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For as long as I can remember I have always been afraid of the dark. According to my father – a work around the clock plumber – the fear originally belonged to the woman he never married, or loved. My mother. She hated the dark, because it was all she lived in while she was pregnant with me. After I was born, insanity finally won out and she killed herself.
My fear of the darkness came from losing her. And ultimately being left alone.
As loveable and respected as my father was, the same could not be said for my older step brother Dustin. He was – in every sense of the term – the opposite of our father. Dustin never was a nuisance until the inevitable day came when he discovered the fear inside my heart. After that, at every chance he could grab hold of, Dustin exploited my fear. At any given time he would lock me in a closet, or turn off the lights in my room at night. Remorselessly he did all these things – and more – just to get me scared. And it all worked until one day his pranks got him beat down.
There was a kid in the next neighborhood – the kind that made even Hollywood look poorer than me – by the name of Randy Orton. He was nine when I first met him, but it was easier to think of him as being older due to his size and height. I was six, and Dustin – eight – had decided to tell all the rich kids at the park about my fear. They mocked me viciously for my blatant differences, and in the end – against all my hopes and wishes – I broke down crying. Begging them beneath heart-wrenching sobs to stop. Just stop.
Then like a miracle, they did.
As Dustin settled in for a final strike, Randy stepped in and knocked my older brother out cold. I remember looking up at him and – even though he was scarier than the darkness I had feared since my cradle days – being drawn into his ferocious set of gray blue eyes, tamed only by his stony expression that looked to be carved out of granite. I remember, in that moment, wanting to be this kid. Wanting to be big and scary so no one – even a formless darkness – could ever hurt me again.
On that day, Randy Orton took me under his celestial wing and made friends with a teary-eyed six year old cry-baby at the neighborhood sandlot.
I stayed with Randy despite everyone – down to my father – telling me not to, and gradually I grew to like him more and more.
Actually, since I'm sitting down, if I think hard enough it was never a matter of me liking Randy Orton. It was more a matter of me respecting him and admiring the man he was. The man I wanted to be.
Needless to say, however, even though three years in our childhood had flown by, our relationship never changed. Not even in the slightest. No matter how much I tried to make him believe differently, the cold hard truth of it all was that I could never be friends with Randy. And to make matters even worse than they were already, it was solely because Randy did not even view me as a friend. Friends in real life were what most neighborhood kids were to my brother. People he could talk to. People who he could laugh with. People who wanted him around. No one wanted me. I knew that since I started walking. The times I spent alongside Randy – trying fruitlessly to make him see me differently – showed me that as clear as a well taught lesson.
In Randy's eyes, there was no person he could call friend because to him, there was always and only John Cena. A kid two years his senior who had been with him since the cradle, and who he respected more than his own father.
I never really knew the story of Randy and John – nearly nine years later and I still don't know anything – but, back then, I understood that knowing would never had changed the fact that, to Randy, I was just the son of a beloved plumber. Just a kid with no friends, and no one. Just a kid who feared the darkness of loneliness.
Pitiful.
One day, as I walked down the distorted path of self-destructive thoughts and beliefs (consciously beating myself up for being nothing more than a sick puppy in the eyes of the one person who took me willingly into his world), I found myself dropping Randy's favorite toy robot and running away towards him. A large black Rolls Royce had come to an abrupt halt at the front lot where Randy and I had been playing together. At the sight of me running, Randy looked to the cause and cracked a sly smile towards the right side of his face. He fearlessly walked over to the intrusion. Afraid of standing alone, I stuck close behind him – scared half to death at all the commotion.
From out of the gaping darkness of the black vehicle stepped a blond kid with a look of disdain marring his face. His driver – the one now scurrying over to meet the boy halfway – had apparently been late in opening the door, and clumsily held it open in an attempt to reconcile. The scene widened Randy's smile to a look of sheer amusement, and effectively piqued my general interest.
"Who is he?" I thought aloud only to catch myself. Randy looked to me momentarily and smiled as he ruffled the top of my head.
"Let's go find out."
With that he strutted over confidently, while I timidly stuck close behind him. We met the blond halfway across Randy's front lot, and from that distance I was instantly struck with a feeling that I could not quite describe. It felt similar to how I thought of Randy, but only one thousand times more intense. As the kid looked at us with his perfectly drawn cold blue eyes, I felt strangled to death-like numbness. It was all as though I was back in the clutches of that darkness that I feared so much. Instinctively, I began to shake like a leaf, so I chose to look away. The trembling slowly subsided, but soon my eyes betrayed me by going back to him.
