What You Own Read online

  I didn’t hear the applause. Couldn’t hear anything over my thundering heartbeat and the blood rushing in my ears. For a song that was a rock ballad rather than a love anthem, I’d felt it from head to toe. It loosened my twisted-up heart. Made me hopeful about talking with Adam later.

  Someone planted me in a plastic chair—thank you, Ellie—and handed me a bottle of water. I sipped at it, aware of Adam standing close by, rocking on his heels, hands deep in the pockets of his khaki shorts. Other people sang. They got feedback. I tried to talk to some of the teenagers who’d hung around for the adult portion. Everything was by remote.

  The rehearsal finally wound down. I’d lost sight of Adam. He texted that he was in the break room, waiting. I went to him, feeling each heavy step, pulled forward by an invisible chord that had bound us for years. I shut the door behind me and faced him, nervous as a whore in church. He stood near the room’s small window, arms folded over his chest, looking out. Away from me. His profile was beautiful, so perfect.

  Mine.

  “I love you,” I said. I didn’t plan it. The words fell out all honest and open, and I let them lay there to be picked up or trod on.

  Adam’s face pinched up like he was gonna cry. “I love you too, Rye, so fucking much.”

  “I felt like Roger up there just now. I felt it all in that song, in the words and music. I know it won’t be easy, but I need you.”

  He angled toward me, his pretty blue eyes bright with tears. I stayed put, too scared of those tears to try and comfort him. “Joe knows.”

  My world narrowed in on his face and those two little words. “Joe Quartermaine?”

  “Yes. He knew from the start that you were on the committee. Neither of us told my dad. Joe’s known me my whole life. He knows I wasn’t catting around, sleeping with different girls every night. He knows it’s you.”

  The awful black splotch got bigger, pressing my heart into my ribcage. “And?”

  “He promised to keep our secret for now. He says Dad’s scared of me getting hurt again.”

  “And hiding who you are doesn’t hurt you?” The words felt raw in my throat. It didn’t make any sense.

  “Physically, Rye. Hurt physically. I was bashed once before I came out to anyone, even myself. Dad sat by me while I was in a coma, and he watched me struggle to get back from that. He may be a jerk and a bigot, but he does love me.”

  “I love you, Adam. I do. I know you got hurt back then, and I can’t promise either one of us will never get hurt again. But I can promise that I won’t hurt you. I will never turn my back on you for being who you are. Can your daddy say the same thing?”

  “He knows you’re on the committee.”

  My hands jerked, and I took a step back, my heel hitting the leg of a chair. “He knows?” I glanced around the room, half expecting to see him standing next to the antique microwave, ready to threaten me for sleeping with his son.

  “He was home Wednesday night when I got there. I had to lie to him, and I hated it. I hated how easy it was.”

  “What did you lie to him about?”

  “I told him you hated us both, that you refused to talk to me about the bashing, and that we barely tolerate each other.” His voice cracked a little, like repeating the words physically hurt him. “He believed me.”

  “So he doesn’t know we’re together?”

  “Hell no. He’s proud of me for sticking through it to the end and making sure the fundraiser is successful, despite you being around.”

  “Then what is all this, Adam? He doesn’t know, Mr. Quartermaine isn’t sayin’ anything. Why are you so tied up in knots?”

  Adam balked, and I felt about as smart as a screen door on a submarine. “I had to deny you, Rye, right to his face. I had to make you look awful, and me look like a martyr, and it was disgusting. I never wanted to have to deny you, never. It was part of the fucking plan!”

  He spun around to face the window, hands tight on the sill, shoulders shaking. Something bad was about to happen, and I was as helpless to stop it as an umbrella in a hurricane. He didn’t like lying, okay, but lying saved us both. Gave us more time. I made a helpless noise, because I didn’t have any words.

  “The plan was so fucking simple,” Adam said to the window. “Four years. Graduate. Get my inheritance, move away from home, and then find you. Even if you slammed the door in my face, I was going to find you and apologize. And if you took me back, I’d have screamed to my father and the world that I was gay, and that I was yours. I was never going to have to look someone in the eye and deny you. Deny what you mean to me. Deny that you’ve been the most important person in my life since I was fourteen.”

