A Man's Bestfriend ⇢ malum [✓]

Chapter 10

(written in point-of-views)

≪ Luke's POV ≫

"What's inside the folder?" Ashton asked while he focused his gaze on the road.

"I don't know," I answered, "All I know is that it's most likely Calum's."

"Definitely."

Once we reached and parked the car, Mali opened the door. We greeted her with hugs and entered the house. Joy was no where to be seen.

"Where's Joy?" I asked her as she closed the door.

"Mum's packing her stuff. She's flying back to Australia to meet Dad and sort out our old house before they come and live with me here."

We sat in the living room, where Mali had her laptop ready on the table. I gave Mali the thumbdrive that I told her about over the phone.

"Are you sure this is Calum's?"

"Yup," I confidently answered.

"Wait, we don't know for sure," Ashton placed his hand on my thigh, "...but it's most probably Calum's."

"Okay, if I see something that has nothing to do with my brother, I'm closing it and I'll pretend nothing happened."

We all laughed as Mali started clicking away. She squinted her eyes as she double-clicked on something, then she looked surprised. She scrolled a few times before what looked like she exited the window. Then she double clicked on another but for this, she took her time to scroll. Ashton and I stared and her and exchanged worried and curious looks throughout, until finally, she spoke about it.

"You're right, this is Calum's," Mali said, looking at the both of us.

"It's totally fine if you don't want to or can't tell us about it," I assured her.

"Yeah, that's the main reason why we brought this to you," Ashton added.

"Remember when you texted me about this?" Mali looked at me, "— you said that if this has anything to do with me or my parents, we deserved to know?"

I nodded slowly while I wondered where she was headed with that.

"It's got nothing to do with me, nor Mum and Dad," Mali smiled.

Ashton and I looked at each other, very confused. Then Mali turned her laptop to show the opened document that was titled "SORRY" and she had scrolled to the last page of it but it was blank.

"There's nothing," Ashton pointed out.

"That's what you would think at first, but what if I did this?"

Then, Mali highlighted the whole page and to my surprise, witten in big and bold in the middle was:

I love you, Michael.

The words were coloured white so that it would seem like a blank page. Of course, Calum would do something like that.

"I had no idea that he felt that way," I commented.

"I did," Ashton muttered, but we heard.

Mali and I stared at Ashton as we urged him to spill the beans.

"Calum and I were very close, too close sometimes, that people think we're in love," Ashton paused, "...and they're right!"

My heart ached.

"We were in love but not with each other, never with each other."

Oh.

"Calum would always talk about Michael and how he missed spending time with him — but he cleverly made it seem like he didn't care too much about it. He tried so hard with the facade that he was not himself sometimes."