He was beautiful. Tall, blond hair cut short, dressed from head to toe in expensive attire, and all topped with the face of an angel that served as housing to a set of rare blue gems plucked from the sockets of a hellish beast. In the span of nearly five minutes, this boy instantly put a new fear in me.
The fear of death.
For some reason, the longer I looked at the blond boy from around Randy's arm, I could feel the fangs of an overwhelming murderous intent ooze out from the kid's body and sink its toxic venom into me and the space surrounding us all. Without a shadow of a doubt, I had expected to die by his hands. And, strangely, I felt that I really wouldn't have it any other way.
"Why are you here" Randy spoke to ease the tension that gripped tightly around my soul.
The boy nonchalantly looked over to him with daggers for a stare. "Who is here?" Dear Heaven. Even his voice was beautiful. The situation soon unraveled to reveal its true identity. This was a reverie. A thing of myth.
Yes. This boy and this situation. They were all just fairy tales coming shortly to life. Or visiting me in a dream from which I had no means of escaping.
"His name is Cody Rhodes."
"Rhodes?" The boy asked a bit shocked. The sound of his voice calling my name set my body inside the casings of a heated stone. I became entombed in a feeling I could not describe whilst my mind still belonged to that of an eight year old child. "Never heard of him."
"Oh?" Randy raised an eyebrow as he cocked his head back a bit. "Well," He glanced to me and then back to the boy. "He's a good kid."
My heart warmed to Randy's words. It had been three years since we first met, and this was the first compliment he ever bestowed on me.
In a heartbeat, however, Randy's mood turned sour. "So, what do you want DiBiase?"
My life should have ended there. This kid, this perfect blonde, was Ted DiBiase Junior. He was the son of Ted DiBiase Senior. My Dad's well-paying client. I wanted to crawl under a rock, so I instinctively hid some more as my body started to quiver with unrivaled fear. A fear of the truth that was always my darkest shadow. Soon, this beautiful being would put it all together and realize that I was merely the son of a plumber. The illegitimate child of good ol' Dusty Rhodes. A notorious cry-baby. A pitiful being.
A nobody.
It hurt. The knowledge that in just a few seconds this boy would discover me, and even though I was right there – just like my time spent holed up inside the many closets Dustin crammed me into – there wasn't a single thing I could do to make it all go away. Or to make myself disappear. I hated this lowly feeling. I hated realizing that – despite having Randy as a companion – I never will truly belong in this sphere.
My hurt and anger made me think something I never once let cross my mind. /Go ahead. Hate me./
"How much is he?" My heart stopped to the question. I looked over to Ted with the same kind of shock sitting kingly on Randy's face.
A long pause overcame us all, before Randy etched in – with a slightly unhinged voice – "He's not for sale."
"Oh?" Ted replied while shifting his eyes entirely over to me. Once at their destination, he gave a wicked smile that could easily set fire to flesh. "But I want him."
Ever since that day, Ted and I have been friends. At first our meetings were greatly disadvantaged by my cowardice. I clung to Randy like Velcro every time Ted came by, and each time I did that, he would glare at me with that pulsating desire to kill locked inside his eyes. Eventually I out grew the habit, and watched as Ted's expression lightened to the whiffs of a smile that passed by every now and again.
Friendship was inevitable.
For me, it was all because – in the end – Ted was the first person to ever truly want me.
My mother, so disgusted by my existence (and the multiple failed abortions), took unhealthy substances while pregnant and soon developed a cancer of the mind. The logical term, I would soon come to find, being schizophrenia.
My father, so as to keep up his loveable image, forced his wife to sign the adoption papers of a son she never needed.
My step-brother, Dustin, hated me from skin to bone since the day I was brought into that house wrapped in cheap blankets.
My companion…my idol…Randy Orton, was simply just a bored and inquisitive child, whose idea of playtime involved watching the subtle reactions of his latest, black-haired guinea pig.
Everyone. Every single person. Everybody in my life, I knew, did not really want me around. For them, it would never have mattered at all if I lived or died. Just knowing that truth made me shudder with fear. It was as though I was back in my bedroom, watching helplessly as Dustin turned off the light, and being unable to scream or cry for help both out of numbness and fright of a step-mother's lashes.
Then…Ted DiBiase rolled along, and became the very first person to ever say "I want him" to me. He was the first – and only – person in this dark and frightening world who wanted me and my existence.
