Preppy smiled and I saw pride gleam in his eyes. “You made a counterfeit money printing press in the eighth grade...and you won?”

I shrugged. “Wasn’t that hard. Second place was one of those volcanoes that dripped tomato soup from the top.” Preppy was quiet as he approached the bed where he stood on one side and I stood on the other.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“The divorce papers,” Preppy said.

My heart sank. “So you came here to deliver them in person?”

Preppy reached into his back pocket and pulled out a manilla envelope. “Something like that,” he said, opening it and spilling paper confetti onto my bed between us. “More like bring them back.”

Preppy was silent as he paced the room, tugging at his hair. A vein pulsed in his neck. I couldn’t help but notice that he’d gained a substantial amount of weight since I’d last seen him. Mostly muscle. His biceps flexed under the fabric of his white button down. This was no longer skinny-lean Preppy. He might have been lean but when his arms lifted over his head and he let out a deep sigh I couldn’t help ogling his ab muscles outlined by his shirt.

That’s also when I realized that for the exception of a missing bow-tie he was wearing typical Preppy attire. Suspenders, khakis, boots. His hair had grown into the style I remembered from years ago, long on the top, shaved on the sides.

My insides clenched but my mind raced along with my heart. I couldn’t take it anymore.

“What do you want?” I screamed, literally pulling at the roots of my hair and charging him across the mattress until I was on my knees on the bed eye to eye with the man who’d broken my heart on more than one occasion. It was a good thing my dad was out. “You have to tell me what you want!”

He stood his ground and shouted back. “I want YOU!”

“Then let me the fuck in!” I yelled through gritted teeth, shoving against his chest. “Tell me what happened to you and let me the fuck in!”

Preppy growled. “He fucking tortured me!” he screamed, his face turning red with his anger, a vein pulsed in his throat. I gasped and sat back on my feet, watching as his walls finally crumbled. “Is that what you want to fucking hear? Do you want to know about all the times he beat me with a bat, waited for my injuries to start to heal, before doing it all over again on top of the bruises? Do you want to hear how sliced me with a sharp knife until my skin was shredded?” His voice grew lower, darker. “Or maybe you want to hear about how he sent one of his biker bitches down to fuck me in the ass in an attempt to fucking break me? You want to know how he sounded when he laughed as he came on my back? Or how he kicked me in my spine when he was done and I blacked out when my head hit the fucking wall because I couldn’t even hold myself up.” Preppy looked to the sky and then back to me. “I couldn’t hold myself up never mind fight him off even though I tried. I fucking tried!”

“Preppy...”

“No, I don’t need or want your fucking pity.” He quieted sinking to his knees on the carpet and I slid down from the bed onto mine, craning my neck so I could look into his eyes. “I have nightmares all the time. You know what’s the only thing that makes them go away?” He placed his hand over mine. “You. You silence the world when it’s too fucking loud. You make me feel less broken.”

“You’re not broken!” I said, grabbing his hands in mine and away from his face. He opened his eyes. “You’re not broken.”

“I’ll always be a bit broken,” he said, staring at me with glassy eyes.

“That’s bullshit,” I said. I released his hands and stood up abruptly. I pulled open my desk drawer and retrieved the proof I needed. I unfolded the wrinkled piece of paper and stalked back over to him shoving it into his hands. “A broken man didn’t write these words.”

“You got my letter,” Preppy said, turning the page in his hands, the ink smudged with the millions of tears I’d cried reading his words a thousand times over and over again. A small smile appeared on his face. “You lied to me, Doc,” he said, sounding both amused and pissed off.

“I did. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know if you still felt the same and I didn’t want to make assumptions when you were in a shitty place.”

His voice softened to a whisper. “Do you want to hear about how the only fucking reason I survived that place was by thinking of you every single fucking day and night. I even meditated like Mirna showed me and tried to go somewhere in my mind, anywhere that wasn’t there. I spent hours in my head having fake conversations with my friends. With you. I don’t remember much, just wanting to get away. I’m alive because of you.”

“No, you’re alive because you’re YOU. Because you battled with the reaper and you won. Because you’re Samuel fucking Clearwater and you make your own rules.” I laughed and choked on a sob. Preppy smiled. “That place you went to in your mind? It was home. It was to your family. To me. I heard you. We all did. Me. King. Bear. Ray. Even Thia.”

“You really believe that?” Preppy asked, raising a brow and brushing a hair from my face.

“Yeah. As crazy as it sounds, yeah, I think I do.”

Preppy leaned in close, pulling my lips within an inch of his. “You always were a little fucking crazy,” he breathed. He leaned down to kiss me and I pulled away. I stood up and walked to the other side of the room.

“You made me think you were dead again. I can’t live in a constant state of fear that you’re going to be hurt or worse. I just can’t. You broke me and I can’t.”

“You’re the one who taught me that. If you’re hurting, you don’t have to stay hurting. I’ll take your hurt for you. I’ll take it all for you. I’d go back down in that fucking hole all over again if it meant getting to see you just one last fucking time. I’m a selfish fucking man and when it comes to you I’m the most selfish man of them all, because I want you regardless of the fact that I’m no good for you.”

“I don’t...” I started, but stopped when I realized I had no clue what I was going to say.

His eyes spoke volumes of how he was feeling. Sad, but determined, rimmed in red, but wide open and clear. “And if this is all coming to an end before it even has a chance of beginning again then there’s no fucking risk in telling you what I have to tell you now. What I have to say to you before it swallows me fucking whole.”