I fetch ingredients for Jesse, which he collects into an aluminum bowl. Every once in a while, he’ll glance over and offer a warm expression, as though he wants me to know he’s here for me.

Quid pro quo.

Three such simple words. They almost make me laugh, thinking about how a silly movie quote turned into a game of learning about one another…and then to so much more. Those words allowed me to reach deep within, pull out something so painful, and share it with Jesse.

Before I spoke the words, shared my experience of what happened to me that evening with my uncle, I was expecting some sort of judgment from Jesse—not because he’s ever given me any indication he would judge me or anyone else over something so serious, but because there’s this fear that’s always lingered in my mind about how others would respond to my secret.

I feared people would see me as incapable of taking care of myself, which is bullshit because I’ve always taken care of myself. When it was me and Dad, who didn’t give a fuck about raising his son, it was still me on my own.

I fought and I fought long after I ran away from home. I kept going, pushed through, and persevered despite any obstacle that stood in my way. Still, it doesn’t change that there’s this part of me that feels weak…helpless even.

However, despite my fear of this judgment, when I look into Jesse’s eyes—those beautiful chestnut-colored irises—and I see the soft expression on that clean-shaven, twenty-three-year-old face, the only thing I can read on it is simply: I’m here for you.

Regardless of how much I want to prove my own strength, there’s something nice about not doing it on my own. Reminds me of those words he fed back to me: “A really smart guy once told me no one ever gets to where they want to be without a little help.”

It’s true too. I’ve believed it in all things, except about this.

When I finish getting Jesse all the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, he mixes them into the bowl.

I rest my hands on the marble countertop behind me and lean back, appreciating how adorable he looks mixing the batter.

He purses his lips, the slight cleft in his chin shifting ever so slightly as he seems to be contemplating the gravity of all that went down this evening. A strand of his dark-brown bangs falls across his face, pulling from the rest swaying in a pleasant wave over his forehead.

It was a lot to put on a kid. Although, Jesse’s so much more than that. Despite his youthful appearance, he’s not some immature fuck-up. He’s a man who’s built a life for himself. A man I’m proud to have in my life.

“Had a lot of ideas about how tonight would go down,” Jesse says. “And they didn’t involve me baking chocolate chip cookies.”

He’s trying to crack a joke to lighten the mood—a familiar talent of his—but I’m having a hard time appreciating it the way I normally would. Not because it wasn’t funny or because it wasn’t nice seeing him try to cheer me up, but it’s been such a rough night.

He gets this adorably awkward look on his face as his thick brows pull together. “Sorry, I’m just…”

“I know what you’re trying to do.” I reach out and rest my hand on his shoulder, holding it gently. His muscles are impressive, stressing the amount of time he spends at the gym, but it pales in comparison to the strength I know he’s harnessed on the inside.

With my hand on him, I notice something has changed after sharing about that night with my uncle. There’s a relief in touching him in this moment. It feels different than it did before, as though some barrier I hadn’t even realized stood between us has come down.

It’s how I feel Jesse deserves to be touched. What I feel he has earned from me.

He should be with someone who wants their hands all over him all the time. While I do most of the time, there are those moments when I want to keep my distance.

I don’t want to keep any distance right now, though, but I know what we have to do. I know what the right thing to do is. And it’s definitely time to do the right thing.

“I have to talk to Ty again,” I say. “And I think it’ll be best if we don’t see each other again until after I do.”

Jesse’s gaze sinks to the bowl. “I agree. I was already considering that. You’re going to do it in person, right?”

“Definitely. Now isn’t the time for texts and phone calls. I’ll go over to his place. I think this is the way to handle it, but fuck if I know what the best thing to do with something like this is.”

“I’ll give you your turn,” Jesse says. “Then I’ll reach out too. This is shitty as fuck, but I have to believe he’ll talk to me. That he knows I care about him. I know it was selfish to get so caught up in what happened. We kept lying to ourselves, saying that it wouldn’t affect him until it got to the point where we both knew it would. But I keep looking back at what we could have done differently, and I know that the only way would have been if I could have kept my greedy fucking hands off you, and the thought of doing that…hurts so fucking bad. Then I feel so guilty about how bad I wanted it.”

