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Authors: Kade Boehme,Allison Cassatta

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BOOK: We Found Love
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The car jerked and swayed, engine roaring. Riley clenched his eyes, fisted his fingers in his lap, fighting with everything he had to curl into himself, because that’s how he’d survived with John and Mimi. Every time they’d fought and turned their anger on him, he would curl into a ball in the deepest, darkest corner of the house. The walls and the shadows kept him safe. John never found him. John’s leather belt never broke his skin.

“I wanna go home,” Riley said. Those were the first words he’d managed, and they were harsh and broken, quivering and raspy. Tears settled in the back of his throat, stealing his voice. They welled in his eyes, and he did his best not to let them break free because John always spanked him when he cried. John didn’t like little boys who cried.

“Your mommy and daddy are meeting us at the hospital, Riley,” the woman’s voice soothed. There was a warmth, genuine care that had been missing from Mimi’s voice. “We just need to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m okay. I want my mommy and daddy!”

“I promise, you’ll be with them soon.”

She lied.

They arrived at the hospital, and as soon as the car door was opened, explosions of white light erupted all around them. Voices yelled in his direction. Riley wanted to dive back in the car and lock the doors. It was quiet there, dark and quiet and safe.

Someone tightened the blanket around him, wrenching him up from his feet. A violent wave of fear surged through him. He flailed, kicking his feet and swinging his arms. Everything inside him screamed to get away from those voices and those lights and escape whoever had their arms around him. He didn’t want to be taken again. He wanted his mommy and daddy!

“Let me go!” He screamed until his vocal cords felt shredded and something metallic gathered in his throat. He screamed and flailed, and the thumping in his ears got worse. The world got darker. His tears burned hotter.

“Let me go,” he yelled one more time, and then everything stopped.

The people disappeared and the noise went silent, like pin-drop silent. Whoever had their arms around him let go of him like he’d asked. And Riley felt like he was falling backward, down into a tunnel, down into dark loneliness. It felt like being in that house again—alone in the basement, locked away for being a bad child. It didn’t matter how hard he cried or how much he screamed, they never came running to see if he was okay. They never tried to soothe his fears.

“Help me!”

Riley bolted straight up in the bed. He woke himself up screaming, and through the fog of his mind he saw a woman sitting in the corner of his room. She felt familiar to him. Like home. But not. Her eyes widened, and she started to stand, freezing with her knees bent and her butt lifted from the seat when the people in white coats rushed into his room. They all lunged at Riley, jumping at him like fleas on a dog. One person held down his legs. One held down his shoulders. Another one came at him with a bright white light, shining it directly in his eyeballs.

What are they doing?

Why are they doing this?

“Nooooo!” he screamed so hard his throat tasted metallic, and his voice went raspy somewhere around the third
O
.

The man with the light looked back to the woman in the corner. Riley recognized her then. She was Mommy.

“Help me,” he begged one more time, reaching his arm out to her despite the men holding his shoulders and legs. He just wanted to get to her, to go home and be safe with her. That’s what he’d been waiting on all this time, what John and Mimi had promised him, that his mom and dad were coming for him soon. He only had to be a good boy, and they would come back.

Had he not been good enough? All those times he made John yell and Mimi cry, did that chase his real mom and dad away? Had he messed up?

The woman in the corner nodded, tears rolling down her face. He caught the glisten in the light hanging over her head. He didn’t know why she was nodding. He never asked any questions, not out loud, not for her to answer. Then she mouthed the words
I’m sorry
and
I love you
. Then the man with the light turned back, needle in his hand. His eyes locked with Riley’s. Then he felt the pinch of his skin.

The sound trailed off into nothing as his body turned gooey and he made fast friends with the bed. His world became empty again, no Mommy and Daddy, no John and Mimi. The men in white coats, the woman with the blanket, and the angel in red were all gone. He was floating now. Not in the sky and not in his room but floating in nothing. And everything felt so cold again, so cold it burned his bones, and he couldn’t cover himself up because he couldn’t move.

He drifted around in that nothingness for a while, wondering if he’d ever wake up, if his mom and dad would be there, or if John and Mimi would come back and take him away again. Prayers, like chants, played on constant loop in his mind—
God, please don’t let them take me away again. Please give me my mommy and daddy back.
He prayed so hard he knew in his soul God wouldn’t let him down. God took care of innocent little boys.

Then he opened his eyes again, and his room had changed. The walls were sky blue now, and the beds—wait, two beds—were draped in white. The biggest difference was his mother no longer sitting in the corner. She was gone again, gone like she had been while John and Mimi had him, and they weren’t there to tell him she would be back.

“Riley, do you remember me?” someone said.

He kinda sorta remembered her voice, or maybe the tone more than anything. She’d been nice to him, had wrapped him in a blanket when he was shivering and scared. She was the woman from the police car who’d promised he would see his mommy and daddy again.

Riley nodded.

“Good.” She carefully shifted closer, then took a seat on the bed across from his.

He sat up, dragging his legs up tight against his chest, arms encircling his folded limbs.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Riley. I’m not going to hurt you.” She spoke slowly and carefully and didn’t make any sudden movements. “I’m going to say a lot of words to you that you probably won’t understand. Okay?”

He nodded again. Funny thing was, he understood her just fine and hated how she talked to him like he was slow or something. He wasn’t. In fact, he kinda remembered John and Mimi talking about how smart he was and how much he could do around the house for them if he’d keep his nose out of all the damn books. There wasn’t a TV or a radio where he slept, so he did what he could to pass the time.

