Chapter 22

A/N: Usually I don't dedicate chapters anymore. But tonight I feel the need to do so as I sit again with tears, wishing that time will speed by and heal all the wounds. My grandmother died exactly two years ago today, and I still reach for the phone to call her. I still say "gran will say" instead of "grand would have said". This one is for you Ouma Ina. I didn't want to write today, but you were always so proud of everything I wrote, always asking me how many votes I was standing on here on Wattpad, always smiling and keeping count how many new votes and reads I got each week. I love you Ouma. I'm sure we will see each other soon enough.

I look out the back window of the moving RV, trying my best to count as many of the thousands of trees speeding by me, but I need to stop. I know I need to stop before I puke my guts out, but I can't. I can't help but wondering if my mother ever sat under one of these trees. Maybe somewhere between all of them there might be one where she carved her name on the trunk like so many other teenagers before her did, and so many will still do. I can't help but wonder if it would mean anything to E.J. if I were to beg Cameron to stop the RV right here and now and climb out to immortalize my name next to E.J. on the trunk of a tree at this very moment. Give the two of us somewhere where we will always be together.

Sure, I am pretty sure, given a few days I will never find the tree again, but trees are also strange that way. I might in time forget. E.J. might even forget in time, but the tree will never forget. He will never forget the names carved out on him, and I guess in a way humans are very much the same. We tend to only remember what hurt us. I'm pretty sure if trees could talk, they would not be telling me about their wonderful days of sun and when the last rain was falling. Oh no... They would rather be telling me about the horrible day when two horny teenagers thought it would be good to carve their names into it. I'm the same. Ask me what I was doing the day that I graduated from school. I don't have an idea. I guess the memory just wasn't good enough. I know I was living with another foster family, but even that's a blur. It could have been the douch that asked me to wear a mask. It might have been the lady with the fourteen cats. I just can't remember anymore, because somehow it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I did finish school at all. I'm not gonna need that type of knowledge where I am going in any case.

Now ask me however what I was doing the day my face got melted away and I can give you every single detail. I can tell you about the Rice Crispies I had for breakfast, and how the chain slipped off my bicycle on the way to school. Miss Granger, the Social Science teacher had a little bit of a fit about my hair hanging in my face, asking me to push it back behind my ears, which is something she frequently did, along with making a sour face about my nails being too long, my jean being ripped, and all over finding fault with everything I did. Weirdly she was the first of my teachers to send me a basket of goodies when I landed up in the hospital. She must have felt guilty. I can recall the ride home. I decided to take a different route than usual so that I could pedal by Jamie's house, hoping that I would see her outside, but she wasn't there, making me think that maybe I should walk that route to school the next morning and offer to carry her backpack, although that never happened since I ended up in the hospital. I can remember the stench as I walked in the door, how I could smell the sour of the alcohol in the air as if it was busy consuming me. I can still recall his slurring when he called me into the living room. I got angry because he was working on a car engine on the living room carpet that my mom picked out with so much care. There was porn on the television. It happened so fast that I didn't even know what was happening until I was on the floor, on my knees, his dick inches away from my face... Then everything went in slow motion... That thing coming closer and closer to my mouth... His fingers twisted in my face... Him calling me his little cum bucket... The split second decision to open my mouth and then to bite... Hard! The screams. My laughter filling the room. His cursing. Then the pain. Blinding pain. Feeling my face burning. My eye blurring until it had lost all vision. The smell of cinging hair. Then finally the moment when I embraced darkness, thinking for one second before that, that when I open my eyes I will be seeing my mom again. Maybe in heaven. Maybe in hell. Maybe just in a new life far away from the piece of shit that called himself my stepfather. I didn't care, as long as the pain stopped.

"Brody? You haven't said a word in like an hour," I hear E.J. complain from the front seat as he turns down the music which I thought would have made it impossible to speak in any case. "I mean, you should come over here and just enjoy the road with us."

