Page 21 of What You Own
I did miss Ryan, and I needed to fix this somehow.
By bringing him back to the place where three fucknuts tried to kill him?
Ryan was shaking all over, and it wasn’t from the air conditioning. “Please, Adam, I don’t want to be here.”
I hated seeing him so scared and uncertain, and he didn’t pull away when I grabbed his left hand. “Have you ever been back?”
“No.”
“I have. A few times, actually. I kept hoping it would jog my memory.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No, it didn’t.” I squeezed his hand and felt pressure in return. “Do you know what it’s like to lose hours of your life? Hours that really matter, even when other people tell you to move on? To always wonder if I could have done something different to save us? To save you?”
Ryan made a noise that sounded like a choke. “You couldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
His eyes glittered, and my throat closed because I didn’t know if I could stand it if I made him cry. “I don’t want you to have all that ugly in your head. It’s bad enough crammed up in mine.”
“Maybe if you share it, it won’t be so ugly.”
He made that harsh sound again. “I shared that ugly once, to the cop who took my statement at the hospital. He said they’d pursue it as attempted murder and a hate crime, and then those assholes got off with community service. Talking about the ugly doesn’t help, Adam, I tried.”
I hadn’t found out about the deal until it was too late. My father had tried to explain, tried to say it was for the best, because we didn’t need to be dragged through a trial. He’d traded Ryan’s sense of justice and security for keeping our names out of the papers, and holding Ryan’s hand in the dark parking lot where we were beaten up three years ago demonstrated that my father had made a significantly bad decision. I didn’t imagine my father had spent a moment considering Ryan when he made that deal. He had selfishly thought about himself and his company, my needs a distant second.
He made you so dependent on him that you’ll never stand on your own two feet. You’ll never own your life.
I hated dragging Ryan through this broken, grief-smeared memory lane, but I couldn’t back down. I had to stand up for myself this time, even against him. “I need to know the ugly, Rye,” I said. “I know remembering it hurts you, but I was there. It’s my ugly to know, and you’re the only person who can tell me. Please.”
He stared at me for so long that I thought he was doing that thing where he got lost inside his own head for a while. Then he exhaled harshly through his nose, almost a bull snort, and shoved open his door. I left the headlights on and followed him. Our bodies cast long shadows on the cracked asphalt.
Ryan stopped near the brick wall, a few feet from the old dumpster enclosure. “They kept Pizza City open two extra hours for us,” he said to the wall. “So we could have the cast party after the last show. It was around midnight when you texted me and said you were outside.”
Texting him made sense. The idea of going inside and facing the cast and crew I’d let down wouldn’t have appealed to me. Father had confiscated my phone after the bashing, so I couldn’t have checked. “Thank you for talking to me,” I said.
A half smile ghosted across his lips. He looked at me, his skin sallow in the headlight glow. “I missed you so damned much. I was so happy you wanted to talk that I’d have walked barefoot over barbed wire to get to you. Ten feet to the door was nothin’.”
My heart swelled with emotion. “We came over here to talk?”
“Yeah. Cars were blocking us from the road and the restaurant. It seemed private enough.”
“And then we talked?”
“Yeah. We talked.”
“I’MANasshole, okay?” Adam says. He seems sincere, imploring his best friend in the world to understand. “I don’t really know how to stand up to my father. I wish I could, Rye, I do. I’d have stayed in the musical and defended you to him. I wouldn’t have been such a bastard to you these last two weeks. We wouldn’t have been apart.”
I study him, taking in everything. Needing to know this isn’t a trick. “I always thought I could count on you, hoss. Out of everybody, I wanted you to have my back.”
“I know. I’m so sorry I didn’t. I won’t turn my back on you again, I swear.”
“What about your daddy? I’m still gay, and that’s not gonna change.”
“He’ll have to get used to a few changes.”
I don’t dare to hope, but ask anyway. In case hope is rewarded. “Like what else?”
