Page 61 of Back to You
“Ihated me,” I told him. “I loved you, and I ran away when you needed me the most, and I guess three years of therapy didn’t help as much as I thought it did. I’m sorry. Please don’t cry. I didn’t mean to make you cry, I’m just…” I gulped, getting ready to pour my heart out.
“I’m scared. I’m insecure and I know I probably sound crazy, but sometimes I feel like this isn’t real, or it’s just a dream and you’re gonna wake up next to me someday and feel disgusted for everything I did, or didn’t, do, and then you’ll walk out and I’ll never see you again and I—I can’t deal.”
“Iloveyou. I’ve loved you since I was old enough to know what love was, but you don’t understand what I went through. The things my father did and said, the anger and the loathing and the pain. He said I was sick and perverted. He said if anyone found out I was gay, they’d hate me. Thatyouwould hate me. He said—” I stopped myself.
“It doesn’t matter what he said, because it was all lies. He was a fucking bigot, but I was terrified of him. Terrified that he’d beat the gay out of me, like he promised he would, and honestly? I was scared that he was right. So I never told you. I was too afraid.” I blinked away tears, trying not to completely break down out here in the middle of nowhere.
“I’m telling you now. I love you, Dane Fisher. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire pitiful existence here on Earth. I want this to work between us. The idea of never seeing you smile again makes me feel sick, and sometimes, I lay awake at night listening to you breathe, wondering how you could ever love me back.”
“But I do,” he whispered brokenly. “Ido, Hols. I love you so fucking much.” Seeing him cry made me cry, until we were clinging to each other in the middle of the trail, hugging it out. He stroked his fingers through my sweaty hair.
“No matter what your dad told you, it’s wrong, okay? It’s all wrong, and I can’t promise you we’ll be together, but I will promise you this—I am here right now and I love you, and I’m not going anywhere for the foreseeable future. You’re worth so much. So damn much, and right now, I kind of want to punch your dad in the mouth for the lies he filled you with.”
“Me too.” My smile was watery, and I hiccuped out another sob. “I’m sorry.”
“No more apologies. We’re okay, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Let’s keep going then. We’ve already come too far to go back now, and besides, we’re almost there.” He offered his hand. I’d never gripped it tighter in my life. He dragged me into a warm embrace. “I love you, worries and all. Don’t ever doubt that.”
We followed the stream to a small basin of water, glittering the most brilliant blue-green I’d ever seen in my life. The formation of stone that made up the Devil’s Bathtub was smooth and mossy, and the pool’s surface rippled from the water cascading down the small falls.
It was beautiful.
“We made it,” I said, still a little out of breath but awed, nonetheless.
Dane’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “We did. What do you think, Hols? Think your mom would’ve loved it?”
“Definitely. You wanna jump in?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?” he countered.
“I hope there’s no bears out here. Don’t scare me like that.”
“Last one in’s a rotten egg.” With a laugh, he stripped down to his shorts and landed in the crystalline water with a splash. When he came up for air, he slicked his hair back away from his face and gazed up at me. My heart beat hard and steady, for him.
For us.
We spread Grandma Gin’s ashes when the sun peeked through the treetops to dapple the forest floor. They glittered in the beams of light, feathering down to dust the earth.
I smiled through the tears. “Welcome home, Gran.”
