. I love his courage in trying to step outside despite his terror, his gentleness even in his own pain, the way he still worries about my safety even when I’m the thing he fears most.
I love all of him, past and present, broken and whole, the boy he was and the man he’s become.