But soon, like being flung into a cruel reality from the loving bosoms of a beautiful dream, I came to realize that Ted's idea of friendship border lined (if not crossed) criminal insanity.
The revelation came to me as I watched Ted heartlessly shove his older brother down the long flight of stairs that stood at the end of his bedroom hallway. The first thing to strike me was the bat of horror. It was like watching a person die in front of your very own eyes. However, in what can only be described as an eerie calm, my mind soon shifted away from the human and turned to the null and void. In my own mind, as Mark got tossed about by a childish gravity, I convinced myself that the older brother deserved this. He deserved to be pushed.
Ted had rules like everyone else in the house, and as constricting as they were, they were all genuinely easy to follow. For me, I could never both bring any of my school friends over to his house, and talk about my friends while in his presence. The rule was simple. I soon became affiliated with the concept that this was Ted's best effort to keep me all to himself, but every time intuition threatened to invade, I forced it out by convincing myself that this was how true friends were. Just like Randy and Cena, it was supposed to be just Ted and I. As for Ted's family, the rules were even simpler. Never, ever, enter his side of the mansion.
Desperate not to anger Ted into throwing me away, I always walked the straight and narrow without quarrel. Mark, in my eyes at the moment, should have done the same. He should have obeyed the rules. When Mark finally hit the floor only to have a frantic Bret chase after him, I mindlessly walked over in front of Ted and threw my arms around him. The second my head hit his shoulder, I started to cry. Not for myself. Not for fear.
I cried for Ted because I knew exactly what he was thinking. 'I wouldn't have hurt you if you had just done what I wanted.'
Afterwards, Ted's behavior grew its own set of dark shadows. His crimes against human beings and all things Earthly became more and more extreme – even escalating to a point where he nearly beat another kid to death because he cut in front of me as I waited in line at an ice cream shop. Despite all of Ted's sins, his father forgave him without a moment's hesitation. And in no time at all, so did I.
Soon, as part of my growing understanding of Ted's possessiveness, I stopped seeing my friends altogether. Even Randy. Truthfully, I missed him a lot then, but I was wanted by Ted. So I stayed with him through each and every one of his crimes, offering myself as something to throw his arm around when it was all over and take back to his home for comfort.
Our friendship, for the longest time, stayed that way. A god and a willing sacrifice whom he could not kill. During that time it was nothing more than an innocent banter. Child play happened outside of Ted's tendencies to exhibiting spews of utter madness and blinding rage. Despite our climbing age, we kept to the selves we knew since day one. The selves who laughed a lot. The selves who played a lot. The selves who lived life in each miniscule moment.
But then came the day when it all ended.
On the afternoon of my fourteenth birthday, in our school storage room, Ted DiBiase beat me down and violently raped me.
I tried, with great effort, to convince myself that it was my utter and foolish pride that had gotten me to this point. This, happening now, was all due to me believing that because I was all Ted allowed in his world, I was invincible. I was immune to him and his murderous intentions. Pride has a great fall, and none came greater than the moment Ted grabbed me and drilled me into the cold concrete.
Convincing myself that this was all my fault made for a great story, but it never did help ease the pain. I could still feel Ted ripping away at every viable piece of skin I had. I could still feel him tearing away at my insides the second he entered with pure force. I could still feel everything. I was aware of everything, and anything. My mind tried to close itself to the scene. Tried to hide away in itself until the dawn finally broke this darkness. However, the only place my mind could conjure up running away to was Ted, and at the moment, nothing in the ordeal – not his face, his hands, his voice – reminded me of the Ted I knew.
With its tail between its legs, my mind returned to me forcing me wide awake to what was happening all around me. Soon a wave of despair fell over me as I felt myself being taken by a stranger I thought I had known for six years. I wanted to break down in tears, so I didn't. I wanted to beg him to stop, so I didn't. I wanted to scream out in agony, so I didn't.
I didn't because I couldn't think of what Ted wanted me to do. And it scared me. The reality of having to make my own choice scared me.
In the end, I bit down on my tongue (hard enough to bite right through it), and tried again to think away from the now. The focus began to take effect like a slow dose of morphine, but Ted – as if sensing that I was trying to escape with the only thing that was capable of registering this event – grabbed hold of my swollen jaw and single-handedly pried my mouth open. The second my tongue came loose, a blood-curling scream fled my mouth. And right away, many more followed.
