When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys Book 2) Read online

  When You Come Back to Me

  ©2020 Emma Scott Books, LLC

  Cover Art: Lori Jackson Designs

  Cover Photographer: Cory Stierley

  Cover Model: Dylan Brooks

  Photograph Licensed by: The Cover Lab, LLC

  Proofing and Formatting by: R. Anderson

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, events or incidents, businesses or places (such as Santa Cruz Central High School, Soquel Saints, Campbell Coyotes, Gold Line Records) are fictitious or have been used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Books by Emma Scott

  Playlist

  Content Warning

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part II

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part III

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part IV

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Part V

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Books by Emma Scott

  (All books but the Beautiful Hearts Duet are available for FREE through Kindle Unlimited)

  Duets

  Full Tilt

  All In

  Bring Down the Stars (Beautiful Hearts #1)

  Long Live the Beautiful Hearts (Beautiful Hearts #2)

  Series

  How to Save a Life (Dreamcatcher #1)

  Sugar & Gold (Dreamcatcher #2)

  The Girl in the Love Song (Lost Boys #1)

  When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys #2)

  The Last Piece of His Heart (Lost Boys #3) coming soon

  RUSH (RUSH #1)

  Endless Possibility (RUSH #1.5)

  Standalones

  Love Beyond Words

  Unbreakable

  The Butterfly Project

  Forever Right Now

  In Harmony

  A Five-Minute Life

  Someday, Someday

  MM Romance

  Someday, Someday

  When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys #2)

  Novellas

  One Good Man

  Love Game

  Playlist

  Walkabout // Augustines (opening credits)

  Señorita // Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello

  Night Running // Cage the Elephant (feat. Beck)

  When Doves Cry // Prince

  Fix You // Coldplay

  I Will Possess Your Heart // Death Cab for Cutie

  Fine Line // Harry Styles

  Wish You Were Here // Pink Floyd

  Not Over You // Gavin DeGraw

  Superposition // Young the Giant (closing credits)

  Content Warning

  Please note that this book contains content that may be triggering for some sensitive readers such as the death of a family member, depression, mental health struggles, repercussions of conversion therapy, and sexual exploitation (off the page). It is my sincerest hope I have treated these issues with the care they deserve. Intended for readers 18 and up.

  Dedication

  For Bill, with all my love. Thank you for being the calm to my storm.

  Let everything happen to you

  Beauty and terror

  Just keep going

  No feeling is final

  —Rainer Maria Rilke

  Prologue

  Sanitarium du lac Léman

  Geneva, Switzerland

  “Can I tell you a secret?”

  The lump in the twin bed on the other side of the room answered with a petulant sniff.

  I tried again. “I’m not kidding, Milo. It’s a very important, life-changing secret. Trust me.”

  My roommate hunched deeper in his blanket. “Leave me alone.”

  Milo resembled a snow-covered mound in our whitewashed room. White sheets, white walls, white linoleum floor. Like the inside of an igloo. If I dwelled too long on all that white, I’d start to shiver under my own thin blanket.

  Not because I was cold. Switzerland in August was quite pleasant, actually. But my parents had sent me to a brutal conversion therapy camp in Alaska for six months, which necessitated this vacation at the Sanitarium du lac Léman. A year later, and my brain was still turning my waking hours into a remembered nightmare.

  My room’s walls and ceiling would morph into the vast white plains of Alaska. The green forests surrounding the sanitarium grounds awoke memories of endless night marches through bitter cold. The indoor pool’s warm water became the icy depths of Copper Lake where I’d been plunged, naked and freezing…

  I don’t swim in pools anymore.

  Dr. Lange would say I was projecting my past trauma onto the sanitarium, that was actually warm and inviting. But PTSD doesn’t give a rat’s frilly pink ass what a thing was supposed to be. Its computations are mindless. White = snow = Alaska = torture.

  And warm and inviting wasn’t how I’d describe the room I shared with Milo anyway. Sanitarium du lac Léman was a mental hospital trying to disguise itself as a bed and breakfast. The moonlight filtered through the barred windows over our meager furniture: twin beds, one bookshelf—filled mostly with my journals, and a few of Milo’s drawings on the wall (hung with tape, not pins or nails).

  I give an A for effort, but bars on the windows were less cozy hotel and more prison chic. And prisons were high on my list of things onto which I projected my trauma. I’d let myself be trapped twice—first Alaska and now here.

  Never again.

  Milo sniffed under his blanket, upset that I was getting out in the morning. I couldn’t fathom why. If I were gone, I wouldn’t miss me. But he was a sweet kid. I hated that he felt bad. I leaned over in my bed to try again.

