Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(23) Confessions

I turned in my report as they expected me to. I warned Rian and I watched the light turn to an infinite dark in his eyes. I couldn’t look at him when he walked by and I wondered if he noticed. I wondered day and night if Shawn was lying out of his ass, trying to get a rise out of me in a moment where I was unreadable, but I didn’t have the courage to ask. I couldn’t watch the world I had built up for myself fall down again. I needed something to keep me safe, to make me feel like something is going right for once.

It seemed like I was always with Jonathon. I think that I thought that being with him would make life a little easier to live. Maybe I was right, but I just as easily could have been completely wrong.

“I’m afraid I’m going to forget about her,” Jonathon whispered into the night, his words echoing up to the ceiling. I turned my head to look at his face from where I was resting on his shoulder—he was staring up, his eyes glazed over in thought. The arms around me tightened slightly as he tensed up, his own words reaching back to his ears, and we both knew that he might be making a mistake with telling me anything about this secret part of himself, but for different reasons. His expression gave nothing away as he confessed, “I think I’m starting to forget.”

He looked at me, and his eyes were filled with horror and dread.

I knew quite a bit about forgetting. I knew how much fear came with losing the memories and the pain that takes you over when you realize it is too late, that you don’t even remember their voice or the color of their eyes or the way they squinted when they smiled. I knew that it was hard to remember, but it didn’t even take a thought to forget even the simplest things.

I couldn’t tell him that I only remembered my mother’s voice for her scream, my father’s eyes for the replica on my face, so instead I played the part, whispering into the silence, “You’ll never really forget.”

“I want to forget the day it happened,” he told me, so vulnerable. So broken. So alive. “I never want to remember a moment.”

I didn’t say anything, my heart sinking.

It was late at night, inching into the witching hour of passing into the next day, and we were lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. The only light was the moonlight pouring through his bedroom windows, opening to allow in the breeze, thick with the hint and smell of oncoming rain. I was wrapped tightly into his arms, like he couldn’t let me go, and I could feel every tremor of breath in his chest, the sound of his heartbeat uneven as it mingled with mine in the near silence. His body was warmth in the chill of the room, the light in the dark. I wanted to stay here forever, but I knew now more than ever that this was my mission.

I knew that I didn’t want it to be.

I looked up at him, my face feeling dreadful and grim. Pale. I wonder if he noticed I was pale.

He looked down at me, pain in his eyes and written across the panes in his face, and he told me, “I remember every second of it.”

“You don’t have to tell me this, Jonathon, you know that, right?” I whispered back, almost desperate. I might have already known what happened, suspected so many different things about that day, but I couldn’t hear him speak the words I knew would break my heart. I didn’t know how I was going to sit there looking at him confess his heart without breaking down myself. And I had to be strong.

He shook his head slowly, but I knew it was coming. I sat up slightly and he followed me, scooting up until he was leaning against the headboard, and I curled comfortably into his side, closing my eyes. One of his arms wrapped around me securely and the other hand brushed soothingly through my hair, soothing himself. He took deep breaths, and I had a feeling if he hadn’t learned how to calm himself down prior to this than he would have been panting like he had run a marathon, falling apart at the seams.