Bryson was staring out the window, his best somber face on, when someone breathlessly dropped into the seat beside him. At his last check two days ago, the flight had only been partially full, and nobody was seated beside him. He turned to greet the newcomer and was stunned to be met by a pair of two-toned eyes staring back at him from beneath a mop of blond hair. It seemed bizarrely impossible, and he convinced himself that he was imaging things.

  “It's real,” Aidan told him, buckling himself up as he kept his eyes on Bryson. “I'm real, and this flight is real. You're here, I'm here, we're going to London. I guess though that I owe you a heavy explanation, but let's get to cruising altitude first. I should warn you I abhor flying.” He stole a quick kiss and then took some deep breaths as they closed up the door and prepare for takeoff.

  Bryson was paying no attention to the safety talks or anything else, still staring at Aidan like it hadn't sunk in yet. He was shaken to earth though by the plane moving, taxiing down the runway to where they would lift off. Normally he loved the sensation of leaving the ground, of climbing up, but he felt none of it now. He only felt the pressure of Aidan grabbing and gripping his wrist tightly, and the confusion inside his head.

  “I promised you an answer,” Aidan finally said the second the seat belt light dinged off. His shoulders visibly relaxed and although he didn't unbuckle, he didn't seem as nervous as he launched into his account. “I thought about it the moment you mentioned it. I knew that I couldn't totally bail on Monmouth, that's part of the deal with my uncle and that's how I'm getting out, but then I thought that we have the entire month of August so why waste it? I know you want to find yourself and all that stuff, and I support that, but I also support my utter and total need to spend a little more time with you. I started asking my mom questions, mostly about my dad's estate, and she finally confessed that he had left me money. Turns out that Joseph was working with a lawyer and a banker friend to find a loophole because he thought the family at large could benefit from it more than I could. Once I found out though, he dropped it fast, because now that I know, it could have meant a heap of legal trouble for him down the line.”

  When the steward came, he ordered them sodas and chips and then turned back to Bryson, taking his hand in his properly “I worked it out with my uncle, and most of what I got from my dad will go for school expenses and to pay some of my bills while I'm living with him. I'll get a job eventually, but this gives me a little more freedom to study and not rush right into a heavy load. He let me take some of the cash to do this with you, just for the month, and then you're on your own. I just thought, you know, maybe you didn't want to be all alone at first and... if you do... well, I can always change my ticket home... ”

  Bryson leaned across the armrest and kissed him hard on the mouth then, not letting go of his hand. He had never imagined something like this. It was a little crazy, but then again, everything about their relationship had been that way. It had started with a fall into the bushes and now here they were, heading off to Europe with no real plans in mind. It was freeing, but most importantly it felt incredibly right.

  “Stay the whole month,” he whispered, lips curving up into a brief hint of a smile. “This is a surprise, I have to admit, but I do like surprises sometimes. I can't believe you'd spend your money to do this with me, but honestly? I wouldn't want to do anything this spontaneous and out there with anyone but you, Aidan. You kept it secret too, which must have been hard. You are just... constantly changing the narrative of my life, and I think you for that.”

  Aidan smiled and kissed him back, finally unbuckling himself so he could get more comfortable. Eventually, he laid his head onto Bryson's shoulder and fell asleep, leaving the other to look out the window at the clouds and consider all the possibilities ahead of him. Ahead of both of them.

  The future that had once scared the hell out of him didn't terrify him so badly anymore. It felt okay to look forward to things again, to accept that he had his own life to live and that he wanted to live it to the fullest. He and Alec had never been the type of brothers who did things the same way, they hadn't even liked the same things, and this was one thing he was able to hold on to that his brother had not. That the future was out there waiting for him, beckoning him to see what there was to see. Perhaps there would be times when it got so bleak he couldn’t imagine taking another step, going another minute forward, but he didn't think so. He had been through the dark; he had seen how far down it could drag you, and he hadn't let it hold on to him for keeps.

  There was a wedding ahead of him, and visits to New York City. There were four weeks in London, Paris, and Amsterdam with a boy he was starting to love and whom he hoped to love indefinitely. There were people to help, a world to save, and so many more things not yet on his radar. With life so bright and beautiful, with everything at his fingertips, why would he ever choose to turn off the light?

  If you liked A Crooked Mile and A Different Shade of Blue, be sure to check out A Narrow Road (Rust 0.5) coming in the winter of 2020!

  Chapter One

  Kansas was an immensely flat state, and Alec Davis was very much tired of looking at it. He was also tired of being trapped in the car, his knees bunched up against the seat in front of him while he listened to the same songs over and over again on his aging iPod. It felt like they had left Georgia a year ago and were on a road that lead to nowhere, the miles stacking up without any end in sight. They had left Atlanta just four days ago, and while they could have already been to Colorado Springs, his mom had insisted they make a real trip out of it which meant staying over in hotels instead of driving straight through. It also meant a constant barrage of stops at roadside attractions that nobody had the heart for, but that they all pretended to enjoy anyway.

