Chapter Text
Carlos was eleven hours into a twelve-hour shift through one of the worst winter storms that Austin, Texas had ever seen when he got the call.
It hadn’t come through his phone, which he always kept on him in case of an emergency. No, it had come through his radio directly from a familiar voice. “This is Nancy Gillian to Officer Carlos Reyes, come in.”
Nancy very much had his number. The fact that she was calling him over official channels did not bode well.
“Officer Reyes, responding.”
“I eh…hey I know your still on shift, but I need you to come down to West Park. It’s…it’s TK.”
The dreaded name he hadn’t dared to speak aloud to himself for months. Not since they broke up. Not since the night TK ripped out his heart and walked out of his life forever.
Their break-up had come as a surprise to everyone, especially Carlos. The thing was he hadn’t even seen it coming. Like, maybe if they had been having problems or arguing all the time or struggling with some big issue it might have made sense. Instead, everything had been perfect and then it had been nothing.
“Don’t tell me he still has me as his emergency contact. He’s literally there dropping off patients every single day, he has had more than enough time to change it.” That was not really the kind of comments he should have been making over an official channel, but the frustration had flown out of his mouth before he could even stop himself. He sighed. “What trouble has he gotten up to this time?”
There was a pause over the line. An unnaturally long pause. For a minute Carlos was starting to think he’d gotten disconnected or that something had happened on Nancy’s end that she had to go.
When she spoke again, her voice was subdued. “Carlos, TK’s in the ICU and he really wants you here.”
His whole body froze at the mention of ICU. Suddenly he was flashed back to a night so many years ago when a gun shot went off on a call and he rushed in to find TK already half dead on the floor with a bullet through his lung. The medics had already been working on him. He’d gone into hypovolemic shock before they could even get him in the ambulance. It had been a miracle possible only by the work of Michelle that he even survived. He’d ended up in a coma for a few days.
They hadn’t even been officially dating back then, but Carlos had stayed by his side every minute he could get off work.
But there was no reason for TK to have been in a situation like that again. TK didn’t even work for a real fire station anymore. He was working for a private ambulance company that only got called in when the city was overwhelmed. He wasn’t supposed to be on any calls dangerous enough to land him in the ICU.
Panic tried to claw up his throat, but he quickly reassured himself. Even if he was in the ICU, if he was asking for Carlos he must have at least been conscious. So, maybe they had him in there more as a precaution than anything else.
None of this still answered the question of why TK wanted him there after months of silence. But what was he going to do? Say no to visiting him when he was in the ICU?
He should. This was a terrible idea. TK had already broken his heart beyond repair and the last thing he needed was to face the man again.
Yet instead, he found himself saying, “Alright. Let me talk to my captain and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Despite the horrible snowstorm, it was easier to get off than he thought. In fact, he hadn’t even asked to leave early, only said TK’s name and his captain had looked at him with pity. “I heard about that. Take all the time you need, son.”
That’s when he remembered he hadn’t really told anyone at the station they had broken up. And though he was ashamed to admit it he hadn’t changed his emergency contact information either. TK’s name was probably still their right next to the word “boyfriend” over relation. It had just felt too final to change it.
The real challenge Carlos faced was getting to the hospital. The roads were still terrible, but at least since it was an emergency route what few snow plows they had in the city had cleared the way.
Carlos parked his car and headed straight for the ICU. If his hands sweat a little along the way at the thought of facing TK that was no one’s business but his own.
As he rounded the corner he caught sight of Nancy. She was seated practically on the floor, not even in a chair. There was a nervous energy about her. When she caught sight of him she jumped up all too quickly. “Hey bud.” Then equally as sudden was pushing them into the ICU like they didn’t have a second to waste. “I appreciate you coming by when you’re still on shift.”
“Mhmn.” He really didn’t know what else to say to that. This was all really strange if you asked him.
Nancy swallowed a moment before going on. “I know he will too.”
At that Carlos couldn’t help but snort. “Yeah? Typical TK. The first time he wants to talk to me in months and of course it’s because he’s in the ICU.”
He was actually a bit surprised Nancy had yet to tell him the surely ridiculously unbelievable story of how TK had gotten himself here.
“About that?” Nancy suddenly looked like she had swallowed a cat and it was clawing at her throat to get out.
Carlos put down the visitor sign in sheet he’d just finished filling out. “What?”
“TK didn’t ask me to radio you today.”
Carlos blinked. “What? You said that he wanted me here.”
