Chapter 36

Ash

"M y name is Ash Sage. I'm twenty-six, and I'll be your group consultant for the next few weeks." Three out of the twelve guys I was assigned to had left the room before I ever got a chance to introduce myself. "The purpose of these meetings is communication," I explained to the bored teens, who looked at me as if I had just landed from Mars. "I hope we'll be able to form some sort of a dialogue between us today," I told them, or at least those who weren't sleeping. Although, the snores of the kid beside me were much better than facing the judgment in the others' faces. And while the situation was uncomfortable at best, I knew I had to fake it because if I backed out now, I wouldn't get another chance to meet Camilo.

The boy I came here for.

Calling him a boy felt wrong because the kid sitting across from me didn't look like a kid but a man—a young man who'd already been through so much in his life. I wondered if Soren thought the same thing when he first met those dark eyes. Did he also feel threatened by Camilo's presence? Or maybe he thought it was nothing more than a tough act to present to the world.

Forcefully removing my eyes from Camilo, I looked at the rest of the small group, reminding myself I was here to play a role.

"I was thinking we could do a small exercise to get to know each other better. How about each one of you tell me your names along with what you're afraid of?" If there were crickets here, you would have heard them in the silence following my question. They all just kept staring at me before three more guys got up and walked away. It wasn't a mandatory activity, so no guard forced them to stick around.

My palms turned sweaty, and my stomach flopped. Perhaps Kai was right about this being a bad idea. After all, what did I expect would happen? I wasn't a real consultant, just a guy with a useless degree. I bet those kids saw right through me—

"I can go first," someone said.

Ashamed of myself for how excited I got over some kid acknowledging me, I turned to see it was the one sitting next to Camilo. He looked way too young to be in here, with big green eyes and brownish hair that fell over his messy brows. Honestly, if I'd met him outside, I would have mistaken him to be one of the guards' sons. He looked like such a good kid who couldn't hurt a fly, so I wondered what he did to end up in this place.

"Please, go ahead." I smiled at him.

"My name is Andrei. Andrei Bespalov. And my biggest fear is to waste my life."

Even though Andrei's answer caused an eruption of laughter from the others, I found it simply beautiful. And not just beautiful but enlightening. Without so much as even trying, a thirteen-year-old kid doing time in juvie for whatever crime he'd committed put a mirror in my face because, currently, that was precisely what I was doing with my life—letting it go in vain.

"Wow, that's fucking deep, bro." A tall guy with bleached hair gaped at Andrei. Unlike the others who laughed, this tall, bubbly boy sounded like he meant it. "To think all I came up with were pickles," he said and immediately chuckled; his rolling laugh was so full of life, adding light to this gray room.

"Calm down, Jessie. You're grabbing people's attention," a smaller kid muttered from beside him, a deep frown on his anxious face.

"So your name is Jessie?" I asked the taller one, who answered back with an enthusiastic nod.

"Yep." He popped the p . "And this is Levi. He's afraid of many things. Bees, bears, sun, hand cream—"

Some other kid made a dirty joke about using hand cream for… Anyway , the one to shut him up was Andrei, and somehow, they all got talking with one another. They were an amusing group, and as much as I enjoyed hearing them all banter, I needed to lead the session.

"Okay, okay." I chuckled, feeling a bit more confident. "I'm happy we're already communicating with one another, but we still need to go over all the names." I locked eyes with Andrei. "So, you're Andrei, and you're—"

"Jessie!"

"Great. And from what Jessie said, your name is Levi?"

Levi nodded, his ears immediately turning red. I could definitely relate to that . He was a shy kid, and I liked it.

Feeling like it was going well, I moved on to the rest of the group. Surprisingly, those who weren't asleep participated until we were down to the last guy, Camilo.

All eyes were on him, yet he remained unfazed. Leaning back in his chair, with arms crossed over his chest and legs spread, Camilo looked like he owned the place.

"You're the last one," I said, excited to finally speak to him. "So, mind telling us what scares you?"

