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

by Jessie Walker

“That book made me sob like a baby.”

Something splinters in my chest at that, something I didn’t know could break…

Like wishes into a desolate sky—glancing whispers you can’t be sure were even uttered to begin with.

I feel the hollowness left behind like it’s a living thing, creeping its way up my limbs, and settling where my heart once was. It’s familiar and strange all at once, but rather than fight it, I let it welcome me in its cold embrace.

He sees me, and the hope in his eyes he’d been so scared of feeling dims when he realizes I’m not there to set him free from the dark.

“You couldn’t stop what was happening when you were a kid, so this is your way of taking the reins. Controlling what you can before it controls you.”

Just a box of parts to put together with no instruction manual.

“Nurture might be the thing that makes or breaks us, but just because we break, doesn’t mean we stay broken,”

The drugs that make the lows feel a little less low.

There’s something terrifyingly lonely about sacrificing what’s gotten you through the hardest moments of your life. Something painfully bleak. Like reaching for a friend who no longer wants anything to do with you.

He releases a short sigh. “Isn’t it obvious?” He cocks his head. “He wasn’t just terrified I’d hurt him for it, Will…” My vision blurs. “...he was terrified I’d hurt you.”

He can’t stand to be touched, but it doesn’t mean he likes this fact. That he isn’t trying. That he isn’t lonely, and starved for some sort of affection. Connection.

Maybe that’s why I held on so tight when I knew we weren’t going anywhere.

Where grief would rather have us cower, submit to its whims, and give up—we fucking spit in its face. Life is for the living, motherfucker.

All I feel is the boy in my arms—my boy. My guy. My man. The one who’s been there all along, waiting for me—and all I can do is pray that I’m not too late. Please, please, please don’t let me be too late.

“Well too fucking bad,” I murmur. “You are loved. And I’m not better off without you.” He sucks in a shaky breath. Slowly, I take a step back, then another. His shirt pulling until I have no choice but to let go. “And I’d rather feel this burden of knowing and loving you than go even a second without you existing somewhere on this planet.”

“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.”

“Please just let me be the one to walk away for once. Please let me try to let you go.”

“You’re so fucking gorgeous, City Boy. Sorry it took me so long to tell you.”

“Just keep your heart beating for me, okay?”

If this last month taught me anything, it’s that healing is about more than letting go. You can’t fall forever and expect to never land. Eventually you’ll have to learn how to make peace with the ground. Find your legs and keep on keepin’ on.

“How do you ever expect the world to get better as a whole, if we just…“—I wave a hand—“hide away and write places like this off? What about the people here? The kids here, the ones who don’t know any fucking different,” I exclaim, my voice growing more and more heated with each word. “What about them?”

But grief isn’t a fever, is it? That was just one of those silly, nonsensical things parents tell their kids when they don’t know how else to help them. When their kids are still too young for the truth, and you want to keep them innocent just a little longer. It might get easier to withstand over time, but that pain? That soul-deep loss that can never be un-lost? It’s forever. It will fade to the background over time, sure. Become a little less raw, a little less tender to the touch… And then someone or something will come along and bump it just right, reminding you it’s still there. Reminding you that it will always be there.

Does he look back on the trajectory of our lives, and try to pinpoint the moment that would one day lead us here? The defining moment that would alter our paths irrevocably, interweaving our fates so deeply that it feels like if we let this go, we’d never be whole again?

I’ll do whatever it takes to prove I’m not going anywhere. Prove he’s not a whim or a fix or any-fucking-thing else in between. He’s the beat of my fucking heart. And that? That’s everything.

What use are defenses now anyway? What use is my flimsy guard in the face of someone who’s always seen beyond the mask?

“That’s my burden, okay?” Exhaustion weighs down every word. “My burden is loving you, but not letting myself have you, because I’m fucking petrified nothing will ever be enough to keep you. And I can’t live with that. I literally cannot live with the idea of losing you, Waylon. So there you fucking have it. I’m not just scared, I’m petrified. Happy?”

“You didn’t make anything worse, Will,” I tell him after a long, quiet moment. “You woke me up, that’s all. You brought me back to life.”

“You make me want to hang on and fight. You make me believe I stand a chance. You. No one else. You.”

“Every time I look at you, I’m ruined.”

“All there’s left in me is… is you, and I don’t even know if that makes sense. But it’s you. It’s always been you.”

A cage where a little boy remained a prisoner for so long that he forgot what it meant to be free. What it felt like to stand in the light.

“Hell, I’ve loved you,” I go on deeply, my voice bottoming out with a grave sort of certainty, “in some capacity, for what feels like my entire life. Before I even knew what love was, I’ve been loving you.” I choke out a watery laugh as I stroke his cool cheeks with my thumbs. “Do you really think I could stop, even if I tried? God, I’ve wanted you in my life since the second you first glared at me and gave me some bullshit about how boys can’t cry.”

“I can’t fight this any more than you can run from it,”

How else can he learn to overcome shame, other than not be fucking shamed for it?

“One day, I’m gonna hold your hand in public, and not feel like I’m dying when I do it.”

“It’s not your job to love who brought you into this world unconditionally. It’s the other way around. You don’t owe me anything.”

But here’s the thing—you can’t really run from something. Not without running toward something.

“I’d rather give every little piece of myself to you,” he goes on roughly, “than wonder what could have been because society says it’s wrong. Too much. Toxic.”

Days that felt like years creeping by at a snail’s pace as I waited for shit to get better again.