Mending Ryan Falls ✓

33 | in which he forgets when he's dreaming

We never had to force love.
We were drowning in it before we even knew it.
From the moment we met.
We were meant to be.

.\.|./.

Ryan Falls

| in which he forgets when he's dreaming |

I feel strange.

Mostly because I don't know what Crystal is thinking, but also because I don't know what to say. She's been awfully quiet since we got on the road, and though I want to break her out of her thoughts, I have no idea what to talk about.

Maybe she wants me to tell her stories about my own family. Maybe she wants to hear about my mom and my dad, about the mistakes I made and the love they showered me with. Maybe she wants to know about me.

I have nothing to tell her, nothing good at least. I have no memories from LA, none that I want to relive. I was a delinquent, a rowdy mess of everything flawed and broken. I was the boy people admired and feared at the same time, but no one knew. I was a beautiful illusion, a mystery they wanted to fantasize about but not unravel. I didn't want them to unravel me either, for the only thing they would see under my glittering exterior was darkness.

Darkness and secrets, pain and scars, a curse I was trapped in since I was seven.

I don't know what to tell Crystal. I don't have those favorite spots to take her to, or those stories that would make her laugh. I don't have friends I would like her to meet or things to show her. I have nothing from my past that I want to drag into the present, and definitely never into the future. Some memories are better discarded and some skins shed, burned and their ashes buried.

She falls asleep after a while, her head against the back of the seat and eyes closed. I glance at her and smile, uplifted by the fact that she didn't ask. Even if she has questions, I'm glad she has the decency to leave them unasked.

Taking short breaks on the drive is the best part of it, getting out of the car to stretch and splash some water on my face, while Crystal stares out at the scene with awe. We don't need to speak, comfortable in our silence.

That is until reality catches up to us.

The sky outside begins to darken, and even when Crystal wakes up and asks me if we're there yet, I laugh and shift back into silence. In my haste to get Crystal away from everything haunting her, I forgot to take my demons into account. I hadn't thought about all the things that would stand between me and her happiness, since they were all parts of me.

My heart beats fast as darkness envelops us, and my mind is already drifting away from me. I'm still over 3,000 miles and seventy hours away from the destination, but the monsters that haunt my mind come out as soon as the sun sets. Crystal's silence only adds to the effect, and my hands clench the wheel tighter, my breathing labored.

'Let's play, Ryan,' his throaty voice echoes in my head. 'You close your eyes while I hide, alright?'

'Why are you tying my hands, uncle Grey?'

'You'll see, kiddo. Now, just hush!' He chuckled.

But I was no longer seven. I was seventeen, a grown man, no longer a kid. Yet he controlled me. He controlled me with a single blink. He controlled me with a flick of his finger. He controlled me with the tapes hidden away in his basement.

'Stop!' I had tried to fight. I had trembled on my feet every time he told me to descend the stairs into the living hell. 'Please just stop.'

'You know what I'll do, Ryan. Now come on, kiddo.'

I didn't have the courage to fight. I was a coward, afraid of being known as the broken boy. It was better to be broken and known as a whole than to be whole and known as broken. At least that's what I had thought.