Camilo slowly lifted his bored gaze from the floor before looking at me with murderous eyes.

I was struck with an unbearable amount of nerves.

"I ain't scared of shit," he rasped, flicking the toothpick he was chewing on from one side of his mouth to the other. "But how about I tell you what pisses me off?"

"S-Sure."

"Righteous fuckers like yourself." With that, he pushed back from his seat, the chair's legs dragging on the floor, making an awful sound that hurt my ears, and I shrank into myself a little bit.

"Where do you think you're going?" the guard barked at him, unlike he had with the others who'd left.

"Fuck off," Camilo swore at the guard before stepping out of the room.

"Damnit, Gómez! You get your ass right back here—" the guard shouted while following him into the hall. And while I was shocked to witness this unfolding of events, the others remained unfazed.

"Don't worry about it, Ash. Diesel isn't always patient with strangers," Andrei said with a soft smile, almost like he was trying to comfort me.

Could it be that he understood I was upset? What a sensitive kid.

"Strangers?" Jessie laughed. "He's not patient with anyone!"

"Jessie! Stop talking," Levi muttered, his eyes looking around. "What if Diesel hears you?"

"Then I'll get my ass kicked." Jessie once again burst into laughter that felt like a boost of warmth right into my system.

Even though I had completely failed with Diesel, which I now understood was what everyone called him, coming here today didn't feel like a mistake. In fact, this was the first time in a long while that I felt like I was doing something right . So I kept doing it. Week after week, I went back there and sat in the same little gray room with a group of kids who'd been overlooked by society their whole lives. Sometimes I had more kids in the sessions, sometimes less, but one thing never changed—Andrei, Jessie, and Levi were always there. Occasionally, Andrei brought Diesel with him, but by the time Diesel regularly joined our little group meetings, I no longer cared for my initial plan and simply enjoyed seeing the boys.

Those kids had been through so much in their short lives, and my heart ached to help them. Not because I felt guilty. Not at all. But because they managed to get into my broken heart and heal it in different ways from what I thought was possible. Talking to Andrei was almost like talking to myself, while listening to Jessie's stories brightened my darkest days. And Levi? He was a brilliant kid who knew so much about the world but was too shy and too scared to share his knowledge.

They helped me much more than I pretended to help them. It was a given fact I didn't even try arguing with. And even Diesel, who barely said more than a few words to me at a time, was somehow able to shift something in my heart. He was a mystery, an enigma , and despite how hard it was to make him trust me, it didn't stop me from trying.

"I hope you don't mind sharing a room with Andrei again," I told Diesel after showing him his new room. It had been almost a year since I'd first met all four of them in that small group council back in juvie, and today, I finally managed to bring them all back home, with Diesel being the last one.

"That's fine," he grunted, then walked into the room and looked around it before dropping his duffle bag on his new bed.

He seemed out of place, standing in the middle of a room that used to be mine, dressed in dark clothes that hung loosely over his already tall frame.

"We're all going to have dinner soon. Jessie insisted on making pizza. But don't worry, we used vegan cheese in yours." I rubbed the back of my head, hating that I still felt uncomfortable around him. "We're all excited you're finally here."

He didn't answer me this time, but that was okay. Back in juvie, I noticed that Diesel usually only spoke to Andrei. And with the way I walked on eggshells around him, it wasn't a surprise he didn't feel the urge to share his thoughts with me.

He wasn't like the others. Unlike them, Diesel didn't believe in anyone, including himself, but mostly in me. After reading his file and understanding what he'd gone through in his life, I wasn't at all surprised that trust didn't come easy for him. And yet, I hoped to earn it. His trust . Knowing it wouldn't be simple, I promised myself I'd work for it because, unlike my life thus far, I wasn't about to sit down and wait for things to happen. I wasn't about to let life toss me from side to side like a raging wave or allow love to deter my path. From this day forward, I was responsible for those kids who somehow gave me a second chance.

A chance to be something more than just a friend or a lover. An opportunity to earn their trust and help them achieve what I knew they could.

A chance to finally make the right choice.