  The first night had been spent in Nashville, where they’d taken a boat ride inside of the huge hotel they were staying at before spending several hours listening to wannabe country stars sing karaoke in a mediocre restaurant and bar. The second day they had stayed in St. Louis, and last night they had made it as far as Kansas City. Today their father had put his foot down though, insisting that they could and would make it to Colorado Springs by tonight.

  When the elder Davis man spoke his word was law, and so Alec's mother hadn’t protested any further. That was how they had set out across Kansas with only a few stops for gas and to use the restroom, eating the snacks they’d brought along and grabbing some fast food for lunch at what was surely the most isolated McDonald’s in history. They were logging miles, that was for sure, and Alec had the feeling that his little brother Bryson was just as bored of the car as he was. They were used to being able to stretch their legs, shooting hoops in the driveway or riding their bikes to visit friends in their old neighborhood. They were not used to sitting cramped up in the back of a small SUV for hours at a time, staring out the window at the nothingness of the great American west.

  The decision to leave Atlanta behind had been a strange and sudden one, and not one advocated by two-fourths of the family unit. Their father had sprang the news on them at the end of June, just a week or so after school had let out for the summer and during what should have been the most joyous time of the year for any kid. There was swimming, boating, and camp to look forward to but instead they had been given cartons and boxes and told to start sorting through their stuff. The house in Montana, their soon to be home state, would be quite a bit smaller than their old one, and so they’d had to weed out anything that wasn’t necessarily considered essential.

  Montana. Who would ever leave sunny, warm, wonderful Georgia for a place like Montana? Specifically a town called Rust, some little hole in the wall that’s one and only claim to anything remotely near fame was growing wheat. All Alec knew about it besides the wheat thing was that his father had been born in the closest hospital, and had spent the first eighteen years of his life there before escaping to college and then law school. Even his grandparents hadn’t stayed there forever, selling off their farm and moving to South Carolina before he had even been born.

  His father had gotten into a nasty car accident some months before the radical decision to move, and it had obviously shaken loose something integral in his brain. He was tired of the traffic, the noise, and the suffocating feeling of living in a big city and he wanted to “get back to his roots”. It didn’t hurt either that there weren’t a lot of other practicing lawyers in the area surrounding Rust, or that he could set up a good business out of Fort Benson. Going west would require him to travel quite a bit, especially when cases went to trial, but the pace would be much more mild and sedate. It was supposed to be good for all of them, but Alec didn’t really see it that way.

  He especially didn’t see it that way because he wasn’t even going to this mythical place called Rust. He was instead being sequestered away to a private school in Colorado Springs where he could better hone his athletic and academic abilities. That had been the spiel his parents had given him when they’d sat him down to give him the news in August, which had only added to the utter anxiety of moving at all. He was going to a new place, in a new state, in an entirely foreign part of the country and he was more or less going to be alone. While they were all eating dinner together in the new house, setting up all the rooms and making it a home, he would be trapped in a dorm room with a stranger. He wanted to be with Bryson, even though Bryson would only be in eighth grade, and he wanted to be where his mother was. His father he could survive without, but the others? It was a harsh reality.

  In Atlanta he had gone to a private school, but he hadn’t lived on the campus. He hadn’t needed to, his mother drove him to and from school every day right along with Bryson who attended the same school but in a different building. He had never been way from home for more than two weeks, which were spent at summer camp in a different part of the state. Upon receiving the news of his being sequestered away he had begged, pleading to be allowed to go to the public school in Rust. He was continually shot down though until they broke his spirit and he stopped asking, giving in to his fate. Just a week before the move he had gotten his welcome packet from The Valley School, which told them where he could pick up his uniforms and what forms he needed to bring with him on move-in day.

  That was when it had really set in; both the reality of it, and the depression that game along with it. They would travel on to a new home, a new life, and he was going to be left behind. Holding that packet in his hands felt like holding a bomb that was about to go off, and he knew absolutely nothing about how to diffuse it.

  Alec knew that part of the reason why his father had picked The Valley School was because of their reputation in athletics. Education was secondary to sports, and it had been since he was a small boy. Though he was a good student he shone more on the basketball court than in the classroom, and his father had been working hard on honing his abilities since they had been discovered. There were constant extra practices, special clinics and camps, and extra coaching if he wasn’t playing as well as his father though that he should. Rust High School had a team, and while they were decent enough they weren’t at a high enough completive level while The Valley School had produced quite a few scholarship students to top tier schools in athletics over the years.

  It was the obvious choice, at least in Alec’s father’s eyes, and that was that.

  “Why didn’t we just fly?” He finally asked, pausing his iPod and shoving his headphones back so they slid down around his neck. “We could have just had the car shipped with the rest of our stuff, like normal people.”

