I was officially the world’s worst boyfriend. I’d begged Trevor to accompany me to this party, then I’d gotten sucked into talking to Levi and Jayden. They’d become close friends as we planned the anti-Valentines dinner, and over long nights of planning, I’d confessed to them my doubts about my future at UNCW. Jayden was quick to agree that taking some time off might be for the best if I had no clue what I wanted to do, and he was sort of the resident expert since he had a completely useless degree hanging on the wall to show for his years at the school. Together, they’d come up with the idea that I could work for Levi, helping him manage Port Java since I was obviously a bit of a coffee snob and knew every drink on the menu.

There were no good solutions to my problems, but this was the best so far. I would still be close to Trevor, we’d have actual privacy for once in our lives, and he wouldn’t have to worry about abandoning me because he was buried in work. Now, I needed to figure out a way to convince him this was a good move for both of us.

I excused myself when Jayden ducked into the kitchen to answer a few last-minute questions for the caterers we’d brought in for the night. I scanned the crowd, wondering if Trevor had met up with some students he knew from class. I hoped he had; maybe that’d help him see that we could be out, like normal college kids, and no one would think twice. Yes, we’d still have to be careful about how much we shared, but we’d both known going into this that we’d never be able to be completely open about ourselves. It was a sacrifice I would willingly make for the rest of my life as long as Trevor was by my side.

A few people I’d met over the winter stopped me to say hello and thank me for helping organize the party. I took a few seconds to speak with each of them, but anxiety grew the deeper I got into the building because there weren’t that many hiding spots and I still didn’t see any sign of the mop of unruly, overgrown waves I loved tangling my fingers in as Trevor and I kissed. On my second sweep around, I noticed Seth talking to Jesse, the newest employee who’d offered to work tonight. The poor kid looked ready to crawl out of his skin, but I was proud of him for doing something other than propping up the wall. I didn’t want to interrupt, but my concern was quickly spiraling into panic. Deep in my gut, I felt like something major had shifted, and it wasn’t anything good.

“Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked Seth after waiting patiently for a lull in Seth and Jesse’s conversation.

Jesse told Seth to find him later and got back to work. Seth watched him walk away, then turned back to me. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Have you seen Trevor? Last I knew, he was headed your way, but now I can’t find him.”

Seth shook his head and started looking around the room as if he’d see my missing boyfriend. “No, last I knew, he was coming back to find you.”

“Well shit.” I patted down my pockets, realizing too late that I’d forgotten my phone back in the room. As I cursed under my breath, Seth handed over his own phone. I dialed the number I’d memorized when we were thirteen and both got phones for our birthdays. The damn thing rang twice and went to voicemail. What in the hell had I done for him to hit the fuck you button on me? Maybe he didn’t realize it was me or he’d bumped the button by mistake. I dialed back, only to get the same result. Okay then, so it definitely hadn’t been an accident.

“Come on, baby, answer so you can tell me why you’re suddenly pissed off at me,” I muttered under my breath as I dialed a third time. Unlike my previous attempts to reach him, the phone didn’t even ring before voicemail picked up.

I pressed the phone back into Seth’s hands and darted off without so much as a thank you, desperate to find Levi and let him know I had an emergency I needed to take care of. I flagged him down and pulled him outside where we could talk in peace.

“Hey, what’s going on?” he asked as soon as the door closed behind us. A cautious hand on my shoulder had me flinching away from him. Without knowing what in the hell had Trevor all wound up or where in the hell he was, I didn’t want to risk him seeing someone else comforting me and get the wrong impression. “Gabe, chill man.”

“I’m sorry, I gotta go,” I told him, my attention already far in the distance, trying to catch a glimpse of Trevor somewhere along the dark road. “I know it’s shit because the party’s just starting, but⁠—”

“No man, you do whatever you need to do.” His voice was low, words measured. “I hope everything’s okay, but if you’re not going to be here for your shifts this weekend, let me know. You’re no use to us if your mind’s someplace else.”

As much as I didn’t want to bail on him, the responsible thing to do was tell him now, when he had time to cover my shifts. Luckily, Jesse was hungry for hours, so it shouldn’t take too long. “Yeah, probably won’t be here. I’m sorry, but I really need to find Trevor.”

“Yeah, go. I’ll give Jayden a heads up. We’ve got shit covered here.” He pushed me away as he wished me good luck. I had a feeling I was going to need it.

The suite was eerily quiet when I pushed open the door. Total darkness. I’d walked into this exact situation several times in the past, but never had the sight made me want to blow chunks. “Trevor?”

