“It changes things for him and me. Not for us.”
Ben dragged a strip of bell pepper through the hummus and shoved it into his mouth, chewing slowly so he’d have more time to respond.
“How can you look at me the same?” he asked.
“I look at you and all I see is the man I love. The man who took a chance on me when I had no idea what I wanted from him. I look at you and see a far better man than I could ever deserve.”
Ben snorted, rolling his eyes, but Thomas grabbed his chin, jerking him and forcing eye contact.
“I look at him differently,” Thomas said. “I look at him with shame and disappointment, and embarrassment. Everything you think should land on you is on him, Ben.”
“I really want to believe you.”
“Ben.” Thomas pursed his lips, a half-grimace. “I don’t know how to make you see that this isn’t your fault and everything I told you this morning, this weekend, the past few months—it hasn’t changed because of this.”
“There’s nothing youcansay,” he admitted, a tear slicking out of the corner of his eye. It burned his cheek, and he angrily swiped it away. “This is…”
He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t admit to Thomas that all of the doubt he felt had been instilled in him by Cody…by his son. He didn’t see a way out, and he sure as hell didn’t see a way forward. All of the words he wanted to say caught in his throat and the ones that would have done nothing besides hurt them both bubbled to the surface. It was a wonder he swallowed them back, leaving silence between them.
“It hurts me to see you like this,” Thomas whispered, thumb stroking over his chin. “To know that I had a part in this.”
Ben wanted to protest, but nothing came. The bell peppers rolled violently in his stomach, threatening to make him sick after all.
“This is…this is exactly what we didn’t want, Thomas.”
“No.” Thomas shook his head. “Please don’t.”
He pushed Thomas’s hand away from his face, frown angled sharply on his lips. “This is what we didn’t want then and I don’t want it now. The mess and the complication. That’s not…”
As he said it, the words burned his throat as intensely as the tears that now flowed freely down his cheeks.
“I want you, but it’s a mess in my heart, in my head. I don’t know how to be with you right now,” he admitted.
Thomas worked his jaw, and Ben watched his eyes fill with tears. Thomas was better at reining it in, though, and with a few blinks, they were gone.
“My feelings for you haven’t changed,” Thomas said again.
“Neither have mine.” He grabbed Thomas’s hands, forgetting to be careful of the bandages, of the physical reminder that everything between themhadchanged. “But everything else has, and I can tell you don’t think it should have, but it feels different for me now. And I’m sorry if that’s a me thing.”
“It can be an us thing,” Thomas offered. “I want to be with you. You aren’t something I want to walk away from.”
“But what if I asked you to?”
He closed his eyes as the question fell out of his mouth, lashes clumped and sticky from the tears he’d shed. There was no point in trying to stop them, so he didn’t. His heart was breaking in his chest, but he didn’t see another way out. He didn’t want to rebuild himself on Thomas’s back, and he knew—he fuckingknew—that there was a part of Thomas that understood that.
“I’d ask that you please don’t,” Thomas answered.
“Maybe not forever,” he whispered.
“Ben, please.”
“Just…I need some time.”
Thomas dragged his tongue across the front of his teeth and looked toward the door like his body knew what to do even if his heart was fighting him. And Ben hoped his heart was fighting him because his own wanted to stage a rebellion in his chest.
“This isn’t what I want. I hope you know that,” he said, like it mattered. He knew it didn’t. “But it’s what I need and I want to come back to you. I want to be better and stronger for you.”
“None of this is your fault,” Thomas said, voice raising louder than it had been the whole conversation. “This is him and his shortcomings and my fuck-ups as a parent. You don’t have work to do here, Ben. I do.”
