Justin counted the seconds and then the minutes and then the hours, collecting time like he was a hoarder. Each revolution around the clock was another revolution that Wes didn’t stir. Another moment he didn’t open his eyes. His dad peeled away when the sun rose, falling into the couch and closing his eyes. He was snoring before the morning nurse came to check on Wes.
Justin slid his chair right up next to Wes’s bedside. He laid his head on the mattress beside Wes’s. The nurses had wiped Wes’s face clean, but they hadn’t been able to wash his hair, and it stuck together in clumps, matted with blood. Justin tried to finger comb the strands as he whispered to him, told Wes he loved him and that he was there, he was right there, and he wasn’t going anywhere. He held Wes’s hand and told him his dreams for their future. How Wes could teach him how to ride horses, and they’d go out to that ridge Wes told him about. They’d camp together, somewhere Wes could hear the country and let his soul fill up all the empty spaces the world had hollowed out of him. Justin could get a job nursing anywhere, and he would. Anywhere Wes wanted to be. All that mattered was them, together. And he was right there, and he would be right there. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Inhale. Exhale. Beep.
Justin laid his forehead against Wes’s bandaged cheek and let his tears fall.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
At 10:28 a.m., someone banged so hard on the front door of their jock house it nearly came off its hinges. The glass rattled in the old panes, and the warped wood leaped in and out of the frame. “Open up!” A deep voice hollered. “Open this fucking door!”
Colton threw himself off the kitchen counter and slumped past his roommates to the foyer. They’d been up all night bickering, snapping left and right, throwing attitude in each other’s faces. Now they slouched in the living room and den, angry stares boring holes in the faded wallpaper. Melancholy soaked the rank air, thickened by a grief they couldn’t name.
He ripped open the front door. “What the fuck do you want?” He glared at the middle-aged man on their porch, who had his fist raised and was getting ready to hammer on the door again. “Who the fuck are you?”
The man shoved him, driving him backward into the house and throwing him against the paneling in the foyer. His forearm pushed up against Colton’s throat, holding him in place.
The rest of the team was on their feet and racing for Colton and this wild man who’d appeared in the middle of Saturday morning in his dad jeans and his tennis shoes and his golf shirt. Cries of “What the fuck?” and “Who the fuck are you?” and “Get the fuck out of here!” bled together.
“Shut the fuck up!” the man bellowed at them all. “I’m Nick Swanscott! Justin’s dad! Wes’s boyfriend. I’m his fucking father!”
The team faltered. Orlando came to Colton’s side, but he held back from getting in Justin’s dad’s face. He hovered next to Colton. “Yeah? What the fuck do you want? Wes isn’t fucking here. You want to go fuck him up, you have to find him somewhere else. He didn’t come home.”
Nick’s eyes flashed. “Anyone Justin loves, I love, and that means Wes is like a son to me. Do you fucking understand?”
He grabbed at Nick’s arm. He was fucking strong. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Did you fucking hurt Wes?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Did you hurt Wes? Are you the reason he’s in the hospital?”
“Wes is in the hospital?” The urge to fight faded, replaced by the emptiness Colton had felt since yesterday morning, when he’d woken up to Orlando’s text messages blowing up his phone, and then Art and Josh and Patrick banging on his door, and then that fucking article about Wes. Reality had shifted ten degrees to the left, leaving him hovering on the edge of a black hole. It was like being sacked and falling forever, never hitting the ground.
“Wes is in a coma!” Nick roared. “Someone beat him half to death.” He dug his forearm into Colton’s throat. “Was that you?”
“No! Jesus fucking Christ!”
“Anyone else?” Nick shoved off of Colton and faced the rest of the team. He was maybe one-eighty, just under six feet, but he squared off against them like he was three times Wes’s size.