"It's uncomfortable enforcing limits and boundaries but I think it would help," I said. "And I think the first limits you should establish are ones with yourself."
Another quiet, "Oh."
"I care about you. I want the best things for you," I said.And I think I love you."And I'll help any way I can."
He nodded but didn't say anything for several long minutes in which I contemplated drawing him deeper into my arms, leaving the bed, checking my phone, initiating sex, and asking if he was all right. I did none of those things, instead studying him for any outward overflow of emotions. I found none.
"It's your turn," he finally said, a touch of sullenness in his voice.
It seemed like as good a time as any to share this bit of my history. "I was arrested for breaking and entering."
Wes peered at me as if I'd told him the oceans and sky traded places. Eventually, he asked, "What happened?"
I pressed my palm to my chest, rubbing the tension that never went away. It was always there, drawing my shoulders up, twisting the muscles beneath my breastbone, keeping my breath quick and starved. The hunched, frantic hopelessness of it never went away. "I was homeless."
As if needing confirmation I currently lived in this apartment, he glanced around, asking, "What? When?"
"It was a long time ago. I was a teenager."
"But-but why? What happened?"
I edged a shoulder up. "It was cold. One of the coldest nights in a month of brutally cold nights and there was nowhere else—"
"No, baby, what happened that you lost your home?"
I met his eyes. "I was kicked out of the house when I failed conversion camp."
16
Wes
I couldn't breathe.There was fire in my chest and I could hear my pulse and I couldn't file this information away without simultaneously shattering something.I managed to say, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," Tom replied easily. "I mean, no. Not at all. It's mental Chernobyl, the whole package. But I'm okay. You wouldn't be here and we wouldn't be having this conversation if I wasn't."
I nearly choked on his glib tone. "Is that right?"
"Yeah, I'm very selective about the people I bring home. If they don't brandish a weapon within the first five minutes of meeting me, they're not getting buzzed up here again. I suppose it's different when they repeatedly break in but that doesn't mean I wouldn't show you the door."
"Be serious," I chided.
"Ugh, fine." He adjusted the pillow and layered his chest against mine. I urged him closer, wanting every bit of him touching every bit of me. "I don't talk about the conversion thing. I don't want pity or coddling or the 'Oh, I have no idea what you've been through but I've heard terrible things on60 Minutesand therefore I can slather you in sympathy after consuming some tragedy porn.'"
"I don't want your tragedy porn and I don't want to slather you in sympathy," I said. "I want to—"I want to love you. I want to hold you as tight as I can and protect you and shield you from the world and I want toloveyou."I want to bury the people who did that to you."
"Oh, great, we're back to that," he muttered. "Is there some kind of transitional program for special operatives who only know how to solve problems with deadly force? Because I cannot have you running around killing people, Wes. Or suggesting you're going to kill people."
I stared over his shoulder, unfocused. "That depends on whether it's time for me to transition."
"You make it sound like it's not your decision to make," he said.
"It's not," I replied.
"Of course it is," he argued. "If I believed I wasn't the one in control of my choices and my destiny, this life would be a shitshow."
"But how can you say that?" I shot back. "You were—you were sent to fucking conversion camp, Tom. You were—oh my god, I can't even think about what you experienced there and—"
"I'm past that now," he interrupted. "It happened and it was the worst thing I've ever been through and I've done the work to knowIam not wrong. But I don't want my identity to be tied up with trauma. I get to decide who and what I am, not my history."
