He shifts, arms folding over his chest like armor. “Then why bring me?”
“Because I need to show you I’m not hiding this part of me from you. Idon’twant to hide anymore.” My voice cracks on the last word, but I push through it. “I want to try, Luke. Really try. And this… this is part of that.”
He doesn’t say anything. Then, finally—softly—he says, “You sure?”
“No,” I admit. “But I want to be.”
A breath. Then another.
He nods once. Slow. Deliberate. “Okay.”
The tension in my chest breaks like a wave, flooding me with something sharp and aching andreal.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “Just give me ten minutes to go back to my dorm room and change, I can’t go in joggers.”
“Xavier isn’t going to notice what you’re wearing.”
“I can’t meet the man you love looking like a teenager, Silas.”
I step forward before I can stop myself. My hands rise—one to each cheek—thumbs brushing over the tear-streaked heat of his skin. I tilt his face up to mine, heart hammering in my throat.
“You’re the man I love, Luke.”
The second the words leave my mouth, I feel the shift in the air. He goes completely still. Eyes wide. Breath caught. Like I just knocked the air from his lungs. Like Ishockedthe silence into him.
His lips part, but nothing comes out.
And fuck—Fuck.
I didn’t mean to say that. Not like this. Not now.
The panic hits me hard and fast, burning through my chest. My hands stay where they are, but I swear I see the start of a flinch in his shoulders.
I brace for him to pull back. To laugh it off. To run. But he doesn’t move. He just blinks, as though he’s trying to process the words that are still suspended between us.
You’re the man I love, Luke.
He whispers, “You… you mean that?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah. I do.”
He exhales sharply, a broken kind of sound. Then throws his arms around my waist, face pressed into my chest, anchoring himself there.
And I let him.
I wrap my arms around him and hold tight, grounding myself in the way he fits so perfectly against me.
His voice is muffled against my chest, but I catch it anyway. “Okay,” he whispers. “I’ll go change. And then… I’ll go with you.”
There’s a pause. A heartbeat. Then another.
He shifts slightly, pulling back just enough to look up at me. His eyes are still glossy, lashes clumped a little from tears he pretended weren’t there. His mouth trembles, like he’s fighting the urge to joke. To deflect.
Hedoesn’t.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