  They had only brought with them the essentials for the drive, and the things that Alec would need in his dorm room. There would be limited space at Valley, and so he’d only brought some photographs, a couple of trinkets and mementos from friends, and the quilt his grandmother had made him for his tenth birthday. There were some casual clothes for the weekends and for after class hours, and of course his uniforms, but those had fit pretty easily into his large duffel bag and suitcase. Everything else would be set up by his mom in his new bedroom, which he wouldn’t even get to see until Thanksgiving break. If, of course, he even got to come home then because when you got down to brass tacks the holiday was just a glorified long weekend.

  Turning around in her seat his mother gave him a look, her mouth fixed into a frown. It was obvious that she felt a bit dejected that her road trip idea wasn’t going as well as planned. “Aren’t you having fun? We saw some pretty cool things, didn’t we?”

  Alec sighed a little and adjusted his knees, which were sore from sitting in such a small space for so long. For most people a small SUV like this was fairly roomy, but when you were as tall as he and his father were luxury went out the window pretty quickly. “I’m just saying it would have been faster, that’s all. It was fun to see that stuff, but it’s getting sort of boring now. Everything here looks the same.”

  Outside the window more flat landscape was flying by, dotted by the occasional distant farmhouse or barn. It made him feel sad and lonesome, even though they were all inside the car together. His mother just gave him another look and reached back to pat one of his scrunched up knees, turning back round with her book already open. His father didn’t say anything at all, just adjusted his grip on the wheel, and Bryson was asleep with his head resting against the other window.

  “Mom?” He asked, sitting up a little straighter in an effort to get at least another fraction of space between himself and the seat in front of him. “What if I’m not smart enough for the Valley School? What if they want to send me home?”

  His mother kept her eyes on her book as she answered him, and he could practically hear the smile in her voice. “Alec, you are more than smart enough. You get fine grades and you study hard. There is absolutely no reason for them to be sending you home, understand? Stop thinking about it and just embrace it. It’ll be fun! You have to see this as a good opportunity.”

  Slumping back down again, Alec frowned and pulled his headphones back up. He did not see this as a good opportunity, but rather a prison sentence imposed by a tyrant who called himself father and the passive creature who was his mother. What he wanted to do was throw a fit, to scream and yell until they relented and continued northward to Montana. He did not want to be left behind, he did not want to be the forgotten one, but he held his tongue. Fighting with his father would result in certain failure and he knew it, and it wasn’t even worth putting the match to the kindling that would get it started.

  Instead he leaned into the door and turned his music back on, staring out at nothing until his eyes grew heavy and he drifted off. When he woke up a couple of hours later the terrain had changed from miles upon miles of flat grass land to craggy mountains rising up out of the earth. They were getting near to Colorado Springs now, a town none of them had ever been to before, and his stomach turned. He felt suddenly and viciously homesick for Atlanta, his ears popping painfully as the altitude changed.

  He didn’t want this, not even a little bit. What he wanted were tall buildings centered around a busy downtown, the metro area spreading out in every direction like spokes from a wheel. He wanted their home in east Atlanta, with its wide front porch supported by slender columns and his corner bedroom at the back of the second floor. He wanted the old and the familiar, the worn out and the comforting. He wanted all of the things he had had for his entire life, all the things that had been stripped away from him in a matter of moments without his consent.

  Feeling the onset of a panic attack, Alec unzipped his backpack and fished out his bottle of pills. His mother heard the familiar sound and this time turned around in her seat so she was almost kneeling, watching him with a worried sort of look in her eyes. He had started on the medication about a year before, after a series of horrible meltdowns and episodes that had seen him out of school for several days at a clip and unable to leave his bed. He had regular medication for every day, the pills he took with breakfast and before bed, but these were special. These were taken when things were so bad he couldn’t breathe, and his mother knew enough to know that if he was taking one that he was on the verge of collapse.

  “Alec, it’s going to be okay,” she told him gently; neither of them noticing when they passed the sign that officially welcomed them to Colorado Springs. “You’re building it up too much, sweetheart, and you’re letting it upset you. You have to own this; you have to make it something positive. This is a wonderful opportunity, and I think that once you’re there and settled in you’ll realize that.”

  Alec popped a pill into his mouth and swallowed it dry, leaning his head back into the seat. He stared at his mother and managed a tiny nod, the pill not working quite yet but the idea of it calming him marginally. “Okay,” he whispered to her, wringing his hands a little to try and get the feeling back in his fingers. He hated that part the worst about the attacks, when his fingers went all tingly and sort of numb. “Are we almost to the hotel? I just need out of this car.”

  “Yeah, we’re almost there.” This time the answer came from his father, finally speaking after hours of relative silence. “Just calm the hell down. You’ve just been in here too long, you need to stretch and eat a proper meal. Tonight we’ll stay at the hotel, and then in the morning we’ll drop you off at Valley. Your mom is right; you’ll be fine once you’re settled in. You’re just jittery. You get it from her. Sure as hell didn’t get it from me.”

 

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