The incident lasted long – long enough for me to even notice – but all too soon, it ran past the finish line. I slipped away into the hands of a new found unconsciousness as Ted moved further and further away. I never even heard him leave, but I could feel him being gone. And the feeling hurt.
It hurt like hell.
I never once thought about that day. Actually, and more precisely, I had buried all the brutality of that fateful summer day – effectively leaving my memory of the ordeal to resemble a slice of Swiss cheese. It was not as though I was scared to remember. It was more that I did not want to be hindered by that memory solely because of one thing.
Ted still wanted me.
Despite looking like I had been subject to a speeding truck, Ted simply glazed his eyes over my disheveled physique and in one breath spoke the words "Come with me" without even the slightest tinge of hesitation. In those three words I discovered a new found purpose in life. I even managed to trace it back to my fetal days of being stubborn and refusing to give in to the poisons that my mother in took. I had been alive all this time to be the something that Ted – no matter what – would always want. Back then, as I left the shed with him, I was drunk with the knowledge that I was now madly in love with the man known as Ted DiBiase. So drunk in fact, that I ended up making a fatal mistake.
I hadn't seen the line separating want from desire.
Yes. Ted wanted me after that day. He kept me closer than ever, and even went out of his way to pay for my tuition here at The Academy. However, Ted never desired me. Not since that day. He never once touched me. And in this segregation I landed on the cold hard veracity that that day was the first and last time that Ted DiBiase would ever embrace me again.
I don't really recall when I made such a horrific discovery, but I can clearly feel the painful cramps of my heart muscles as they twisted beyond repair. Nonetheless, I soon managed to sweep that aside as casually as I swept away all of Ted's trespasses. In no time at all, having Ted desire me became nothing more than a wish I kept locked away somewhere deep inside my mind.
"Ted?" I call shyly. I can't exactly say how long we've been sitting out here, but the blazing sun makes it uncomfortable to even fathom. To his name, Ted throws his head back in order to point his cold gaze at me. Seven years have passed and still he is beautiful and mystical as the day I first saw him. Still I feel like the willing sacrifice that he has yet to claim. "W-We have to go. Class is about to start."
After a few seconds, he silently turns on his side and nestles his head onto my lap. My entire body stiffens to the movement, and immediately I pray that he doesn't realize. I had worked hard these past two years to drown out the effects that come with being violently raped by a man I've been forced to be with. "I don't want to go."
Desperate to be rid of this unforgiving heat (wearing school uniforms did not help at all), I replied a bit more confidently. "We have to alright." He looks at me again, to see the shameful lust and wretched fear that's trapped in my eyes. "I've got Undertaker's class coming up soon. You know he'll kill me if I miss it." I pause to allow him to respond. He doesn't. "Ted, please. Let me go. If I miss any more classes, I'll never graduate."
"No." He state defiantly only to turn away again. "I don't want to."
A long sigh escapes me. "Ted—"
"If you go" He chips with a cold voice that slices through my words, "I'll have you expelled."
To this I don't reply. Fear begins to choke me again. I don't want to be expelled.
For as long as I can remember, obey or else had been Ted's motto for nearly our entire friendship, and it only became more elaborate once we entered the Academy. Obey or else I'll expel you. Most students here would rather die than be expelled from The Academy, solely because it was a school well recognized worldwide. For me, being expelled never meant being away from prestige. It meant being away from Ted. And that was something I could never bear.
With that, I came to shortly realize how deeply paralyzing Ted's ultimatum was. Just the thought of him carrying it through made me constrict all muscles to a halt. It was due to this ultimatum – this threat – that I remained silent for so long, and instead of replying with so much as a syllable, I simply let out a soft shaky breath as Ted's words nailed me to the ground.
After an agonizing set of minutes –with his face set towards me – Ted spoke softly into my lower abdomen ."Now sing me a lullaby." His deep voice rippled through my shirt and gracefully scraped my skin with fiery nails. This was the moment where I realized how much I wanted Ted DiBiase. How much I wanted him to desire me once again. "I wanna sleep."
Many things gush through my mind as I wrestle off the idea of telling Ted – for once – what I wanted. But then I look at his face with its closed eyes and peaceful aura, and I bite down hard on my tongue in an effort to drown out the emotions. With haste I begin to stutter on the first few notes of the only lullaby I ever heard. The one my father's wife sang to Dustin. I start off with a trembling voice, but soon it curves to something remotely passable, and from above I watch Ted drift off into sleep.
