Page 29

William

Present Day

We stood there with the truth out in the open now, the candle flames surrounding our pain, and the outside world forming a wall of snow around us. Neither of us could run from this. Not anymore.

“Asher,” I whispered, letting the pain of hearing his name consume me. I needed something to hold on to, something to give me strength, because nineteen years later I still lacked it.

Asher was close enough to be the pillar I needed, and as though sensing that, he went rigid, letting me know he couldn’t be my anchor.

“I-I thought you were gone. I thought he killed you because I ran. I saw him standing over you. You were so quiet, so still.” I flinched, hearing the gun go off again in my head.

“I wished he had, instead of leaving me to live with the pain of losing you. The pain of what would happen to me next.”

My knees wavered, and I willed the oncoming tears to recede. I didn’t want anything blocking my view of him.

“It was a warning shot.” He stood with his hands behind him. As though wanting to project stoicism, but his eyes gave away the emotions he tried to hide. He may have been angry, but he was also hurting.

I took a second from my heartache to appreciate every facet of him now—even the pain-filled parts—before I lost him forever. He crept closer, stopping before getting close enough for me to do something idiotic like touch him, but he was near enough to read my gaze, which he seemed to do now. Did he see regret? Fear? Did he see the inner workings of my heart, and how it bled for him? Or did he only see the worst thing I’d ever done to him?

I thought about last night, about the urgency in his need for me to make love to him. He hadn’t faced the truth yet. Hadn’t sat with himself—or his therapist—and weeded through the mess of our past together. But he knew he’d have to today, and maybe he hadn’t been sure we could survive it.

“How could you think I wouldn’t figure it out? Your name? Did you think I was too young when I lost you to—” he paused to rub at his throat, “to recognize you now? Or maybe you were hoping I’d forgotten the most painful moment in my life altogether.”

“Any or all of the above,” I admitted. “I prayed every night you’d forget me. That the memory of me hadn’t haunted you, the way your memory relentlessly haunted me.” Why hadn’t I done this sooner? Why hadn’t either of us done this sooner? Because losing him now would be a much harder blow to my heart than it would’ve been in that hospital room.

“And if you had remembered what happened between you and Malcolm, I prayed you never knew that Malcolm was really me.” I let out a shallow breath and rubbed at the sudden ache in my chest. Asher’s hand twitched at his side as though he fought not to reach out for me.

“Why William?” His voice sounded rough. Either from losing the hold on his act of indifference, or the physical pain of speaking. Maybe both.

“William was my grandfather’s name, and my middle name. He died shortly after I got back.” I didn’t say “home” because nothing ever felt like home again. I’d returned to a new and strange world, one I could no longer trust to be kind to me. One that hadn’t been kind to Asher.

“I couldn’t hear the name Malcolm without hearing your screams, without feeling or seeing your fear. I had to be someone different in order to survive, even if it was only in name.” My legs were on the verge of falling now as I stood there, waiting for him to either destroy me or save me. He took in my stance, arms to my side, palms up. I stood there open to him, ready to take whatever he thought I deserved. I wouldn’t close myself off from the pain. I wouldn’t run from this.

“You’re good at that,” he breathed, his own emotions getting the better of him.

“Good at what?”

“Making me hurt for you.” A single tear ran down his cheek, he blinked toward the ceiling to hold on to the others. “I’m so angry with you, but yet you make it so hard for me to hate you. You’ve made it hard since I got here. I thought I could let the past go. I wanted to let it go, because I knew if I dealt with it, I’d also have to deal with the anger and hate I still had for you. It’s so… complicated, because I also don’t hate you. Life has never been good for me, so that means you’ve been the best thing that’s happened to me, both then and now. How am I supposed to feel about that?”

His words gave me hope, but I cautioned myself not to get excited. We weren’t out of the woods yet. “Not a day went by that I didn’t think about you, Ash—”

“You didn’t think of me,” he snapped.

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you thought about what you did to me. Your pain was about you, it had nothing to do with me.” He jabbed a finger at his chest, still trying to blink away his vulnerability. I couldn’t let his lie stand. Couldn’t allow him to shape the truth into something that would make walking away from me justifiable.

I took the two steps needed to enter his space and cup his cheeks. He recoiled with a sharp breath, but I held on. “You don’t believe that. You’ve looked into my eyes for months now. The truth has been right in front of you.”

Asher shook his head, rejecting my words.

