CHAPTER 53: BACK STORY.

The year after that... everything broke apart and rearranged itself at once.

My parents divorced when I was twelve.

My mother took me with her. Packed what little we owned into two suitcases and left before dawn like we were running from a crime scene. My father didn’t chase after us. He didn’t call. He didn’t ask where I was. Weeks turned into months, and eventually even my nightmares of him stopped.

It was like we had vanished from his life completely.

And somehow... that hurt more than the violence.

By thirteen, my attitude had changed.

I wasn’t quiet anymore.

I wasn’t scared anymore.

I was angry.

I leaned into it the only way a broken kid knew how — with rebellion that looked ugly but felt powerful. I cut my hair shorter. Got my ears pierced with a needle behind the convenience store with shaking hands and a stupid, defiant grin.

When I came home bleeding a little from the lobes, my mother barely looked up.

She was drowning in her own sadness then. Some days she didn’t leave her room. Some days she cried over nothing. Some days she stared at the wall like she was already halfway gone.

She didn’t scold me.

She didn’t notice.

So I got louder.

I skipped classes. Picked fights. Learned how to throw the first punch so I wouldn’t end up on the ground again like I used to. People stopped calling me weak.

They started calling me trouble.

And that was when Charles really came into my life.

Not as a hero this time.

Not as a savior.

But as a friend.

He found me behind the bleachers one afternoon, cigarette trembling between my fingers even though I didn’t know how to smoke properly.

He stared at it. Then at me. Then sighed.

"That’s going to kill you, you know."

I scoffed, exhaling badly and coughing like an idiot.

"Good."

That was the first time he looked at me with something sharper than kindness.

He walked over, plucked the cigarette from my fingers, and crushed it under his shoe.

"No," he said simply. "You don’t get to die."

Something about the way he said it — calm, certain, like it was a rule of the universe — made my chest ache.

"Why do you care?" I snapped.

He shrugged, sliding down beside me until our shoulders touched.

"Because you walk past my desk every day and pretend you don’t exist. And I don’t like invisible people."

I laughed before I could stop myself.

After that... we just stayed side by side.

We shared lunches. Shared detentions. Shared stories we never told anyone else. He talked about his family in careful pieces. I talked about mine like it was already dead.

He didn’t judge me for the piercings.

Didn’t flinch at my fights.

Didn’t lecture me for being angry.

He just stayed.

And for the first time in my life... someone choosing to stay felt heavier than any promise.

By thirteen, Charles wasn’t just the boy who saved me behind the gym anymore.

He was my anchor.

The one place I stopped pretending to be hard.

He introduced me to Anna and Daniel not long after that.

"Don’t bite," he’d told them with a straight face while standing between us like a shield. "He just looks feral."

Anna laughed first. Bright, fearless. The kind of girl who smiled like she’d never been taught how to be afraid. Daniel followed — quieter, observant, eyes always calculating three steps ahead.

They became my first real circle.

My only comfort.

With them, I didn’t have to be the angry kid. I didn’t have to be the fighter. I didn’t have to be anything but... a boy trying to survive.

We skipped stones at the river. Shared food like it was sacred. Talked about dreams we pretended we believed in.

For a while... I almost felt normal.

But my mother kept slipping.

Some days she forgot to cook. Some days she forgot my name. Some days she sat on the edge of her bed and whispered apologies to no one.

The social workers came quietly at first. Then loudly. Then with papers.

And just like that—

I was sent back.

Back to my father.

The man who never asked if I was okay. The man who never asked if I was afraid. The man whose fists had once taught me what pain meant long before I learned what love was.

I still remember the morning they took me.

My mother didn’t fight. She couldn’t.

She stood in the doorway in her slippers, hair unbrushed, eyes hollow and wet.

"I’m sorry," she whispered. Over and over. Like a broken prayer.

I didn’t cry.

I had already learned that crying never saved me.

When I arrived at his house, my father looked at me the way one might look at a returned burden.

"You’ll behave this time," he said flatly.

It wasn’t a question.

That night, alone in that old room that still smelled like violence and dust, I realized something cold and permanent:

Charles, Anna, and Daniel weren’t just my friends.

They were my escape.

The only place in my life where I remembered what it felt like to breathe.

And every night after that—

No matter how much it hurt,

I thought of them.

My father was worse than a womanizer.

He didn’t chase love. He chased bodies.

Anything that breathed. Anything that would let him.

It was almost strange that nothing had ever finally taken him out — no disease, no overdose, no jealous lover with a blade in the dark. Men like him usually didn’t last long. Yet he survived, like rot that refused to die.

He noticed my anger the moment I came back.

And instead of correcting it?

He fed it.

The cigarettes came first. "Better you smoke than whine," he’d said, tossing the pack at me like a reward.

Then the alcohol. "A man learns early," he laughed once, forcing the bottle into my hand when I was barely old enough to hold it steady.

He watched me destroy myself like it was entertainment. Like I was some twisted experiment he was proud of.

And I let it happen.

Because when you grow up being hurt, being ruined can start to feel like control.

But Charles...

Charles pulled me back without even trying.

Just by existing.

By sitting beside me at school like nothing had changed. By talking to me like I was still the same shy kid he’d met at eleven. By never flinching at the smell of smoke on my clothes. By never asking why my eyes looked older than they should’ve.

With Charles, I didn’t have to be the son of a monster.

With him, I remembered the part of myself that hadn’t died yet.

He was the reason I didn’t drown completely. The reason I didn’t become my father.

was fifteen when my mother finally decided to fight for my custody.

She didn’t come alone.

She came with her father.

My grandfather was a retired military officer — tall even with age pulling at his spine, voice still sharp enough to cut through steel. He didn’t raise his voice when he met my father. He didn’t need to.

Men like my father were loud. Men like my grandfather were final.

The day they came for me, I was sitting on the edge of my bed with a cigarette between my fingers and bitterness in my mouth. My father was drunk in the living room. Again.

I remember the knock on the door. Three slow, steady raps.

Not hesitant. Not afraid.

My father opened it with a grin that faded the second he saw who stood outside.

"You don’t get to keep him anymore," my grandfather said quietly.

My father laughed. A cheap, ugly sound.

But when my grandfather stepped forward, when his presence filled the doorway like a wall no one could push through, something in my father’s eyes changed.

Fear.

Court came quickly after that. Testimonies. Photos. Medical records my mother had hidden for years.

The judge never even looked at my father when he ruled.

Custody was granted to my mother.

Just like that, I was taken from the house that had tried to turn me into something broken beyond repair.

I should’ve felt free.

Instead...

I felt hollow.

Because by then, damage doesn’t disappear when the door finally closes. It just learns how to echo.

My mother tried. God, she tried.

But depression doesn’t vanish just because you win. And neither do the ghosts.

She worked too much. Slept too little. Cried when she thought I couldn’t hear her.

And I learned—quietly—how to survive on my own again.

But through all of it...

Charles never left.

Not when I was angry. Not when I was reckless. Not when I was unbearable.

He stayed.

And that was how I learned the difference between someone who keeps you...

And someone who comes back for you.

Even when I was spiraling, Even when I was burning through myself on purpose—

Being with Charles kept me from being consumed.

And I didn’t even realize how deeply he’d saved me...

Until years later, When losing him started to feel worse than losing myself.