25
“You’ve been quiet,” Finn said, breaking what had been an almost total silence between them since they got in the car twenty minutes ago. Maybe Nolan was just tired—he’d have every right to be, since the evening had stretched Finn’s reserves of social energy, and Nolan’s seemed a lot smaller.
He’d told Finn in the beginning that he wasn’t great with crowds.
“Gavin said something to me tonight that I can’t stop thinking about.” Nolan shifted his weight in his seat. He didn’t look away from the road, but Finn could see the way his face had changed.
“You have to stop listening to him,” Finn said. “All he ever does is make you miserable.”
“So I shouldn’t believe anything he says?” Nolan asked.
There was an edge to it, though. Something in his voice that made Finn uneasy.
Shit, what had Gavin said?
“Probably not. Dude, if he said the Earth revolved around the Sun I’d worry about whether or not it still did.”
“You really don’t want me to listen to him, huh?”
Finn didn’t like the tone of Nolan’s voice at all. He could feel the tension in the car like a physical force.
“What did he say?” Finn asked softly, fully expecting to want to turn around and strangle Gavin over whatever it was. Nolan was clearly upset, and Finn hated to see him that way.
Nolan was silent as he pulled into his parking space, shutting the car off and then sighing. “Did you know he was making a substantial weekly donation to the sanctuary?”
“What?” Finn asked, his heart speeding up instantly. All the things that implied spun around in his brain at a thousand miles an hour.
“Five hundred dollars a week,” Nolan continued. “The exact amount you said you’d date me for.”
“That was a joke!” Finn defended. He’d been sure Nolan knew that.
“Then why say five hundred?” Nolan asked, looking at Finn with desperation in his eyes.
Rain started to fall on the windshield.
“Because it starts with a five and it’s less than five thousand, I guess. I dunno. I swear to you, it was just the first number that popped into my head. I didn’t know.”
Nolan opened his mouth and then closed it again, still gripping the steering wheel.
“You didn’t really think I was doing this for the money, did you?” Finn asked, hurt now that he’d processed what this conversation was really about.
“I…” Nolan looked at him again, his grip tightening reflexively. “I didn’t know.”
“But you thought I might’ve been,” Finn said. “You thought…” he tried to continue, but his voice failed him.
Nolan thought he was capable of that. That everything he’d said and done, everything they’d shared might have been fake.
Did that mean he didn’t feel the same way about all this as Finn did? That it didn’t mean as much to him?
It had to, right?
If Nolan though it could have been anything other than completely sincere, then it couldn’t have meant as much to him. Finn had been pouring his heart out to the guy and finally opening up, and he thought maybe he’d been doing it for the sake of a few donations?
“I had to know,” Nolan said, his voice breaking as well. “You never really said why you liked me. I could never figure out why me when you could have had anyone.”
“Because you’re like me!” Finn said, louder than he meant to. The thought of shouting at Nolan—at anyone—made him sick, but with panic rising in his chest it was hard to control the volume of his voice.
Nolan looked at him like he didn’t believe that, and Finn was used to that look, and he’d accepted that Nolan would need time to build his self-confidence, but it seemed different now.
Finn’s stomach hurt.
“I liked you from literally the first minute I met you. You were cute and quiet and then you turned out to be as big a dork as I am and you wanted to rescue animals with me. And then you were so goddamn cool with Ollie. How could I not like you?”
“You didn’t think for even one second about how life might be… easier, for you, if you were with someone who was better-paid?” Nolan asked.
Finn could hardly believe what he was hearing. “No,” he said, tears he had no intention of shedding stinging at the corners of his eyes.
“No, not once. I never cared about your job and you looked ridiculous in a suit. I was daydreaming about a life together where you finally told Gavin where to shove it and took that job teaching kids, and maybe you’d come down to the sanctuary on Friday afternoons still, and we’d both go home to the same crappy apartment somewhere, but it wouldn’t matter that the apartment was crappy, because we’d be living the lives we wanted. We’d be happy. And together.”
Finn paused to take a deep breath.
“I never wanted you to take me away from all this,” he added. “I wanted to take you away from it. From the moment I saw the way Gavin smirked when he handed that date over to you. I hated that he treated you like that.”
Nolan swallowed audibly.
“Everyone I meet finds out what I do and then looks at me like I’m gonna be a charity case for life, someone they’ll have to support if they stick around long enough. I thought you were different. But you’re not,” Finn said. “Gavin’s gonna turn you into him. A mean, bitter bully with no friends and a drinking problem, and you’re gonna let him because you think him being your cousin means something.”
“I thought you weren’t gonna tell me who was and wasn’t family to me,” Nolan said.
“Yeah, well, I lied.” Finn undid his seatbelt, pushing the car door open and stepping out into the rain. “Gavin’s not your family. But I could have been. We all could have been. I…”
He paused, swallowed, and then decided he was going to say it. Maybe it wouldn’t do them any good, but if Nolan knew what he’d really lost, it might just wake him up to how toxic Gavin was to him.
“I love you,” he said. “And that’s real whether you believe it or not. But I guess you didn’t really feel the same way.”
Nolan stared at him, but he didn’t say anything. Finn didn’t want to force him into anything, and definitely not a choice between him and Gavin, but this was bigger than that.
This was a choice between believing that the happiest weeks of Finn’s life had been real for him, and believing that he would have done all that, everything they’d had together, for a few thousand dollars in donations to the sanctuary.
It hurt.
It hurt so much more than Finn had imagined it could have to know that he was losing Nolan. That maybe he’d already lost him.
Fine.
Fine.
He could walk away from this. He could at least keep that much of his dignity.
“I’m going,” he said, ducking all the way out of the car.
“I’ll take you home,” Nolan said softly.
Not I love you too. Not even I could love you one day. Not I’m sorry, which was all Finn really wanted to hear.
“No, you won’t,” Finn said, pushing the car door so it swung closed and turning his back.
He could barely even feel the rain over the pain of his heart cracking in two.