In my second year here at the Academy, Ted enforced a new rule.
Be home by nine o' clock, or sleep outside in the open hallway.
I stumbled upon this rule after a night of getting drunk with the boys. Having given up all hope on Ted and I, Evan convinced me of the goodness of drinking away my sorrows. Ten bottles later and I had even forgotten my own name.
Nearly ten months prior to our binge, Ted – having resigned himself to sleeping on the couch since he ordered our Head Master to put us both in a single bed room – broke his own law and hopped into bed with me. A cocktail of emotions swam about in that moment as I tried hard not to think about the muscles in his arms tightening around me, and the feel of his breath rampaging through my short hair. I was determined not to react to Ted's suddenness, but soon my eyes – just like the first time – betrayed my intentions by turning upwards and gazing at his beautiful face. The longer I looked, the more I wanted him. I wanted to taste those lips again. I wanted to feel these very hands rip me to shreds with uncontrollable desire. I wanted hear his voice force me into deep submission. I wanted him all in that moment, but after seven years, I knew I couldn't have him. I knew that this, like the storage shed, was simply another one of his whims. There was no meaning behind it. There was never a meaning behind it. He just did it, because he wanted to. He did it, because he can.
I fell asleep that night with my face nestled into his chest. Ted didn't move until morning. By then, however, I had finally made up my mind to give up on him.
And as such, Evan's idea played out for me. I drank away each and every one of my sorrows - from my fear of the darkness, to my nightmarish childhood, to being pitied by Randy, to the school storage room, to my inability to stop shaking whenever Ted so much as looked at me, to my heart's desires and wants. I drowned them all in various liquids that soon lost both taste and name.
The binge did not last long as soon I decided it was best to return home. We had been out since school ended at three, and by the time I reached the dorm room, it had been ten o' clock. With a strong warning, I mentally realigned myself, deciding it to be best to at least not seem drunk when Ted inevitably slams the door in my face for missing curfew. I got to the door forcefully sober, only to try it and find it unlocked.
I thought a lot of things. I thought, at first, of the why. Why did he leave the door open? Then I thought about the why not. Maybe his whim had finally run out again. Maybe there wasn't a curfew anymore. Then, when all was settled in my head, I decided to get inside before the falling temperature got the better of me.
I wished I had never opened that door.
It was like watching someone else in a horror movie. I watched, stone-dead, as my body ran over to Ted. I watched as I clutched his cold face in my hands – gently patting the cheeks to revive him. I watched as my eyes spotted the revulsion that was his upturned wrist cut open and bleeding. I watched as I tossed away – as if caught in the spell that maybe doing so would reverse all that happened here – the small razor still clinging to his fingers. I watched as I screamed his name over and over and over again, until my throat went dry and the damn in my eyes broke to the pressure of teardrops. I watched it all happen from the doorway, and then watched as myself returned to the real body it had left behind.
Without any form of permission, my hand wrapped around my cell phone and shakily dialed 911.
Once, when we were children, we played hide and seek.
I was the seeker. Ted had to hide.
The second the game started, Ted ran off to find the perfect hiding spot. After I counted to one hundred, I began searching for him. Minutes of playtime soon elapsed into hours of playtime, and still I had yet to find Ted. As the day slipped over towards night, I grew more desperate – even going so far as to enlist the help of Mark and Brett (both of whom had nothing much to add to the list of places Ted might have been) – and soon I stared at the frightening revelation. Ted was outside. In the four acre backyard.
Darkness took over, and grounded me for the longest time. I watched as the landscape – normally littered with gorgeous gardens and various stand-alone buildings – vanished under the thick blanket of blackness. The sight made everything in front of me seem like various depictions of hell, and soon I felt cold. I felt fear. However, all feelings of stillness ran for naught when put up against the thought that maybe Ted was trapped wherever he was hiding and could not move. And I was the only one who knew.
Armed with that thought I grabbed a flashlight from the nearby tool shed and headed out into the enveloping night. My heart raced faster than my mind, forcing me to stop many times, but soon I managed to control my emotions in order to think more clearly. Why would Ted hide? Was all I could sing upon the further away from the mansion I got. Soon something inside my head clicked. There was a forgotten stable about two acres in. It had been overrun by grass and forestry, until Ted took me there to help bring it back to something tangible. We named it our hideout, in the events where Ted grew bored of his own home.