“You feel the truth, Asher. While my pain has been self-serving at times, it has always been about you. My dreams were no longer mine when I returned. My ambitions and everything I fought to achieve at breakneck speed was all about you. All about your honor. All about making a difference because your life mattered. Everything I do, everything I’ve done from the moment I met you is with you in mind. Always .”

He’d closed his eyes, not wanting to see the honesty in my gaze. It didn’t matter. The truth tended to find us in our darkest corners anyway. I traced the outline of his face, then his lips, which quivered and parted under my touch. Tears flowed past his long lashes, and when he opened his eyes, I became hypnotized by their beauty and openness.

“How could I ever forget you?” he whispered, like not forgetting me was the real tragedy.

“Trauma can make you forget things, people. Some of that can be age, or circumstances surrounding how the memory was imprinted.” I’d spent enough time researching the subject.

“That’s because you’ve never had a Malcolm in your life. You’re unforgettable.” It didn’t sound like a compliment.

“I can’t remember the color of my mother’s hair, or even if I have her name correct. But I remembered that your eyes were the color of leaves in the spring.” He raised his trembling hands to my face, holding them suspended, like he was scared of what touching me would do to him. I leaned into them, closing my eyes as his fingertips rested on my wet cheeks. He mimicked the trail I’d taken across his features, grazing his digits over my lips, feeling my breaths wash over them.

“I remembered that your hair was brown, a few shades darker than your skin, and that it was soft like mine but… spongy.”

A mixture of silk and wool my mother would say. Asher slid his hands over my short hair, sighing.

“I remembered how young you were, but how much older you seemed. Not much has changed there.” His fingers skimmed over the flat bridge of my nose. “And I remembered how good it felt to be cared for by you, to be protected by you, and then to have that feeling ripped away. I could never forget you. Never, ” he swore.

“I’m so sorry,” I rasped. “I wasn’t strong. I was only pretending to be. My inner voice was eating me alive, telling me things that weren’t true. Sleep deprivation made me see things that weren’t there. I tried my best to cope, but I was just a kid then too. I was falling apart. I had no business trying to keep you together.”

Asher lowered his head but kept his hands on me. I kept mine on him too. I felt something shift in him, sensed a wall coming down. “I know,” he said. “I know.”

I exhaled in relief, pressing my lips to the top of his head. “I can’t believe you’re alive.” I’d wanted to say those words for months. I’d wanted to celebrate, to spin him in my arms and jump for joy, to fall to my knees and beg for his forgiveness.

“Can… Can you tell me what happened to you?” In a way it felt too soon to ask. Just a few minutes ago he said he still hated me. But it had been on my mind for weeks. Since I first laid eyes on him again. If I was still going to lose him, I had to know everything first. “When did you become Ryan?” When he hadn’t responded to seeing the name Asher on my back, I thought maybe he didn’t even remember his own name.

He nodded, looking around as though searching for a place to start. I led him to the couch, sitting and pulling him down to straddle me.

“I was sold into slave labor,” he whispered after several false starts. I held him at the waist, my grip steady but gentle to keep him physically moored to the present while his mind traveled into the past.

“My first owner asked me my name, but I couldn’t speak. I’d gone somewhere in my head when you left, and I stayed there.” There was no accusation in his tone. My heart throbbed with guilt anyway. “He… beat me until I passed out when I wouldn’t answer.”

Asher hissed when my grip tightened. I relaxed my hand and my jaw, apologizing.

“He kept me chained in a dark, cold cellar room while I healed, then did it again. I spent weeks healing down there. One day he finally gave up and said he’d call me Ryan, the name of the boy he bought me to replace. The boy who died screaming, he’d said. The name followed me to my next owner.”

He removed his shirt, his hair falling over his face. I brushed the strands back as I took in the scars lining his torso. “My next owner liked to h-hurt me.” He looked down at his chest, face awash with pain. “And so did his customers. I’d fall asleep wishing I could go back to the dark, cold cellar I’d spent the last few years in.”

Asher shivered, holding his breath when I ran my fingers over the rough patch of skin on his back. “That was done little by little over time,” he choked out. “Some of them liked to take their time with us.”

“Jesus,” I breathed, my vision blurring from rage, a lot of it directed inward.

“You think you’re in hell until you realize it can get much worse, then you start to think what happened before wasn’t so bad.” He swallowed a few times, exhaling before continuing.

“I was sold into the sex trade next, my body given to men who had a thing for young boys.” Asher averted his gaze, the familiar look of shame filling his face. “I can still feel their hands grabbing at my skin, forcing me into position.”

I removed my hands, thinking I may be making matters worse.

