The Returnee

Chapter 3

[Table talks don't have to happen at the farm.]

[You should have been there for Katie's one about her coffee habits.]

[Lee?]

[You haven't done something stupid again, have you?]

The messages lined up on the screen, popping up one by one in quick succession in a way that suggested the phone had lost connection for a brief moment rather than Damian texting fast. Lee winced as the last one popped up. The phone vibrated before he could try to unlock it and reply. He answered more from surprise than inclination, thumb hitting the accept button in place of the unlock button.

"Lee!" Damian's voice rang out, worried and on the edge of a panic attack. "You answered! Thank fuck. I didn't want to have to call Joey. I hate snitching; it goes against everything I ever stood for before I got trapped in this whirlwind of a family."

"Calm down, Damian. You're going to give yourself a heart attack," Lee kicked off his shoes off and crawled further back on the bed, patting a pillow to lean on more comfortably. He closed his eyes, and a yawn escaped him. "I was checking my other messages, not fleeing the country. Yet."

"Haha," The eye roll was unmistakable even over the phone, with the image of Damian slumping in relief. "Seriously, dude, what the hell? What you did wasn't cool."

"Hence the not getting in contact."

"Bullshit! That made it worse. We had to take rotations guarding the phone, so Grant and the others would sleep. Their relationship is back on solid ground now after you broke their trust. How could you do that to them?"Distress started to leak through and make Lee's guilt over how he'd dealt with the situation rise from where he usually buried it deep. He tried to squash it back down. Damian liked to be dramatic.

"They knew what I wanted. Loving them didn't mean I was going to give up what I'd worked for all my life," Lee said, trying not to let his voice sound too defensive. The ceiling had no cracking paint or patterns to lose his eyes in. It was plain white. However, there was a discoloured patch where someone had painted over something. Nothing interesting enough to distract from the conversation at hand. The picture in the room was no better, a simple two-bars of colours merging in a shamelessly mass-produced form of abstract art with no meaning or intent behind it.

"So you admit that you did?" Damian's voice turned curious, a slight purr at the end of his sentence. The visual image of Damian's eyebrow appeared in front of him. Damian had a particular way of moving and reacting that was unique to him and made him very easy to see even when it wasn't in the room.

"Did what?"

"Love them."

Lee's eyes welled up. His chest tightened, and a sound escaped him. A pitiful, disgusting sound that no adult had any right to make, especially on the phone. He turned and buried his face in a pillow to muffle any more. The mere mention of it made the endless echo of loneliness in his ribs rattle relentlessly every time their faces appeared in his dreams.

He missed them.

Being with people who love you and then going to not, words didn't fully describe the empty sorrow that filled the hole that is left. A few perfect months of bliss, then the warmth left. He made the choice. No one forced him to leave the way he did. His lovers hadn't asked him to decide there and then. Escaping in the dead night without telling anyone seemed like the best opinion at the time, but now, he wished he hadn't.

Leaving the proper way would have been harder, but the additional effect of not being able to contact any of the people who had befriended him made everything so much worse. Not being able to talk to Damian, Kjell or Crystal almost sent him back down a path that almost killed him the first time. A strange trick of fate wouldn't save him this time.