Page 91 of Because I Liked A Boy
It was not true, but it was all I had.
Outside, taxis idled under a low, gray sky. Jet fuel. Damp concrete. The stinkof home that was not home.
I was back on his ground. It did not feel like a return. It felt like a battlefield.
The cab pulled away and left me at the gates with a battered suitcase and a ridiculous, oversized bunny wedged on top. Hunter’s bunny. The one he had shoved into my arms with a grin. Now it felt like a weight I could not put down.
Gravel crunched under my wheels. The cemetery stretched in rows, stone biting up through winter grass. The air smelled like wet earth and rot.
Nathan Ashbourne.
The letters were clean and merciless.
My knees hit mud. Cold bit through denim. I reached for the stone and traced the grooves of his name with shaking fingers.
“Hey, Nate.” My voice was a splinter. “I am sorry it took me so long.”
Silence pressed back. Heavy. Punishing.
“I should have come months ago,” I kept going, because stopping would crush me. “I ran. I told myself distance would help. It did not.”
Wind rattled the branches overhead.
“I miss you,” I whispered. “You were the only one who ever really saw me. You are gone and he still wins. He walks free while you are under stone.”
The crash hit me again. The blood. The terrible, ringing quiet after. “I should have stopped you. I should have been better. I should have protected you. Ilet my anger blind me and now you are gone.”
The name blurred. My palm flattened over the marble.
“I tried again with Hunter,” I said. “I let someone in. I thought maybe I could have something different. He lied. He worked for him. It was a job. All of it.”
A breath tore out of me. “I am tired of being used. Of opening my hands and getting cut every time.”
The bunny’s pink bow peeked from the suitcase. A stupid ribbon in a gray world. I let out a broken laugh. “He won this for me. Carried it like proof. It was never proof. Not like you were. Not like us.”
I bowed my head to the stone. “I cannot save you,” I said. “But I can save her.” Penny’s name throbbed behind my ribs. “He will not break her the way he broke us. I swear it. I will burn every inch of what he built before I let that happen.”
Wind cut colder. For a heartbeat I pretended it was you, telling me you heard me.
“I love you,” I said. “Always.” I pressed a kiss to the marble. “Goodbye, for now.”
I stood on unsteady legs and wiped my face with my sleeve. The suitcase handle felt heavier when I gripped it. The bunny slumped to the side as if even it understood what I was walking toward.
Outside the gates, I called a cab. When the operator picked up, my voice rasped.
“Pickup at Highgate Cemetery. Kensington,off Cromwell Road.”
“Ten minutes.”
I hung up and hugged the stupid bunny to my chest. Cars hissed by on wet tarmac. The skyline sat in mist. This city was mine and not mine. Full of ghosts. Full of him. I was not here for me.
I was here for her.
Headlights cut through the gray. I climbed in and did not look back.
By the time I stepped out again, my body was running on fumes. Exhaustion pressed at my skull. London’s weight was a hand on the back of my neck.
The street was quiet. One porch light glowed. Seven months since I had last stood here. Poker nights. Beers in the garden. Before we learned how little say we had in our lives.
