Page 79 of Boneyard HEA

He shakes his head and holds my hand some more.

It’s curious, but I think Aaron…Mr. Loxland—not sure what to call him now. I think he’s suffering more than I do. I can block out all the shit they’ve done to me, half the time. I fuel myself with fantasies of killing them. But him, he’s trying hard to care, to protect, when he can do very little, and since he isn’t being damaged, I think it’s eating him up inside.

Mister Tough-stern-and-mean, has more good in him than I expected. Perhaps more than he thought he had? It comes to me that I should be taking care of him. The distraction might help me too.

In some ways, I’m stronger than he is. He’s wasting away. Maybe that’s because he needs to be the one in control. Me, I simply plan to survive to bite them where it hurts.

They’ve only been sticking their dicks in me, laughing, calling me names. They’re like schoolboys with a frog they are torturing. That, I can bear. I refuse to see that as horrifying or them as people I should heed. The physical damage, though, the beatings and floggings, the electric torture, that tunnels into my psyche, my nerve endings, my brain, and that’s harder to ignore.

And that they may amputate bits of me. I shudder, grimace. Schoolboys who are fucking around with fire, that’s them. They’re not worth spit.

Blood, the stump of a finger, a girl hanging from a hook and spinning, slowly.

Om mani padme hum. Breathe.

I play with Aaron’s hand and the warmth, the tactile sensations, settle me as per usual. My prescription of Aaron.

“Thank you for this.” I nod at our hands.

“Easiest medicine ever.”

“Oh.” I smile, after a few seconds. A wan smile but it’s there.

He smiles back, though I can see the cracks in that, in his eyes, the way his throat bobs as he swallows, how he looks at my arms. “We’ll get through this.”

“Have you thought about why Tomás did what he did?” I ask.

“As in why he tried to shoot me in the head?”

“Yes.”

“Not much. I won’t dwell on that. It is what it is.”

“Uh-huh.” Maybe I’m bad at this therapy stuff. I told myself to care for him. I may as well keep going now that I’ve begun.

“What if he had a reason to think that gun wouldn’t kill you?”

“Like?” His mouth curves downward, and he frowns, shakes his head.

“Can’t you put your finger on parts and stop the mechanism sliding, so it doesn’t fire?”

“Where did you get that from? And no, I doubt it. It would still fire the one round. I heard the clicks anyway.”

“It was in James Bond or one of the books I read.”

“You and your books. Sure it wasn’t John Wick?”

I shrug. “Books are good. You’re the one trying to do that trick where they get their cuffed hands from behind them to the front.”

“That’s gymnastics and stretching, and it’s possible.”

“You’d need to be Elastic Man. What if Tomás figured they’d never want to kill you. There are lots of possibilities.”

“Look, he was a friend, or I thought he was, but right now⁠—”

“We both need hope.” That shuts him up. “Think. Don’t just assume he will abandon us.”

“It’s false hope.”