To love you | Malum

Ch. 25 - The Road Ahead Is A Long One + Stay With Me

Michael + Ch. 25 - The Road Ahead Is A Long One + Stay With Me

It was time to return home from the hotel sooner than later, and I had really hoped that it would be later, but it wasn't. Daryl was sitting at the kitchen table with his head inside of his hands, and the entire place was clashed with broken glasses and shredded newspapers – making it look like a landfill full of waste. The daylight was barely peeking through the small window in the corner of the living room, just enough to see the left side of his cheekbones. I stayed sitting in front of the door behind the counter where he couldn't see me — but where he could see Calum, the one he detested more than Karen. Calum's illuminated skin pressed against the side panel on my wheelchair, and he was burning, warm, and I could tell that he was just as afraid as I was for what was about to go down since the last time he and my father spoke – which was at the hospital, where he rudely and unexplainably left me stranded because he had something better to do. "Nice to see you here after you broke my son's heart."

"For all the right reasons, sir," Calum gulped, and I didn't miss the way his fingers folded like wedges on my handlebars, or the way his skin numbed from the amount of tension inside of the room, or the way he suddenly forgot how to form proper sentences, but I did miss the way he grabbed my hand and squeezed it – I missed it because I was numb too, and feeling anything other than this was impossible. "I messed up big time, and I know that now. But I love Michael, and nothing you say or do to me will change how I feel about him."

My heart faltered, and Daryl gripped tightly onto the bottle of beer he was holding, but he let it go quickly in fear of scaring me – he knew what my mother was like, and he swore he'd never be like her. "You love him?"

"I do," Calum winced, knowing that Daryl wasn't a mean person because he always had the best intentions, and he cared more about me than he did about anything else, so there was no way he'd hurt Calum unless the situation was threatening and he had to protect me. "I'm sorry if that makes me seem like the biggest jackass on earth, and in a way, I am exactly that. I've hurt him more than I'd like to admit, and that's why I'm standing here right now in your kitchen trying to make up for it."

I tried to smile, but the tension was still thick, and I wanted nothing more as of right now than to return to that damn hotel and pretend that staying there for an infinite amount of time could actually happen. He wasn't even smiling, and I knew that there was about to be a world full of hell stepping on my toes and there wasn't a single thing that I could do about it. Even writing in that journal that I haven't touched since that announcement wouldn't do anything but harm. "Dad –"

"Michael, don't get involved in things that you don't need to be involved with," Daryl sucked in a breath, looking as though it was too stressful to be apart of my life anymore, but that wasn't the case. He could never get tired of me. "This is between Calum and I, and quite frankly, I don't want you hearing this because you just might get hurt again."

I knew this was something that my dad wouldn't accept, because he knows about Calum, and he knows he's the kind of guy who breaks hearts until they're no longer worth breaking, and he knows that Calum has been involved with Luke, but he doesn't know the story — and that's what hurts me the most, he's judging before Calum can even speak up. "If you're going to talk to my boyfriend, at least have the decency to respect him while I'm here, or you know what, scratch that, always respect him whether I'm here or not. You should know of all people not to judge others. You know, after what mom did, and then you did a week later."

"We don't talk about that," Daryl mumbled, his head hanging low, his eyebrows twitching ever so quickly. "And - and boyfriend?" – I knew this was a time that I'd slip up, and I didn't even run it by Calum first. Calum on the other hand was grinning, his complexion lighting up just like his eyes. It was a reaction that I wasn't expecting, but got anyway. "When did this happen? You could have told me."