  “Milo, hey.”

  “Don’t talk to me.”

  “My secret is kind of a big one,” I said. “Like, huge. You’re not going to want to miss out.”

  “I said, leave me alone.”

  The pain in his voice—child-like and tear-choked—pierced the shriveled icy rock that passed for my heart. Milo Batzirkis, son of wealthy shipping magnates from Buffalo, New York, was two years younger than my seventeen years, but the traumas that had landed him here had beaten him down, making him sound and act like a lost little boy.

  I could relate.

  I put on my best Big Brother voice. “I’m going to lay it on you, anyway, Milo. Ready? Here it is: you’re going to be
okay.”

  He rolled over to face me, his dark eyes shining in the moonlight, his black hair askew. “Are you joking? That’s your big secret? You are so full of shit.”

  “It’s true.”

  “That’s a stupid secret for one thing, and why would I believe you? You are not okay. You are a mess.”

  I tapped my chin. “And here I thought I was hiding it so well…”

  “You keep hitting on Dr. Picour even though he’s forty-five and married.”

  “Have you seen him in swim therapy? Without a shirt? No jury in the world would convict me.”

  “You have a death wish. Everyone knows that.”

  “Death wish is a strong choice of words,” I said airily. “I prefer to think that life and I are keeping things casual. No need to get serious.”

  Milo’s voice tapered to a whisper. “You said in group that you wanted to die.”

  “Oh, that.” I rolled away to turn my gaze to the ceiling. “That was ages ago. When I first got here.”

  “But I know you still think that way,” Milo said. “I don’t know how you got them to let you out, but you’re not well.”

  I flapped my hands in the air. “Sure, I’m fucked up. We’re all fucked up. Who isn’t fucked up? But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re going to be okay. You can be okay and completely fucked up at the same time. I’m living proof.”

  He sniffed. “Doesn’t feel like I’m going to be okay. Not without you.”

  “Sure you will. You just don’t believe me because I’m Cassandra.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t you know your Greek mythology?”

  “But you have it all memorized, right?” He scoffed. “Whatever. Keep your giant IQ to yourself. You’re leaving and it sucks and that’s all there is to know.”

  Milo rolled away again, but I barreled on, undeterred.

  “Cassandra lived in ancient times and was like me: so extraordinarily good-looking that gods were falling out of the sky to try to hook up.”

  Milo snorted. “Give me a break. You’re not that good-looking.”

  “I beg your pardon. Have you seen me?”

  He laughed a little, and I took that as a small victory.

  “Apollo, the Sun God, took one look at Cassandra and decided he had to have her. In an attempt to win her heart, he gave her the gift of prophecy.”

  “What’s prophecy?”

  “Cassandra could predict the future, which honestly seems like a pretty sweet deal for some under-the-toga action. My last date didn’t even buy me dinner before I gave him a blow.” I stroked my chin in mock thoughtfulness. “Or maybe that was the dinner…”

  Milo smacked a hand to his forehead. “Dude…”

  “TMI?”

  “With you? Always.” He rolled back to face me and propped himself on one elbow. “But wait, who was your last date? There’s no dating allowed. Or did you talk them into breaking the rules for you? Again.”

  “Dr. Picour needed no persuading, I assure you.”

  Milo practically fell out of bed. “What? That is so bad! He’s a doctor. You’re a patient. And seventeen—”

  “Keep your voice down,” I hissed. “Some side-action with a doctor—”

  “A married doctor.”

  “—is a mere footnote in my sordid history.” And my ticket out of this place. “Now, hush up and let me finish. Where was I?”

  “Cassandra and Apollo.”

  “Right. Cassandra knew what Apollo really wanted with his fancy gift and she wasn’t interested in being turned into a walking Magic Eight Ball.”

  Milo laughed again, which made me feel good about myself. And that didn’t happen very often. Like Halley’s Comet—a rare bright streak across a cold black sky and then gone again.

  “As with many entitled dude-bros,” I continued, “Apollo lost his shit when Cassandra rejected him and cursed her so that no one would believe her prophesies. So here’s poor Cassie, wandering around Ancient Greece, telling everyone Troy is going to burn and no one believes her. They all think she’s crazy and they even lock her up. See where I’m going with this?”

  “You’re the reincarnation of a Greek goddess?”

  “Let’s examine the evidence, shall we?” I ticked off my fingers. “I’m ridiculously hot. They all think I’m crazy. I’m locked up in here and no one believes what I say.” I smiled gently in the silvery dimness. “Including you, when I say you’re going to be okay when I’m gone.”

  “You’re right,” Milo said, tears rushing back to choke his words. “I don’t believe you.”

