Forgotten Luca (The Four 1)

But all I’d done was fuck things up. I’d broken him even more.

Maybe it hadn’t all been about giving him the chance to lay into me… a part of me really did need to know everything he’d been through. Yeah, he’d told me what had happened to him, but his goal had been to shock me, to stun me, to knock me off my axis that night in his apartment. And he’d done all that. But I doubted he understood that it was the little things that weighed just as heavily on me.

Like how he’d talked about the kid in the warehouse who I’d given money to. He’d said the kid could only save himself, but how many times had the same thing happened to Remy? How many times had assholes like me come along and promised to give him the safety and protection he craved? How many times had he needed someone to stand in front of him and take on his battles, even if just for a little while? He’d already had to fight so many in his young life…

It gutted me every time the “nothing can touch me anymore” mask he wore slipped just a little bit.

His fear of dogs, the little nervous gestures he seemed to unconsciously engage in, his instinctive jerking away from any kind of physical contact… they were like little knives being slid directly into my heart each time I saw them.

And that brief look of betrayal when I’d told him I was leaving the bathroom and he’d misunderstood me and believed I was leaving him again. He’d said he didn’t care, but the words were clearly his only self-defense mechanism. I’d also known he didn’t believe a word I said.

Hence my brilliant plan to let him confront me with everything. I’d thought lancing those wounds might be the start to healing them, but all I’d done was draw more blood.

“Remy—”

“What do you want, Luca?” he whispered. His face was pressed against his drawn-up knees and he had his arms wrapped around his legs. “You did it, okay? You won.”

“This wasn’t some game, Remy,” I snapped and then immediately regretted it when Remy’s whole body seemed to flinch. “Remy—”

“I kept it short because I kept getting lice, okay?” Remy yelled in frustration.

I realized he was answering my earlier question about his hair. His eyes pinned mine.

“After getting high, I’d wake up in these god-awful places and I’d be covered in fleas and roaches and shit. And my fucking head would itch so bad that I’d pick at my scalp until it bled. My skin too. I couldn’t do anything about my skin, but it was easy enough to shave my head. So there. How does that help? Am I supposed to be magically cured? Do you feel better now? Is this some come-to-Jesus moment that’s supposed to fix me?”

I didn’t have an answer for him. I didn’t have any answers at all. I’d tried to steel myself for revelations like the one he’d just told me, but there was no preparing for them. I’d forced him into opening old wounds, and I hadn’t even thought to have some fucking way to bandage them back up.

I collapsed onto my ass so I was sitting across from him because I simply didn’t have the energy to get back on my feet. My legs ended up on each side of him, but I made sure not to touch him in any kind of way. I clasped my fingers at the back of my neck and stared at the floor because I didn’t know what to do next.

So I took a page out of his book and went with brutal honesty.

“I’m terrified of what will happen to you and Violet if I let you out of my sight.”

He didn’t respond right away, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

“We’re not your responsibility.”

“You feel like it,” I said. I didn’t add that there was something else there too. Something that went beyond guilt and obligation or righting the wrong I’d done to him. I wasn’t prepared to deal with those unexpected emotions myself, so I wasn’t about to share them with him. I was physically attracted to Remy, but lust wasn’t what made it impossible for me to walk away.

“Isn’t it enough that you helped me find Violet?” Remy asked. His voice sounded a bit more even, but I couldn’t bring myself to raise my eyes to look at him. I wasn’t ready for him to see what was there. I needed more time to get my mask back in place.

“Is it enough for you that she’s safe?” I asked. I pulled in a few breaths to internally calm myself, then lifted my head. As expected, he was watching me. But gone was the emotionless young man who’d told me not to waste time trying to save kids who weren’t ready to be saved. There was no hint of the manipulative Remy who’d tried to shock me into walking away that night in his apartment when he’d told me what life after his abduction had been like. Unlike me, he didn’t seem to be trying to slip any of his masks back into place.