It was stupid to think he’d be anywhere in the suite, just sitting there in the dark, but that didn’t stop me from calling out his name. I flipped on the light to our bedroom, only to reveal more empty space. It wasn’t until I reached for my phone, ready to call Trevor incessantly until he answered, when I noticed his keys were missing from the top of the dresser. “Where in the hell did you go?”

I racked my brain trying to come up with a plausible excuse for Trevor bailing on me, but there were none. While he hadn’t been enthusiastic about tonight, I’d given him multiple opportunities to stay home and he’d still opted to go with me. There wasn’t anything that stuck out over the past week that’d have him this angry with me. And if there’d been a family emergency back home, Trevor wouldn’t have hesitated to pull my ass out of the party, no matter what I’d been doing at the time. He was just… gone.

As tempted as I was to start blowing up everyone’s phones back home to see if anyone had heard from him, I didn’t want to make anyone else panic. Not yet. Maybe he just needed to go for a drive to clear his head. He’d be back. He had to come back.

I paced back and forth in our tiny room, twisting my hair between my fingers as I tried to think of anywhere Trevor might’ve gone. Back home, he always went to a small clearing in the park a few blocks from our neighborhood when he needed to clear his head. If he had a place like that in Wilmington, I sure as hell didn’t know about it. Eventually, I ran out of energy to continue pacing and dropped to my ass on the floor next to the bed. I pulled my knees up to my chest and buried my face against my arms, barely holding back tears. There was no reason to cry. Not yet. We’d fought plenty over the years, and Trevor always wanted to talk things out in his own time. He’d be back.

Sometime later, I leaped off the floor at the sound of the suite door opening. My face fell when I realized it was only Seth. He led me to the common area and flopped onto the couch next to me.

“What’s going on, Gabe?” he asked, draping an arm over my shoulder. “Did you find him?”

“Does it fucking look like I found him?” I spat out, instantly regretting the sharp tone of my words. Seth wasn’t the enemy; he was trying to be a friend. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorta losing my mind here, trying to figure out where Trevor took off to and why. It doesn’t make sense. He knew I had stuff to do, but he didn’t even tell me he was leaving. He doesn’t do that shit.”

“I… I think I might be part of why he spooked on you,” Seth admitted. My shoulders stiffened and I pulled away from him. There was fear in his eyes as he sucked his lower lip between his teeth. “I didn’t mean to push him, honest.”

“What in the fuck did you do, Seth?”

“Nothing, I swear.” Seth kept eyeing the door as if calculating how to get the fuck away from the rabid animal next to him. “He came over to chat while you were doing your thing and he was trying to convince me to talk to Jesse. We got talking about families and… well… I think I pushed him to tell me more than he was ready to.”

“How so?” I needed to know every minute, meaningless detail. Somewhere in this conversation, I knew I’d find the key to where Trevor had gone.

Seth told me everything he could remember about their conversation, including the fact that he knew why we were so guarded. Most people wouldn’t give a shit that we were only cousins on paper; as soon as they knew there was any sort of bond between our two families, they’d judge us. I’d been willing to risk that for Trevor, but I had often wondered if he’d ever deem me worth the hell we’d have to survive to find happiness again on the other side.

“Fuck. I know where he went.” If the dam had broken and Trevor shared this much with Seth, it made sense that he’d feel compelled to tell his mom, too. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if strangers knew the truth but he was still hiding from her. But that didn’t answer the question of why he hadn’t come to find me before he left. Now, more than ever, we needed to be together. We needed to present a united front if there was any hope of the moms accepting that I hadn’t pressured Trevor into anything. “I need your keys.”

“You’re not taking my car.”

“Seth, I don’t have time for games right now. Please, I need to get home before he talks to his mom.” I checked the time, realizing he was probably about to pull onto our street. Fuck.

“You’re freaking out and a bit scary on the road on a good day. Let me get a soda and I’ll run you up there.” Never before had I seen this take-charge version of Seth. It suited him well.

“Dude, it’s already after nine. If we leave now, it’ll be pushing midnight by the time we get there,” I argued. While I appreciated his offer, I couldn’t put him out like that. But maybe…. “Okay, fine. I don’t have time to sit here arguing with you, so you can drive. But you’re going to crash in our spare room tonight. I’m too frazzled to have to worry about you falling asleep behind the wheel on top of everything else.”

“Deal. Oh, and since neither of us ate dinner at the party, you’re buying food for the road.” That was the least I could do. When all this shit settled, I was going to buy Seth the biggest steak I could find.