They’d always been meant to be together. Mike could feel that in the pit of his stomach now, the overwhelming certainty that Ezra was the person he’d been looking for. Even on that first day, when he’d come to the sanctuary looking for somethingmore.
He’d found it. Instantly.
And he was so stupid that he’d let it go twice now.
Waking up and seeing the pine cone Ezra had saved for him had felt like a blow to the chest. It still hurt now, the moment he thought about it.
By now, his dad had moved on to some story about a guy at work who he’d bullied into doing what he wanted him to do, and like the clouds parting on a mid-winter day, everything seemed to change. Suddenly, Mike wasn’t sitting in a room with his family having Christmas dinner.
He was miles away from them, sitting with practical strangers. People who barely knew him, who didn’twantto know him, even though they’d raised him.
They were interested in Mike being what they wanted him to be.
The people at the sanctuary—all the people he’d just lost—thosepeople loved him. All they ever wanted was for him to be happy. To be himself.
All Ezra had ever wanted was to be Mike’s friend. And he’d made one hell of a boyfriend, even if Mike had been a little slow to figure that one out.
And Mike had chosen his bully of a father and his indifferent mother over Ezra. Why?
Because it waseasy?
No, because it meant he didn’t have to change. He didn’t have to face up to what he really wanted, he didn’t have to take the step of actually making a difference to his own life. Last time, he’d had Rachel to drag him away.
He didn’t have her anymore. Now, he just had himself.
“I was going to kiss Ezra,” Mike said all of a sudden, surprising himself almost as much as he clearly surprised his parents. “I was about to kiss him,” he repeated, wanting to make himself clear.
It was like falling off a cliff. His stomach felt like it was somewhere around his knees, but it was too late to back out now.
He’d just have to grow wings.
The silence around the table pounded in Mike's ears.
After a long moment, he stood. “You can yell at me or mock me or disown me or whatever else you want,” Mike said. “But I don't have to listen to it.”
His hands were trembling, the rush of adrenaline making every breath, every tiny shift seem deafeningly loud. Too late to back out now, though.
“I love him,” Mike said, surprising himself all over again. He knew, but he hadn’t… ever… expected to say that out loud.
Definitely not to his parents, who were both looking on in shocked silence.
“And I already lost my chance with him once,” Mike continued, talking to himself now more than his parents. “I can’t lose him again. It’d break my heart.”
Ezra had brought so much warmth and light into his life since he’d first gotten into town that Mike couldn’t imagine going back to not having it. Going back to his old life would only have been miserable.
“I’m gonna go see him,” Mike said. “Put my suitcase on the lawn or whatever, I’ll pick it up when I come back. I don’t care.”
Taking a deep breath, he turned his back on both of his parents, grabbed his coat and his car keys, and headed for the door.
Hopefully he wasn’t too late to beg Ezra for forgiveness.
