I opened my mouth to protest, but Eddie lifted his palm to stop me.
“This isn’t about my career, even though that’s a part of it.”
“What is it about?”
“I don’t want to depend on you. I don’t want to…” He gestured with his hands back and forth between us. “This…intensity. I crave it so much, but what if I come any closer, and it’ll eat me alive? It’s too much. It terrifies me how much I want you. It fucking terrifies me, Russel.”
With horror, I saw tears well up in his eyes. He was slipping away from me, and I had no idea how to stop it from happening.
“You said it yourself,” he continued, his voice softer. “When shit went down with my mother, my world crumbled around me. I was a clueless, nineteen-year-old kid, and everything I knew, every firm point in my existence, was taken away overnight. I had no parents, no home, nowhere to go, and no coping skills to deal with any of it. I went from the most sheltered, privileged position you could imagine to a complete wreck. People I’d known my whole life, family, friends, distant relatives, my friends from school, they all stopped answering my calls. Well, my grandfather offered for me to come live with him on Long Island if I took care of the gay thing.” He made quotation marks in the air, his mouth in a bitter sneer. “The more things came to the surface about my mother’s dealings, the more of a pariah I became. And I just thought…if I can work my way out of this, if only I can get a student loan, finish school, and get a respectable job, I’ll prove to everyone that I’m not… Ugh!”
Eddie rubbed his hands down his face, wiping the tears away. Watching him cry was like having a hot poker shoved up my ribcage.
“I’ve worked so hard not to be like her.”
“You’re not. You’re nothing like Julia Perkins.” But Eddie didn’t seem to hear me.
“I decided I wouldn’t make mistakes. Not a single one. Never. I would never do a single bad thing. And somehow, all those people who washed their hands of me, they would see that, see what I’d become, and they would regret that they didn’t support me.” He let out a broken laugh. “Like I said, I was clueless. But even after I made it, there’s still this fear in me, and it fucking cripples me. If I make a mistake, a single stupid mistake, I’ll be alone again. Left with nothing.”
“Oh, Eddie…” It was like he grabbed the hot poker and twisted it. I wished I could cry with him so the pain could go somewhere. “We’re all allowed to make mistakes. And you’ve never made any. Ever.”
“Except for this.” He gestured between us again. “This is a colossal mistake.”
That propelled me from the sofa. “No, it’s not. It can’t be.”
I hugged him, and thank heavens, he let me. He laid his head on my shoulder and exhaled, sagging against me.
“I don’t know what to do.” His whisper warmed the skin on my throat, and I held him tighter. Amid the pain I felt for him flickered a spark of happiness. Eddie said that being with me was a beautiful dream. Except we were wide awake, and what we had was real. Unique, rare, and incredible, but real.
“We’ll figure it out,” I told him with conviction, a decision already forming in my head.
He didn’t reply.
I pressed my lips to his forehead and inhaled the scent of his hair. What did I have to lose? Nothing. Nothing in my life was worth more than the boy in my arms.
“It’s late, and you need to sleep. I know we said Friday, but please come to my place tonight. It’s only a few blocks away.”
“I’ll turn up at the office in the same clothes again.”
“Is that a no-go?”
“It should be,” he grumbled into my shoulder.
“Don’t leave like this, sweetheart. Stay with me.”
To my great relief, Eddie agreed.
I returned the key card at the reception, and we left the hotel together. The streets were quiet on a weekday in the middle of the night. We walked side by side, our shoulders nearly touching.
“Eddie, what happened with your mom on Sunday?”
He moved to the left abruptly, and I feared it was my question that pushed him away. But he only stepped around a beige puddle of something spilled on the concrete and returned to my side.
“She asked about who I was dating,” he said. “I told her a little about you. Nothing too specific, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried. I’m glad you talk about me.”
“Well, she didn’t like that I was seeing a vampire, and stupidly, I let it slip you were someone from work. That was when it got bad.”
