Page 103 of Arctic Titans of Northwood U: Volume 2

I opened my mouth, stunned, and only managed to reproduce his words. “What are you doing here?”

He clenched his jaws and looked into my eyes. He stood a little straighter. “I’m coming to get you.”

Stunned silence tied my tongue. “Wh-what?”

Tyler put on his bravest face. “I’ve been thinking about you for days,” he said, his voice thick with some emotion I couldn’t name. It wasn’t anger. “About what you said. And I refuse to believe you.”

“I lied,” I managed to stammer out.

Tyler’s expression crumbled for a moment, hurt showing briefly before he smoothed his face out. “You said that already. I don’t believe you. There’s something else and I’m not letting you off the hook until you tell me.” He frowned again at my duffel. “Are you going somewhere?”

He wasn’t moving to close the distance between us. Of course. It was up to me to close the distance if I could. To build a bridge rather than burn it. “Tyler, I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t…” I shook my head.

“Something happened,” he stated, eyes narrow.

A shudder passed through me. As I exhaled, Tyler made one small step toward me. I shook my head again, trying to sort through my thoughts. When I looked into his eyes, everything seemed simpler. “I was such an idiot,” I said. “Look, I don’t expect you to listen to me. You don’t have a reason to believe a word I say, but I swear, I thought I was doing the right thing.” As desperation welled inside of me, I dropped my duffel, my fists balling. “I wanted to push you away because I’m nothing without you, Ty. A lifetime of hearing how I’m falling short of all the great things my brothers achieved messed with my head. And seeing them now, hearing all the bullshit coming from their mouths…I believed them. And they’re right about one thing. I failed. I failed so fucking much. College, hockey, relationships. I failed you, Tyler. I thought you’d be better off without me.”

Tyler licked his lips and cocked his head to one side. “I figured it was something like that.” He shook his head in disappointment.

I couldn’t bear disappointing him and yet that was exactly what I’d done. “It’s the truth,” I whispered, then found my voice. “They took away the last shred of confidence I had, but it’s not all their fault. It’s mine. I feel like…like I don’t deserve you. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have even gotten this far. You should probably just forget about me.”

Tyler rolled his eyes. It hurt like hell, but I deserved it. It was the least I deserved.

I nodded. “I understand if you don’t want to see me. I’ll, uh…” What would I do? Find a room near campus and hope washing dishes in some kitchen would cover the cost? I really was lost.

“I was coming to rescue you, Sebastian,” Tyler said. He dropped that piece of information like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He might have been saying the sky was blue. “I knew there was more to it than what you were telling me. You always do that. All the time.” A note of despair was in his voice and I was completely alert. “When are you going to start believing the things I tell you? Because when I say you’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, I fucking mean it. I’m not just flattering you. Why would I ever give you empty compliments?”

“But…” I wanted to give him all the evidence of my fuck-ups. I wanted to present to him, clearly, all the ways I’d failed him.

“No buts, Sebastian. You need to break free of them.”

I didn’t know how, but we were standing only a couple of feet apart now. “I think I did that,” I said. “I…came out.”

A pained expression showed on his face.

“Yeah, it went as well as you’d expect. But I’m out. Out of the closet and out of that house.” I shrugged. “And I was coming to see you. Now. I wanted to tell you that. And to ask you to forgive me.”

He rubbed his eyes with the fingers of one hand. “You have to stop, Sebastian. You have to stop with all this constant guilt. You keep acting like everything bad that’s ever happened is your fault.”

Silence crawled into the space between us. It brimmed with unshared emotions. “So what? You won’t forgive me?”

He scoffed. “It’s too late for that,” he said flatly, his gaze on me, his eyes glimmering under the street light. “I’ve already forgiven you. Right then, in the park.”

My mouth opened and closed silently. “What are you…?” But again, my voice failed me.

“Sebastian, you are so much more than you’re letting yourself believe,” he said. “Your low opinion of yourself needs to go because I won’t let you push me away again. Not because you’re not good enough or because your family’s a mess or any other reason you can make up.”

I moved closer to him. “Do you really mean that?”

“With my whole heart,” Tyler said. “And you better believe it, or I’ll kick your ass right now.”

A laugh burst out of me so abruptly that I had no chance to stop it. “I love you, Tyler,” I said. The words poured out of me without thinking, without a single moment to consider them, and with no ceremony. They simply tumbled out and I had to stew in the deafening silence that followed.

It only lasted a heartbeat or two, but it felt like it would never end. Tyler’s eyebrows dragged up and his eyes grew twice their size. “I love you, too, Sebastian.”

My heart tripped and sped as if to catch up. Shivers ran down my arms as I took the final little step and closed the distance between us. “Even after all I said and did?” My hands rose slowly, carefully, to rest on his sculpted chest. How I loved him.

“My love,” he whispered, testing the words. “If you think I don’t know where that was coming from, then you don’t fully understand just how much I love you. And how well I know you.”