“Don’t,” he said, lifting my hands to his chest. “The closest I ever come to forgetting about them is when you touch me.”

I leaned forward to press my lips to a rogue tear falling down his cheek, and he wiped mine away in return.

Drug dealers profited off of a sale once. What made human trafficking so lucrative, was the endless revenue stream the victims brought in. And when they were no longer of use, they could be resold or traded.

“I was a favorite because I didn’t scream.” He bit his quivering lip and wrapped his arms around me, his mouth now close to my ear. I squeezed him tight, feeling the pain in my heart spread to other parts of my body. “I lost count of how many nights I wished I could go back to the monster who had me before.” His words were labored, and it tore me apart to make him relive his worst nightmares. I came close to stopping him, but as hard it was, it also seemed like something he needed.

“But being a favorite didn’t mean all that much, because I was sold over and over again. No one kept me. No one ever keeps me,” he whispered. His words triggered a memory, taking me back to another promise I hadn’t kept.

“I’ll keep you.”

I gently urged him off of me so I could stand. I needed room to break, needed to get down on my knees to tell him once again how sorry I was for what happened to him. No matter how many times I said it, though, unrest remained deep inside of me, like I would never be free of this burden. Like we’d both been condemned to live a hollow existence because of it.

“I spent days getting lost in those woods before someone stumbled across me. I thought you were dead. I thought…” I paused to take a breath. “I sent help. I told them about the ship, about the truck, about Declan and the others. Too much time had passed, though. Everyone was gone. It was like it never happened. They never caught them, but I tried. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…” I cradled my head in my hands, feeling myself sink, unable to cope with the constant ache.

Asher got to his feet, trying to hold me up, but we were both too broken in that moment. We sank to the floor, both of us crying and holding each other. My fingers ached with how hard I gripped him. The terror of him being taken away from me, of losing him, was still fresh after all these years.

“Once I’d decided to deal with our past, all the anger and bitterness rushed to the surface,” he whispered in my ear. “I couldn’t make it go away. It had never really gone away to begin with, but it became easier to ignore when I started feeling… different feelings for you.” He let out a ragged breath. “Tonight, I tried hugging you and kissing you like I had so many times before. Nothing worked. It only reminded me of what you’d done, of what I thought you’d cost me. I had to get the rage out of me somehow.”

I kept my sobbing as quiet as possible, not wanting to miss a word of what he whispered to me.

“So I spoke my first words, and the more I talked the more pain you seemed to feel. It felt good at first, because I wanted someone to pay for everything that happened to me. But I realized that when you hurt, I hurt. I don’t want us to hurt anymore, William. I want us to be free.”

I froze, my tremors ceasing as I waited for what he’d say next. His heart pounded against my chest, and mine against his. Asher squeezed me tighter, nearly cutting off our air supply. His next words came out hoarse, like it took everything in him to let them go.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It was never your fault.”

I could feel my remaining chains break free, feel life bloom inside of me.

“I blamed you all these years because I needed to survive, and hating you is what kept me going. It was how I coped, the one thing that gave me the strength to go on, the hope I’d see you again one day. In the end, you were my Gargantuan. You were the one who saved me, and you keep saving me still. Now it’s my turn to save you. Let it go, William. Please, let the pain go.”

The sound of sobs echoed around the room, increasing in volume and intensity as I cried his name with a mix of sadness and gratitude. Asher squeezed his arms and legs around me, shuddering through his own release of old and weary pain.

We stayed there for as long as it took, both of us drenched in salty tears by the time we pulled back to gaze at each other.

“You wear your heart everywhere,” he breathed. “On your sleeve, in your hands, but mostly in your eyes. Just like I remembered.” He kissed the corners of them, the candlelight making his own eyes shimmer. “You look at me like I’m special. That’s how you make me feel.” He shook his head. “But you’re the special one.”

I would’ve argued with him if I could have, but I was still trying to process everything he said.

“You… You forgive me?” I whispered in a ragged breath.

“You never needed my forgiveness. We were just boys, and you did more for me than most people ever would. More than anyone ever has.”

“Y-you don’t hate me anymore?”

“I wanted to believe I hated you, especially when I first got here. You seemed to have so much, and I had nothing. But you were so sad, always so sad. I realized you hadn’t gotten off easy. It was too hard to hate you when I knew you were in just as much pain as I was. I know leaving me that day hurt you so much. Even with everything that happened to me, none of that was your fault, but you were forced to live with a choice no kid should’ve had to make.”