I nod. “There’s a part of me that feels like a bastard for letting it happen, but then there’s this other part of me where I can’t bring myself to regret it when it led to what we have now.”

“I only hope Ty knows I really do value his friendship,” Jesse adds. “I have to believe he won’t walk away from that. He has every right to be mad…pissed. But…we were so close. We were there for each other. Whenever he was sweating about finals, I would grab a pizza and stay up all night, helping him cram to maybe get a B. I tried to be there for him whenever I could, and he was there for me. Even recently, when I broke up with Whitney, I was kind of down. Not because I thought Whitney was the love of my life, but she was who I did so much stuff with. Ty made sure to get me out there, kept encouraging me. Took me out to hang at the bars and made sure I got more involved in activities—flag football, basketball, volleyball.”

Jesse smiles, and I can see how much their relationship matters to him.

Ty deserves a good friend and, of course, I had to be the thing to stand in the way of him and such a meaningful relationship in his life.

“He’ll come around,” Jesse repeats again, but as though he’s not quite sure himself.

It doesn’t instill much confidence in me, but I have to believe we’ll find a way.

I care about Ty, and Jesse finally gave me hope that I can build a bridge and have a meaningful relationship with my son after all these years. It’s something I’m determined to do. It won’t be easy, but when has anything in my life ever been easy?

Jesse spoons some of the batter onto a cookie sheet before placing it in the oven. As soon as he does, he turns to me, and I can tell he has something else on his mind. Although, who knows what the fuck it’s about, considering all the shit we’ve discussed tonight.

His face twists up. “Can I ask you something about…quid pro quo?”

I nod, even though I’m not sure I’m going to want to answer whatever question he asks.

“You said you were with your aunt and uncle,” Jesse says, and already I don’t like where this is going. “And you said your aunt didn’t know what your uncle had done to you. I’m wondering, did you ever hear from her after that? I would assume she would want to know what happened to you.”

I fold my arms and nod. “She looked me up some years later, when I wasn’t difficult to find. She’d been searching for me for some time, but after what happened, I didn’t contact anyone in my family. Not that she had anything to do with anything that fucker did, but I was so ashamed, and at the time, I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. And…really, there was a part of me that felt as though she would blame me…that she would see it as her husband cheating on her with me. I know that sounds fucked up…”

“But I can see why you would have believed that,” Jesse says quickly. “You were a kid. Hell, you didn’t even understand why he would have done something like that. And you couldn’t have known how she would have reacted to finding out about it.”

“It got in my head and left me questioning so many things about myself and other people…about the whole fucking world. When she tracked me down, we had dinner. She wanted to know why I’d run off, and I said I was confused about Dad and didn’t want to burden her or Uncle Andy.”

“Was she still with him?” Jesse asks.

“He’d passed away…heart attack a few years earlier.” Disappointment rushes through me as I reflect on the moment she told me.

“How did that make you feel?” Jesse presses.

“You don’t think we’ve had enough quid pro quo, Dr. Lecter?” I tease, and I know it’s because I’m uncomfortable with how much I’m sharing with him.

“You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to.”

Jesse’s words put me at ease, keep me talking. “In a way, I was relieved, but in another way, it was painful because I had to pretend to give a damn. To be sympathetic toward my aunt’s loss. It felt like I had to pretend to be sad so that I wouldn’t give away my real reason for leaving.”

Jesse approaches me. “I’m so sorry.”

He starts to reach for me but stops himself, as though he doesn’t want to push or make me uncomfortable in this moment. There’s something about his hesitation, his appreciation of my boundaries that has a way of disarming me. I take his hand.

“Jesse, you don’t have anything to be sorry for. Weren’t you the one telling me I said sorry too much?”

He smirks subtly, appreciating my humor while discussing something so painful.

“I know I don’t have anything to be sorry about,” he says, hooking his free arm around me.

