“Okay,” Darien’s words had the feel of a caged animal, one who had been fighting their captivity but has finally settled down into a sort of acceptance of the situation. Noah closed his eyes, searching his heart, to see if he wanted to do this.
The thing was, if Darien really seemed to care that much about Noah, then he would never do this. If he took their relationship seriously, then Darien could be friends with whoever he wanted, and it wouldn’t bother Noah. But he’d never felt on firm footing with the man, not since Darien had left him in the first place.
He was starting to think that he never would, and that was the real problem. Lance spending the night was just the proverbial last straw.
“You’re very close with them,” Noah finally managed to speak past the clenching of his jaw, and once the first word was out, the rest of them followed pretty naturally. “The other Lost Boys.”
He searched Darien’s face, saw something like defiance there, and he was sure of himself when he heard the defensive tone of Darien’s voice when he replied.
“Yeah, so what? They’re my friends,” he said, and Noah let his gaze drift away. He wasn’t going to be able to do what needed to be done if he let himself look into Darien’s strangely sad, vulnerable eyes.
“I think you should spend more time with them,” Noah told him, and out of his peripheral vision he could see when Darien jumped, clearly startled by that. Whatever he had expected, it wouldn’t be that.
“Noah …?” Darien started, but Noah made the most intense effort that he had ever had to make and forced his gaze back to Darien’s. He saw wariness there as if part of him expected what Noah was going to say next.
“I think you should spend more time with them, and probably less with me,” Noah said, laying it all out on the line. “We tried this, Darien. We’re just different people.”
That’s what it came down to. Noah was serious and focused, determined, and Darien was carefree and sweet and cheerful. Noah would give his heart and soul to someone, if he let himself care about them at all, and Darien seemed to care about everyone on a surface level, but that was all.
Noah couldn’t take it. He couldn’t give his all to something, to someone, who wouldn’t give it back. And as he looked at Darien, as his gaze seemed to glance off of the shiny, now impenetrable surface of Darien’s brilliant blue eyes, he saw that Darien knew it deep down, too.
“Okay,” Darien said, and what else had Noah expected? Had he thought that Darien would fight for him? When had Darien ever done that? He should have known better, and really, he had. In some way, this was exactly what he’d known would happen.
“I’ll be out as soon as I can find a place,” Noah told him—and as soon as he could get some money together. What he was being paid for the websites, it should be enough for him to get an apartment. He’d take anything, at this point, to get away.
To get away from his failure, because that’s what this felt like, a failure, on his part. A failure to make this work. Or maybe his mistake had been to get involved with this man in the first place.
To get involved with anyone.
The whole thing was over with a minimum of fuss. No loud arguments, no tears. Not even any recriminations. It had gone as well as it could have, and Noah wondered at the gaping hole that had opened up, seemingly within the last few seconds, in the very center of his heart.
A black hole, he realized, and one which would suck his entire heart into the void if he let it. But that had to be better than getting it broken.
