“You don’t have to babysit me.”
He turns his head to look at me, and in the dim light from the bedside lamp, his eyes are dark and serious.
“I know,” he says again. “Your next dosage is in forty-five minutes. You should get some rest.”
But he doesn’t put down his tablet.
I close my eyes, letting myself sink into the pillows, into the hazy warmth of the pain medication, and the weirdly comforting feeling of having Tanner Sinclair in my corner.
My last thought before I finally let myself drift off is that for the first time in a while, I don’t feel so alone.
The buzzing phone pulls me out of deep sleep. I surface slowly, like I’m swimming through molasses, my brain foggy and my mouth dry as hell.
“Lou.” Tanner’s voice is close. “Hey. Time for your meds.”
I crack my eyes open. The room is dark except for the faint glow from the bedside lamp Tanner must’ve left on. He’s standing next to my bed, holding a glass of water and the pill bottles, his hair sticking up like he’s been running his hands through it.
“What time is it?” My voice comes out rough, scratchy.
“Little after two.” He shakes out two pills into his palm. “Anti-inflammatory and another pain pill to stay ahead of it. Doc said you need to stay on schedule.”
I take the pills and wash them down with the water he hands me. The cold liquid feels good on my throat. When I hand the glass back, our fingers brush, and I’m too out of it to care that my heart does a stupid little skip.
Tanner sets the glass on the nightstand and starts to move away, back toward his own bed.
“Wait,” I say.
He stops. “Yeah?”
I sink back into the pillow nest, tilting my head to look at him. “How did you get so good at this? Taking care of people.”
He shrugs. “My grandpa. You asked me that already though,” he says with a small smile.
“Yeah, you said that.” I study his face. It’s probably because I’m high as a kite on the pain medication, but I push him. “I just—I get the feeling there’s more to your story. Sometimes you act way older than twenty-three. Like you’ve been taking care of people your whole life, not only helping your grandma when you were a teenager.”
His jaw works, and for a second, I think he’s going to deflect and tell me to go back to sleep. But then he gets back into his bedand leans against the one lonely pillow he allowed himself, since every other piece of bedding in the room is currently cushioning my injured ass. He arranges the blankets carefully and looks down at his hands.
“My parents were best friends in high school,” he says. “They grew up together in this tiny Minnesota town where everyone knew everyone’s business.”
I wait. The meds make everything soft around the edges, but I’m alert enough to know this matters.
“My dad knew he was gay from the time he was a little kid,” Tanner continues, his voice quiet and measured. “And as he got older, he realized there was no way he could survive in that town. His parents were ultra-religious. If they would have found out, he knew he’d be on the streets. He was the typical stereotype: the gay boy who wanted to get out and move to New York so he could be himself. But he was also really fucking scared. He thought maybe he could be wrong. Like maybe he just needed to try harder to be ‘normal.’”
He pauses, swallowing hard.
“So on prom night, he asked my mom to help him figure it out. He didn’t lie to her—she’d known he thought he was gay, but he wanted to be sure. And my mom…” He huffs a quiet laugh. “My mom loved him. Not like that, but she loved him. So she said yes.”
The pieces click together in my foggy brain. “They slept together.”
“Yeah.” Tanner nods. “He left for New York two weeks later. My mom found out she was pregnant a couple of months after he was gone.”
“Fuck,” I breathe. “So she raised you alone?”
“Yup. She told him though,” Tanner corrects. “His first instinct was to come back to Minnesota and marry her. He was ready to give up everything to do the ‘right thing.’”
“But she didn’t let him.”
“Nope. She told him absolutely not. She knew if he came back, he’d be miserable. He’d be living a lie in a place that would never accept him. So she told him to stay in New York, to build his life, and that she would raise me. She set him free.”
