“Because then if people adopted me, it meant they really wanted me. Do you know I once came home all excited because we had my favorite flavor of ice cream in the fridge? I scooped out the biggest bowl and was about to sit down and eat it when my mother came in, saw me, and took it away.”
“She probably didn’t want you ruining your appetite; that’s what parents do.”
“Fuck that.” He kept his voice low. “She told me I couldn’t have any because it was my father’s and he might want it.” The memory tasted like bitter ash in his mouth. “Who tells a child they can’t have ice cream and then takes it away from them?”
“Marcus, she probably—”
“There’s no probably; I know. My mother never wanted children. All she ever cared about was my father and pleasing him. I was always second place.” His eyes stung. Almost thirty-five years old and yet it still mattered. Fuck. This. Shit. This was why he didn’t do relationships or even second dates. Everything was going fine; why did—
“Hey, it’s okay.”
Tyler wrapped his arms around him from behind, and his chin rested on his shoulder, in the crook of his neck. “I can’t imagine how that made you feel.”
Sympathy made his skin crawl, and he pulled away from Tyler. He needed some space; all this made him feel suffocated and unstable. Time to check out of all this togetherness bullshit.
“I gotta go.” He pushed back his chair and virtually ran into the bedroom to put on his socks and sneakers. His hands shook, so he couldn’t tie his laces, and he cursed under his breath.
“God damn.” He jammed the laces down the side of the sneakers.
“Marcus?”
He closed his eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath before answering. “Yes, Lillie. What?”
“Are you leaving? Where are you going? I thought we were gonna have breakfast.” She sniffed. “I helped.”
Fuck. A knife’s blade of shame swept through Marcus. He’d gone right back to that cold bitter place, forgetting that others might depend on him now. He always was a selfish bastard.
Through the viselike grip in his chest Marcus sucked in one more heartsick breath and then opened his eyes to see not only Lillie standing there but Tyler, his brow furrowed with confusion.
“If you’d rather, I could call Julian and Zach and tell them not to come. And we could clear out for a few hours.”
When he didn’t answer, Tyler, now pale and defeated-looking, put his hand on Lillie’s shoulder. “Come on, honey. Let’s go.”
A few months ago he would’ve agreed to that; hell, he would’ve demanded it. He had waltzed through life, believing himself invincible and capable of taking on the world, alone and unencumbered.
But then yesterday Lillie’s little hand slipped into his, placing her trust in him that he would look out for her and keep her safe from harm. And at that moment the path he’d been traveling on changed, forcing him to rethink everything he’d believed in all his life.
It had taken him this many years to figure out who he was and where he’d planned on going. Opening the Pandora’s box of his lifelong hurt and struggle now would most certainly destroy the carefully constructed persona he’d built to show the world. But Tyler would expect nothing less; total honesty and truth were his guideposts. If it wasn’t so ironic and pathetic, it would be amusing that he, Marcus the consummate loner, who some people called morally bankrupt, had fallen for a man who carried a tractor trailer load full of responsibilities, and put those responsibilities above himself and everyone else.
“Don’t go.”
For the first time in his life he spoke from the heart and asked a man to stay. Tyler’s bent head and slumped shoulders evidenced the extent of the hurt and betrayal Marcus’s actions and words had inflicted on him. He kept on walking although Lillie continued to shoot looks at Marcus over her shoulder.
“Ty, please?”
Finally he stopped, straightened up, and turned around. Marcus caught his breath and a fresh wave of sadness washed over him at the lines of hurt etching deep furrows in Tyler’s face. To think he’d caused this man pain when all he’d done was offer him comfort, brought him to a new low.
Marcus’s entire childhood had been spent attempting to please people who honestly didn’t care; he could’ve stood on his head and recited the alphabet backward without any notice from his father and an indifferent shrug from his mother. That apathy had shaped him into the man he’d become. Ruthless, cold, and self-indulgent. And now he could add cruel as well.
But Marcus no longer wanted to be that man; he hated him in fact. What had it gotten him but a string of anonymous, grasping lovers who cared nothing about what lay beneath his designer clothes and seemingly fast life? The men he’d slept with in the past had used him as much as he did them, but it didn’t make it any less wrong of a way to live.
Maybe the greatest happiness wasn’t the rush he’d get from sleeping with a different man each night, but instead it was waking up to the sleepy morning smile of the person you’d been dreaming of. Was this his new normal? He’d always hated that word—normal. Who determined the right way to live? Some preconceived notion that had been handed down for centuries but that no longer made any sense?
If that were the case, then Julian and Nick and Zach and Sam, married or planning their lives together would be abnormal, and no one could tell him that their happiness was bad or evil.
“What do you want from me, Marcus? I thought it would be nice to have everyone over here; they could meet Lillie, and we could enjoy a quiet day. I didn’t mean to dredge up past hurts, but when the person I care about is obviously in pain, I’m going to do the only thing I know how and that’s offer to talk about it.” His sweet-sad smile drove a stake into Marcus’s heart, shattering the final illusion he’d clung to from the past—that he was better off alone.
He didn’t ever want to see Tyler hurting or sad, nor did he want to be the cause of that pain. Now he understood why people put their own feelings aside for the benefit of others, and that their greatest happiness came from others’ enjoyment. Knowing he’d hurt Tyler made him reckless and desperate enough to speak from the heart without stopping to think.
