Use Me (Caldwell Brothers)

I feel like I am seventeen all over again. This time, however, it isn’t cameras in my face and reporters rapid firing their questions at me.

I remember the first picture I saw of myself after the arrest. It was one of me being taken out of my house in cuffs. I remember the fucking deer-in-the- headlight look on a boy, even then built like a man, when those fucking cameras started flashing. I remember crying like a little bitch in the back of the cop car when I saw the coroner wheeling my sister out on a stretcher and loading her, not in the ambulance, but the coroner’s vehicle. I also remember swearing that no one, not a single soul, would ever see me like that again.

Saint Michael the monster became the headlines, and all the hell that came with it. All of it lies.

I waited for God to step in, but He must have been busy. I waited for the nun’s prayers to reach Heaven itself, but they must have been intercepted or delivered to Hell, instead. Then I waited for Karma. She came in the wrong direction, wiping out the rest of my family, taking my father. Then I waited for death, but he never came.

I’m a man of my word. I gave her my word when I agreed she could use me. I made a promise to breathe again. It hurts so badly. I want to break my promise, but I am not that man. I promised to love again.

I haven’t stopped and love... Love is probably going to be the death of me.

Chapter Twenty - Seven

One Week Later...

Today is five weeks since I last saw the man who breathed life back into my lungs and filled my heart with what I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is love.

I lie on my bed in my New York apartment, looking around. I am home, but I don’t feel like I belong anymore. I left a piece of myself in Detroit.

Wasn’t that the plan? Go to Detroit, fall in love with the city, and wallow in what could have been? If I am honest with myself, that’s what I was doing until Melanie, until romance, and most importantly, until Angelo.

I’m a mess. I have been since I returned. I miss him. I miss the man, the mystery he was, and the muse he came to be. Mostly, it’s the man I miss.

Angelo is not the monster he was painted to be. He was a brother who loved his sister. He was a young man who believed in family. He took a life, but in reaction to feeling helpless. He had to defend himself and his sister. There wasn’t a plan; no malicious intent. In fact, in all the time I spent with Angelo and the things I learned about him, there isn’t a single ounce of ugly inside of him. He is caring, loyal, and giving. He is strong, understanding, and kind.

He is in pain.

I hold on to the hope that, even though our time together was short, he somehow found even a single moment of reprieve in the anguish he lives. For our time together, I can only wish he had his own moment to breathe again.

My bedroom is littered with cardboard coffee cups from the Starbucks and piles of printed manuscripts with edits. His words and mine.

Jonathon and Annie got the typical happily ever after that is expected in the traditional romance world. The novel, Breathe Again, is eighty thousand words of romance at its best. The story is compelling, relatable, the characters are ones the readers can sympathize with and are larger than life.

I had sent Melanie a few chapters at a time while I was in Detroit, and she has been working on the edits as she gets them.

I pushed hard to surpass the typical six-month stale hold that it takes to get a book out and won. Breathe Again is set to publish in a month. Three months is nearly unheard of in this world, but luckily, I have a Melanie who is begging for more from me, but I refuse to give her more unless this does well.

It better do well. Not because of the money or Melanie’s job, but because of the sacrifices to my heart. I feel like I sold my soul for this book.

I have been invested in my work before. Stories, words, they are life to my soul. Breathe Again is my healing, my breaking, and my future all in one.

I sit up and throw the bound manuscript to the floor and hug my knees as I start to shake, silently sobbing and trying to physically hold myself together.

I wasn’t supposed to fall in love. How the hell did it happen?

Tears fall and my chest tightens to the point of physical pain. I know what this is. It’s the same way I felt after I lost Gregory. My heart is breaking.