If you couldn’t outrun a ghost, what could you do? The time for pretending it wasn’t real seemed to have passed, because I was falling the fuck apart. When it’s clear the ghost is real, the only thing you could do was stand and face it. Pull off the sheet and call it by its name.
“My mother wasn’t deported,” I choked out. “She left me at my aunt’s and never came back. She didn’t fucking want me anymore, Rhys. Just like my father didn’t fucking want me. Neither did my aunt. And Grin ran the fuck to Florida to get away from me. All my foster families— Everyone wants to get rid of me! You’ll see. And then you’ll get rid of me too!”
I didn’t realize I was yelling in his face until Rhys winced and my words echoed in the quiet of the cottage.
I wiped the sweat off my face and realized it was tears. Rhys gaped at me.
“You … lied to me?” Rhys said. I’d never heard his voice shake like that before, and it scared me. Everything about this conversation scared me.
Rhys backed away from me, looking as hurt and lost as a little boy.
“I can’t believe you fucking lied to me about all of that,” he said. His voice was shocked and disgusted and so, so sad, and as he walked out the door, I realized that I might have miscalculated everything.
It wasn’t the ghost that was leaving. It was Rhys.
Chapter 10
Rhys didn’t come back. I sat on the couch staring out the window and waited, but the sun rose and still Rhys didn’t come home.
I checked my phone a hundred times, thinking he’d call or text. Check in. He hated to worry me. But there was nothing.
I kept getting flashes of him driving in the dark, reckless with anger and heartbreak and betrayal, and slamming into a tree. The truck a mangle of metal and fire and Rhys.
Finally, around noon, my stomach so empty I couldn’t even puke anymore, I texted Theo. I knew I had no right to text Caleb.
Is Rhys with you?
Yeah, Theo replied right away. Air slammed into my lungs so hard it made my head swim. Okay. Rhys was okay. That was something. I typed my response slowly.
Can I talk to him?
There was no response for a while, and even though I knew I was putting Theo in an awkward position, I couldn’t help myself.
I fucked up, I wrote. I really fucked up and I’m scared and rhys is so mad at me and he should be but I just need to hear his voice and I’m sorry to ask but please please can he call me.
I was sobbing and shaking and the ring of my phone made me jump. I scrambled to answer it.
“Rhys,” I choked out. “I’m sorry.”
But it wasn’t Rhys. It was Caleb.
“Matt, Rhys can’t talk to you right now.” Caleb’s voice was unspeakably calm. I tried to hold my breath so he couldn’t hear me crying, but the sounds still leaked out.
“Is he okay?”
Caleb sighed. “He’s safe. We’ll take care of him.”
But I was supposed to take care of Rhys. It had been what I was trying to do. And I had utterly failed at it.
“Is he c-coming home?” It came out as a sob, and I heard people talking in the background. Rhys and Theo, it had to be.
“Matty, listen,” Caleb said. He sounded pained. “You need to give Rhys some space right now, okay? He’s here; he’s safe. He’ll call you when he’s ready to talk. Okay?”
I felt like I was dissolving.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
I cried until I physically couldn’t cry anymore, my eyes swollen and gritty, my throat raw. I didn’t think I’d ever cried like that in my life. There was a purity to the pain I felt. A violent, uncomplicated clarity that came from knowing exactly who was to blame—me—and exactly what I might have lost—Rhys.
All other pain felt twisted and complicated and numbing in comparison; everything else I’d lost more shameful and less avoidable.
But there was no comfort in the clarity, only the hollowness that comes from emotional exhaustion.
When I couldn’t sit still any longer, I prowled around the house, cleaning everything. When there was nothing left to clean, I wandered from room to room the way I had when Rhys was on tour. The emptiness had a different quality to it now.
When the light began to change and Rhys still hadn’t called, I had to leave. I couldn’t stay in the house for one more second, and I couldn’t bear to let the sun set on it. I did the only thing I could think to do. I walked to the train station and went back to the city that had once been all I knew.
* * *
—
I didn’t know where I was and then I did.