“My name is Janice, and I’m your social worker.”

Social worker?
That, Riley didn’t understand.

“As you know, you’ve been through a lot of hard stuff.”

Okaaayyy….

“And the doctors just wanna make sure everything is gonna be okay, that you weren’t hurt when—”

“I wasn’t,” Riley exclaimed. “I swear, I wasn’t. I wanna go home now. Please let me go home now. I’ll be good. I promise.”

“Riley….”

“No. No. No. Please let me go home.”

He burst up from the ball he’d tightened his body into, sprung from the bed, and jumped to his feet. The empty space between them was closed in a few beats of Riley’s thudding heart. His knees cracked against the linoleum when he dropped down in front of her. He clasped his hands together like he’d been taught to pray every night before going to bed.

She wrapped her hands around his elbows and gently guided him up from the floor. His body shook so hard he could feel the loose sleeves of his T-shirt knocking against his skinny arms. She looked him square in the eye, and he fell into the deep green like it was a field of fresh grass for him to roll around and play in. Her eyes narrowed, thick brown lashes batting. Her lips twitched at the corners, like she really wanted to smile for him and couldn’t make herself do it. No doubt he’d remember that look for the rest of his life.

“You can’t go home, sweetie,” she said. “At least not right now.”

“But why?” he whined.

“It’s complicated, and you….” Janice shook her head. Her eyes were turning red now, like she was trying hard not to cry. “We need to get you well before you can go home, okay?”

“But I’m well. I’m well. Please let me go home.”

She sniffled, turning her head quickly.

Riley didn’t understand any of this. He knew he’d seen his mommy, and she’d looked sad, but….
Oh, no.

He fell back to the floor, sitting down on his legs. His spine bowed and his head hung. He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d figured it out, but in that moment, he knew he would never see home again.

Chapter 1

 

 

Spring 2014

Tuesday

 

H
UNTER
SAID
his good-byes. Not like there was a difference in his mind. Well, there was the small difference of the living being able to say it back, perhaps with a hug. But the dead, they whispered in your subconscious, tickled your brain with discontent and judgment. Especially when their last words to you had been along the lines of
It’s a shame you were such a disappointment.

All he could even think to respond with in his heart of hearts, that “heart of hearts” thing that made sense when your aunt or your Bible school teacher brought it up, was
Same to ya, Mama.

Stumbling out to the gravel parking lot of the small-town Pentecostal church his family had crawled to in every instance of lost hope made him feel strong. He didn’t care…. Well, the pills didn’t care. There he was on the hallowed ground, that place that represented everything that had cast him and Cory from their homes. He hadn’t had anyone in years, especially after Cory.

Of course, now they’d called him back. He’d been called home for this, the duty of family responsibility.

Thank goodness. Pills.

He made no sense. His thoughts failed. But who needed to think to get to….

He blinked, and the world was tipping, falling, swirling. It was like a cracked fun house mirror. Not only was the world shit, twisted, distorted…. The world was broken. And thank goodness.

Booze.

He was in a bar, and how had that happened? There were people he used to know. They spoke, but why worry about them?

So he sat on a stool he could barely find his way to, blinked his eyes to make them seem less fucked-the-fuck up.

His voice says, “Jack. Double. Fuck it, make it two.”

He’s in the bathroom.

He’s popping something, whatever he found in his aunt’s cabinet. The shit he put in his pocket to survive this grand family reunion.
Can’t I just go back home?
Not the first time in the last couple of days he’d wished for his New Orleans apartment. Natchitoches had almost robbed him of his final grasp on his sanity.

Cancer and overdoses and death.
The dead can’t say good-bye.

 

 

H
UNTER

S
EYELIDS
were dead weight, unable to do much more than flutter. His head, it hurt. Throbbing. His life was all a throb: errant heartbeat, cock, and muscles. The twitching was the worst. His voice made a few grunts. And maybe, just maybe, he’d pissed himself. It was warm.

I think someone said
sleep
.

So he drifted off.

The dead didn’t say good-bye.

 

 

Thursday

 

“F
UCK
!” N
OT
only was that Hunter’s first thought but his first, painful word. He still didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but he knew enough to know he needed to get the fuck out of there—here—wherever.

He jumped from the bed. Damn, did he want to throw a chair through the windows that were letting the light in. That would have been easier if his knees weren’t—
oh fuck.
His body hit the floor faster than his feet.

His body was racked with nerves, blown from abuse and booze and goodness knows what. His muscles spasmed, weakened from—weeks?—in bed.

He lay on the floor, fingers grasping the linoleum as it cooled his bruised cheek. The room was certainly too bright, his pride too dim. What the fuck was going on?

“Oh, Mr. Morgan.” A voice wafted through the ether. Huh. The ether. He was surprised such a word was willing to push itself out of his suffocated intellect.

There were suddenly arms around him. He tried to fight, but why try when even your cock is twitching in a bad way?

“Just calm down, darlin’.” The voice whispering in his ear was much like his gram’s. The tone she used before she hated him. Why not give in?

 

 

Friday

 

“H
OW
ARE
you feeling?”

Hunter opened his eyes, unhappy with the bullshit pounding in his head. And the voice of the nurse who’d been waking him every few hours.

“Peachy,” he said.

“Oh, good. Still a jerk, I see.” The nurse’s amused tone made Hunter’s hackles rise, though he knew it was for no good reason. She’d been quite nice for what he could remember of the last… whatever.

BOOK: We Found Love
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ads

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