Page 48 of What You Own
Adam balked, and I felt about as smart as a screen door on a submarine. “I had to deny you, Rye, right to his face. I had to make you look awful, and me look like a martyr, and it was disgusting. I never wanted to have to deny you, never. It wasn’t part of the fucking plan!”
He spun around to face the window, hands tight on the sill, shoulders shaking. Something bad was about to happen, and I was as helpless to stop it as an umbrella in a hurricane. He didn’t like lying, okay, but lying saved us both. Gave us more time. I made a helpless noise, because I didn’t have any words.
“The plan was so fucking simple,” Adam said to the window. “Four years. Graduate. Get my inheritance, move away from home, and then find you. Even if you slammed the door in my face, I was going to find you and apologize. And if you took me back, I’d have screamed to my father and the world that I was gay, and that I was yours. I was never going to have to look someone in the eye and deny you. Deny what you mean to me. Deny that you’ve been the most important person in my life since I was fourteen.”
Oh. Oh!
I got it. I hoped. “Plans change, babe. They change, so you adapt. What if somebody else walked into LQF that day, and you decided the center wasn’t worth your time? What if you stuck to your plan and another year down the road you did find me? And what if I did slam the door in your face?”
“And what if you let me in?”
“Point is, we can’t know that your plan would’ve ended like we are now, which is together. Your plan might’ve ended with us apart forever. I’d still be miserable, and you’d be all alone with your inheritance.”
“But I wouldn’t have to lie or deny you, or deny who I am.”
“So stop denying it.” Even as I said it, I knew they were the wrong words. Coming out and claiming me as his boyfriend wasn’t as simple for Adam as I wanted it to be, and we both knew it.
“I could stop denying it.” Adam sounded cold, furious even, and it didn’t jive with his words. “Make it so I didn’t have to lie to anyone about us being together.”
Once again, I felt sure I was missing something important. It sounded like he was agreeing with me, only not. All I wanted was for him to make a decision and untwist the knots he’d tied himself up in over us. “You know I’ve got your back.”
He looked at me over his shoulder, blinking hard through a lot of tears I didn’t like seeing. “No matter what?”
“No matter what.” I crossed half the distance between us and stopped, needing him to crush the rest of the distance himself. “What do you need from me? Name it.”
“Ten months.”
“What?” Was that code? Had I forgotten a double meaning?
He turned his body toward mine, but stayed crowded near the window. Small, miserable, and that dark splotch pressing against my heart rose up and swallowed it whole. “Wait for me, Ryan, for ten months, until I graduate, and then nothing is between us and the future.”
“There’s nothing between us and the futureright now!” That dark splotch hardened into rage, and I didn’t care that he was flinching back from me.
“I can’t keep lying, Ryan.”
“So don’t lie anymore. Find your balls and come out!”
“You know why I can’t do that.”
“Yeah, because you don’t know how to make it without Daddy’s money buying your way, I get it. I knew you could be selfish, but fuck, Adam.”
“I’m being selfish? I’m asking for less than a year.”
“A year of what? Pretending we don’t love each other? A phone call once a week? Texts only? A year of what?”
“I couldn’t have one text without wanting two, you know that. I’m addicted to you, Ryan, and I couldn’t have reminders around.”
He might as well have punched me in the balls. “You’re saying no contact? For ten months?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Now who’s being selfish?”
Oh fuck him for that and everything else his daddy put my family through. “You’ve been selfish about us since I came out, and you turned your back on me. It’s always been about you. Those assholes who bashed us getting off with probation was about you. Well, I get to be selfish about this.”
“Ryan—”
