Like two people who have finally stopped pretending.
Like the first honest thing.
I press my face into his shoulder and let myself cry for all of it — for him at eleven, for me at sixteen, for every window and every silence and every almost —
and he lets me.
His hand on the back of my head.
The way it always is.
• • •
After a long time —
I pull back.
“Tell me to stay,” I say.
He looks at me.
“Ro —”
“Please. One more time. Tell me and I will.”
His jaw moves.
“I need you to go.” He says.
“Cassian —”
“I need you to go and find out who you really are when I’m not taking up all the space. I need you to go and be okay without me. Because you can be. You are so much more than what you’ve let yourself be in this —” He gestures between us. “I have taken so much from you already, Ro. I’m not taking this too.”
“You’re not taking anything. I’m giving it.”
“I know.” His eyes are wet. “I know you are. That’s the problem. You’ll give me everything and I —” He stops. “I’m not okay. I’m not — I have things I need to deal with. Things I can’t deal with while I’m here, in this house, next door to everything that —”
“So we both go,” I say. “You go somewhere. I go somewhere. We figure it out.”
“Maybe,” he says.
“Maybe isn’t good enough.”
“It’s all I have right now.”
• • •
I look at him.
This boy.
This infuriating, beautiful, broken, brave boy.
“I hate you,” I say.
“I know.”
“I love you.”