I took my first real breath in years. Until recently telling my mother, I’d never told anyone what I did, or what Asher meant to me. I’d been too ashamed to. I’d told the authorities about a little boy named Asher, and about the other victims I’d seen, and the names and descriptions of the people who had a hand in trafficking us. Never more than that, though. Keeping the whole truth locked inside kept me a prisoner of my past, but I’d welcomed it. Not anymore. Now I wanted to be free, and I wanted to share my freedom with Asher.

Slipping my hand up his back, past his nape and into his hair, I brought him down for a kiss. It was tender, sweet, and I savored it, feeling other parts of our bodies come to life.

“When did you know?” I asked against his lips. “When did you know it was me?”

“In the hospital room. At first I couldn’t be sure because of how foggy my head felt, and just the years we’d spent apart. You were bigger than the last time I saw you too. But then you told me about your foundation. Freedom Fighters. And the way you looked at me… I was sure of it then.”

“How did I look at you?”

“Like you were guilty. Like you’d done something wrong.”

Because I had. I couldn’t look at him without seeing him crying in that field. “You knew, and yet you came home with me anyway.”

Asher looked torn, just as torn as I imagined he felt that day. “I had no choice. You were the only thing familiar to me.”

“Why didn’t you say something then, or any time after?”

“I was confused. And I wasn’t ready. Not to talk to you, to talk about my feelings or what happened to me. I wasn’t ready for any of it.”

I nodded, opening up for his kiss. “I had a feeling it was you who waited at the hospital before I even arrived.” I touched his beauty mark. “Davidson had given me a description of you.” Davidson saw my need for irrelevant details as a trauma response, a need to know exactly what I was walking into. So he indulged me. “I thought you were gone, but without a body there was always this hope.” I closed my eyes, and Asher slid his hand under my shirt, his fingers brushing over my plea to Gargantuan again. Bring him back.

He already knew why I hadn’t said anything. Already knew I’d hoped he didn’t remember me or what I’d done, so I didn’t bother explaining that any further.

“Did a part of you like my silence?”

“Yes, because as much as I wanted to hear you speak, a part of me also feared it, because I knew what happened tonight would come next. I feared you talking to Davidson, and once you went to Safe Haven, I feared your therapy sessions too. The idea of your weekly vision boards both awed and terrified me.” I’d wanted him to deal with his trauma. I wanted the people who hurt him caught. But I was afraid that reliving his life might’ve triggered his memories of me. I struggled with wanting him whole, but not wanting to be pushed away.

“Looking back, though, I can see all the little mistakes I subconsciously made on purpose. Tests, I guess, to see if you truly hadn’t remembered me, because I couldn’t ask you outright. I was petrified when you remembered your favorite childhood meal, because it proved how far back your memories went.” When nothing else came of it, though, I figured it was something that carried into his adulthood, and he had no recollection of how or why.

“There were other instances that proved you held on to some of your younger memories, like you knowing how old you were when you stopped speaking. But I told myself you either didn’t know I was Malcolm, or you only remembered pieces of your past, and the pieces that included me weren’t a part of it. Still, sometimes you’d look at me with such contempt, and I’d think ‘he knows .’ I’d then convince myself it wasn’t true, but the truth is, I felt protected by your silence.”

Asher scraped his fingers along my scalp, nestling deeper onto my lap and my burgeoning erection. It was my turn to kiss him again, this time deeper than I had before.

“How did you end up with my mother’s violin?”

“You knew?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.

“Yes. I remembered leaving a scratch inside one of the openings near the strings. It was my proof that it belonged to me if one of the other boys ever stole it.”

“Clever little thing,” I grinned. Asher smiled at that, two clefts appearing in his cheeks. I’d spent too much time reflecting on his sadness to remember what his joy looked like, to remember it came with a set of dimples.

“My mother took me to St. Joseph’s after they were informed about what happened to you. They let me have the violin.”

“You gave up the piano for it.”

“Yes,” I breathed. Most prodigies started playing around age five. At twelve I was practically a senior citizen. It just meant I had to work harder to master it. “How did you end up back here?” I slid my hands to his hips.

“I was sold again. All of us who made it back were. But this time to someone who said they would help us. I don’t remember much. We were out of it for most of the trip here.”

“Will you talk to Davidson about all this?”

“Yes,” Asher sighed after considering it for a while. “But will you please make love to me first?”

I tossed my head back on a laugh, the sound replacing the heartache hanging over our home like a dark cloud. “Yes,” I said, smiling up at him. “With pleasure.”