I ran harder and harder the closer and closer I got, until finally I stumbled upon it. Just like we left it, there it was. I opened the loose door and threw my light around without any direction.
"Ted! Ted!" I called frantically –fearing the worse for some inexplicable reason – before my light landed on the body of my friend standing rigidly on his own two feet. He looked alive, and overjoyed I ran to him and wrapped clumsy arms around his neck and shoulders.
"Are you okay? Thank God I found you!" I cried out into his shoulder, shaking with relief.
He put a lax hand on my head and thoughtfully ran his fingers through my hair. And with his lips put down to the start of my ear, he spoke softly. "I knew you would, Cody. You'll always find me." His head rested on the rim of my shoulder. "No matter what, I'll only be in the places you'll look."
Ever since I was born, I've always hated hospitals. My mother died while lying on a bed similar to this one. My father – having exceeded his workload – slept peacefully in this room and passed away without a moment's hesitation. To me, people died in hospitals.
And now, this wretched creature – more disturbing and cruel than the dark – had Ted in its grasp.
I watched for days as Ted lay atop that slim bed. He looked distant, and lifeless. The only things there to prove otherwise were the various machines he had been wired into. To be honest, I don't exactly remember the events that took place since I found Ted on our dorm room's sofa. All I can say is that 911 responded, and we ended up here.
For close to two days Ted just laid on the hospital bed, sleeping almost as peacefully as he did every time his head rested on my lap or shoulder. There were times – as I sat there unmoving for those two gut-wrenching days – that I would gently hold his hand only to let it go the moment I felt the rhythmic beats of his pulse. At one point I even tried to kiss him, but for fear of him waking up and catching me in the act I left the need alone.
Sad as it is, I was slightly thankful for this situation, because it was truly the only time I could say to Ted what I've wanted to Ted.
That I—
"Cody?" Stumbles groggily out of his mouth.
I watch in a frozen second as his eyes crack open and then look over to me, before finally jumping up – unaltered by my fears and thoughts – and grabbing him in a desperate embrace. "Ted!" I screamed into his chest and shoulder. "Ted, thank God you're alive!"
He didn't reply with words. Instead, he placed his arm around me and held me close. That was my breaking point. It took everything in me to not make a sound. To hold back those tears. Even though relief –I've come to find – is a powerful feeling, Ted didn't need a cry-baby. He needed something far more robust.
We stayed like that for a while, before his grasp loosened to a lack of strength. I took it as a cue to let go, and so I withdrew to my former stance. Yet, as much as I wanted to look calm, as much as I wanted to look okay, I couldn't keep up the façade any longer. Those pent up tears came gushing out the longer I stared at his living face. He didn't die. He didn't leave. Nothing in this world could express my joy to that.
Ted looks away, before speaking up in a timid voice. ""Cody." He pauses. "I'm sorry, for everything." I watch – through streams of tears – as his captivating blue eyes keep their distance from me. I feel like saying something, but I know that he's got more to add. And I know how much I don't want to interrupt. "You shouldn't stay with me Cody." I wished I had interrupted. I wished I had never heard that. "You should go." He scoffs a bit cruelly. "Don't worry. I won't have you expelled. I never intended to."
/Expelled?/ I thought to myself shell-shocked. /What the hell?/ My blood level rises to the feeling of anger./ That never crossed my mind. Not once. Not ever! All I cared about was you! All I ever care about is you!/ The tears come back harder than before. Why did he wake up just to tell me this? Why did we become friends…why did we stay friends…if this was how we would end?
I didn't have an answer. And I didn't care. Instead, I threw away logic. I threw away fear. And in one motion, I hugged him without thought of his condition. Any tighter and I'm sure he would have been broken in half.
"I was so scared!" The truth flies from my mouth with enough speed to break sound. It echoes into his chest. "I thought you had died! I thought you had left me!" Distanced from the first time, I sob loudly whilst pouring tears stream down my face. God. I love him so much. "I thought—"
"I get it." Ted's deep voice slices in with the ease of a hot knife cutting through a stick of butter. His hand lifts and plants itself gently atop my head. My trembling body slowly ceases to a complete halt the longer he held me. Regrettably, I found myself preparing for something. Preparing for a different ending. Or rather, an ending I had been so subject to that it became the only ending I ever knew. "I love you."
Nothing prepared me for this.
And as I replied – shaking and crying like I was six all over again – with "I love you too", I felt that he already knew that kind of truth all along. Because this is what he always wanted.