“Blair wasn’t just a little bit afraid of it,” I went on. “His fear was almost debilitating. He’d been that way all his life. Before we met, he’d slept with every light in the house on, and he said even that didn’t always help.”
He’d been ashamed of it, and that shame had kept us apart longer than was necessary. He’d thought it meant something was wrong with him, when nothing could have been further from the truth. He’d thought it would make me think less of him, when all it had done was show me how perfectly we fit, how I was made to fill his need, just as he was for mine, how my drive to provideeverythingfor him had slotted right into place with his bottomless craving to be with someone who could.
Rene sucked in a sharp breath. “I sleep with the lights on at home, too,” he admitted. “Did he… did your husband have a bear? Did you help him stop being afraid? What did he doafterhe met you? Did he still keep the lights on?”
“He didme,” I answered with a feral grin as memories that I rarely let surface anymore rose up hard and fast. Then I remembered where I was and who I was talking to, and backpedaled. “I, ah, I mean, yes. I helped him with his fear. He slept with me after we met, and that… helped. He stopped needing the lights left on.”
“But…how?” Rene pressed, his hand gripping mine so tightly that I’d have had trouble breaking free.
If I’d wanted to.
Which I decidedly didn’t.
But, Christ. There was no way I could tell the boy that the only thing that had worked for Blair was to fuck the fear out of him, every single night, until he’d been too sated and worn out to let it consume him. How the last five years my arms had felt achingly empty after fifteen years of learning to sleep without ever letting go. How I hadn’tletBlair be afraid, how I’d convinced him with a thousand small actions and promises fulfilled that I’d always be there, always take care of him, never let anything hurt him.
Until I wasn’t, and didn’t, and something had.
My throat closed up, my libido effectively killed.
“It’s okay,” Rene said, petting the back of my hand now likeIwas the one in need of comfort. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I didn’t mean to be nosy. I’m sorry you lost him. You must have loved him very much.”
“I did,” I said, only realizing after that I’d used the past tense. I cleared my throat. “Ialwayswill. We were as different as night and day, but he was perfect for me.”
“How did you meet?” Rene asked, the quietly whispered question in the dark and his soft, sighing breath warming the air and the gentle weight of his body as he scooted closer to me again, all lulling me into a place where it felt easy to answer.
Easy toremember.
As if the painful ending was suddenly—or at least temporarily—less important than all the perfect years leading up to it.
“We met on a job site,” I said, closing my eyes and settling the hand that wasn’t holding Rene’s onto his head. His hair was smooth, soft, silky. Not like Blair’s curls, but equally nice in a different way. “I was broke as fuck at the time, some trouble in my past that meant I was stuck working construction for cash under the table. I was determined as hell to make something with my life, though. Eventually, I got sent to a jobsite on a multi-million-dollar mansion. It was all the crew could talk about, every one of them going on and on about every ridiculous piece of over-the-top excess the owners wanted us to put in, but me? All I could see from the first moment I stepped foot on the property was Blair.”
“He… lived there?”
I nodded. “His parents have money, but Christ, they’re assholes. Blair was just twenty-three when I met him. Twenty-four before I convinced him to shake loose enough of their iron control over his life to give me the time of day. And twenty-five when he finally came into his inheritance. And we—”
“Oh,” Rene interrupted, sounding unexpectedly delighted. “So he could be free of them, then? Did they not like that he was gay? It sounds like the best gay fairy tale ever. Did you two run off with his money and live happ—”
His mouth closed with an audible snap before he said it, but I still heard it.
Happily ever after.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “That was… I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, baby,” I said, squeezing his hand in mine and running my other one over his hair. Over and over, not sure which one of us it soothed more. “Wewerehappy, even if it didn’t turn out to be ‘ever after.’ And I wouldn’t trade the fifteen years we did have for anything.”
“Fifteenyears,” Rene repeated. “Wow. That’s… wow.”
I huffed out a laugh, knowing how ridiculously long that span of time must sound when it was more than half your age. Having lived it, though? It didn’t feel long at all. Not nearly longenough.
But Rene was right about one thing. Those fifteen yearshadbeen pretty damn “wow.”
Something suddenly broke free in my chest. They really had been, and Iwouldn’thave traded them for anything. Not even to be free of this pain now, at the end. And that was… Christ.
It was a goddamn revelation, was what it was. One I wasn’t sure I knew how to deal with right now.
Instead, I kept talking.
“You’re right. Blair coming into that trust money did mean he could be free of his parents once he turned twenty-five, and no, they didn’t like that he was gay.” Or anything else about his authentic self, including his choice in partners—namely me—butfuckthem. “They assumed weweregoing to run off with his money, that that was all I saw in him—”
