“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” I ask Cate at the foot of the steps leading up to the townhouse’s front door.

“I’ll be okay, Dylan,” she says, shivering and drawing her shawl around her shoulders a little tighter. “I need to go inside, I can’t believe it’s still chilly this time of the year.” She turns to walk inside, stops, and turns back to me. “If you know where he is, promise me you’ll find him and bring him back safely, okay?”

I nod. I know exactly where he is. It’s where he always used to go when a joke went too far, or when his parents would show up to make a scene.

When he was hurting.

It was his hiding spot away from the world.

“I’ll take care of him, Cate. I promise.”

She smiles, cupping my face for a moment. “Take care of you too, yeah?”

“I promise,” I say.

She nods and heads inside.

It’s not far. Jack never strayed far from the townhouse.

I walk away from the steps, down the street a ways, until I get to the alley the next building over. Just as I suspected, the fire escape ladder is down. It’s been years since I’ve been back here, and I figured it would have fallen down or been torn out by now.

If it had, though, I have no doubt that Jack would’ve found another way to get to the roof.

I step over to the ladder, test my weight on it, then climb up. It’s a good, solid climb for the first two stories, then steel steps that lead all the way up the side of the building in a zigzag pattern. I’ve got about five stories to go, and I take them as quickly as I can. By the time I reach the top, I’m more winded than I remember from when we used to do this. I keep myself in shape, but I guess I’m not a kid anymore.

I take the last short ladder to the top of the building and throw my leg over the ledge, landing on the fine grit of the rooftop gravel. God, it’s been more than a decade since I’ve been up here, but yeah… I see Jack about fifteen feet away at the street-facing ledge, high enough that he doesn’t have to bend to rest his arms on top of it.

Old dogs and their tricks.

My heart contracts a little. I hate that Jack’s hurting. I wish I could just take it all away from him, but I know it’s not a battle that I can fight on his behalf. I can still try to help, though, even if he’s the one who will have to do the heavy lifting.

My foot scrapes against some loose gravel, and Jack calls out without looking.

“That you, Dylan?”

“Yeah,” I say, smiling as I cross the distance to join him. He knows me as well as I know him, even after our years of estrangement. “It’s me.”

I rest my arms on the ledge next to him, and we both look over the side in silence. The stars are out and the breeze is crisp and refreshing—peaceful, but I can practically feel the coiled tension radiating off Jack at my side.

After a few minutes, I break the silence. “So, did you bring along a couple of 40’s for us?”

Jack laughs at the reminder of our youth, some of the tension easing out of his body. When he answers, I can still hear it in his voice, though, like he’s choking on his own emotions.

“Sure,” he jokes. “Bribed Old Man Garretty to pick ’em up for us at the packie down the way.”

I snort, shaking my head. I remember us leaning out here, watching the traffic, or the sunset, or the fireworks on the Fourth of July. Anything, really. It was our place, but I only ever came up here with Jack. I knew he had come up here at least as many times by himself to get away from the stress of his home life. He’d told me once that it felt like the only place he was ever able to truly breathe.

“I know I fucked up real bad tonight, Dylan,” he says after a minute, his voice low. “I swear I didn’t mean any of those things I said.”

“I know,” I say, and I do. I get him. I love him.

I put a hand on his back—comfort, support, connection—and I’m not sure how he’ll react. He tenses up for a split second, but it doesn’t last long before he lets that go. His muscles relax, and I rub slow, wide circles against the tightness there, hoping I can get through to him.

I’m right here with him. Right here for him. He’s not as alone as he thinks he is.

I’m crazy about this man, and I think I may have always been.

“I can see you, Jack.”

“I’m standing right here, of course you can see me,” he says, going for a laugh. But even I can hear that it sounds more like a choked sob.

“You know what I mean,” I say, not willing to let him get away with hiding from this. From us.

He sighs, then nods. “I do. I just… I don’t deserve it, Dylan. And you don’t deserve to waste your time on a wreck like me. You’re so close to getting your dream, and all I’m gonna do is shit all over it.”

He’s part of my dream, ridiculous man. “You’d never hurt me, Jack,” I say, biting back a smile at his stubbornness. I will get through to him. “I know you. That rage, that sadness… none of it is who you really are.”

“It’s all I have left,” he says quietly.

“It’s not,” I say firmly. He hasn’t moved since I joined him here, and I slide my hand up to his shoulder, tugging gently. “Hey, look at me.”

He sighs again, but does it. It takes him a moment to let his eyes lock onto mine, but once he does, I hold them firmly in my gaze, refusing to let go.

I let him walk away from me once, but that’s never going to happen again.

“Jack, just let it go. We’re up here where no one else can see. It’s just you and me. Let it go.”

