“Arden, I’m not. I’m…weak and I’m ugly, and I’m”—his voice cracked like black ice—“so ashamed.”
I shook my head, a few of the tears I hadn’t even noticed I was shedding clotting on my lashes. “Those are things you feel—and it’s okay to feel them, even if it’s hard—but they don’t define you and they’re not what I see when I look at you.”
“Most of the time,” he admitted raggedly, “I don’t think I can be anything else.”
“You’ve been something else to me.”
“That wasbecauseof you. You gave me hope for myself in ways I never thought possible.”
“I’m not magic. I was just there. The person you were when we were together was someone you chose to be. Someone you always have been. Someone I fell in love with.”
“But”—his eyes were locked on mine, pleading, even as his mouth offered nothing but resistance—“I kept the worst of myself from you.”
“What happened to you isn’t the worst of you.” Impulsively I reached for his hand and he let me take it, his fingers folding tightly around mine. “I could spend a lot of time talking about your bad qualities, like how arrogant you are, and how controlling and high-handed you can be, but none of that has anything to do with being an abuse survivor. And yes, I’d have understood you better, and probably been a better boyfriend, if you’d told me earlier, but you always get to decide how and when your story gets told.”
He twisted away from me, though not before I’d seen the anguish on his face. “It’s a story that broke me long ago.”
“It hasn’t broken you. It’s just hurt you and made you feel weak. But that doesn’t mean hurt is all you’ll ever be and it doesn’t mean you can never be strong.”
A pause. So deep and airless I could barely breathe. Then Caspian threw up an arm to shield his face and began, almost silently, to weep. “Don’t,” he gasped, “don’t look at me.”
“Oh, Caspian,” said Nathaniel, in this small, lost voice. “Caspian.”
I thought about telling him to shut up again, but I didn’t have the heart. This wasn’t actually his fault, and he was as damaged by it as any of us. I inched a teeny bit closer to Caspian—hoping he’d feel me there, ready for him when he was ready for me. “Look…we’ll do whatever you need. It’s okay to cry, and you can trust me on this because I cry all the fucking time. But you don’t have to do it alone.”
Nothing but uncertain breath, and the softest of inarticulate sounds from Caspian.
“Especially,” I added, “when you’re with two people who love you.”
“Inevercry.” Something that, from anyone else, might have been a sniff. “I…I don’t know what to do.”
“You let it happen. And you let us comfort you.”
Another sound, this one perilously close to surrender. And then, at last, Caspian Hart came clumsily—warily—into my arms. I enfolded him and drew him close, his sobs muffled in my skin and his body so awkward against mine, as if it had never learned to be held. My eyes, staring at nothing across the haze of red in that godawful room, unexpectedly found Nathaniel. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking so helplessly human that I felt bad for all the times I’d resented him.
I made the smallest of motions, and he slipped gratefully off the bed and joined us on the floor. Resting his brow against Caspian’s shoulder, he began to cry again, and I reached out with my spare hand to bring him in.
“This,” muttered Caspian, sometime later, “is mortifying.”
“It’s okay.” I petted clumsily at his hair. “It’s just, like, emotion water from your eyes. Give yourself that.”
“I hate it.”
He did not, however, seem to be capable right then of stopping. So I offered reassuring nonsense and Nathaniel stroked him gently, and Caspian shuddered in our arms, managing even to cry with more dignity than I ever managed—mostly rough breath and the occasional muffled sound. It was probably a messed-up comparison, but it reminded me, a little bit, of when he came. Which was something else he’d been uncomfortable with me witnessing. And then I got incredibly sad for him, realising that he feared expressing joy and sorrow alike, and had denied himself the solace of both for such a long time.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally, his voice steady again. “I don’t know what—I’m sorry.”
“You’ve got nothing to apologise for.”
“Nothing at all,” echoed Nathaniel, sitting back on his heels, giving us space with a humility that almost surprised me.
Then I felt the prickle of Caspian’s eyelashes against my skin as he lifted his head. And opened my eyes slowly to find him gazing at me through tear-heavy lashes. “Arden?”
“Yes?”
“Did you”—he hesitated and then pressed on—“did you mean it?”
“Mean what?”