I look at E.J. and then I look up to the mirror, catching Cameron's eyes looking back at me. I expect him to smile or at least say something in his flirty manner, but he doesn't. He just looks back at the road after a few seconds before I ignore E.J. again and look out the window.

If only E.J. knew how much I just want to be alone with my own thoughts, he would turn up the radio again and belt out another bloody Black Veil Brides song at the top of his lungs and leave me alone with my thoughts until we make it all the way North so that I can see the Northern Lights.

"Brody! Talk to me. You've barely said a word to me at all trip," E.J. sounds again from the front seat.

"I'm just thinking, okay?" I answer just loud enough for him to hear. For a moment the cross around his neck catches a bit of light and I am transported again to the moment I gave it to him, thinking about how his lips softly grazed mine. How my fingers found the back of his neck. And how Cameron knocking on the door fucked up what could have been one of the best moments of my life.

"Well, don't think too long, okay?" E.J. answers, but I nod, already staring out the window again trying to count the trees speeding by my window.

I try my very best to actually recall when was the actual moment that I realized I felt something more than friendship for E.J. Being honest with myself, I have to admit that it was long before this trip. Maybe it was the first time I dried his tears after yet another failed phonecall he had with Chris, reaching for his past and hoping to find some sort of support from someone familiar, but finding just another guy who wanted to get into his pants. It could have been that moment I raised myself up from the bed the first time I saw him sleeping in the hospital. He looked so innocent and perfect that I could not believe that anyone would ever want to hurt him. There already I wanted to take him into my arms and never let go. But then again, I think I know when it actually happened. When I stopped thinking about Jamie and her long blonde hair altogether. It was two months after I came out of the hospital. I was already on my second foster family. I got to see E.J. for one afternoon, and we were sitting on the grass in a small park near where he lives with his mom. I pulled a cap out of my backpack, putting it on and hanging my face to the side, trying to shield my still pink skin from the sun that I could feel burning on me. That's when he asked me if he could touch it. For a moment I wanted to say no. I didn't want him to feel how gross it would be touching it. I have tried and every time I wanted to recoil from myself, but there I was, looking him in the eyes, taking his hand with mine and placing it on the tender skin of what was once my handsome face. But E.J. didn't recoil like I predicted he would. He felt over my molten skin and smiled at me. "It gives you character," he said before he pulled back his fingers, and at that moment I knew that it felt like to truly be seen for me, and not just for my face. In his eyes I have never been a monster. I have always just been a hero. The person who did what he couldn't do. The guy who stood up. And my face only showed him courage. He has told me so many times, even if I still in come ways don't believe him.

I didn't notice that he left his seat until I feel his hand on my shoulder.

"Brody?" E.J whispers in my ear.

My eyes immediately dart toward the front of the RV, watching as Cameron looks back in the mirror at us, catching my eyes before he turns his gaze back on the road.

"Yeah?" I answer, turning myself so that I can look him in the eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said as he takes my hand in his.

I can't help but cock my head at him a little bit. Sorry? For what?

He must have seen the confusion in my eyes, because he continues before I can even answer.

"Brody... I'm sorry for how you feel. I'm sorry about your gran, and your mom. And I'm sorry about your face. But I am sorry for how you must be feeling. You know I can't really walk this path with you, because I can never really know exactly how you feel or what you're going through. But I can offer you my hand when it gets a bit rough. I can hold your hand while you're walking. And maybe when we get to the end you will forget about number ten," he said, his voice soft and low so that only I can hear him.

"Nobody has ever said sorry to me for how I feel," I whisper back to him.

"But I'm telling you now," E.J. answers as he fingers interlink with mine. "And I am also telling you that I love you."

And there in the back of an RV the entire world falls away as I see the truth in his eyes and hoping with everything in me that he really means it. That he is not just saying it because he feels sorry for me.

"Eight letters. Three words, and then add a two," I answer making E.J. look confused and allowing me my first smile for the day. "I love you too."