Chapter Thirty-Five
Rivals and Despair
Luke agrees to meet me at my house without any resistance, but he’s eerily quiet and reserved as he follows me inside.
It’s unnerving how he just stands in the foyer, staring blankly into space.
He’s so zoned out that it’s like looking at a house with all the lights on, but nobody’s home.
He only follows me upstairs when I physically lead him by the hand.
I’ve never seen him so despondent and withdrawn—that’s normally been my thing—but it’s making me anxious on top of my already fraying nerves.
Still, I take my time to properly clean the cuts on his lip and neck while he sits on the bathroom counter, and he doesn’t fight me or push back.
He hardly reacts to the rubbing alcohol on his wounds.
I’m unsure what to say to him—how to help him through his disquiet. My own thoughts are numb and muted, still processing.
At one point, when I finally glance up, I’m surprised to find him staring at me, his eyes searching my face with quiet intensity. It lights a fire in my soul at the helplessness I find there.
“Why are you being so kind to me?” he asks, his voice low.
“What sort of question is that?” I frown, my lips curling into an incredulous smile.
Luke doesn’t back down, his stare unwavering. “I’m serious.”
“Why would I be anything but kind to you, Luke?” I cup my hand to the side of his cheek. “Why would you deserve anything less?”
Luke shakes his head, and I can see how his lower lip trembles with an onset of tears brimming.
A well of emotion is hiding beneath the surface of his composed facade, being held at bay by sheer determination, but he can’t keep it from his eyes.
Awe, regret, uncertainty, anger, shame, misery…
I can see how he wars with himself through all of them.
Intuitively, I know he feels that what happened with Chrissy is his fault.
I can imagine how he’s probably berating himself, thinking he failed to uphold his promises to keep me safe.
It’s precisely how I would have viewed things if the roles were reversed.
But I don’t have those same concerns right now.
“None of this is your fault, Luke,” I assure him quietly, leaning forward until our heads are pressed together.
His forehead scrunches with anguish against mine, and I spot two or three rogue tears fall onto his hands on his lap.
I gently brush my hand along his skin, wiping them away. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” Luke blubbers out. “I knew where we were, the risk we were taking….”
“I kissed you, idiot.” I chuckle. “And I’d do it again.”
He shakes his head, pulling away. He moves like he wants to escape from me, but I don’t let him. I plant myself firmly in front of him, blocking the exit. Luke keeps his eyes lowered.
“Don’t you get it?” he snaps, his whole body shaking. “I outed you, Ethan.” His voice breaks, and he squeezes his eyes shut. “Me. I… I hurt you.”
“Stop it.” I plant my hands on both sides of Luke’s face, forcing him to look up.
He stares at me with such a heartbreaking expression that I can feel tears welling in my eyes in sympathy for his pain.
“Stop it, please. I outed myself. Okay? I could have lied and tried to brush it off, but I didn’t.
I chose this. I chose you. And I’m not sorry. ”
“But Chrissy….”
“Fuck Chrissy,” I growl. “Nothing she says or does will make me regret what happened. I’m disappointed in her reaction, but I wouldn’t change it. Not if it meant hurting you in the process. I would pick you every time because I lo—”
The sentence dies in my throat before I can finish it, my lungs constricting in a panic as soon as I realize what I almost said.
I love you. I’ve kept the words so close to my chest these last couple of weeks, and now that they were right there, so close to spilling from my lips, my body is physically preventing me from speaking.
Almost like it knows how much more painful it would be to utter the words, knowing that we’re still firmly headed down the path to ruination.
Luke searches my face but gives me no indication that he knows what I was about to say. With a shaky breath, I swallow hard and start again on a different track, a safer one.
“I lost the right to stay silent the moment you were involved.” I sigh.
“You don’t deserve to be erased or mistreated just because I’m afraid of what my friends will say once they learn the truth.
If my friends react half as badly as Chrissy did tonight, then I…
Well, they’re not really my friends. I’m not ever going to push you away to protect myself. ”
Luke lets out a soft sob, a tear rolling down his cheek. I wipe it away with the pad of my thumb, smiling.