That’s why he’d come. Because he was a giant idiot where TK was concerned and even if the man had ripped out his own beating heart and left it bloody on the floor Carlos had come the moment he asked for him.
“I did kinda say that… didn’t I?”
“Eh, yeah.”
“Yeah well, that was a lie.”
Great, their friends were playing match maker again. It wasn’t the first time. The group had been unrepentantly meddling in their relationship since the day they broke up. This hardly came as a surprise. At least it was less awkward than the time they had invited TK and Carlos to the same bar and managed to coordinate them to run into each other in the bathroom. What the group hopefully hadn’t known was it had been the same bathroom that just a week before their breakup they had snuck into to have sex. So yeah, super awkward.
They probably thought it would be a romantic gesture for Carlos to show up during his shift to visit TK after he’d had some injury. But romantic gestures were what had gotten them into trouble in the first place. Not that he’d told them.
“A lie? Why?” Carlos felt all the well-fortified walls he’d built up so carefully around himself beginning to crack again. So, TK hadn’t wanted to see him? That fact shouldn’t hurt. He should be over this already and Nancy really wasn’t helping here. “Why would you lie about that?”
“Excuse me?” Before he could get his answer from her another woman walked up to them. In Carlos’s anger he was half tempted to tell her they were talking and she could wait, but there was a sorrow around her eyes that made that impossible. “I’m sorry to interrupt. Are you one of the paramedics that rescued the boy in the ice?”
A boy in the ice?
“Yes.” Nancy answered.
“You’re a hero.”
“No. The hero is my friend TK who went into the drink to save your son.”
Carlos was so focused on learning the fact that TK had apparently fallen into freezing water to save a boy that he almost didn’t notice the way Nancy teared up at the mere mention of TK.
Almost.
“How is he doing by the way?” Nancy asked, though she seemed to have to force herself to keep speaking about it.
“The doctors say Abe is going to make a full recovery. I just want you to know how grateful we are. And that we are all praying for your friend.”
“Thank you.”
Carlos could physically feel his heart beating in his ears. The bits and pieces of this story were starting to come together in his head.
ICU
Take all the time you need.
TK didn’t ask me to radio you.
Went into the drink.
He suddenly looked around at all the rooms, realizing he hadn’t heard TK’s voice razzing his nurses like he always did. Then he looked at Nancy, with the eyes of a detective instead of an annoyed friend. She was shaking slightly and far too pale.
Ice began to spread through his veins, colder than even the winter freeze outside. “How serious is it Nancy?”
“Honestly, it’s not good.” She swallowed. “Cap is finding out the latest now.”
As if Nancy had summoned her, TK’s captain, Tommy walked out of a room.
Her and Nancy exchanged words, but Carlos didn’t hear any of it. He was too busy staring at TK. The rest of the ICU turned into a distant ring.
Somehow this was so much worse than the shooting had been. He was so pale and deathly still. A tube was coming out of his throat and more wires were attached to him than he’d ever seen on a patient before.
That couldn’t be TK.
Even on his worst days, TK was vibrant and full of such endless energy once Carlos joked that they could use his personality alone to power the fire station in case of an emergency. TK had laughed. He’d laughed so hard a bit of boba went up his nose and Carlos had fallen out of his own chair laughing back.
“I’m going to try to get ahold of his father,” Tommy said, disappearing out the door with nothing more than a tight smile and a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
Carlos forced himself to look away from TK. He knew there were tears in his eyes and that his voice was breaking, but he felt like he was going to fall apart if he didn’t get answers now. “Nancy what happened? Why is he like that?”
With endless patience, she took his hand and led him into the room to the two small visitors’ chairs that had been set up at TK’s bedside. It was as torturous to get closer as it was to be away from him. Up close he could hear the machine forcing air to inflate his lungs. Up close could see the lifeless pallor of his skin.
“We were already out on a call, when Grace radioed us saying there was a boy who had fallen under ice. There were no fire trucks available, being the closest our ambulance was their only hope. We had no gear. No tools. No help was on the way. It was just us and whatever was in the back of the ambo.”
“But you tried to help anyway.” It was a fact, not a question. Because of course that’s what they would do. They were trained for rescue, even if they had spent the last few months working for a private company.
“TK was the only one of us with experience with ice rescue. So, he volunteered to go out to get the boy.”
“Of course he did.”
TK was always the first to do something stupid and dangerous. Though usually he managed to pull it off with a surprising amount of success and flair.
