He considers what I said, then stuns me when I see a flicker of anger transpire in his eyes. “I used to think it was better to keep things bottled up,” he says. “But I’m not so sure anymore. Not since I met you… And you running away, to Preston’s, that wasn’t your fault. Yeah, I wish you would have stayed…but completely get why you left.”

“I should have came back after you called the police and turned your mom in… things would have been less horrible if I had,” I mutter, then swallow hard, my mind racing with every bad choice I’ve made. “It wasn’t like I fought him or anything. It was our deal while I stayed there.” Air in, air out. Breathe. “He gives me a roof over my head and in return I have to touch him… at least that’s what it was in the beginning. But then a week ago, I messed up a stupid deal and he got super pissed and kind of forced me down on my knees to,” I make a motioning gesture with my hand, “Well, you know. And that’s where the bruises came from. I hit my leg on the bed when he was shoving me to my knees,” I say. Luke’s face turns from pale to red, his breathing quickening, his fingers going stiff on my cheek as if battling the urge not to ram his fist into something. I feel the need to add something. “You can’t get mad at him. In fact, you should be mad at me. I should have never gone back to him. I would have been better going and living out on the streets, but I was too scared to do that again and honestly, for some reason, I didn’t want to be completely alone in the world yet and Preston is the only family I have, as fucked up as that is. I was weak and I know better than to let myself get that way.” I shrug and continue. “The stuff that happens to me—the messes I get myself into—are my fault. In fact, it’s kind of my thing. I’m careless and I don’t think things through and this is where it’s gotten me. Homeless, famililess. And now I’m paying for my mistakes.”

“You say that like you deserve it?” He’s baffled, his anger fading to shock.

“Sometimes I don’t think I do,” I admit for the first time aloud. “I think about all the times I was moved from home to home. I always pretended that it didn’t matter—that it was them not me. But I think it was more of a defense mechanism than anything… I could have tried harder to be a better child, but I was too stubborn and had too much rebellion in me.”

He stares at me, his expression unreadable, one hand on my hip, the other on my face. I can feel his pulse throbbing through his fingertips. It seems as if he’s searching for the right words, but I don’t want him to say anything. I don’t want to hear how he thinks that’s not true, how I’m better than that, how it was everyone’s fault but mine.

“I don’t want a pity party,” I tell him. “I was just saying my thoughts aloud.”

“I wasn’t going to give you a pity party,” he replies, reminding me of the reason I was drawn to him in the first place. “I was going to say that when we get back to Laramie, I want you to stay with us.” When I start to open my mouth to say, well, I’m not sure, he talks over me, “I’ll sleep on the sofa and you can have the bedroom. Seth and Greyson will be completely fine with you being back. In fact, Seth even said something about missing you the other day, but don’t tell him I told you that.” He pauses as if waiting for me to agree, but I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. “And if you want, we can work out some kind of schedule where we don’t have to be in the house at the same time, except for when we’re sleeping.”

It’s amazing how easy it is to run away from your problems. Running back to Preston felt easier than going back to Luke. Yes, it has to do partly with who his mother is, but I think there was always more to it than that. I think it was easier to run away, because it meant running away from what I was feeling. That night he told me who his mother was hurt so badly that I knew I was falling for him. Hard. I’d never had such powerful emotions toward someone before and that scared me.

“What about this thing with your… mother?” I ask, wincing as I remember the one and only night I met his mother, how crazy she looked as she sang that song with my parent’s blood on her clothes. “What if something happens, like they arrest her? Won’t that make things weird? More weird than they already are?”

He looks baffled, his jaw dropping, his eyes widening. “I fucking hope they arrest her. In fact I’ve been waiting for them to my entire life.”

Silence stretches between us as he drifts into thought as he rolls onto his back, his gaze floating to the ceiling while I examine his expression, trying to figure out what he could be thinking.

“How bad was it?” I dare ask. I’ve heard some stories from him, horrible stories, but I’m guessing there’s more to it, more that he hasn’t told me yet. “With your mom, I mean… was it just the drug thing? Or was there something more?”

His breath catches in his throat, his eyes glued to the ceiling as he struggles with something internally. I’m about to tell him never mind, that he doesn’t have to talk about it if he doesn’t want to, but then he starts talking. “She used to like to play these games,” he says, his voice faltering. “Ones that you’d never win, but you’d have to try or else you’d pay too. There was one time she messed up the entire house and then told me to clean it, but the catch was that everything had to be put in the right place, otherwise I’d have to spend time with her… days… which should sound fun but her idea of spending time together, was not the normal mother son relationship. More like a pet… only she liked the pet too much…” He squeezes his eyes and I wonder if he’s trying to hold back tears. “You know what really fucking sucks. Is that I just let her make me do all those things, was I that afraid of her?"

“You were just a kid,” I tell him. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“So. I knew what she was doing was wrong, but I didn’t do anything to try and stop it, because I was afraid of her—still am sometimes. A full grown man and just the sound of her voice makes me feel so angry and helpless.”

Just like Preston does to me. God, we have so much in common. If only there wasn’t that one thing, then maybe we could have something good.

He stays still for a while, while I wonder exactly what he’s trying to say, read between the lines. His mother clearly hurt him, but it seems like there’s so much more to it, way, way more. Dark things. Ones I should know. The things people do behind close doors—I’ve seen a lot of fucked up shit. But I think Luke might have seen more, which is so sad it literally hurts my heart.

When he opens his eyes again, he rolls back toward me and starts grazing his finger across my cheek. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. You’ve been through your own shit and the last thing you need is for me to babble about my problems.”

“It’s okay. I asked you to,” I say, battling to keep my voice. Too many emotions, dammit, I can’t keep doing this. I pause, inhaling and exhaling loudly, about to say something that I’d never thought I’d say aloud. “Luke…”

His hand stops moving on my cheek, his thumb tracing a line beneath my eye. “Yeah?” When I don’t say anything right away, he adds, “You can say whatever you want to me, good or bad. I deserve whatever it is.”

“I think I was wrong for leaving that day.” The words fall from my lips and crash to the earth like fragile glass. Throughout the last two months, I’d thought it many times. Every time I woke up from my nightmares alone. Every time I saw a place Luke and I shared some kind of moment together. Every time Preston touched me… that’s when I regretted my decision the most. But admitting that and letting everything go so I could get back to the place I was in before I left Luke, always seemed out of reach. But what if it’s right here, in front of me?

Just let it go.