Page 44 of Lace

The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and he was out of choices. Because there was Levi, standing in the hallway in his pyjama pants. His chest and feet were bare, his arms wrapped around himself. Caleb swallowed hard at the sight of his eyes, rimmed red and his too pale cheeks.

“Levi?” Caleb stepped out into the brighter light.

“Thought you might change your mind and go back down.” His voice croaked and grated over the words. “Made Max promise to call up when you got here.” Levi’s arms tightened around himself. “Knew you’d come. You had to. But you might chicken out. Change your mind?—”

“Levi…” Caleb moved closer. “What is wrong?”

“You might not have come at all,” Levi whispered. “Convinced myself I’d scared you off, didn’t I? That I’d made it too hard. Gave you an ultimatum…”

“Stop it.”

“Not my place to force you into anything. What you want to tell me or not…”

“Yes, it is. You were right. You deserve the truth. I know that. Always have. I was selfish. Scared.”

Levi nodded.

“I’ve wanted to tell you for so long. I just wasn’t sure you really wanted to know. That you really wanted to deal with this.” Caleb held out his arms, turned in a slow circle until he was facing Levi again. “It’s one thing to make believe I could do this, Levi, and play at it. With the kilt and the leather and alwaysbeing safe—noisy and showy, but ultimately safe. I could never really be hurt. Even if people tried to make fun of me, I knew it wasn’t the real me they were targeting. It was some construct I’d made for them to throw their stones and their words at. It didn’t matter. But this is real. This is me. When someone mouths off about this, and they will, it’s going to be about me. You sure you want to deal with that?”

“What I’m sure of,” Levi replied, voice growing stronger as he spoke, “is that I don’t want half of you. Not anymore. I was attracted to you knowing there was something different, something deeper, and every little hint you gave—the glam, and the scarves and the kilt, and eyeliner—I knew it was in there. I knew it, and I was so mad at you for not coming out and telling me. I wanted you to tell me. To trust me. I wanted to be the one you could share that with. I was so very pissed off at you for keeping it hidden, like I didn’t matter enough to tell the truth—this thing that mattered so much to you, you had to protect it with everything you had. And then Mitchell came along, and it was so easy for you to just… lay it all out on his living room floor and prance around in his designs, and everything we’d struggled through the past year was nothing. It was nothing to you to show him all the things I wanted you to show me. I couldn’t watch the show because I just wanted to strangle the little shit. I hated him. I was fucking pissed at you. I couldn’t breathe. I just wanted to take you and shake you and…makeyou tell me. And I wanted to be him. I wanted that.”

“Here it is,” Caleb said weakly, suddenly, positively, knowing it was too little, and far too late.

“Yeah.” Levi slumped. “Last and least. That’s me.”

“No.” Caleb moved forward, already sensing Levi was moving away even though his feet hadn’t shifted on the grimy carpet. “Not least. Not… Levi… please.”

“Please what? Please pretend you didn’t get up there and show the whole world what you couldn’t show me ever, in private, where I could be a part of this thing that’s everything to you?”

“Please…” Caleb had reached out, but there was a wall between them. One he hadn’t seen growing before and couldn’t reach through now. His hands closed into fists on empty air. “Please understand.”

“I do. A year and a half I put up with the angst and the fear and your tentative probing out into the world in hopes I could make you feel safe enough to want to really be with me. And you got up on the stage and gave that to a room full of strangers. I understand. I didn’t matter.”

“No!” Caleb rushed forward all in a step, gripped Levi’s clasped arms. “No. That isn’t it at all. You did matter. You do. You mattered so much I couldn’t risk you. Couldn’t give up the one bright spot, the only thing I had to lean on, to ground me. I wasn’t brave enough, maybe. I just wanted you to love me, and I was scared you wouldn’t, and I wanted to cling to you.” He stopped and hauled in a breath. “I couldn’t do this with you. I—I had to do it first and be what I am, and then come to you. Whole.” He shook his head, as if the vigorous movement would shake his thoughts into some sort of arrangement that made sense. Like he could make them come out in coherent order. “I’m sorry. I was so wrapped up in myself, I didn’t see.” Caleb swallowed a lump of fear greater than anything he’d felt over coming to Levi and telling him the truth. “I didn’t see how much I was hurting you. I’m so sorry.”

Levi trembled under his hands. He didn’t know if the emotion that whirled through his lover’s eyes was anger or something else. When had he lost the ability to read him? Or had he never actually known how he felt about anything?

“What else is there you haven’t told me?” Levi asked. “What other secrets don’t I know about you?”

Caleb drew in a breath and let go of Levi. “Can we go inside?”

“Tell me.”

“There aren’t any more secrets,” Caleb said. “Nothing else.”

“Your uncle called me, you know. Five or six times in the past few weeks, wanting to know if you were all right—if you’d told me…”

“Told you what?”

“I don’t know, do I? But he was worried about you, and it wasn’t really about the skirts, was it?”

“No. I suppose not.” Caleb imagined his Uncle Jase must really have been worried about him to be calling Levi, going through his things. Had he been acting that far out of character since he’d discovered the truth about his father? “It’s a long story. Please, can we go inside?”

“Tell me now. Maybe I don’t want you inside at all.”

That lump of fear Caleb had swallowed ground at him from the inside out—mill stones turning the chaff of his life into a spoiled, gooey mess that made it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to focus on anything else.

“Okay. Fine.” He dug in the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out his puffer, using it to at least get his breathing under control. For a few minutes, he leaned on the wall by the elevator, trying to figure out where to start.

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