“By the time he reached the kid, the hole had frozen back over. He had to break the ice to get to him, then pull him up. He did it in less than a minute. Honestly I was so damn impressed. He made it look so easy. Then the ice broke beneath him.”
Though he hadn’t been there, he could see it in his mind. It was the image of nightmares of TK falling into water so cold it could leave him unable to move.
“And that’s when he ended up like this?”
“No. Not then. We managed to pull both him and the boy back onto the shore. He was cold, wet, and shivering, obviously. But he didn’t even complain or ask for a blanket. He was so focused on saving the boy and doing his job. Still, we should have noticed the signs. We should have realized something was wrong. If we had, we could have gotten him in that ambulance with the boy and he wouldn’t be laying here like this!”
“Hey, hey.” Carlos wrapped his arms around Nancy.
Whatever had been holding her together before broke apart now. She choked on her own sobs. “I should have noticed. He’s my best friend, my partner, and it was my job to look out for him. It’s all my fault.”
“No, Nancy. Whatever happened this is not your fault.” Carlos assured her. “If TK even heard you thinking such a thing he’d be so mad at you. Not that he really is even capable of being mad at you, he’d probably just throw dirty socks at you until you took it back.”
He had done just such a thing once during a game of Catan when he’d claimed Nancy was cheating. Which, she totally had been. She’d claimed it was the only way to beat the Tarlos crew.
The memory did what he’d hoped and got her to laugh just the tiniest bit. With the laugh he pulled in a deep breath. Her sobs quieted to slow hiccups. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, Nancy. It seemed like you had been holding that back for too long already.” Carlos didn’t want to push her to go on, not after that, but he still desperately wanted to know what had happened out there in the snow.
She must have read it on his face anyway. “I swear, Carlos. We only turned our back on him for a few minutes while we were loading the boy onto the second ambulance that came. It was only a minute, but by the time we turned around he was gone.”
“Gone? It was the middle of the snowstorm. Where could he go?”
Her sad eyes told him the answer.
Oh.
Oh.
He’d vanished into the storm.
Even having gone to school in Texas, he’d been taught the basics about hypothermia. When the body gets so cold it’s forced to route all its blood to the core organs. But it did more than that. The change in blood flow could also do strange things to the mind. He’d heard plenty of stories of people who thought they were burning up even as they froze to death and vanished into the snow for release.
“By the time we found him, he was in severe hypothermic shock. He’d stripped down butt naked and was just huddling there on the ice. We tried wrapping him in blankets, but he fought us, like we were hurting him. I was so glad that Cap was there. She somehow knew exactly what to say to get Tk to let us help. Then, before we could even get him back to the rig he just dropped. His heart had stopped.”
The image was too much for Carlos.
Even seeing TK right there in front of him, and knowing he was still at the very least alive didn’t calm the panic building in his chest.
Nancy didn’t seem to notice how effected Carlos was, or maybe at this point she just couldn’t stop herself from getting it all out. The need to tell the story as necessary for her as it was for Carlos to hear it.
Even if it physically ached to think about TK laying naked on that ice with no heartbeat.
“We had to shock him to get him back, and by the time we made it back here he was already gone again. They did what they could to stabilize him. That’s when I called you because if he…if he didn’t…I just knew that despite everything over the last few months, you were the one person he would want here with him.”
Carlos didn’t know why she believed that to be true, but God he hoped it was. And until TK woke up and told him otherwise he was going to act like he had a right to be here. Because Carlos couldn’t think of going anywhere else.
Tommy had returned, yet somehow she looked more frantic than when she’d left. “I can’t get ahold of Owen. He’s not answering his phone.”
“That’s not surprising. Between the snow and the busy phone lines there are a lot of reasons you might not be getting through.” Carlos supplied, though knowing how trouble prone the Strands are he couldn’t help but feel like it wasn’t unreasonable to think they were both in trouble.
“I’ll try again in a little bit, but I also got a call from our boss, and he says if I don’t have the ambo back in the next hour all of us can forget about today’s pay.” Tommy said.
Carlos bristled a bit at that. “Does he understand that one of his employees is in critical condition right now?”
“He does. He’s just a dick.” Tommy rubbed at her head, looking down at TK like a mother conflicted with leaving her child home sick for the first time. “I want to stay, but I have to at least get the ambulance back. Then I’ll do what needs done so the both of us can stay here for the foreseeable future. Nancy do you mind waiting here and keeping me updated on his condition?”
