Page 28

Chapter Sixteen

Khaos - Present

I listen intently as she tells me about that day ten years ago. Opening old wounds that have never really healed. She tells me about the kiss, how she left him there all alone, how she spent hours that night with the entire neighborhood searching for him in those woods.

“We never found him. It took his parents two years to finally accept that he wasn’t coming home, so we buried him, well at least the memories of him.” Tears fall from her glazed eyes before she looks up at me. “I shouldn’t have run. I was a coward and I let my best friend die because of it.”

“Look, whatever happened to that kid, it wasn’t your fault.” I sooth her, pulling her into my chest.

“It is. If it didn’t take me so long to realize that I felt the same way, maybe he’d still be here.” Her lips start to tremble. “Khaos, I loved that boy and I wish I could have told him before it was too late. He should have been my everything.”

I stiffen beside her, that confession something I’m not sure I want to hear. There are so many things I want to say to her right now, but nothing feels right.

“You’re trapped in a nightmare, holding yourself back because of something you had no control over. It’s not your fault he disappeared. You can’t hang onto the past and let it keep you from living your life. You’re trying to repent for sins that were never yours.”

She pulls away, frustrated that I’m being nice for once.

“But they are mine! You have no idea what it was like to have the entire world question you. I was the last person to see him, people didn’t understand how I had no idea what happened.

I was accused for years of being at fault to the point where his own mother started to believe it, I started to believe it!

“And then little-by-little people stopped caring. That’s when I realized that I had failed again, that I let people forget he existed. He deserved to be remembered even if it was at my expense.” I can feel the sorrow pulsing off her in waves.

Somewhere in the time she started talking, the guys had disappeared, giving us some space – not that there is much on this bus, but at least they tried.

I hold Ash in an embrace that feels natural, like a deep breath after being under for too long. I have this overwhelming urge to comfort her, to take away all of her pain, to rewrite her entire past. I might be a God on stage, but when it comes to Ash I am utterly powerless.