tongue-tied and heartbroken ||mashton||

Chapter 14

As I came too, I was not where I thought I would be. Instead of laying on a blanket on the beach, I was in a beige room in a bed. Instead of Ashton lying next to me, Luke was sitting in a chair with his head in his hands. Machines beeped around me. My throat was dry and my body was stiff. Where was Ashton? Where was I? I didn't know anything.

Luke looked up and gasped, his eyes filling with tears. He jumped up from his chair and hugged me tightly, crying. "Oh my god, you're alive," he cried into my shoulder.

"What-"

"Shhh, don't try to talk, Michael. Let me get you some water." He leaned over to the small table next to me and pour some water from a pitcher in a cup. He stuck a straw in it and held it to my mouth so I could drink. I took a few small sips, swallowing hard.

"Where am I?" I asked.

"The hospital. You've been in a coma, Michael. I'm so sorry. I should've been there."

"How long?" I asked, terrified of the answer.

"Nine months."

And just like that, my world crumbled down around me. All that time with Ashton, all those feelings and moments, were never real. None of it had ever happened.

*flashback*
//third person pov//
Michael took every hit. His dad was furious. He grabbed Michael's wrist and threw him against the wall. The only thing Michael thought of before he blacked out was Ashton. The way it felt to kiss him at the party. Waking up in Ashton's room the next morning. Ashton's sleep-glazed eyes and bed head. And suddenly, he blacked out.

Instead of waking up in his room the next morning, he never did. Luke found him bruised and bloody, knocked out on the floor next to the wall he'd been thrown against. Michael was hardly breathing, and he wasn't responding to Luke. He wouldn't wake up. So his best friend called an ambulance.

The doctors couldn't help him. He was set up in a room, all his broken bones set in casts and his cuts tended to. For nine months, Michael laid in that hospital bed in a coma. For nine months, Luke never left his side.

I began to cry. I couldn't stop the tears from flowing. All that time I'd spent with Ashton was just a dream while I was in a coma. Ashton had never been abused by Emma. They never broke up. I never helped Ashton through everything. Ashton never kissed me in the boys' bathroom. We never started dating. Nothing was real. I was immediately taken back to the first time I'd seen him. I could never forget that moment.

It had been the first day of freshman year. I had seen him in the music room playing the drums in black skinny jeans and a cut-off tank top. His hair was falling across his forehead, and he had done the hottest thing where his lip in concentration. His best friend had been playing bass beside him. They had looked like they were having so much fun. I had longed to join them, but I remembered being immediately pulled from my thoughts by Luke.

The doctors had released me a couple days later as I hid my feelings from the world. I stayed home most of the time. I didn't talk to anyone. I was depressed. My life without Ashton was something I had never wanted to go back to. It was so lonely being without the one person you loved.

I decided, then and there, that I never wanted to live without Ashton. It wasn't the life I wanted. And there was no way it any of it was ever going to happen. So I did the only thing I could think to do.