  Oh. Oh!

  I got it. I hoped. “Plans change, babe. They change, so you adapt. What if somebody else walked into LQF that day, and you decided the center wasn’t worth your time? What if you stuck to your plan and another year down the road you did find me? And what if I did slam the door in your face?”

  “And what if you let me in?”

  “Point is, we can’t know that your plan would’ve ended like we are now, which is together. Your plan might’ve ended with us apart forever. I’d still be miserable, and you’d be all alone with your inheritance.”

  “But I wouldn’t have to lie or deny you, or deny who I am.”

  “So stop denying it.” Even as I said it, I knew they were the wrong words. Coming out and claiming me as his boyfriend wasn’t as simple for Adam as I wanted it to be, and we both knew it.

  “I could stop denying it.” Adam sounded cold, furious even, and it didn’t jibe with his words. “Make it so I didn’t have to lie to anyone about us being together.”

  Once again, I felt sure I was missing something important. It sounded like he was agreeing with me, only not. All I wanted was for him to make a decision and untwist the knots he’d tied himself up in over us. “You know I’ve got your back.”

  He looked at me over his shoulder, blinking hard through a lot of tears I didn’t like seeing. “No matter what?”

  “No matter what.” I crossed half the distance between us and stopped, needing him to crush the rest of the distance himself. “What do you need from me? Name it.”

  “Ten months.”

  “What?” Was that code? Had I forgotten a double meaning?

  He turned his body toward me, but stayed crowded near the window. Small, miserable, and that dark splotch pressing against my heart rose up and swallowed it whole. “Wait for me, Ryan, for ten months until I graduate, and then nothing is between us and the future.”

  “There’s nothing between us and the future right now!” That dark splotch hardened into rage, and I didn’t care that he was flinching back from me.

  “I can’t keep lying, Ryan.”

  “So don’t lie anymore. Find your balls and come out!”

  “You know why I can’t do that.”

  “Yeah, because you don’t know how to make it without Daddy’s money buying your way, I get it. I knew you could be selfish, but fuck, Adam.”

  “I’m being selfish? I’m asking for less than a year.”

  “A year of what? Pretending we don’t love each other? A phone call once a week? Texts only? A year of what?”

  “I couldn’t have one text without wanting two, you know that. I’m addicted to you, Ryan, and I couldn’t have reminders around.”

  He might as well have punched me in the balls. “You’re saying no contact? For ten months?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Now who’s being selfish?”

  Oh fuck him for that and everything else his daddy put my family through. “You’ve been selfish about us since I came out, and you turned your back on me. It’s always been about you. Those assholes who bashed us getting off with probation was about you. Well, I get to be selfish about this.”

  “Ryan—”

  “Sometimes I think I need you just to breathe, and you want me to hold my breath for ten months? I can’t do it. I w
on’t.” My eyes burned. I wouldn’t cry in front of him again, not about this. Could not let him see how much this hurt.

  We stood there, on opposite sides of an invisible chasm that neither of us was willing to jump over. Living without him for almost a year, no contact, no idea if he was happy or sad or fucking someone else, or if he’d even come back to me once he graduated—no. My anxiety would explode, turn me inside out, make me miserable and paranoid. If I was being selfish about not giving in to ten months apart, then so be it. Slap the words on my forehead and I’d wear them proudly.

  I’d rather be selfish than a coward.

  “So what do we do now?” Adam asked.

  “The way I see it, one of two things. We stay together, same plan as before, with me givin’ you until the fundraiser to make up your mind about us. It means you keep lyin’ until you’re ready to tell the truth.”

  “Or?”

  I had to shove the words past my lips, and they hurt. Hurt so bad. “We break up. For good this time. I won’t do ten months. You don’t want us together? Then it’s for real and final. We do the fundraiser, and then you’re out of my life, done and over. I can’t half-ass it. I need all or nothin’.”

