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He doesn’t answer.
“Jonah.”
“I get it,” he groans quietly. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to be normal for a minute.” He scrambles out of the car and heads to the elevator without me.
After I’ve ironed things out with the garage, insisting that I can pay his medical bills, I follow him upstairs and stare at the closed bedroom door. Shaking out some medication and pouring a glass of water, I carry them into the dark room, all the blinds down. He’s curled up in bed with his back to the door, but I can tell from his breathing that he’s awake. His eyes follow me as I circle the bed and crouch down next to him. “I have your medicine.”
He swallows drily, pain in the tense line of his mouth. Sitting up, he reaches for the water, then pulls back with a growl of frustration. The silence sits thick and hot in the musty room as I put the medication into his mouth and tip the water to his lips. My fiercely independent boy swallows twice, then collapses back into bed, not looking at me. “I’ll buy some straws later,” I say, stroking his hair as he closes his aching eyes. “Rick said that he wants you back when you’re better. They like you a lot.” He doesn’t open his eyes or say anything, just curls deeper into himself.
Look at us both now, such a fucking mess. Like we’re being punished for wanting something we were never meant to have. Maybe my heart is falling apart because I let everyone down, Oliver and Victor and myself and Jonah. But maybe it’s because I had three words saved up like a promise, like a ring you hide in your sock drawer until the right time, and now the right time isn’t going to come because I don’t have anything to offer him, just like Colson warned me.
“Get some rest.” I kiss his ear and then walk down the block to the market, where I load up on straws and anything that looks like he can hold on to it as the swelling goes down—pastries and sandwich fixings and disgusting, frozen burrito things he’ll probably love.
After I unload everything into the cupboards, I go to the study and start researching new cases, looking for the one that’s going to redeem me from my failed attempt at redemption, a ridiculous chain of cause and effect that just might string me along for the rest of my life. I don’t snap out of it until I hear Jonah’s voice in the doorway, so quiet I almost miss it. “Gray?”
“What is it?”
He sounds hoarse and broken, voice cracking like he’s about to burst into tears. “I need to piss and I can’t get my pants off.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” I scramble around my desk. “Come here.” He shuffles after me to the half bath, his head hanging, and watches me undo his belt and pull his jeans and boxers down around his thighs. “Can you manage now?” Still not looking at me, shoulders tense, he nods.
I search the bedroom for his sweatpants, then bring them to the bathroom and kneel down to help him change, his hurt arm resting on my shoulder for support as he steps out of his jeans. “You should be able to pull these down anytime you need.”
Kissing his hip, I tuck his cock into his boxers and pull up the sweats, making sure they’re settled comfortably. “Are you hungry?”
He starts to shake his head, then nods slowly. “But I don’t want you to feed me.”
“I’m sorry.” I rest my nose against the top of his head, rub the back of his neck. “For the first few days, we don’t have a choice.”
Perched on a stool at the counter, he watches wearily as I show him everything I bought, then microwave one of the burritos. There’s no way not to make this terrible, holding it out for him with my hand cupped underneath to catch any falling rice as we sit in strained silence.
“When they were driving me to the hospital—” He clears his throat and swallows a bite, his voice thick. “I thought it was over, that my hand was gone for good.” His whole body is trembling as I wrap my arms around him, pull him so tight to my chest neither of us can breathe.
“It’s alright,” I murmur, letting him bury his face in the same spot on my neck where he cried the first time we met. Hunting for the right words, I find the lie that kept me going when I had nothing else. “Someday this will all be over and you won’t even remember how much it hurt.”
Jonah
Now I know how it feels, not being able to sleep. It’s torture, like someone took one of those contraptions they use at the dentist to hold your mouth open and put it in your brain, cranking it as wide as it will go. All I can do is lie there and think about that one terrifying moment betweenGray’s going to be so impressed that I put this transmission in myselfandOh God what have I done.
Gray’s asleep again, because apparently who needs Ambien when you can just lose your will to live? My throat is so dry I can’t even unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth and my arm throbs with a pain I can feel all the way to my toes. I can’t open a medication bottle and I don’t want to wake Gray, so I give up and sneak into the kitchen to chug water from the tap.
Remembering the cans of Pabst I stuffed in the back of the fridge, I hunt through the shelves and use my stump and my arm brace to grab one and wrestle it onto the counter. It hurts like shit to pop the tab with my fingers the size of hot dogs.
When I awkwardly try to grip the can between my arms and take a sip, I drop it on the floor, spraying beer all over the cabinets and the hardwood and my legs. I stand there for a little while, staring at the mess and wishing the bang had woken Gray up so he’d come find me and tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do. Eventually, I slide down the cabinet until I’m lying on the floor, stray drops of beer sticking to my back. Closing my eyes, I count the minutes between every time the ice machine in the fridge spits out more cubes.
Atticus Finch thought you should keep fighting, even if you were beaten before you were born, but he’s a fucking book character, and he didn’t even win in the end.
