“Yes.”
“We’ll find new things for you. Things you like.”
“It seems wasteful,” he says.
“I don’t care if it’s wasteful.” I realize my voice is sharp and soften it. “It’s more important that things feel good.”
He nods, but I can see that he’s confused. He doesn’t understand why this whole thing has upset me.
That’s a truth that’s hard for me to admit, but I make myself do it. “I wish I’d seen it,” I tell him. “That you hated the room. It upsets me that I missed that.”
“Oh. No, Lucas.” He walks over to me, and I feel how a subtle tension that I barely knew was there eases between us. He puts his arms around me from behind. “That’s not on you.”
My hands settle over his forearms, avoiding the bandage still wrapped around his left arm. “I still wish I’d seen it. I don’t have context for everything. I didn’t know you … before.”
He stays with me, but his body tenses slightly. He says, “I’m glad you didn’t. You wouldn’t have liked me.”
It’s hard for me to imagine not liking Roman, but it’s also hard for me to imagine him being any way other than he is now. I like him as he is.
But all of this makes me wonder. “Does it bother you being in this house? Or around Vitali? Sometimes it feels like there’s a lot of tension between you.”
“Maybe. I don’t know, Lucas.”
I sigh, trying not to feel frustrated. I believe him. I don’t think he knows.
And that’s the point, isn’t it? That’s what I need to talk to him about. I think he needs help sorting through things.
At first, he just needed time. I don’t think that anything but time would have helped in the beginning. But I think he’s past the point where time alone is helping.
Roman has a lot to sort through. Too much. He’s overwhelmed. I think that’s why he said he doesn’t belong here. He’s so fucking overwhelmed that he doesn’t know what to do.
But the fact that he said that, that anything like that is in his head, is very fucking serious, and it still terrifies me. And that’s why I can’t be the one to help him sort through things. I’m not objective enough. I can’t be calm enough. I would panic again.
I rub my thumbs over the corded muscles of his forearms. I make myself say, “I think you need someone who can help you sort through things like that.”
His body tightens instantly behind mine. His fingers dig into my stomach. “What do you mean?”
His reaction makes me anxious, but we have to have this conversation. “Like … a therapist.”
“Oh.” Roman breathes out, relaxing. “You scared me.”
I huff, relieved but also a bit annoyed. “What, did you think I meant someone in place of me? Do you imagine that I would ever, for one second, give you up or share you?”
“It was just a gut reaction.”
“And would you give me up, Roman?”
He reacts exactly like I expect. He bites the crook of my neck and growls against my skin, “No.”
I shiver, pleased. But I need him to hear me, so I rub his arms soothingly until he releases the bite.
“I know it would be hard for you,” I say. “Talking to someone. We’d have to find the right person. But I feel like … I don’t know, Roman. I feel like there are things we need to talk about but can’t.”
“BecauseIcan’t,” he says, sounding frustrated.
“They’re hard for me too.”
I leave it at that. I know we need to talk about it sometime, what he said that day and how I reacted, but not right now. It’s not the point.