“Of course not. I wasn’t planning on leaving myself anyway. Not for anything.” Except just as she said that her stomach rumbled loudly.
“Maybe food doesn’t count as anything?” Carlos suggested. “I can sit with TK while you return the truck and while you get some grub for us both in the cafeteria.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to feel alone in here.”
“I won’t be alone. I’ll be with TK.” Out of habit, he reached out to take TK’s hand only to stop short as he realized he shouldn’t touch him. In the emotion of it all, it had been all too easy to forget they were broken up. He was here as a friend and barely that.
Both women looked at him with a pity that made his skin itch.
“Seriously, it’s alright. I’ll keep an eye on him. If anything happens I’ll call you both.”
It took a little more coaxing, but finally they both agreed. Each of them gave him a hug before leaving. And he was left with a silence he had hoped never to hear again.
Carlos had begun to doze off in the chair barely a half hour after Nancy and Tommy had left. He didn’t know how. The chairs were so uncomfortable one would think it was illegal to fall asleep in them, but he had. He blamed the fact that he’d been through most of a full shift when Nancy had called him so he supposed by now it was well past his usual sleep time.
He was desperately trying to stay awake, and was starting to hope that Nancy brought coffee with whatever food she chose when an incessant ringing echoed through the room.
It took his tired mind too many seconds to realize what it was. He’d only ever heard that sound on his mom’s ridiculous telenovelas. It was the sound of a heart monitor screaming.
TK’s heart monitor.
If it was possible, TK’s body had gone even more still. But he didn’t understand. Usually when you heard that sound on tv, it meant the person had flatlined. Only when he looked at the screen, there were still little bumps appearing. TK still had a pulse so why were the nurses rushing around him like he was about to die.
TK wasn’t dying.
He couldn’t be dying.
“What, wait? What’s going on?” Carlos demanded.
The head nurse didn’t take the time to even look at him, but she at least answered his question. “His heart rate is too low.” Then she said a bunch more medical things that went in one ear and out his other.
He didn’t understand all this medical jargon. He just needed the basic facts. “What does that mean? Is he going to be okay?”
In lieu of an answer, two nurses were running in a crash cart.
Then another pushed him back. “Sir, you should step out and let us work.”
He didn’t want to step out. He was supposed to be there watching over TK, making sure nothing happened to him. Yet he was just as powerless to stop them from shoving him out the door as he was to protect TK.
During his career as a cop, Carlos had stared down the barrel of a gun, he’d faced armored robbers, even been trapped in a burning house with no way out but a twenty-foot drop out of a window. Yet he’d never been more terrified than he was at that moment watching them shock TK’s unresponsive body.
An hour later, Carlos was back in the waiting room. Nancy and Tommy had both returned, though if anyone asked when he couldn’t answer them. There were two logs on his phone of the calls he’d made to them both that he had no memory of. It should have been concerning how fractured his memory was at the moment, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
As much as he hated the silence of that hospital room, he hated being away from TK’s side even more. Being forced to wait outside the room meant TK wasn’t stable enough for visitors. It meant he was possibly dying or already dead and the doctor’s just hadn’t had the gall to come out tell them.
Tommy tried to reassure him that the doctor was likely just running tests to determine what their next steps would be. She said that like next steps was a magical cure, like the tests would change the fact that Tk had basically coded for at least the third time today.
God above, Carlos couldn’t believe he had to use the word third. Because TK’s heart shouldn’t have stopped three times.
“We managed to get his heart back in rhythm.” Carlos physically startled when he realized the doctor was standing in front of them, explaining TK’s current condition.
“Okay,” Nancy said. “Well, that’s good news, right?”
The expression on the doctor’s face proved it was anything but. “The problem is his body is still not compensating.”
“Compensating for what?” Carlos asked.
Tommy fielded that question, thankfully not using any large medical terms to explain it. “It means his vital signs haven’t returned to normal.” Then she forced a smile. “Yet.” Like that sentiment alone could soften the blow.
“He’s been through a major trauma,” the doctor continued. “I’m afraid he’s on the verge of multi-system organ failure.”
Now that was bad. Carlos didn’t need a medical text book or a degree to know that. “How do you stop that from happening?”
“Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do. Other than keep him sedated at this point. It gives his body a chance to recover without additional stress.”
“Does that usually work for somebody in his condition?”
“It can.”
