Confounded: Part II - 18. Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18 --==Kit’s POV==--

For a minute there I thought my heart was gonna fly from my throat, it jumped that high.

“Tom,” I said, rising from my bed. “I didn’t…”

“I know,” he interrupted me, not appearing to be mad at all. “I heard. Relax, I didn’t plan on eavesdropping, I just came to borrow a DVD to watch in my room and then I heard him say you thought it wasn’t yours to tell. But it’s okay…I don’t mind. Maybe it’s time they know.”

I stared at him as he came in further and closed the door behind him again. Then he came over to where I was sitting and lowered himself to the floor beside my feet, his back resting against the bed frame, waiting for me to begin.

“I don’t know the whole story, Tom; I really think you should tell it. I don’t know the details and I think they might be important for you to talk about.”
It took a while and he slowly nodded. Then, inhaling deeply, he began.

“Okay, let’s see…about two years ago I met someone. His name was Miguel; his parents came from Mexico. We didn’t really get along at first, because he was in a biker gang, harassing some kid at my school. The reason I didn’t know. One day I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut and said something to them. They got kinda pissed at me so I ran. One of them followed me.”

I leaned forward, listening while Tom spoke. I noticed Taylan doing the same.

“He gave me some shit about it not being very healthy for me to stand up to them; I didn’t really care and told him he should pick on someone his own caliber, and quoted something to him from a book.”

“Ulysses,” I mumbled, causing a frown to appear on his face as he looked up at me for a second.

“Yeah. It shut him up and then he started to laugh; told me I had some guts quoting that to him. He knew where it came from, which surprised me. And for some reason, next thing I know, this big biker is sitting with me on the curb, and we’re discussing literature.”

Tom grinned as he seemed to remember, drawing up his legs so he could rest his chin on his knees.

“I guess that was kinda weird; a bikerguy knowing literature. I never really thought about that; we just connected there. So the next day, he was back at school. Alone. One of the kids thought he was waiting for him, to beat him up. So I went outside, find out what he wanted and he said he was there for me. So…I hopped onto his bike and we drove off to the beach.”

He went silent for a minute, clearly remembering.

“To make a long story short; we fell in love. I spent a lot of time with him, after school, during the weekends…”

“How old was he?” Taylan asked.

“Sandro? He was 25 but it never bothered me that he was older, or him that I was younger. We just connected. He liked it when I started calling him by a shortened version of his second name, Allessandro. Somehow, it made him feel different; like he was someone else, not with the gang.” Tay nodded. “I never felt that way about someone before. Whenever I saw him, or even heard his bike; it did things to me. I went all soft and gooey.” He looked up at me and smirked. “Must sound familiar to you.”

I didn’t react to it other than give him a slight nudge with my knee.

“We talked a lot,” Tom continued, “about everything and anything. I started skipping classes to be with him; we’d just drive off somewhere along the coast and spend the day there. Dad was on my case about absences all the time but…I just couldn’t tell him. He wouldn’t understand, I think. But Jay found out and started bullying me about it, threatened to tell on me…”
Tom hung his head there.
“I got so mad about that…”

“You almost killed him…” Taylan softly said. “You beat him to an inch of his life, your dad told me.”
Wow…

“Yeah…I…I tried to choke him. If Dad hadn't pulled me off of him. If he hadn’t…”
The quiet moment spoke for itself.
“Dad threatened to send me away to Military School or whatever. Somewhere far away. So I ran away with Sandro. He wanted to quit the gang, I wanted to get as far as I could from Dad; why not? So we did. We stayed away for a week. Then the gang found us. How, I don’t know, but they did. They forced Sandro to go back; if he didn’t, they’d do stuff…to me.”

I involuntarily shuddered at that. I couldn’t imagine what they would’ve done but it couldn’t have been something nice.

“They forced him to come along on a robbery; some drugstore. How he did it I dunno but somehow, Sandro convinced them to have that be his last job with them. Then he’d go. And take me with him. Then the robbery went wrong and he got shot…”

I heard Taylan’s shocked inhale and looked up to see his eyes were as big as saucers, shock evident in his expression.

“One of the bikers called me; he was closest to Sandro. He told me that the robbery had gone wrong and that Sandro had been shot, several times, by the owner. It must’ve been two or three in the morning, I don’t remember. He told me which Emergency Room they’d taken him and that I might wanna get over there.”

At that point, Tom leaned back his head with his eyes closed, inhaling deeply. I guessed he was reliving that night again, judging from several movements in his face, among which a pained expression.

I lowered myself from my bed and sat next to him, gently shoving my arm between his neck and the bed frame until it rested around his shoulders.
Then his head straightened and he opened his eyes, staring into nothing.

“I’ll never forget that night. The blood, the smell…the fight with the nurses because they wouldn’t let me see him…I got there just in time. H-he…lived for about a minute more, when I got there. He was scared…”
A single tear appeared and he blinked, forcing it onto his cheek. He wiped it away quickly with the back of his hand.
“He couldn’t even make a full sentence anymore. The last he said was ‘love…you’.”

I heard a sniffle then and raised my head, seeing Taylan also wiping his eyes, quickly so that none would see.
Beside me, Tom inhaled softly through his nose, sounding full. Once, twice his shoulders moved as he hiccupped.

Then he cried.

Silently.

Edited a glaring error.