Chapter 15 Vince #2
“You never planned for me to be part of your future.” The question rips out of me, raw and bleeding. “You never thought about what happens next, what this means beyond your art.”
“You think this is just about my art?” Adrian gestures wildly between us, tears streaming down his face now. “You think any of this has been easy?”
“I think you needed something, and I was convenient.”
Without thinking, I reach out and grab his shoulders, my fingers digging into the soft cotton of his shirt. His body jerks forward, solid and warm against me, and for a moment I can feel his heart hammering against his ribs, matching the frantic rhythm of my own.
“That’s not true,” Adrian says, his hands coming up to grip my forearms, his touch burning through my skin. “God, Vince, that’s not true at all.”
I can feel the tremor in his breathing, can see the way his pupils dilate even as tears track down his cheeks. My body wants to pull him closer, to press my mouth to his and forget everything else, but instead, I shove him back hard enough that he stumbles toward the wall.
The loss of contact feels like tearing something vital out of my chest.
“Then why?” The question comes out broken, desperate. “Why did you meet up with that football scout in high school? Why did you look like you fucked him in his hotel room?”
Adrian’s face crumples, and he slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor, his head in his hands. “You knew about that?”
“Answer the fucking question, Adrian.”
“Because I was eighteen and stupid. Because I thought I was protecting you.”
“Protecting me from what?”
“From everything!” The words explode out of him, raw and anguished. “From them, from me, from everything trying to ruin your life! You had everything ahead of you, scholarships, a future, and I was just some confused kid who couldn’t even figure out who he was, let alone what he wanted.”
I stare down at him, anger flooding my chest with searing heat. “So, you made that choice for both of us.”
“I made what I thought was the best choice at that time.” Adrian looks up at me, his face streaked with tears.
“When you started avoiding me in high school after everything went down, I got the message. It was clear as fucking day to me that you didn’t want me anymore.
And it all made sense. I was so scared of holding you back, of not being enough for you, that I convinced myself letting you go was indeed the right thing to do. ”
“And now?” The words barely make it past my lips. “What’s different now?”
Adrian is quiet for so long, I think he won’t answer. When he finally speaks, his voice is barely a whisper.
“Now I’m still terrified I’m not enough for you, that I’ll never be able to give you what you deserve. But I’m more terrified of losing you again.”
The honesty in his voice breaks something open in my chest, but I can’t let it. I can’t let myself hope when I know how easily he can walk away.
I don’t know how to get past the fact that he gave up on us, if there was even an “us”, just like that.
Adrian always has this power to make me lose my mind, make me lose reason, make me forget why I am supposed to be mad at him in the first place.
I saw myself knocking down walls in days when I spent years building them up.
Yeah, that’s Adrian Fucking Callahan for you.
“I don’t know how to stay.” Adrian’s voice cracks on the admission. “I don’t know how to fit into your world without destroying everything you’ve built.”
“So, you know what’s best for me. Thank you for your concern. How convenient that you want to run away now, now that you have your ‘material’ for your art exhibit.”
“I’m not running!” Adrian struggles to his feet, his face flushed with anger and pain. “I’m still just trying to figure this out!”
“So, what do you want, Adrian?” I’m shouting now, years of hurt and confusion pouring out. “Because I’m drowning here and I need to know if there’s even a place for me in your life beyond your art!”
“I want everything!” The confession rips out of him like he’s been holding it back for years.
“I want to wake up next to you and fight about stupid things and support your career and build something real together. But I don’t know how to do that when you look at me like I’ve destroyed you, like I am the very reason you hate the world!
How can I fix that without ruining you even more? ”
The words hit like a punch to the gut because he’s right. I have been waiting for him to leave, building walls before he can tear them down again.
“Because that’s what you do. That’s what happened before. It all started when you kissed me, Adrian.” I whisper, and my voice sounds broken even to me. “I wish you hadn’t. Our lives would have been so much simpler.”
“Yes, maybe I shouldn’t have, but not a day has passed without me reliving that kiss, Vince.” Adrian steps toward me, his hands reaching out like he wants to touch me but doesn’t dare. “God, you were perfect. You are perfect. That’s the problem.”
“Don’t.” I back away from him, almost panicking that I might give in. “Don’t make this about me being perfect when you’re the one who can’t commit to anything beyond your next project.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” The words come out sharp, cutting. “You’ve got your inspiration back, your manager is happy, your career is saved. What else do you need me for?”
