“I’m here. But you need to stop walking around and sit because you can’t see properly, and you could fall in a ditch and break a leg.”
That was good advice from a fucking cactus. Amazing how a man could walk around without legs. “I don’t have any hands.”
“They’re tied up, but you can break free.”
Break free. That seemed a very hard thing to do. “Fuck me, if anything happens to Aurora Rae I am a dead man. Mom will run me t
hrough with a knitting needle.”
“Her number zero. She’ll do it in your sleep.”
“I won’t go to sleep. I won’t ever go to sleep. We were all so angry with you. Heartless bastard, what you did to Rory. How could you love her and not be in love with her? It’s impossible. I wanted to kill you. I was in agony for her and so freaking happy. Angry and happy, angry and happy. And then she dumped me. I think maybe I just ate my tongue. There is crap pouring out of my mouth.”
“You didn’t eat your tongue. You’re vomiting the drugs up. That’s good.”
“What would you know? The sky is bleeding on me and you’re a cactus.”
“She didn’t dump you. She didn’t want you to have to choose and she needed time out.”
“From you. Who do you think she came to, Cal, when it all went up in flames? She came to me. Right before she ran away for months. I fucking hated you for the longest time, but you were my brother before you were a cactus, so I fucking loved you too.”
“You need to sit, Zeke. You’re tripping, that’s all. A bad trip. Ride this out without getting into worse shit.”
“You are not the boss of me out here, brother. I will walk back to Rory. I’ll walk till I can’t walk anymore. I can see spaceships and I am fucking cold and there are things I don’t understand about the cosmos. Maybe there are legions of nude angels out there to take care of me.”
“Sit down, Zeke. You don’t know where you’re going.”
“Mom?” She was only a leopard spot tumbleweed, but he was still a little scared of her. She loved a good disguise. “Okay, I am sitting, because I still have an ass.”
“I’m going to stab you with a knitting needle if you fuck this up and die. Cal is my soldier. My stoic one. Halsey is my professor, my serious boy. And you. You are my funny poet.”
“Roses are red. Violets are blue. Aurora Rae loves someone other than you.”
“Not that kind of poet. Always with the smart mouth. You have a dreamer’s soul and a strategist’s mind, Zeke. But you stopped dreaming for yourself. I want you to dream of all the good things you’ve been denied.”
“I never denied myself anything, Mom. Not women. Not men. Not sugar. Not the good drugs. I had them all. I’m a swallower.”
“You swallowed the thing you wanted most so you couldn’t have it. I might look like a humble tumbleweed, but I am your mother and I know these things. You swallowed your love for Rory because you thought Cal deserved her more.”
“Cal deserved her more and she chose him. I don’t want to die. I want to see Rory’s baby.”
“She wanted you both. You know why she chose Cal. And he knows you’re in love with her. Rory has to know it too. But you have to tell her what’s in your heart.”
He didn’t know anything about that. His stomach pained like he’d already been stabbed with a thousand knitting needles. Mom and Dad had worked a lot. Cal had helped bring them all up. Acted like an extra parent. He was the responsible one. Rory was smart to choose him.
“My heart is frozen. Cal is a cactus and Rory is the sun when you’re in a spaceship and you get up close and all those fires on the surface are so hot and beautiful.”
Oh fuck, he was cold, down to his chalky bones, and he could die out here and that made him sad for all the times he’d swallowed down his real feelings, so many they were poisoning him now.
“Mom. Don’t leave me.”
That strange sound like cymbals, that was laughter. His own laughter. Mom was gone but not because she’d left. He was the one who left people. Made the decision for them. Expert level at goodbye. Got out before there were too many feelings involved because he couldn’t lie to people he cared about.
“You lie to me all the time.”
Oh fuck, Rory was here. She was an eagle and then a coyote and he was on his knees trying to dig himself out of the hole he was in. None of this was real, but his heart was somehow outside of his chest and he could see it was frightened to beat. He’d lied to her. Lied. Lied. Lied, with every touch that wasn’t a caress and every word that wasn’t a kiss. She chose Cal because he was the better man. She chose Cal when her dad dropped dead and she felt lost.
She’d never chosen Zeke all the times she could have. She never would.