Chapter Twenty-Three

Chad

WINSLOW LOOKED SO small, so frail, lying in bed. Part of me wanted to hold him; the other wanted to just get the fuck out of this hospital and find a real man, one who wouldn’t allow me to dominate him like some pathetic loser.

“These are for you.” I set the flowers on his chest, as though he were a table.

“Uh, thanks,” Winslow mumbled, ungrateful as usual. So what if I didn’t pay for them? So what if they were a couple days old, from a coworker’s birthday celebration? Winslow didn’t know I had fished them out of the trash. I’d removed the daisies, which had completely died. This bouquet looked fresh.

“You’re welcome.” I plopped down on the chair next to his bed. “We’ll get some nurse to fix those up in a vase with water.”

“Okay.” Winslow sat up straighter. He eyed me, and there was something in his expression I wasn’t used to seeing.

It took me a moment to get it.

He’s not afraid. If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was almost a challenge in his gaze.

“What are you staring at?” I asked. “I know I need a haircut. You don’t need to tell me.”

He continued to stare. It started to make me antsy and maybe a little angry too. I didn’t need the latter, not here in a hospital.

When he didn’t respond for a long while, I asked again, “What is it, man? You’re creeping me out.”

He looked down at the flowers and then, very gently yet very deliberately, shoved them to the floor.

“What the fuck?” I bent down, picked them up, and set them on the little rolling table beside the bed.

“I’ve been thinking.” Winslow eyed me, but in a different way. He seemed more patient with me. Where’s his fear?

I swallowed. “So?”

“I know it was you.”

A vision rose up in my head—a rain-slicked road, Winslow ahead of me in some asshole’s car, weaving a little because I was getting too close. Brake lights glowing red in the wet dark…

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“It came back to me.” He nodded. A small smile flickered across his pale features and then vanished. “It was you.” He shrugged. “You ran me off the road. I assume you were trying to kill me.” He met my stare. “You almost did.”

Flustered, I started to deny everything.

I barely got three words out before Winslow held up his hand. “Please. Don’t bother. It’s just the two of us here, Chad. We both know what happened. We were both there, so no need to try the gaslight routine. Someone who wasn’t there? Maybe they’d buy your line of bullshit. In a court of law, what I know might not stand up. After all, I can only remember the headlights, the impact, so I know it wasn’t an accident. Who else would want to hurt me? I’m no saint, but I’m lucky enough to say my enemies are few. Certainly no one—other than you—cares enough to want to wipe me out.” He sighed. “Who else has been hurting me the whole time we’ve been together?”

He shook his head, sad. “Of course, it was you. Let’s not kid each other.”

Again, I tried to speak, to deny. But the words wouldn’t come; they were stuck in my throat. He had me. He knew it.

What would happen next?

“Don’t worry, Chad. I’m not calling the police, although I could. Even if I didn’t see your face, I imagine you have damages to your car too. Damages that would match up.” He stopped to turn and look out the window for a moment. The sky was darkening with storm clouds.

He turned back to me. “I still love you.”

Now, where did that come from? Maybe this wouldn’t go as bad as I was thinking.

“But that love is sick, dark. Hell, maybe it’s a delusion on my part. I don’t know. But it’s not me—not anymore.

“I know the man you can be. You’re damaged—and that’s not all your fault. I know enough about your own family history and your mom to know where it came from. But, Chad, that’s your stuff, your baggage—it’s for you to work out.”

His mention of my mom makes me shudder and causes an image to rise up in my head, like an old movie, but this shit’s real—Mom forcing me into a closet as a little boy, closing the door so it’s so dark I can’t see. “The rats are coming, Chad, coming to get you.” And even though it isn’t real, I scream as I feel the pinprick of hundreds of tiny bites. Mom laughs. I forced the memory away. It made me sick and feeling ill caused me to rub at my belly, where the raised tic-tac-toe board of scar tissue was, from when she had pressed me against a hot radiator when I was only a few years old.

Winslow didn’t know what was going on in my head, so he went on. “And I hope you do work things out, maybe get some help, because I really believe that beneath the scarred, scared little boy who lashes out at anyone who dares to come near just so he can be first to strike, there’s a good man. Someone who maybe will one day learn to love someone the same way I loved—and love—you.”

We sat then for the longest time in silence. It seemed like the whole hospital stilled for a bit, no PA announcements, no carts being rolled down the corridor outside, no voices.

The realization that someone I’d tried to kill loved me? I didn’t know what to think, what to say. Forgiveness like his was too big to get my head around.

But Winslow did.

“I’m not afraid of you anymore. No, I’m actually kind of grateful. As hard as this experience has been on my body, my mind, and yes, my soul, I’ve learned something. I’ve stared down death. It doesn’t scare me.

“And neither do you. Nor can you ever again. Because, see, no matter what you do to me, you can’t take away my essence, my love for myself.

“You won’t get that. You need my permission to take it, and I’ll never let that happen. Not again. But I hope you will understand, one day, with time and good experience.”

I wanted to shrink into the chair. A part of me needed to hit him, to choke him, but I didn’t dare. Not here.

But what really stung was that I realized I didn’t know if it would have mattered.

Winslow had moved on.

I feasted on his fear.

Now, I was left with famine.

“Now, I want you to get up and go. Leave. Never darken this door or any door of mine again. Just go—not mad, not sad—just away. Okay?” He cocked his head, and his smile was, remarkably, kind. “I know there’s a better life out there for you.”

I couldn’t think of a response. I stood and started toward the door. Winslow stopped me.

“One more thing.”

I turned. “Yeah?”

“I’ll be leaving town. I should be out of here soon, and then, I think it’s time for me to move on, make a different and happier life for myself.”

“Where will you go?” I asked.

He wagged a finger at me. “I’m not telling you that. And if I were you, I’d leave it alone. Don’t try to find me. I don’t want you. I’m sorry you have to hear that, but it’s the truth.” He leaned back into the pillows, stretched. “Our time is done.”

Time passed. I waited, frozen in the doorway, for him to say something, change his mind, like he always did.

He looked at me as though he noticed me for the first time. “Are you still here? I’m tired. I want to sleep.”

He rolled onto his side, drew his knees up near his chest, and closed his eyes.

There was such trust there, leaving himself vulnerable like that. I could have easily slid a pillow over his face.

I turned and left him, unsure if I was incredibly lucky or unlucky or some combination of the two. The words slipped from my lips, so soft I doubt he heard them. “Goodbye, Winslow.”