“That’s not —”
“Because it feels familiar, Cassian. It feels exactly like how you used to be and I fucking hate it.”
He stands up.
Runs a hand through his hair.
The specific restless thing he does when he’s trying to hold himself together.
• • •
“I want you to go,” he says. “I mean that. I want you to go and be everything you’re supposed to be and not —”
“Not what? Not be here with you?”
“Not break yourself into pieces for me anymore.” His voice cracks slightly on the last word. “You’ve been doing it since you were eight years old. You’ve been making yourself smaller, making yourself fit, making yourself into whatever shape I needed — and I let you. I kept letting you.”
“I wanted to.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
“So you just get to decide —”
“Yes.” Hard. Final. “This one time, yes.”
I stare at him.
“I don’t understand you,” I say. “I have never understood you. You let me in just far enough and then there’s this wall and I’vebeen climbing it my entire life and I’m tired, Cassian. I’m so tired of not knowing what’s actually in there.”
“Ro —”
“You know everything about me.” My voice is rising. I can hear it. I can’t stop it. “Everything. You know about the panic attacks, the pills, the way I feel about you, every embarrassing piece of who I am — I handed it all over, I’ve always handed it all over — and you have given me nothing. Nothing real. Just enough to keep me here.”
“That’s not —”
• • •
“Then tell me something true.” I step toward him. “Right now. Tell me one true thing that I don’t already know. Because I love you and I would stay for you and you won’t even give me a reason and that’s not fair. And I’m not letting it go this time.
I need you, Cassian. So please. Tell me.”
He looks at me.
And something —
something gives way.
• • •
I see it happen.
Like a wall that’s been standing for so many years finally hitting the one crack it can’t hold.
He sits down on the edge of my bed.
Hard.
Like his legs stopped.