“The day I do that to you is the day I stop deserving to be your boyfriend,” I murmur. “Nothing would be worth that.”
Luke breaks down at the words and reaches for me, pulling my body closer.
He wraps his arms around my neck and buries his head in the crook of my shoulder, sobbing freely.
I can feel his pent-up emotion flooding out of him while he clings to me.
It’s so raw that I don’t think it can all be attributed to this moment.
It’s more like he’s releasing whatever else he’s been keeping bottled up inside as well.
The tension in his muscles makes his body so rigid that he's shaking beneath my grasp.
I hold him tightly, working my hands up and down his back in soothing circles.
After a while, Luke eventually settles, going quiet in my arms, his body relaxing.
He keeps his head on my shoulder for another minute before turning his face in and pressing his lips to my neck.
It’s soft. A whisper of warm breath above my collar.
Despite everything, it sends a flash of heat straight through my core, and my eyes flutter shut of their own accord.
Luke’s hands find their way along my back, curling into my hair, and my heart picks up speed with the caress.
But I pull away gently, not wanting this to go on without absolute certainty that this is what Luke wants.
When I look into his eyes again, puffy and red-rimmed as they are, his shy desire is written all over his face, and I think I understand what he’s asking for.
Even in this state, he’s so beautiful that my heart aches.
He leans in and kisses me again, barely brushing our lips together.
He’s presenting an invitation for me to accept or decline, letting me decide if the comfort he’s seeking is something I’m willing to give. As if I could ever deny him anything.
I don’t hesitate to scoop him into my arms, and he wraps his legs around my waist. I carry him to my bed, laying him down gently, covering him with my body.
He opens himself up to me slowly, the heat of his desire more like a low flame instead of an inferno, and I tend to that fire carefully.
He unravels with every soft caress, his body giving in to my touch with a further release of tension until nothing blocks him from experiencing pure sensation.
He guides us until we’re on our sides, his back to my chest, and he throws his thigh over mine, giving me access.
I love him slowly and deeply, drawing so much pleasure out of him until he’s utterly lost to it, and we can both forget, at least for the moment, that there’s anything but this in the world.
Our breathy moans and the way he tangles his fingers in my hair are the only things that matter, the feeling of being so connected to each other heightening our pleasure.
It’s precisely what we both need, our simultaneous releases pulling us closer.
This time, I refuse to let him leave when we’re finished. I hold him tight against me, feeling how the stress fades from his body as he sinks deeper into my arms, knowing his thoughts have subsided for now. I wish there were a way I could take away his pain forever.
And yet, as Luke’s agony eases, mine steadily increases.
I replay the moment Frank held that knife to Luke’s neck, following it through the alternate ending that could have played out.
The image of his throat being slashed open sticks with me so viscerally—so real and vivid in my mind—that I can’t stop the tears from coming to my eyes at the imagined scenario.
I have to hold onto his sleeping form more tightly to remind myself it didn’t go that way. That he’s safe. He’s alive.
There’s no telling what I would have done if Luke had died tonight.
I don’t think I would have survived the impact of that kind of loss a second time.
At least if he breaks up with me to go back to New York, he’ll still be alive and well somewhere out there living his life.
I could handle that better knowing he was happy, even if it broke me.
The thought of his light going out forever in such a swift and violent burst makes my chest go tight, and it’s hard to breathe.
Maybe if I weren’t so madly in love with him, this wouldn’t have such a hold on me. But then my stomach lurches at the thought that if he really had died tonight, he would never have known because I still haven’t found the courage to tell him how I feel.
Even being on the verge of blurting out the truth tonight, my cowardice held me back, just as it always has. Despite everything, I’m still too afraid to admit it. Like the moment I expose my heart to him, all of this will end—but then again, it almost ended tonight as it was…
The next morning, all the possible repercussions of Chrissy’s discovery hit me like a semi-truck doing a hundred miles an hour on the freeway, and I’m paralyzed.
It’ll definitely be front-page news in the small-town gossip rag alongside Frank’s headlines, ‘Two for One Special! Extra! Extra! Read All About It!’