Dammit. She was going to be disappointed as well. He might as well leave if he’d lost two out of three of the people here.
“You’re leavingright now, when I’ve just sunk the most useful connection this sanctuary had because he upset you. When we’re right on the verge of losing everything and our only hope was you turning all this around. When I… When I’d…” he stopped, lower lip trembling, tears springing up in his eyes.
If Ryan thought he’d felt sickbefore, it had nothing on the feeling of making Oscar cry.
“And you’re just gonna leave my life in ruins,” Oscar said. “Because you wouldn’t take two seconds to let meexplainmyself. Because you can’t give me the benefit of the doubt. Because everyone’s out to get Ryan, poor Ryan, everything that ever happens toRyanis awful, right? You’re so stuck in your own self-loathing that you can’t even imagine that someone might… might…”
Oscar swallowed, dropped his head, and scuffed the roughened floorboards under his feet. “Love you,” he said softly.
The whole room seemed to tilt and spin like a carnival ride, a wave of dizziness and more nausea washing over Ryan as the words, almost too quiet to hear, filtered through to his still-panicking brain.
Oscar loved him?
Oscar loved him.
And he… he…
Dammit.
“Oscar,” he began, voice cracking. What could he say to that? A million things came to him, fromI’m sorry,toI love you, too.
None of them would quitecome out, though. He couldn’t make his throat work to fix this.
“I guess that was a mistake,” Oscar continued, sniffing and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “You go. You just… go. I don’t want you here.”
Those five words might as well have been a punch to the chest, making Ryan take a step back from the sheer force of them. The way Ryan’s heart clenched, the way his lungs tightened, theyfeltlike it. The only thing missing was the physical contact.
Oscar didn’t want him to fix this. He wanted Ryan toleave.
He’d screwed up too badly for another chance.
Oscar disappeared from the doorway, the hinges squealing again as the door swung shut behind him, leaving Ryan alone.
Hot tears spilled down his cheeks, his guts churning with anxiety over everything that’d just happened. He’d had Oscar. He’dhadOscar, and now he’d lost him.
Oscar wanted him to go, and he’d dismissed him just like Laura had, and now…
Ryan was all the way back to having nothing. Because he was a coward. Because he couldn’t believe that maybe someone would see him and think he was worth hanging onto.
Maybe it was better for everyone if he left, after all.
Sighing, Ryan dragged out his half-unpacked suitcase, tipped it out on the bed, and started folding.
