Hopelessly Falling [book 2]

Chapter Fifty-One

"What am I good for, Crystal? I mean, seriously?" He asked me softly, and my heart broke for him, "I make shit harder for the people I try to protect, and I'm not just talking about this one time. I wouldn't be at risk of losing Jake and Layla right now if I didn't do so much to get me here," he vented, and I wiped a couple of his tears with my thumbs as they fell. "My mom would still be here, Crystal. Maybe not my dad, but my mom would be," his voice was strained and his breaths were thin.

"You have a beautiful soul, Ashton," I told him intently, wishing on every star out there that he could believe me. "And you are here, and you are a part of us. All of us. And nothing can change that. I always joke about you being stuck with us, but it's true. Jake and Layla need you, Ash. Past aside, they need you now." I added, and he finally looked like he was at least taking in my words. Whether he believed them or not, I couldn't tell.

"I, just-" his voice was low and hoarse, "I'm a fucking mess."

"No you're not-"

"I am," he cut me off. "How did I seriously ever think I could raise Jake?" He asked, and I brought my hands down again to hold his.

"You're not doing it alone. You might have felt like you were back then, but not at all now," I said, "think about how happy Layla is to finally have you again. And Jake needs you. You're an amazing older brother."

"But he needs a dad," he shook his head, more tears falling. "I lost mine, and it broke me, but he never even got to have one. He doesn't remember either of our parents or anything they planned on teaching us, and he's going to grow up in this cruel world and I don't know how to make him not broken like I am, or even worse than I am. The more friends he makes, the more he understands how much he is missing without parents, and I don't know how to help him through that- especially considering the fact that I haven't even started to help myself."

"You're not alone, though. You're doing none of this by yourself," I repeated myself, knowing that it's what I would want to hear if I were him. And it was the complete truth.

"I should be," his voice was barely audible, but it broke my heart again.

"No you shouldn't," I disagreed firmly.

"Fuck," he swore under his breath, looking away from me and resting his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees. "I'm scared, Crystal," his voice was finally really shaking as he spoke, and I realized that he had reached his limit of keeping himself together in front of me as he kept his head in his palms.

Not knowing what else I could do, I reached and brought him into me, wrapping my arms around him and holding him close. It caught me a little off guard, but he hugged me back even tighter and buried his face in between my neck and shoulder, letting himself cry.

He had cried in front of me a few times before, but this was the first time he was actually crying into me. My heart was breaking at how he was feeling, but swelling at the fact that he finally understood he had a shoulder to cry into.

His sobs were still silent, but his shallow breaths in between them were so raw and so broken that they sounded more painful than any audible sob could. I ignored the fact that he was almost crushing my lungs from squeezing me so tight, and just held him back as he shook in my arms.

His hands balled the back of my shirt into tight fists as I just rubbed his back in efforts to comfort him. These emotions had been building up in him for a long time, and even though I wanted to say something positive and try to make him feel better, the only right thing to do here was to let him just cry it all out. Sadness can't be healed by just wrapping a blanket of okay-ness around it.