  Adam’s whole body trembled, and I had to order myself to not go to him, to hold him, when he was doing this to us both. Razor wire replaced my muscles, acid my blood. My whole body hurt because his silence was his answer. He didn’t have to say it. I let the darkness take over and hug me tight.

  Dark. Gravel. Laughter.

  Panic fluttered beneath my breastbone. I squashed it down. Tried to wet my lips with a dry tongue. Had to get this out. Make it real for us both.

  “Adam, if I walk out this door, it’s for real. We see each other for the fundraiser rehearsals, for the show, and then after next week, we’re done.”

  “Ryan, please.” He moved forward.

  I put a hand up, palm out. “Don’t. I didn’t have a choice last time, not about any of it. Your daddy made those choices for us. And maybe this is the worst mistake of my life, but at least I’m makin’ the choice.”

  “I love you. Do you hear me saying that?”

  “I hear it.” I swallowed hard, sure I was about to shatter into a thousand shards of glass. “I hear it, but I don’t see it.”

  Adam made a desperate, stricken noise like a puppy caught in a wire fence.

  “I’ll see you at the tech rehearsal,” I said.

  I walked out slow, giving him time to call out. To grab my arm. To do anything to stop me from walking away from our relationship.

  He didn’t.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Adam

  I don’t know how I managed to drive home without crashing my car. Everything from the moment Ryan walked away from me was a blur of grief and disbelief. Actions occurred on rote memory and nothing more. I climbed into my car. I started the engine. I drove the correct route and didn’t run any red lights. I parked in the garage next to my father’s empty space and marveled at how I’d arrived.

  Ryan dumped me.

  Or had I dumped him? The entire conversation was jumbled in my head, as though I’d had it years ago and was just now trying to remember who said what. I truly hadn’t thought that asking him to wait would drive him away. I thought we were stronger than that.

  You deserve it.

  Maybe I did deserve to be dumped on my ass. I’d pursued Ryan. I’d forced him to talk about the bashing. I’d wedged myself back into his life without really considering what would happen if I couldn’t pick him. I hadn’t wanted to entertain the idea of a future without him, even though that had been inevitable from the moment my plan changed. And now I was living with the consequences.

  I am such an asshole.

  I clasped my hands on the steering wheel and leaned forward, resting my forehead against my knuckles. I’d destroyed the best thing in my life because I was a coward. Ryan wasn’t wrong when he said I didn’t know how to live without my father’s money. Trying to finish school without financial support terrified me. I didn’t know how to stand on my own two feet. I’d never tried.

  Letting Dad decide had always been easiest. It hadn’t been so bad in high school, but after I came out of my coma, I gave up running my own life…

  …Pain breaks through the darkness first. Not sharp pain. A deep throb all over. It weighs me down, makes it impossible to move. I flee from the throb, into the dark, but it follows me. Maybe light will chase it away.

  Opening my eyes the first time takes so much effort. The throbbing gets worse, centered in my skull. My eyeballs want to explode. My mouth is dry, chalky. It’s all a blur of light and dark, colors and gray. Blinking hurts.

  “Adam? Son? Can you hear me?”

  Dad. I try to reply. Nothing comes out.

  “It’s okay, don’t talk. You’re awake, that’s what matters.”

  Something else matters, only I can’t remember what. I don’t know where I am or why. The tan blur hovering in front of me focuses briefly. Dad’s face. He’s smiling and crying, and that doesn’t make sense.

  “Adam, the doctor is coming. Can you stay awake until he gets here?”

  I try but it’s too hard, and I slip back into the throbbing darkness.

  Dad’s still there when I force my eyes open again. The throb has dulled a little, and I get him focused faster. Something wet cools my tongue and throat. A man in a white coat comes and shines a light in my eyes, and I want to curse at him for that, but talking hurts. I gurgle something nonsensical instead.

  “Adam, I’m Dr. Cornwell,” the light-flashing bastard says. “I know talking is difficult. You’ve had a tube in your throat for three days. I’m going to ask a few questions. I want you to blink hard, once for yes and twice for no. Okay?”