“It can?” Not even a statistic, just a uselessly hopeful word can. Carlos’s thoughts spiraled wondering how many people had ever come back from this. “But realistically speaking what are we looking at here?”
She gave no direct answer. “We are watching his labs closely, but if they continue treading down…”
He finally realized what she had been trying so hard not to say during this conversation. What everyone but him had already realized. “We’re going to lose him.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have better news.”
Tommy was talking to him again. He wasn’t even certain what she was saying, but he figured it was all meant to be comforting and hopeful. He only reacted when she and Nancy took his hands. “We’re just going to keep on praying.”
“Yeah.” Because what else was he supposed to do. What else could he do?
In that moment he didn’t care that TK had broken his heart. He didn’t care that they were broken up. If there was some way he could find the grimm reaper threatening to take his world from him before he’d even had to chance to get it back he would have put a whole chamber in the bastard’s heart.
But he couldn’t. There was nothing he could do.
“If there is one thing we know about TK,” Nancy’s voice slipped through, “it’s that the kid does not know how to stay down.”
“I need some fresh air.”
“Want someone to come with?”
That was the last thing he wanted. “No. I need to be alone for a minute. Thanks.”
Carlos hadn’t meant to stay outside for so long. The last thing anyone needed was him catching hypothermia too and landing himself in the bed right next to TK. Yet if Nancy hadn’t physically dragged him back inside he might have stayed out there forever.
Shit that made him sound so horrible. TK was dying upstairs and the least he could do was be with him. Only that was the problem wasn’t it? He wasn’t with him. They weren’t even together.
So why did it feel like it was his own heart that refused to keep beating?
TK had hurt him so terribly and he didn’t even know why.
Carlos forced himself back into the room. His shuffling feet so silent that the nurses currently working on TK didn’t even notice he was there. He hoped they were just changing his pillows and checking his vitals and not that they had just finished shocking his heart back into rhythm again.
“God, look at him. So young,” the taller of the two said.
“Kids a hero too, apparently. Heard he got hurt saving a little boy.”
That was TK. Always a hero, no matter if he was wearing the uniform of a firefighter, paramedic, or even his favorite button up. A memory of another almost date before they’d officially gotten together flittered through his mind. He’d had stitches from a gunshot wound in his shoulder and yet he’d run straight into a flooding bus just to save a woman.
Only while Carlos was living in the past he realized the nurse’s conversation had taken a drastic turn. “You know, he would have been better off if they never brought him back from that cardiac out in the snow.”
“Yep, now he gets to torture the friends and family for another three days.”
“Three days? I’ve seen one go for three weeks.”
“No kidding? In this condition?”
“Yep, first year out of nursing school.”
“Well, either way. At this point it’s a matter of when not if.”
They turned and finally saw him.
Carlos had no idea what expression he was making. He didn’t even know what he was feeling he had gone so numb listening to them casually talk about TK like he wasn’t even alive anymore. Like he was already dead and just waiting for his body to catch up.
When not if…
When not if…
They both tried to pretend like he’d not heard every word they said before scurrying off, leaving Carlos alone with his thoughts.
For the first time his mind finally dared to dip into the thoughts he’d been keeping away at all costs. What if this is it? What if TK doesn’t survive? What if he never finds out why TK dumped him?
He couldn’t have run from that hospital room fast enough. Nancy had returned from her dozenth attempt to call Owen. She’d taken over for Tommy who had left to take a personal call about her girls.
Carlos let his body fall into the chair beside. He was silent for forever before he dared to ask her what he needed to know. “Am I the world’s biggest schmuck?”
She leaned forward to stare at him. “What?”
“I’m holding vigil for a man who doesn’t even want me in his life.” It still hurt to say that. “Doesn’t that just scream schmuck?”
“Hell to the no.” Nancy said with a smile on her face. It felt impossible for anyone to be smiling in that moment, but it seemed whatever she had to say had brought some joy to her. “First off, TK loves you. And second, where did you pick up Schmuck?”
“From TK. Must have rubbed off.” He wondered what other things he had started saying because of TK, probably a lot of things. “Why do you say that? That he loves me.”
“Because it’s true,” she answered like it was fact.
And really how could she say that. There had to be something she knew. Something she wasn’t telling him. With all the intensity he gave to criminal interrogations, he turned to face her. “You’ve been by his side, all this time. Does he ever talk about me?”
“Honestly, not much.”
There. That was more what he expected. “I didn’t think so.”
“But he does bite off my head anytime I bring up your name.”
“That makes me feel so much better.”
