Chapter 22 #3
Caleb presses on when Asher remains quiet. “I’m so sorry. That day, during the meeting . . . I was trying so hard to protect you, but I didn’t stop to listen to what you wanted. That wasn’t fair. I didn’t give us the chance that we deserved. I made an impulsive decision and then I ran.”
“Caleb,” Asher says finally. His voice is tight, brows knitted together. “I’m an adult. If we’re ever going to have a shot at making it together, you need to trust that I can decide for myself.”
“I do trust you.”
“Then trust me when I say that I’ve given up so much to get to where I am today. I’ve given up my body, my family, my youth, skin off my bones and years off my life. But I’m not giving you up. I refuse to let Mr. Prichard take that away from me.”
“But this is everything you wanted.”
Asher half shrugs. “True. I’ve spent the better half of my life fixated on this dream.
This belt. But there’s more to my dreams than that.
I love this championship, but it doesn’t mean a thing if I have to give up my whole heart to be what someone else wants me to be.
They can’t take that away from me. I won’t let them.
I could still chase that dream, or maybe that dream will change.
Either way, I want to do it on my terms. Or y’know”—he flushes—“ours.”
A beat. Caleb is quiet, considering, before he admits, “I was so scared.”
“Of what?”
“I’m scared that I will spend forever loving you, and we will never be in the same room again.”
There is a noise like a sob in the back of Asher’s throat. His hand trembles when he reaches up to brush a thumb over Caleb’s cheek. “You love me?”
“In every single fucking universe. I’ve been driving myself mad thinking of ways to tell you I love you without actually saying those words. I love you. God, I’ve loved you this whole time.”
“Does it scare you? Loving me?”
“It did, but perhaps the best things worth fighting for are a little terrifying. I love you, Asher. I know that, because when I’m with you, I don’t feel like I’m drowning.”
At this, Asher reaches for Caleb’s wrist and places the flat of his palm on the curve of his jaw in silent permission.
“You came back,” Caleb breathes.
Asher cups his face gently, like Caleb is something precious, someone worth holding on to. “I made you a promise, didn’t I?”
There is a desperate stutter in Caleb’s heartbeat, the feeling of a key slotting into place and twisting.
He wraps a shaking hand around Asher’s wrist, presses his fingers into the groove where his pulse thunders.
“And this is mine: I’m through with being afraid.
No more running. I want to stand with you in the light. You’re it for me.”
“Every part of me has always been yours,” Asher says.
“But you don’t have to do it, you know? You don’t have to come out if you’re not ready.
You don’t have to make a statement. You’ve given this business so much; you don’t owe anyone a damn thing, least of all an explanation.
We can figure something else out. I’ll always be in your corner. You don’t even have to ask.”
“I know. I’m terrified,” Caleb admits. “But I want to do it. If not for us, then for the boy I used to be. And if there is any other kid out there watching . . . I need them to know that life exists on the other side, and that they’ll make it through.”
Asher grins. “We’ll be waiting for them with outstretched arms whenever they’re ready.”
“Exactly,” Caleb says, and when Asher kisses him, the salty ocean breeze whipping up his long hair, it is every time Caleb's watched Asher soar through the air: death-defying, gorgeous, miraculous.
It is Caleb's hands roaming over each groove of his ribs, fingertips claiming him over and over again.
"You and I. We're gonna try?
"Yeah." Caleb takes an intentional breath and press his feet against the cool ceramic tiles, anchoring himself. “Let’s give us a fighting shot.”
“I love you too, by the way. I’ve been waiting to say it.”
Caleb plants a kiss on Asher’s eyelid, chest squeezing when he finds Asher’s lashes damp. “I’m sorry I made you wait.”
Head tipped toward the sky, Asher's face glows in the golden hour sunbeam. He is sunshine personified and moonlight incarnate, a dazzling light that leaves you seeing stars, and a gentle glimmer to get lost in. In the distance, the entire Atlantic Ocean stretches out behind him, Caleb’s present and future slipping over one another.
“You were worth the wait.” Asher’s smile lights up his face, and Caleb’s brain readily supplies There’s your sun.
They stay like that for a while, gazing at each other without being surrounded by four walls. It’s a new sensation altogether, loving Asher this openly. It’s been a long time coming.
Caleb doesn’t care that anyone can see. Let them.
He isn’t afraid any longer. He wants to let Asher ground him in the moment.
He wants to touch, to feel the heat of Asher’s skin beneath his palms. And he can.
He takes it back, all those tiny pieces of his heart, reclaims them with unhurried hands across Asher’s neck and cheekbones, plants a tiny kiss on the curve of Asher’s lips.
He lets himself look his fill. Asher is so fucking beautiful and he is Caleb’s. No more hiding it from the world.
“C’mon,” Asher says.
His fingers move to Caleb’s wrist, stepping forward with that smile on his face, the one that could end wars.
He pulls Caleb back indoors, dragging Caleb down onto the bed with him, the both of them grinning giddily at each other.
Asher makes a happy little noise, inhaling deeply as he buries his face in Caleb’s neck.
He places a few kisses against Caleb’s pulse.
Tendrils of pleasure spiral down Caleb’s spine.
When Asher kicks off his jeans and sends them flying into a corner of the room, Caleb’s brain buffers. Fading, yellowish-brown bruises dot Asher’s hips. Wide-eyed, Caleb hovers a hand over the marks. They line up perfectly with his fingertips.
Asher slides his right hand down to apply pressure over the discolored skin. A satisfied groan emanates from deep in his chest. “It tells me that we had was real,” he says. “When I missed you, I pressed on them to know you were here.”
Caleb blinks, going still before surging forward and kissing Asher until Asher is breathless, pink-faced and giggling.
Heart pounding, a memory unfurls around Caleb like a sweltering Sunday morning, the air thick, gleaming, and filled with possibility: mahogany pews and light scattering through stained glass windows and knees on the ground and prayers sent up to heaven.
“What?” asks Asher.
“You are a fucking miracle, you know that?”
Asher laughs, and—God, Caleb is going to devote his all to making sure Asher’s light never dulls.
“I missed you,” Asher tells him. His fingers slowly trace along Caleb’s jaw, like the touch feels as grounding to him as it does to Caleb.
When he brushes their noses together, it’s a homecoming. “So very much.”
“I missed you too.” Caleb takes one of Asher’s hands, intertwines their fingers, and moves the flat of Asher’s palm over his heart.
“You feel that?” Caleb asks. Asher’s grin makes Caleb feels like he could fly, like he could defy gravity.
“That’s my promise. I’m gonna spend the rest of my life showing you just how much you mean to me. ”
Asher kisses him again, grinning into it. “What do you want?”
The answer comes easy. “You.”