Page 59 of Ruin

I miss you.

I open my mouth to speak, but he cuts me off before I can lie.

“Do not lie, Kazimir,” he sighs, and he sounds…exhausted. “If you intend to lie, you can leave.”

My lips flap like a gasping fish, mouth opening and closing for a moment, I shake my head.

“I don’t have the capacity for it,” he whispers, my eyes snapping to his, and I shut my mouth.

“What’s happened, Charlie?” I ask quietly, feeling the sudden delayed burn of vodka flood through my chest, like I’ve come back online, have a purpose, can breathe.

He sighs, unseeing where he gazes out onto the gardens. Everything shrouded in pitch, the night is dark, and the room is only lit with a small floor light hidden somewhere amongst the leaves at our backs.

He says nothing and I don’t attempt to pry. Fear filling me at him changing his mind about my being here, throwing me out. I don’t know what to do or say, so I speak the first words that pop into my head.

“Leonid is here.”

His hands tighten around the arms of the chair, and slowly, he swings his head in my direction, his eyes the last thing to follow the movement.

“Just him?” he rasps.

I think of all the things I watched my uncle do to Charlie, back when he was our prisoner, shackled by the throat, ankle, locked in a too-small crate. How I did nothing. Let my father’s men ruin the boy I fell for.

“Just him.”

He grunts in the back of his throat, gaze flicking down to his lap.

“Any of the others coming?” he asks, and I can hear the rage in his voice, the loathing, it’s almost as loud as the self-loathing I house in my core.

“It seems unlikely,” I pass a hand over my head, grip the back of my neck. “But I don’t know.”

He nods, his mind somewhere else, his eyes lift to mine, and I want to grab him. Shake him. Hold him. Kiss him.

We sit in silence, but neither one of us looks away, probably thinking of the same thing. I think of the time he was in one of my father’s cells. Abducted at my father’s order, snatch the Swallow boy with the future. Charlie was going to MIT, away from the violence of our world. He could have done great things for the world, and my family took it all away from him.

He would have been safe.

He never would have met me.

I think of the twenty-two year old boy, tall and lean and naked. Frightened. That’s how I first met him. Bundled into a metal cage, a thick collar pinching his neck too tight. A length of chain used to yank him around by his throat. A second added to his ankle, good for keeping him spread out. Pinned down.

I remember the sound of snapping his ankle, the look in his eyes, and my own squeeze closed.

“It’s done, Kazimir,” he says quietly, my chin dropped to my chest.

My head shakes. I can’t get the sound to stop. Replaying it over and over inside of my head. The pained squawk that tore its way up his throat as I smashed a hammer into his foot.

My throat is tight and my lungs squeeze, a desperate exhale huffs through my flaring nostrils.

“It doesn’t matter,” he rasps, making my teeth grind. “It was a long time ago.”

“It does matter,” I shove my hands through my hair, dropping my elbows to my knees.

“It doesn-”

“It does to me,” I whisper, staring at my feet, shined shoes against the warm red of the terracotta tiles.

There’s a moment of silence, and I don’t breathe.

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