  Okay, I can do this. I blink once.

  “Good. Do you know where you are?”

  Twice.

  “You’re at County Hospital. Three nights ago, you and another boy were attacked and beaten up. Do you remember that?”

  Twice. Panic flutters in my chest. Why was I beaten up? Who else was with me? Was he okay? I look at Dad, but he’s staring above me. Angry.

  “Adam, during the fight you were hit in the head with a piece of brick, and you suffered a minor skull fracture. Your left arm is also broken, and you have a few other bumps and bruises.”

  I try to look at my arm, which is immobile against my chest. I don’t understand any of this. Skull fracture. The words echo in my mind, horrifying. Is this why everything hurts, and I can’t remember?

  “Memory loss isn’t uncommon with injuries such as yours. It’s possible that it’s only temporary, but we’ll know more when we’re able to talk about it.”

  I blink once. I have so many questions bubbling to the surface. Something keeps tapping at the corner of my mind, reminding me it’s there, but I can’t see it. Don’t know what it is, or what it means. I swallow against fire and try to make a word. One word.

  “Who?” I rasp out.

  “Who did this to you?” Dr. Cornwell asks.

  Blink twice.

  “He should rest,” Dad says.

  I blink twice again. I don’t want to sleep, I want to know who. Who what, I’m not sure. And then it hits me. Who was the other boy? Who was with me when I was beaten up and got my skull cracked? “Who?”

  Dad pulls the doctor to the side, and I can’t hear them. Can’t get their attention, and then I drift back into darkness.

  When I wake up again, my throat feels better. My room’s empty. I feel around with my right hand for the call button. The curtain moves, and Lucinda bustles inside. She sees me. Grins.

  “Hello there, mijo,” she says. “How about some ice?”

  Ice sounds good. I nod, which doesn’t hurt my head as much as I expect. The ice helps. I cough a little before finding my voice. “Dad’s here?”

  “I think your father is speaking with his lawyer, but he’ll be back soon.”

  Lawyer? Oh wait. The fight. Is this a crimi
nal case now? Do they know who hurt me and the other guy? “The other one,” I say. “Who is he?”

  She cocks her head, thinking. “The other… oh, the other boy who came in with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was discharged a few days ago. A broken wrist and a lot of bruises. He was lucky compared you, mijo.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Lucinda’s eyes go soft, sad. “Ryan Sanders.”

  Everything blurs. The name echoes in my head like a gong, carrying a shock unlike anything I’ve ever felt. Ryan is hurt. Ryan has a broken wrist. Why was I with Ryan? Why were we beaten up? A noise of pure distress rips free of my throat, and she jumps.

  She takes my right hand and caresses it, trying to be kind. “He’s all right. You’re both all right now.”

  I haven’t spoken to Ryan in forever. Dad forbid it, and God help me, I went along with it. I turned my back on my best friend. On the better part of myself—a part I feel missing, even now, on my back in a hospital bed.

  We were together. Did I go to him, or did he come to me? Where did this happen? So many questions.

  The biggest question of all: has he come to see me yet?

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “I don’t know the details, mijo. I’m certain your father or one of the police detectives will fill you in.”

  Police detectives. It sounds so ominous put like that.

  Dad comes into my cubicle. He smiles at me widely, happy like I’ve never seen before, maybe because I’m so aware. Aware enough to get answers this time, damn it. “Where’s Ryan?” I ask.

  His smile disappears. So does Lucinda, and I want her to come back. She’s always been on my side, and I need her here. “Probably at home with his parents. Why?”

  “He was with me? He got beat up too?”

  Dad steps closer, his face shuttering off like it does when he’s playing cool, sizing up a new client. “Yes, Ryan was there. He’s the reason you were hurt.”

  That makes no sense. I’ve never seen Ryan throw a punch at anyone. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “Maybe not directly, Adam, but you were targeted because you were with him. What were you doing with him when I expressly forbid you from seeing him? I knew something like this would happen.”