If There's a Way (Lost Boys #2)

by Jessie Walker

“Nurture might be the thing that makes or breaks us, but just because we break, doesn’t mean we stay broken,” she tells me. “I’ve worked with dozens of cases similar to yours, and while I can’t say that everyone found their happy ending, I can tell you that it had nothing to do with what they’ve been through. It wasn’t the trauma that determined the outcome.” I frown, not sure what she means. She gives me a gentle smile. “Resilience, Waylon. It’s resilience. The drive to stand back up, even when the world would rather have you on your knees.”

Lyrics and melodies flowing off my tongue, my fingertips, beating through my heart like I was nothing more than a vessel to be used by whatever muse or god was steering me.

“You’re a ticking time bomb,” I hear myself say, my voice distant even to my own ears. “One that just keeps fucking rebuilding itself after every explosion, over and over and over again. But I don’t. I don’t rebuild. I don’t heal. I just keep taking it. But I can’t anymore. There’s not enough left of me to take any more shrapnel and walk out alive.”

“And you miss Grandpa,” I say, hiccupping. “I do. Very much so.” She tips my chin up with her fingers so she can meet my gaze. “But you guys have made the wait to see him again far, far better than I could’ve ever hoped for.”

He stills as I slowly, gently cup his injured jaw like it’s something precious. And it is, isn’t it? Precious. Sacred. He’s sacred. To me. Always has been. Since I was ten fucking years old. Every fucking part of him is sacred to every fucking part of me.

“I told you the other morning. I’m not you. I can’t⁠—” “No, you’re not,” I say, breathing harshly. “And thank fucking God for small mercies. I can barely stand myself enough on a good day.” He gives me an unimpressed look. “But you know what? You know what I’ve realized?” I go on, not tearing my gaze off his. “What?” “I like myself a whole lot better when I’m with you.”

I’m shaking and I’m exhausted and there’s a goddamn sun in my chest where my heart should be, burning its way through the shadows and shackles, until there’s nothing left but ash where there was once a cage and impenetrable darkness.

But I don’t look away. I don’t back down. I’ll never hide again. Never, never, never. Because I’m staring into the abyss and the abyss is staring back at me and it’s looking at me like I am the goddamn sun. He’s looking at me like I’m the goddamn sun.

Hope’s a noose around my throat, and fuck if I’d never been so ready to⁠— Okay, bad fucking analogy.

After all, the real monsters are just humans who forgot how to be good. Humans who turned away from the light.

“You’re a good kid. But that boy—wherever you’re hiding him right now—he’s my entire world.” His eyes glitter with something like amusement, but there’s also an edge there that tells me he’s also being dead serious. “You get me?” I chew on my lip, fighting a smile. He looks heavenward like he’s praying for patience. “This is supposed to be a threat, kid. Can you at least pretend you’re quakin’ in your boots?” I grin. “I’m not wearing boots.”

Still, it’s one thing to create art. But it’s another to make people feel your art.

No one loses when the only objective is to out-love the other.