Adrian’s face goes white, like I’ve slapped him. “Is this really what you think of me?”
The hurt in his voice almost breaks me, but I can’t back down, not when I’m this close to protecting myself from the inevitable. The situation needs to hurt enough so he can understand how devastating it’s been for me all these years.
“And what about you?” Adrian’s voice rises, desperate now. “You talk about fighting for something real, but you won’t even let yourself believe I could want that too. You’ve already decided I’m going to leave you here and go back to what you call ‘my real life’, so you’re pushing me away first.”
The accusation hits too close to home, and I feel something snap inside me.
“Maybe because I’ve been here before!” I shout, my voice cracking with the force of it. “Maybe because I opened myself up to you once, and you destroyed me! Maybe because I can’t survive you doing it again!”
The silence that follows is deafening. We stare at each other from opposite sides of the room, both breathing hard, both raw and bleeding from our own versions of truth.
“That’s it then,” Adrian says finally, his voice flat and defeated. “You’ve already decided how this ends.”
“I think you’ve known this was coming for a long time too,” I say instead, and the words taste like ash in my mouth.
Seeing him with my friends and being in the same space as him these past few days have been like a cruel act of mercy killing.
I get to taste the kind of life with Adrian back in it, knowing full well this will all be taken away in the end.
Adrian nods slowly, something dying in his eyes. “You’re right. Maybe I should just go back home.”
“Maybe you should.”
Ten years of want and hurt crackle between us. The impulse wars in me to either run or close the distance.
I choose wrong.
My hands fist in his shirt before I can think, pulling him away from the wall and dragging him toward me with enough force that he stumbles forward.
“Fuck,” I hiss and crash my mouth to his.
It is not the tentative brush of lips like in high school.
It is rage and hunger. Everything I have buried claws its way out.
I want to devour him. I want him to feel the years I spent trying to forget.
My tongue slides over his lips, tasting him, the man I should have forgotten long ago but never truly did.
I pin him hard against the wall. He gasps, his body trembles against mine, pressing hard.
I feel the heat of him, the undeniable evidence of his arousal straining against his pants.
His hands dig into my shoulders, pulling and demanding, but I am faster, sharper, angrier.
I bite his bottom lip, and his groan shudders through him.
Every thud of his heart against mine feeds the fire.
I trail my mouth down his jaw and bite just enough to leave a mark.
He shivers against me, hard and needy, and in a reflex, bites my bottom lip.
We press together, taut and aching, my cock hard against his, our bodies screaming with raw desire and unspoken emotion.
His skin against mine, our ragged breaths, and the ache between us ignite the desire that has been simmering for a decade.
For a long moment, there is nothing but us.
The world is gone. Only the ache remains.
Then the room tilts back into focus. The resort suite. The fight.
The goodbye.
I shove myself away from him so hard I nearly stumble, both of us breathing like we’ve been underwater.
“Vince,” he says, voice wrecked. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
His eyes are on my mouth, and I know he feels it too. The way we still fit. The way we still burn.
“You’re right,” I manage, wiping the blood from my lip where he bit back. “Let’s not pretend this is more than it actually is.”
He turns toward his bedroom, and I feel something inside me screaming to stop him, to reach for him one more time. But my feet stay planted, my hands stay at my sides, and I watch him walk away from me.
He pauses at the doorway, his back still turned.
“For what it’s worth,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “I’m sorry it came to this between us. I wish we had been able to do it differently.”
The door closes behind him with a soft click, and I’m left standing in his suite, surrounded by the ghost of everything we just destroyed.
I walk back to my room on unsteady legs, my hands shaking as I close the door.
Everything I’ve just said and done presses down on me.
I don’t feel vindicated or protected. I only feel the emptiness of breaking the one thing that ever made me feel whole.
I can’t unsay the words that made Adrian’s face crumble.
I can’t undo the moment I watched him stop fighting for us.
I can’t escape the finality of what I’ve done.
I lie awake, thinking about Adrian packing his life back into his duffel bag, wondering if this is me finally learning to protect myself or just carrying out my father’s lesson, to push people away before they can leave.
I remain awake, still wondering if his leaving is the true closure we both needed, or the biggest mistake of my life.