  Shit.

  He turned his back to me again. The comet streak of good feeling faded to black. No one would ever accuse me of being the comforting type, and I was running out of ideas.

  Milo cried softly, trembling as if he were cold, and a memory—my only good memory from Alaska—came back to me. It snuck up and wrapped its arms around me and I felt better instantly.

  I climbed out of bed and sidled up next to Milo, squishing myself against him.

  “Get off me,” he whined. “I’m not one of your boyfriends.”

  “I’m not coming on to you,” I said. “When I was in Alaska, another guy did this for me. It helped. But I won’t if—”

  Milo grabbed my arm and held on tight, his body shaking with silent sobs. I moved in closer, spooning him, and put my blond head on the pillow next to his dark one.

  After a few moments, he sniffed and said softly, “Alaska. That’s where you were sent for conversion therapy? Before you came here?”

  I stiffened. “Yes.”

  “You hardly mention it. Not even in group. Unless they make you.”

  “You must be special, then.”

  I felt Milo smile, a loosening of tension in his skinny body. “What happened?”

  “I was freezing,” I said. “We all were, huddled on the floor of an old cabin, no fire and the wind blowing in through the cracks. I’d never been more miserable or alone as I was in that moment. Then one of the other boys brought his shitty blanket to where I was lying under my shitty blanket. He hugged me like I’m hugging you.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Silas. His name was Silas.”

  “Do you still talk to him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Did you lose touch? What’s his last name?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  It did matter. It mattered a whole fucking lot, but as much as I cared about making Milo feel better, Silas Marsh was off-limits. If I shared too much of him, he wouldn’t be mine anymore. He existed mostly in my journals. Stories. My endless writing where I tried to purge myself of Alaska until my hand cramped and tears blurred the ink on the page.

  But there was always more.

  My parents had sent me to Alaska in the name of “fixing” their broken son, but it’d nearly destroyed my already tentative hold on sanity. They knew their mistake the instant I came back, bruised and hysterical. A year in Sanitarium du lac Léman was their way of trying to put me back together, but it was too late. What happened in Alaska was now woven into my marrow. My cells and bones. A cold that would never let me go.

  I tightened my arm around Milo. “It was forbidden for us to touch, but Silas had laid down with me to try to keep me warm anyway. It only happened that one night, but he saved my life.”

  And I never told him. I should have told him…

  “Why just the one night?” Milo asked.

  “We got caught. They beat the hell out of us. Him, mostly. They beat the hell out of him…”

  Another shiver wracked me, and I squeezed my eyes shut at the memory: a ramshackle cabin and a dozen boys huddled under thin blankets. Silas—big and tall with gold hair; an Adonis—being yanked away from me, the counselors wailing on him for the sin of comforting another human being.

  “Did Silas tell you that you were going to be okay?”

  “No,” I said. “That would’ve been a lie. We didn’t lie to each other in
Alaska. Alaska wasn’t like this place. Here, you get good food and exercise, and instead of people telling you that you’re worthless and have to change who you are, they try to make you better.”

  “You’re not better, so how come you get to leave?”

  “I feel the institution no longer has anything to offer me.”

  “You don’t get to say. The doctors do.”

  “The doctors agree.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “My parents pay the doctors,” I said. “I told my parents it’s time to go, so they stopped paying.”

  “Your mom and dad just do whatever you want?”

  “Since I came back from Alaska, they do. They’re afraid of me. And they should be.”

  Milo gasped at my sinister tone. “Are you going to hurt them when you get out?”

  I pretended to be affronted. “Do I look like a violent psychopath to you? Never mind, don’t answer that.”

  He sniffed a laugh.

  “No, I can hurt them where it counts,” I said. “If I tell the press about my Alaskan field trip—or worse, if I spill it on Twitter—my parents’ empire of money could come crashing down in shame and infamy. That scares the crap out of them.”

  “So you’ll get out and become a famous writer someday, while I’m stuck here forever,” Milo said, sounding petulant again.

  “Not forever. And you’re going to be okay. Take it from your Uncle Cassie.”

  “You’re so weird.”

  But I heard the smile in his voice. His back pushed against my chest in a big sigh, and I felt him settle deeper in the bed, closer to sleep.

  “Holden?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Aren’t you scared?”

  “Constantly.”

  “I mean, aren’t you scared of getting out of here? When you’re not better yet?”

  I thought long and hard about how to answer, sorting through the voices in my head clamoring and shouting, banging their cymbals like toy monkeys. I wasn’t better. I was never going to be better. No matter what the counselors and doctors and pills and therapy tried to do, the cold would always find me. Alaska had broken something inside me forever.