Chapter 13 #2
My guts are twisting. I’m not sure if we are talking about platonic love, and the uncertainty feels like the ground falling away beneath my feet.
He shakes his head, tears starting to spill down his cheeks. “No, you don’t. You love who I used to be. You love the memory of someone confident and whole and capable of being in a relationship without falling apart every five minutes.”
Relationship. He said relationship. Liam said relationship when talking about me and him.
“That’s not…”
“It is, though.” His voice cracks. “You look at me and you see someone who needs to be fixed. Someone who needs to be healed and made better before they’re worthy of love. But what if I can’t be fixed, Nicky? What if this broken thing is all that’s left?”
I set my coffee down and step toward him, but he backs away, pressing himself against the counter like he’s trying to disappear.
“You’re not broken,” I say fiercely. “You’re hurt. There’s a difference.”
“Then why won’t you touch me?”
The question stops me cold. “What?”
“You won’t touch me,” he repeats, his voice barely above a whisper. “Not properly. Not like you want to. You put blankets over me when I’m sleeping and you hold me when I’m having nightmares, but you won’t... you won’t choose to touch me. Not unless I’m falling apart.”
My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Because he’s right, and I don’t know how to explain why without making everything worse.
“Do you know,” he continues, his voice getting smaller with each word, “the last time someone touched me because they wanted to? Not because they were hurting me, not because they had to for medical reasons, not because I was having a breakdown. Just because they wanted to touch me?”
I shake my head, even though I’m afraid I already know the answer.
“Five years ago. Under that overpass. When you ruffled my hair and called me a dufus.” Tears are streaming down his face now, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Five years, Nicky. Five years of being touched only in violence or necessity or pity. And now I’m home, and the person I love most in the world still won’t touch me unless I’m hurting enough to need it. ”
The words shatter something inside my chest. “Liam...”
“I know what I’m asking for sounds wrong to you.
I know it’s not healthy or normal or what the therapists would recommend.
” He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, leaving red splotches across his pale cheeks.
“But normal isn’t working for me. Healthy isn’t working.
And maybe... maybe being claimed by someone who loves me is better than being untouchable. ”
I cross the space between us in two strides and pull him into my arms, holding him tight against my chest as he breaks down completely. His whole body shakes with sobs, and I can feel his tears soaking through my top.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into his hair. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to protect you, but I was protecting you from the wrong thing.”
He clings to me like I’m the only solid thing in his universe. “I just want to feel wanted. Not pitied, not comforted. Wanted.”
“You are wanted,” I tell him fiercely. “God, Liam, you have no idea how much you’re wanted.”
“Then why…”
“Because I was terrified of taking advantage of you. Of being another person who hurt you when you were vulnerable.” I pull back just enough to look at his face, to let him see the truth in my eyes.
“I love you so much it physically hurts sometimes. But I was so afraid of becoming something you’d need to heal from that I forgot you might need to heal toward something too. ”
He stares at me, his eyes wide and hopeful and terrified all at once. “What does that mean?”
I take a shaky breath, knowing I’m about to cross a line I can’t uncross. “It means maybe we can find a middle ground. Something that makes you feel wanted without recreating your trauma. Something that’s about love instead of ownership.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet,” I admit. “But maybe... maybe we figure it out together. Slowly. Carefully. With you in control of how far and how fast we go.”
He nods frantically, hope blooming across his features like sunrise. “Yes. Please. I want to try.”
I cup his face in my hands, thumbs brushing away the last of his tears.
“Then we’ll try. But Liam, the moment it stops feeling good for you, the moment it starts feeling like something you have to do instead of something you want to do, we stop.
No matter how far we’ve gone, no matter what I want. Your healing comes first. Always.”
“What if I’m never ready for what you want?”
The question is so vulnerable, so scared, that it breaks my heart all over again.
“Then we find other ways to love each other. Ways that work for both of us. Because I’m not going anywhere, Liam. Not ever.”
He searches my face for a long moment, looking for the lie, the moment when I’ll change my mind or realize he’s too much work or decide I’d rather have someone who doesn’t come with five years’ worth of trauma and baggage.
But all he finds is love. Patient, stubborn, unwavering love that’s willing to learn new shapes if the old ones don’t fit anymore.
“Okay,” he whispers finally.
“Okay?”
“Okay, let’s try. Let’s figure out how to love each other as we are, not as we think we should be.”
I lean forward and press my forehead against his, breathing in the scent of sandalwood and home.
“I love you,” I tell him, and for the first time, I let him hear everything I mean by those three simple words.
“I love you too,” he whispers back, and the morning light streaming through the kitchen window feels like a benediction.
We stand there holding each other in the quiet of the morning, two broken people trying to figure out how to be whole together.
It’s not the beginning I would have chosen for us, and it’s certainly not the love story either of us dreamed of when we were eighteen and thought we had all the time in the world.
But it’s ours. Messy and complicated and real and ours.
And maybe that’s enough to build on.