Broken, Flawed & Living (Discontinued)

Chapter Twenty-Four

"I won't let myself be a burden in someone else's life," I said to myself once. And look how well I kept that promise. Was it too late to renew my vows?

His cough broke up my thoughts. "You know... I love you for doing this."

"Doing what?"

"Opening up to me," and I caught a faint play on his lips from the corner of my eyes. "You always feel like you can handle things by yourself, like that's what men do. No, that's what Anthony did because he's still a boy. He hasn't grown in the least – and I'm honestly just talking out my ass because who knows what the bastard's up to – but Chance... real men are honest with their feelings. They accept the emotions flooding them and they won't let it kill them either. Women won't die from theirs either. Real men are honest with what they need help with and become stronger for doing so."

Loved him for understanding. For trying. "Am I really a man for falling prey to depression? Am I really a man for making the same mistake three times?" Bentley. Jalen. Thomas. "How can I be a man when I'm broken and left with nothing to do because I don't know how to fix myself?"

"It's that kind of foolish talk that keeps you a damn fool for the rest of your life, living in the embrace of depression. You're doing it again without realizing it, your digging your own grave again."

Why was this so hard? "I just don't see how I'm a man. I'm just a mangy dog who can't deal with his own life." One hell of it.

I almost had to make him repeat himself with how low he replied. "Did you not let Tori in...? Did you not let us in...? Did you not ever get protective over Thomas...? And please tell me... did you not realize your own faults and choose to become a better you?" In turn he left me with no answers. There was no denying anything he said. I'd be right back at the bottom, somewhere in the jungle of the forest again if I did.

"So tell me... how a mangy dog can do that?" he asked. "Only a man can realize how fucked up his life is and keeps on living, piecing back the broken glass that he for sure thought couldn't fix before. What are you doing now? You can't just flip moods on me like that, man. That's not the man I know right now."

How Tori fell for a man like this, of course I knew why. For years I had and no wonder he stood by my side. Ever since we were kids. Growing up, going through problems and figuring things out on our own. Having a little fun together on some drunken nights – and in his own damn defence, he was drunk. But so was I and we could still accept it happened a few times. He knew me inside out and how could I not deny the truth I waited for myself to say?

The truth wasn't something to fear, but to live with. To move on with it no matter what bomb it laid in its wake. For all we knew, the truth could always be a rainbow in the sky. Or just music itself; good on occasion, bad on some days and downright mellow on other. No more cowardice. Not at something like this.

"I'm sure Thomas thinks of you as a man. A very mysterious man."

He once told me that. "Yeah." If I accepted it happened... that this was what I became because of it, then I'd feel comfortable. Then his ears could touch the story I'd been dying to tell him and my parents. Hopefully. But until then, that's what I remained to Thomas. A man, nonetheless.

"And you know, you could always come back to my bed and have a few drinks like old times." His shoulders bounced as he hid his face away and I couldn't help myself to punch the idiot in the arm.

Like old times. "Yeah, I'm sure you'd like that again, wouldn't you?" Those were the days... "Trying to break my poor sister's heart now?"

"She's trying to kill mine here! Being too damn sexy for her own good."