“It should, you big dummy.” She bumped into his shoulder. “He doesn’t want to hear it because it’s too painful for him. Which means he still has it bad for you. It’s obvious. The dude loves you. Just trust me.”
The more she said it, the more he thought about all the time that TK had claimed the same. He could still hear TK saying those very words. But he’d made the mistake of believing that before. “If he loves me so much, then why did he break my heart?”
The tears were dripping down his cheeks before he could stop them.
Nancy gave out a long sigh like she had suddenly made a difficult decision. “Give me your phone.”
Carlos didn’t even question it. He was happy to just comply to the order because it was at least something he could do other than give into the sob clogged in his chest. He unlocked it with his thumb before handing it over. She turned it away from him doing who knew what, and honestly Carlos didn’t care.
“Here.” When she handed it back, Carlos didn’t know what he was expecting, but it surely hadn’t been for Nancy to pull up some stupid Reddit thread.
“What the hell is this?” He saw five letters first AITAH and it took him a moment to parse out what they meant. “Is this an Am I the Asshole thread? Nancy, what the fuck does this have to do with—”
“Just read it,” she ordered. “I promise it’s worth it.”
Carlos really didn’t feel like reading some random schmo’s and damn it there was TK in his head again. But maybe if he skimmed it he could at least humor her. Then he read the title and it all suddenly made perfect sense how it had anything to do with their conversation.
AITAH For Dumping my Boyfriend for Buying me my Dream House?
“What is this?” He looked back up at Nancy for answers, not daring to read another word until she confirmed his suspicions.
“Tk posted that about a week ago from some dummy account. I caught him on it a few times. He kept reading through all the comments and stuff whenever he had a free moment or I never would have found it myself. It was probably a dick move of me to read it without telling him, but as I said, he bit my head off every time I brought you up.”
“Why would he post about something so personal online?”
She shrugged. “You know TK. He sucks at talking about his feelings, even more so with people he cares about. Maybe he felt it was easier to spill his heart out to random strangers on the internet than worry about anyone else judging him. The title says it all, doesn’t it? He thought that if he explained his reasons out loud all of us would think he was the asshole and would abandon him too.”
She was right. That was a very TK thing to think. No matter how many times Carlos tried to assure him that he was valued and loved for just being him, TK always seemed to think it came with caveats. Like his theory that the only reason he was ever accepted in the firehouse was because his dad was the captain. Or that people only came to their 126 hangouts because of Carlos’s great cooking. He always said it like a joke, but Carlos wondered deep down how much of that had TK believed.
Would he really think that all his own friends would abandon him over a breakup?
“And this post he made just magically has all the answers I’m looking for. How do we even know TK posted this. Maybe it’s someone else’s and he was just obsessed with it because it was so similar to our problems.”
“Read the first two paragraphs and then ask me that question again.” Nancy dared.
Carlos hated these things. It felt like reading someone’s personal diary, but then again whoever had put this up knew they were sharing it with anyone who stumbled upon it. So, Carlos read.
Now, I know what you’re going to say. An immediate yes, right? I mean, how can a person in that scenario not be the asshole. But give me a moment to say my side of the story and then you can make the decision for yourself.
So, it might be important to give people a little bit of context before I get to the incident. My boyfriend and I had been dating for almost two years. We were both first responders and we met on the very first day of my dream job. I had just moved from a big city to… well a slightly less big city on the complete opposite side of the country.
And yeah, it had only taken two paragraphs for Carlos to realize that this was 100% TK. Between the details and the phrasing the writing just had TK’s cadence.
“Okay, this is definitely TK’s post.”
“I told you,” Nancy bragged.
“I can’t believe he posted this. And only a week ago based on the date. What was he thinking? Why couldn’t he just talk to me?”
“It’s all in there,” Nancy prompted. “Not that I read it. At least not all of it. Okay, I read all of it. I’m nosy so help me. But I swear I only read it today. I tried talking to him about it, but I just couldn’t find a way to bring it up. It’s all pretty personal and emotionally heavy.”
Carlos couldn’t tell if that made him want to read it more or less than he already did.
“Look, all I’m going to say is that TK is his father’s son. He’s really good at pretending like everything is okay on the outside even when he’s suffering within. And he was suffering more than any of us ever could have realized. So, if you are ready to face the answers you’re looking for, they are right in your hand.”
That was the problem though. He glanced up at TK’s still form. He wasn’t sure if he could survive knowing the truth.