I can see the dam start to buckle under the weight, and then—finally—it bursts. “I’m a fraud, Dylan. I’ve always felt like it. Known it. Everything I have is thanks to Sully. I meant that part. I’d have nothing if it weren’t for him, and what’d I do to deserve it? Pick the man’s pocket? He should have thrown me to the fucking wolves, just like anyone else would have.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No.” Jack shudders, and I don’t even think he realizes he’s leaning into my touch now. “He didn’t. He took me in and gave me everything I was never gonna get from my own family. The Kelly clan’s legacy is always going to be booze, bruises, and being broke. This life I’m living now? I wouldn’t have gotten any of it without Sully. I cheated. I’m a fucking imposter.”

“So… what? You’re going to give it all back?” I ask, squeezing his shoulder. “Go back to the life you were born into?”

“No. God, no, not ever. You better believe the moment Sully came calling, I ran as fast as I could outta that place. Every single time. I never missed an appointment with him, never missed an opportunity to get away. That townhouse is my home, Dylan. It’s not that I don’t want it in my life, I just… I don’t know how to deal with the pain of all that loss, now that he’s gone. Now that I’ll never have that again.”

God, my heart hurts for him.

“Jack, I know. Both of us know, me and Cate. It feels like someone burned a hole clean through you, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he says, and a shudder goes through him.

“It hurts in a way that’ll never go away, right?”

He nods.

“Like someone took a limb away, and all you have left is the phantom pain.”

“Yes.” His face screws up with a parade of emotions, and then, with a choked sob, he lurches toward me, burying his face in my chest. Crying into me.

“I don’t ever want to go back to that. To being a Kelly,” he mumbles into my shirt, shaking. “I pay them off, again and again, but I can’t get away. And I don’t get a damn thing in return. Ever. No love, no thanks, nothing. Just a big fat pile of judgment, neglect, or whatever other garbage the Kelly family feels like dropping on their awful, ungrateful, sell-out of a son.”

He continues to cry and I cradle him in my arms, holding onto his back with one hand and stroking his hair with my other. As awful as this is, as painful as this is, he needs to get it out. It’s killing him inside, and it has to be purged. He’ll never get around this. He needs to go through it.

And oh Lord, I’m so, so thankful he’s letting me help him do that.

“You have us,” I remind him, remembering how devastated he’d looked when he’d been shouting about how alone he was. “Me and Cate. You have me.”

He relaxes against me, and after a minute—clearing his throat—he lifts his head. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him cry, and it says more than anything that he was willing to do it in my arms.

“I know I have you guys,” he says after a minute, not quite meeting my eyes. Still letting me hold him, though. “But that’s… you. It’s all I have, and I know…” He sighs, a sound of defeat. “I know that’s not gonna last. I’ll fuck it up, like I did when we were kids. I’m not, you know, all that great with relationships.”

“Who have you had in your life, all these years?” I ask.

He snorts. “No one. Sully, I guess. You know me, Dylan. I don’t know how to get close to people. I always push them away when shit gets too uncomfortable. Too close. I mean, sure, lots of girlfriends, lots of sex, but never a… a connection. Never anyone that I could feel…”

I tighten my arms a bit, a silent prompt for him to tell me.

He clears his throat, then mumbles, “You know, intimate with.”

“No one?” I ask, tipping his face up so he has to look at me again. “Even now?”

He returns my stare, and I can see the corners of his lips start to raise into a small, sheepish smile. “Cate, maybe. Who’d have thought? But… yeah. I guess I felt that way with Cate.”

He stops, wrestling with it, and I raise my eyebrows.

“And…” he pauses, clearing his throat again and taking a deep breath. “And you, Dylan. Guess maybe I’ve always felt that way with you.”

“Remember that, yeah?” I wrap a hand around the back of his neck, tipping his head forward and resting our foreheads together. “You’re not alone, Jack. You never have to be.”

He’d come to the house the other day for sex. Reached for me. Inhaled me. Took what he wanted. But that was sex, and I know—as much as it scared the crap out of him to go there—it was easier, in a way, than this kind of intimacy. Than accepting love. So I don’t mind that he hasn’t reached for me now. That he’s just accepted, but not initiated. Let me comfort him. Let me touch him. Hold him. And now, when I finally lean in and cross that last inch between us, let me kiss him.

I can taste the salt of his tears on his lips. The desperate need as he opens for me, invites me in. And then something tips inside him, and it’s not just a comfort kiss anymore. A connection, but hotter.

Need.

His hands go around my waist and when he pulls me against him, the heavy weight of his erection bumps mine. He freezes.

“Is this… you think this is okay, Dylan?” he asks, his whole body radiating a totally different kind of tension than when I’d first come up to the roof and found him here. “Just you and me?”

“Oh, hell yeah.” I grin, doing a hip roll to emphasize just how very okay I think this is.

He laughs, and even in the darkness I can tell he goes red. “I mean, what would Cate think?” he asks. “It’s always been, you know, all of us.”

I smile. Maybe he’s getting it, after that outburst at the restaurant insisting we pair off. Stuck seeing the world in the narrow, narrow limits he grew up with. All of us. That’s how it should be.

I step back, grabbing his hand. “How about we go ask her?”