Page 61 of Under The Twilight Rainfall
“My love. It means ‘my love.’” His words are a soft rasp, a husky sound that’s like pillow talk in the morning. His lips brush the shell of my ear, trail to my jaw and down the column of my throat. He presses a kiss to the hollow there and rests his head on my chest. “I love you. If you leave tomorrow and never come back, I need you to know that.”
When Valen pulls away, the red rimming his eyes makes my heart ache. It makes me cup his face in my hands, makes me place a kiss on his lips even as he gently pushes me away.
“I love you,” he whispers with such a heartbroken ferocity that I feel it echo in my own chest. “You have always,alwaysbeen my family. My home.”
Home.
I love you.
“Valen...”
He shakes his head and presses a kiss to my palm. “You don’t have to feel it, too. But this—“ He looks around, a stray tear escaping down his cheek that I quickly swipe away. “I don’t know why you run, Dex. But if you ever thought we didn’t—if you thoughtIdidn’t—we love you. I love you. I wanted you then, and I want you now. Wherever you go, I need you to know you will always have a home with me. Someone—somewhere—to come back to. If you need it. If you want it.”
I know. I know,I want to say. I want to shout that everything they offered me was everything I wanted.
“What if you change your mind?”
Valen blinks, eyes turning down at the corners as a crease forms in his brow. His lips part, full and red from being bitten. He draws my hands away from his face, holds them against his chest, where I feel the thunder of his heart as it pounds.
“Ten years,” he says, our eyes locking on each other. “I have been in love with you, Dex Ashford, for ten years. If I was going to stop, I would have a long time ago.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to jump off this cliff with him, to freefall over the precipice we’ve both been standing at, unbeknownst to each other, for years. I feel it. I know I do. But what does that mean for me? For us?
I’m not built to stay.
I’m not meant to be kept.
Even if part of me has always belonged to the boy with sad, accepting eyes who just handed me his heart with the expectation that I would give it back in tatters.
Before I can figure out a way to put all of that into words, Valen’s mom and the nurse she’s been talking to step into the room, and Valen disentangles us to stand and wait as she gets closer. The familiar feeling of being somewhere I shouldn’t creeps in, like I’m watching a scene through a window where someone forgot to pull the curtains closed.
But then Valen’s hand seeks out mine, not urging me to stand but to be a point of contact in the hurricane hurtling towards him.
The nurse’s mouth moves, but I’m focused on Valen. On the tightness in his shoulders, in the grip of his fingers around mine. When his eyes widen and a choked gasp leaves his lips, I’m on my feet in an instant. I wrap my arms around him and shake off the haze so I can pay attention. So I can figure out how to make this better.
”—can’t handle it. He’s going to need around-the-clock dialysis.”
“But,” Valen breaks in, voice cracked and raw, “isn’t the dialysis already hard on his heart? That’s why his schedule is every other day. He already doesn’t always manage the whole time.”
My instincts tell me to pull away, that I can’t snake my way into someone else’s family just because I couldn’t build my own, but somehow I stay. Something draws me to Valen, wants me to offer him protection in the only way I know how.
A doctor comes into the waiting room, putting a hand on the nurse’s shoulder and directing them out before turning back to the Olaños.
When he speaks, it’s nothing I can understand. Bits and pieces of the language I put together over years of living with the family, memorized the way the words sound coming from Valen’s lips, but none of it is useful in this context. Instead, I’m left to read the news in Valen’s expression.
His jaw drops. His shoulders slump. He licks and bites his lips, parts them to speak but thinks better of it. His nails dig into my skin where his grip is like a vice, and I let him use me as a crutch no matter the bite of pain.
Valen’s mom says something, dabs at her eyes, then steps out into the hall. The doctor nods once with a sad smile towards Valen, then turns and leaves. I watch the little pieces of hope fade from Valen’s eyes, watch the return of tears as they fill his lash line, and Ifeelhow he goes slack in my arms.
It’s just the two of us on this side of the room, another family across the way, so I take it slow and easy as we settle back into the chairs. I wish there was enough room for me to pull him into my lap.
“Val?” I put a hand on his cheek, and he leans into it. “What’d he say?”
His smile wobbles and he closes his eyes. I don’t push, let him collect his breaths one at a time and wipe at the tears that indiscriminately fall.
“Pop-Pop doesn’t want to do it. He wants to go home.” Valen’s voice cracks, and I pull him into my chest.
“Shh, hey, hey. Why don’t you go talk to him?” I don’t want to let Valen out of my sight; I don’t want him out of my arms for even a second, but if his grandpa is as sick as all of this sounds... Valen needs his family.
