He shrugs. “I don’t know, Tyson.”
“You should still see her,” I tell him, though my heart breaks.
“Why?”
“Because she makes you smile.”
“A lot of things make me smile. Doesn’t mean I need them. I won’t, Ty. I won’t do it again. I won’t see her again.”
&n
bsp; “Why?”
“Because I don’t want it to lead to this,” he says, patting the bathtub. “I can’t let this happen to you. Not again. Not under my watch.”
Instantly, I feel like the world’s biggest asshole. How could I have ever thought he didn’t love me? How could I have ever thought he’d sacrifice nothing for me? That’s not who Dom is. Dom has given me everything. The least I can do is deserve it. “No,” I say. “You don’t get to do that. Not because of me.”
“Ty, I’ve already made up my—”
“These are my problems, not yours,” I interrupt. I reach out and touch his face. He closes his eyes. “You don’t have to put up with my stupid shit.”
He catches my hand in his and holds on. “I don’t have to do anything. Every choice I make is my own. And it’s been that way ever since I saw you on that sidewalk, following the ant you named Helmholtz Watson. That was the day I felt like I had choices again, for the first time in a long time. And you know what I chose?”
“What?”
He opens his eyes to look at me. “I chose you. Right then and there, I chose you.”
I tremble.
“I promised myself that I would do everything to make you happy, that I would do anything to make you feel safe. You want to know why I haven’t asked you to stay? You want to know why I haven’t asked you not to go, even though every part of me is screaming to lock you up and never let you out?”
I shake my head as my eyes start to burn.
“Because,” he says harshly, “because I know you. I know what you’re capable of. I know what you’re going to become. You are going to make the world so much brighter, because you’ve already done the same for me. And it’s selfish of me to want to keep that to myself. It’s selfish of me to want no one else to see it. You’ve got a gift, Ty, and you need to share it with the world. You’re my best friend and you always will be, but I can’t be the thing that holds you back. I won’t be. So you’re going. You are going so everyone else can know what I already know. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“Answer me!”
“Y-yeah. Yes. Yes.”
He sighs and bows his head, burying his face in his hands. I touch his hair. His ears. Bear may be my rock, but Dom is the force that moves me.
He drops his hands to his lap. He doesn’t raise his head. “You said you hated me,” he whispers. “Please don’t hate me. I couldn’t stand it if you did.”
“I don’t. I didn’t mean it.” Out of everything that’s been said, it’s those words I wish I could take back the most. “I can’t hate you. I won’t. You’re my… you’re Dom. How can I hate you when I love you?” And as those words come out of my mouth, the meaning behind them changes into something so completely different than they had ever meant before.
“I don’t need any other home,” he tells me roughly. “I don’t need any other home than you, so you don’t ever forget that, you hear me? You don’t ever forget me. You can’t. You just can’t.”
As if I could. As if I could ever want to. I jump out at him and he drags me from the bathtub and curls me up against his chest where a great heart beats a staccato rhythm. And we sit here, in the waning afternoon, just me and him. For a time, it doesn’t matter what’s happened before. It doesn’t matter what’s coming. All that matters is that Dom is who I need him to be and I pray I can be the same for him.
After a while, he says, “The present.”
“Yeah?” I close my eyes and breathe him in.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever gotten.”
“Yeah?” My chest feels warm again.