“No, I didn’t,” he confessed. “But clearly there’s more we need to discuss about us than what I’m doing to you tonight.”
“Maybe what we need to be doing tomorrow morning? How you want to be inside me?”
My jokes were more about avoiding the conversation he was trying to have, one I knew had to come up sooner or later, so he cut right to the chase. “You have to go back to Atlanta.”
“I could stay in Boystown a little longer.”
“We’ll both be in DC for a few days to sort through this mess, but I’ll make sure you’re not there long. You need to see your family: Eric, Jesse, Tricia. Your friends. You need to spend time with them.”
He was right.
After everything that happened, I wanted to see them again, remind them that I loved them and see that they were all right. But it didn’t change how I felt about me and Liam. “But then I want to be with you.”
He appeared almost hesitant about the idea, which made rage rise within me. “If you think you’re going to get out of this by saying I’m not safe with you or some bullshit, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“I’m not naive enough to think I can get out of this that easy. Any chance I had of pushing you away ended long before the night this all began. It’s only gotten worse since then. I can’t change what we are. And even more importantly, I don’t want to.”
“What are we, Liam?” I asked, genuinely wanting him to define it. To be on the same goddamn page. With me, I felt like my feelings were so fucking obvious, it was embarrassing. But with him, he worked so hard to disguise himself that I needed confirmation.
“I’m having a hard time pinning that down. I’m about as new to relationships as you are to guys, but I’m pretty confident we’re past thependingpart. I’m trying to decide if I’ll even like saying it.” He reached forward and put his hand against my face. “Do you want to be my boyfriend, Ty? Because I want to be yours.”
I closed my eyes, enjoying the way that word hit my ears as he touched me, as I was that close to his body.
“Isn’t that what we are?” he asked. “Boyfriends?”
“Yes. I’m your boyfriend, Liam.”
He moved closer.
Perhaps I would earn a kiss now, but as he rested his cheek against mine, I accepted that this was as far as we were, for the time being.
And it was an unspeakable joy that was so powerful as it moved through me.
“As soon as I finish cleaning up this mess, I’ll come to Atlanta.”
“I can come to you.”
“No, like I said before, your world is there. I don’t have anything…not like you do. I’ll get a place in Atlanta. Plus, you’re in school. I’m retired. I can do whatever the fuck I need to do. I just know I can’t live in a city that’s so far away from you. Try to make it work between that.”
I hadn’t thought there could be anything more he could say that evening to satisfy me, but knowing he wanted to move to Atlanta for me so that we could be together made it all that much sweeter.
“I’d really like that,” I confessed, holding him close to me.
“Oh, Ty. You’ve taken my soul and broken it into a million pieces, and I don’t even wanna put them back together. You send up all these red flags. Every siren is going off in my brain, yet somehow there’s this deep certainty in me that this is what’s right.”
“I feel the same way.”
He tucked his head just slightly closer to mine, a gentle nudge that showed so much affection, and we just lay there, holding one another.
“But, Pretty Thing, I need you to promise me you won’t do anything to put yourself at risk like that again. Ever. That if it comes down to it and something were to happen to me, you’ll let that happento me.”
Everything in me resisted, but I understood where he was coming from, and part of it made sense. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I had been reckless.
“I promise,” I said, even though it was the last promise in the world I wanted to make.
As his lips touched my cheek and he offered the subtlest of pecks, I reveled in the profound satisfaction of being able to be with him in that moment.
The calm after the storm. The recognition of how everything in my life had changed the day I met him, though I never could have known just how much.
But I knew that finally, we had a real beginning ahead of us.
Liam McKinney was mine, and I was his.
Everything else, we could figure out.
