Chapter 17 #4
Myles clamped his hand over Steven’s and intertwined their fingers but said nothing.
Steven expected him to fall asleep quickly, but his breathing, instead of evening out, got more and more unsteady until it was hitching and jerking his chest in an uneven rhythm.
“Hey.” Steven lurched up on one elbow. “Myles?”
“Don’t.” Myles cleared his throat, but that didn’t seem to help.
Leaning over him, Steven kissed his bare shoulder, nuzzled at his neck, breathing him in. “You don’t have to hide from me,” he whispered.
Myles pulled in a harsh breath.
“And I don’t need you to be the tough guy here. You know that.” He squeezed Myles to his chest.
“I’m fine,” Myles grated, though his rough voice and the sweat breaking out along his arms and chest and down his back clearly showed he was not fine at all.
Steven closed his eyes, breathed in deep, the scent of Myles’s skin permeating him. “You don’t have to be fine.” He nuzzled deeper. “Not here, with me. Not tonight.”
“If I start—” Another hitched breath stopped him speaking.
“You have to feel it, babe.”
“It’s too much.”
“I promise you, it’s not.”
“I miss her.”
“I know.”
“Stupid. I ignored her so much of our lives.”
“Doesn’t mean you didn’t love her.”
“I missed most of their lives.” He shuddered, and a pained noise leaked out of him.
God, Steven couldn’t hold him tight enough. He was coming apart in his arms, but he hung on, kissing his neck and tightening his fingers in Myles’s already painful grip. “You won’t miss any more,” he reminded him.
“What if I can’t… do…”
“You can.” Freeing his hand with some difficulty, Steven gripped his shoulder and yanked Myles onto his back so he could see his face. “You can. You are.”
Instead of looking at Steven, Myles curled into him, buried his face against Steven’s chest, and shook.
The sobs came a moment later.
Steven slung a leg over Myles’s and wrapped an arm around his waist. It was quite possibly the most uncomfortable position ever, but he hung on. He could only rub Myles’s back and wait.
The sleep Steven had expected came to Myles eventually, and without Myles saying anything else. The emotional roller coaster of the day finally dumped him into a dead-to-the-world rest he’d probably been needing for months.
Steven lay awake watching over him until the grey of an overcast morning seeped into the room.
He was sitting up in bed texting with Stephanie when Myles finally stirred.
“You’re still here.” Myles gazed up at him, bleary and a bit puffy from his ordeal.
“You really thought I wouldn’t be?”
“Your house, though.” Myles struggled up to lean on the headboard next to Steven. He groaned through flexing his hip enough to assume the sitting position.
Steven held up his phone to show the text stream. “Steph’s there. She’s packing.”
“Packing?”
“She bought her little house over on Riverbend. It’s tiny, but suits her perfectly.”
“You’re not going to miss her?”
“It’s a five-minute walk, so I doubt it.” He grinned. “She’s over the moon about it.”
“Good for her.”
“How are you?”
Myles side-eyed him.
“Sleep well?” He blinked, as if he could pull off an innocent, nothing-happened-if-you-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it look.
Myles studied the tape and gauze over his knuckles long enough Steven wondered if he was going to answer. Finally, he scrubbed both hands over his face and heaved out a breath. “I haven’t cried myself to sleep since I was Jet’s age.”
“Since your mom.”
“Before that, even.” He glanced over, but then immediately went back to his knuckles, picking at a loose edge of tape. “You could say my father was not a safe man to cry around. Not unless you were his daughter, and even then, you had better have a damn good reason.”
Steven nodded. It explained some things, but he felt no need to say that out loud. Myles had probably covered it all in therapy.
“Doesn’t bother you, though, does it?”
He could practically feel Myles not looking at him, so he reached over and took his hand, keeping him from undoing the tape entirely.
“One thing living with Jake has taught me is that not feeling what you feel, not finding a way to express it, only makes it worse, and everything harder than it has to be.”
“Crying is hard,” Myles said, voice flat.
“And something you don’t do until you have no reserves left to hold it back.”
“Said with judgement?”
“No.” Steven kissed his bandaged knuckles. “Said through observation and experience. And I will also say, because I feel it needs to be said, so you know, I’d rather you sob yourself to sleep on my shoulder than hide it until you need a drink.”
Myles grunted. “Fair.”
“I hoped so.”
Finally, Myles looked over at him. “I don’t deserve a guy like you.”
Steven dropped his hand, swung around to straddle his lap, and took Myles’s face in both his hands.
“You do. And so much more.” He kissed him, this time with all the command and authority he ever had, to seal his words in Myles’s heart before backing off enough to look him in the eye.
“And any time you think otherwise, I will remind you that because of you, my house isn’t holding me captive anymore.
Because of you, I’m here, barely freaking out at all.
Standing just on the edge of panicking, but so far, I haven’t gone over. ”
Myles tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile. “Because of me, huh?”
Steven settled onto him. “Nothing else ever mattered enough to me to risk it.”
“And you figure it’ll still be standing when you get back?”
Steven gasped, his gut falling out from under him with sudden, catastrophic panic. “Are you trying to help me over the edge?”
Myles took his face in hand then and forced him to stop the spiral. “I’m sorry. That was not my intention.”
“I know.” He closed his eyes. Myles’s kiss was tender, exploratory, and sweet. It let Steven ease away from the panic, and he let out his breath as his pounding heart slowed again.
When he eased back and leaned their foreheads together, Steven could breathe again. “I might be a little bit on the edge of sleep deprived,” Steven finally admitted.
“You didn’t sleep?”
“Not your fault, so don’t think that. Just me and my…
whatever. It happens sometimes.” He swung off Myles’s lap to settle back next to him.
Turning his head to find Myles right there, leaning back, hands in his lap, shoulders down, gazing at him from his deep, beautiful brown eyes, the universe unfolded around Steven.
It should have been terrifying.
It wasn’t. “You slept well, though?” he asked, trying to wrap his head around being afloat in the middle of everything and also secure next to a man who he’d never even imagined could exist.
Myles squirmed around a bit, as if testing how his muscles and connections felt. “Nat would call it a good body sleep, I guess.”
“Would you?” He liked hearing him talk about his sister without wincing this time.
To Steven’s surprise, Myles squirmed and scrunched some more until he could rest his head on Steven’s shoulder. “I would call it a good heart sleep,” he said. “Haven’t had one of those in…” He sighed. “A long, long time.”
“Yesterday was… a day.”
“For both of us.”
“Yeah.”
“I could…”
Steven waited, but Myles didn’t finish his thought. “You could? What?”
“I’m afraid it would be easy to drink you instead of the booze,” Myles whispered. “I don’t want that to be who we are.”
Steven held out a hand and waited until Myles took it. “I don’t want that to be who we are, either.”
“I’m not sure I know how to avoid that.”
Steven remained quiet a long time. He didn’t know, either. And he had to be honest with himself. He didn’t know Myles well enough to know if it was a real danger. Finally, he lifted their hands to kiss Myles’s knuckles. It was the only answer he had at the moment.