Page 43 of Collin: Episodes 1-3
“Fair point.” Collin nodded. He glanced out the window again. “I don’t want to hold this together anymore. I want you to just take control. I can hear my mother in my head, but…it doesn’t matter when she says I can come home and start over. It might be true, but it won’t fix anything. It’s not real refuge. And she knows it even if she’ll offer it anyway. It’s all she has, and she can’t live with the reality that she isn’t providing a safe place for us. She needs to believe that she’s taking care of us, that I’m just helping, that she’s really got all of us taken care of in her own right. But if I go home…” Collin let out a long breath. He blinked back tears. “It doesn’t feel safe. It’s a house full of ghosts of mes I don’t want to be and a town full of cars and no buses. It’s a trap.”
Liquid spilled over and ran down the side of Collin’s face.
Mr. Reevesworth put his hand on Collin’s. Collin opened his fingers and squeezed it. He wiped his face. “I’m guessing it’s not what you want to hear, sir, but I will sign that contract, and I don’t much care what’s in it, short of you selling me or causing permanent injury. I don’t know why you want me, but I don’t want to be in charge of me. And that makes no sense.” He paused to wipe more tears off his face. “You have Damian, and Damian isn’t a mess. He looks like he could run a whole ship on his own with one hand behind his back. And that’s the last thing I want to do. I just want to stop running anything. I know you described how this all works with people supporting people and how you create extensions of your will and all that, but I, I think I’m too tired. Like I told you before, I think you found me too late. And I’m just desperate enough to throw myself at you if you’re mistaken enough to have me.”
“I didn’t find you too late, Collin. And I will still have you.”
Collin pulled his hand free so he could try to rub away his tears with both hands.
“Can I hold you, Collin?”
He nodded.
Two arms, supple and iron hard, wrapped around him, lifting him from the window seat. He grabbed on to Mr. Reevesworth’s neck, squeezing his eyes shut against the sudden sensation of being swept up. Two long steps and Mr. Reevesworth lowered them both into one of the large chairs. He turned Collin in his lap so that Collin’s head came down on his shoulder and cradled the rest of his Collin in his lap, one arm bracing Collin’s back, the other around his knees.
The man smelled good. He was all hard planes and muscles that barely gave when tightened and then softened when not engaged.
Collin squeezed his eyes shut harder and buried his face in Mr. Reevesworth’s shoulder. “I’m not a child, I shouldn’t…”
“Children only have human needs, Collin. Which means that adults are only depriving themselves of their needs when they eschew displays of support and affection that children are not too ashamed to demand.”
Collin gave in, leaning into the embrace. “I’m going to get your shirt wet.”
“That’s what laundry is for.”
Collin dared raise one arm and gripped Mr. Reevesworth tight, pressing his chest against Mr. Reevesworth’s belly and ribs. There was so much warmth and strength there. He gritted his teeth. He really was going to cry. The ice he’d tried so hard to hang on to was melting, and he didn’t have enough distance to refreeze it.
“Cry, Collin. I want you to. If you know how.”
He laughed then. Who didn’t know how to cry? But then he did cry, a rough, snorting, inelegant sound, as if he truly didn’t know how to cry. Perhaps he didn’t know how to cry after all. When was the last time he’d cried?
A wave rose up from his belly into his throat. He tightened around it. That old dreaded sensation. But his walls were down. It was coming, up his chest, burning through his lungs, tightening his throat, and punching through the barrier at the back of his throat.
And then he was in it, the place he didn’t want to be, lost. There were sounds, and he was physically struggling, trying to get away from the arms he desperately needed. Something wild and awesome was tearing out from the center of his being. He couldn’t breathe because the wave was in his sinuses, turning his air passages into a sordid road of snot. He was choking on screams. Tight heat was locking his jaw, turning his shoulders into boulders of lava, driving pain into his head. His face was wet, like he’d thrust his head into the Lake. He was drowning, but there was someone there, not letting him run but also not leaving him alone. There was a heartbeat through the storm. He pressed the seeping skin of his face against that sound.
The thing passed like a demon slipping out of his head, leaving him gasping and spent, clinging to a chest covered in a drenched shirt. His heartbeat thudded in his own ears. Too loud. Too fast. He was shaking and couldn’t stop.
A blanket, soft as kittens, wrapped around him. There were footsteps. Someone else was here. Shame burned, but exhaustion was stronger.
He drifted for a while. Then there were more sounds.
“Drink, Collin.” The lip of a bottle was pressed against his mouth.
He opened and drank. Water, cool but not cold. It spilled into all the places the terrible thing that had been inside of him had burned as it had torn itself loose from his core.
There was a damp washcloth from somewhere. He rubbed at his face.
“You’re wet.”
Mr. Moreau chuckled from somewhere behind Collin’s head. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Dinner was a quiet affair with tacos from a nearby restaurant that delivered. Collin ate curled up on the couch, blanket still tangled around his waist and Mr. Reevesworth sitting beside him. Mr. Moreau drew up the chair across the coffee table from them both. He and Mr. Reevesworth spoke in soft, slow voices about some friends of theirs, plans to visit one of their offices the next week, and whether they should order Artemis a cat tree.
Mr. Moreau was for it. Mr. Reevesworth wanted to consult an artist about sculpting a tree into the wall. A few pictures on Mr. Reevesworth’s phone showing his husband his vision had them in agreement. They would invite the artist over to look at the space and make sketches for their perusal, incorporating some of the elements Mr. Moreau had liked from the cat trees he’d selected.
His bedroom was empty in comparison. Collin sat on the edge of the mattress, looking out of the window, teeth brushed, ready for sleep yet unwilling to close his eyes.
A soft knock on the door had him turning his head. Mr. Reevesworth leaned past the doorway. “Don’t forget the bell, Collin.”
