I shook my head again.
“Are you thinking that I will love you tomorrow and the next day and the next, no matter what your parents did or didn’t do, no matter how fucked up your past is, whether your father killed your mother or not?”
Now I was crying too hard to shake my head.
“How about that I’m going to hold you until you believe me, and I will do it again tomorrow, no matter how many times you shy away from me, because Idolove you, and I trust that you love me, even if you can’t say it right now?”
I clung to him, shamed and humbled and utterly destroyed.
One hand stroked through my hair as he continued. “Seth, there is nothing, I repeat,nothing, that will make me stop loving you. Not your father, not your fucked up religious background, not even your death or mine. I love you. Now and always. Got it?”
I mumble-sobbed a “Love you” into his now-damp shirt.
I don’t know how long we stayed there, but his stomach growled loudly next to my ear, causing me to pull away.
“You’re hungry,” I said softly.
He reached out and brushed tears and a few too-long blond hairs from my face. “Will you eat if I bring back sandwiches? For me?”
I nodded, rubbing at my eyes, even though I didn’t at all feel like eating. I knew that wasn’t going to change, but I’d at least try to eat some of what he brought back. I pushed away from him, half crawling my way up the bed, then laid on my side, curled up around my hurt and humiliation.
I hadn’t expected to fall asleep.
Yes, I was exhausted, but I was also riddled with fear and anxiety and something that might have been grief, although I couldn’t quite figure out what I was grieving for. I remember hearing the door click as Elliot left, and then swimming back out of darkness as Elliot’s gentle hands smoothed over my forehead.
“Baby, wake up.”
I made some sort of noise.
“Come on, Seth. You need to eat.”
I peeled my eyes open, hating the stickiness of my contact lenses. I rubbed at them.
I felt Elliot stand, and when he returned, he had my glasses. “Take them out,” he said gently, then held out one hand for me to put the disposable lenses in.
I obeyed, my eyes at least feeling a little less irritated once I had my glasses on, although I could feel a headache starting already, and they wouldn’t help with that.
Elliot set a brown box in front of me, and I opened it to find some sort of pita sandwich, a salad, and pile of potato chips. He passed me a plastic fork for the salad. Then he brought over a plastic cup full of some kind of juice and the bottle of Bayer. “You should take at least one now,” he said gently.
I nodded obediently and took the pill with a swallow of juice. It was tart and sweet, something a little tropical—maybe pineapple—and citrus and the seedy tartness of raspberry. I took another sip, testing how much my stomach was willing to tolerate.
The juice seemed okay.
I wasn’t sure about either the sandwich, which Elliot said was chicken salad, or the chips. My mouth and throat felt dry and raw, and the idea of putting anything solid in them was daunting.
“Try to eat something?” Elliot said, his tone gentle and pleading.
I smothered a sigh, then picked up a chip and put it in my mouth, the salt and potato sticking to my tongue. It was hard to chew and force myself to swallow.
“You need to eat, baby.”
In that moment, it felt like the story of our relationship. It was one of the first things he’d said to me after I’d gotten out of the hospital, what he’d done for me the first day I’d arrived in Shawano, what he’d done the day he decided he really did want to date me.
What he did every time I had to work long hours at a crime or fire scene, or just after a long weekend of training when the copious quantities of food they’d fed us—because most of us were shifters or other Nids—still weren’t enough to fully satisfy a shifter’s metabolism.
He wasn’t wrong—he’d been right about every one of those meals—but I didn’t know if I could actually follow his good advice. Swallowing one potato chip had been an effort.
I picked a single mayonnaise-covered chunk of chicken out of the pita pocket and put it in my mouth. It was easier to eat than the potato chip, less dry and softer, but it still felt like swallowing a rock, and I grimaced.