He moves slowly, cautiously, studying my expression like he’s waiting for me to push him away…something I won’t do right now. Even if my whole body didn’t want him near me, barring some violent episode, I would fight it with all my being because I need to be close to him.

“I wish someone had been there for you when you needed them,” Jesse says. “I wish, when you had searched for a friend to help you, you hadn’t run to a monster.”

“Sometimes life is shit.”

“And sometimes it’s not,” he reminds me, looking directly into my eyes, and I don’t have to read minds to know he’s talking about what we have right now. It’s true, because nothing from tonight—Ty shouting at us, or reliving the nightmare I experienced as a kid—could take away the pleasure I get in being with Jesse.

“Yeah, sometimes, I guess, I get pretty fucking lucky,” I say before forcing a kiss on him. He receives it eagerly, and it helps diffuse some of the tension that’s left in my body. The stress that has been bound up in knots in my chest has been cutting free ever since I confessed my dark secret. And gradually, the more we’ve talked and touched, the more I’ve been freed.

When we finally pull away from one another, Jesse says, “Please tell me you’re going to get some sort of help for this. I want to be here for you as much as I can, Eric, but what you’re going through, from what I have looked up—”

He must have detected how I’ve tensed up, because he stops talking for a moment. “Looked up?” I ask.

He bites his lip and takes a breath before saying, “I did some research after we went camping. Based on how you reacted, I knew something had to be related to some sort of assault in your past, so I Googled, and I’m so sorry—I wasn’t meaning to intrude. I wanted to find a way to help you.”

I knew he had caught on even before that, but I hadn’t realized he would have bothered to figure out what was wrong with me. Such a simple thing as a Google search makes me feel tense because he was probing into something so private before I’d given him permission to. Yet at the same time, it makes me feel so cared for. He just wants to help.

“There you go apologizing again,” I say, grabbing his chin, my thumb in the dip. I force him to look up at me. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about, Jesse. It was incredibly thoughtful of you. And I know by the way I was acting about being a total top and having that episode camping, it was all easy to read on me. I know I pushed not to talk about it, and there’s a part of me that is screaming, wishing we’d kept on like we were doing, but after tonight, after what I’ve been able to share, I know that was never the right thing to do, but it was so hard…” My jaw tenses up, and movement shifts about in my tear ducts.

This isn’t me. I don’t get like this.

“Eric, you’ve spent too long fighting this on your own. You don’t have to do this by yourself anymore. I’m here. And we can get help together.”

As cathartic as the experience of sharing with Jesse was, there’s something about the idea of telling someone other than Jesse that tenses me up again.

“I’m not going to push you into doing anything you don’t want to do,” Jesse says, “but you know that’s the right thing.”

I take a deep breath before Jesse goes on, “We can talk to your therapist in San Diego together…or find someone else…or I can go with you and I’ll sit in the waiting room. I don’t care, just let me help.”

God, I love this kid. The fact that he’s sitting here talking about not only going to a therapy appointment with me, but being willing to sit around in the waiting room if I don’t want him in there. He is one of the most considerate human beings I have ever met in my life.

I keep wondering how he can be real…how someone so amazing, so understanding, so compassionate can be standing in my kitchen with me, making chocolate chip cookies.

It reminds me of what he said about how we are pretty damned lucky tonight despite all the bullshit.

“I would really like it if you helped me, Jesse.”

I don’t want to do this on my own, and maybe I do need to take some of my advice, reach out and get some help for this.

Jesse moves toward me quickly again, this time stealing his own kiss.

I feel safe as he wraps his arms around me.

I feel appreciated.

For the first time in so long, I’m not totally alone. I have an ally.

Funny to think that this kid, who most people would think I’m here to protect and keep safe, is doing all that for me. In many ways, he’s stronger than I am, and maybe that has something to do with his own past, when he was that lost boy being kicked out of one foster home after another until he found the Morgans.

Whatever the reason he’s so amazing, I’m glad he’s here with me tonight.

I’m glad he’s here with me through this horribly fucked-up situation.