“So…” Ev said, buckling his seat belt as I pulled my truck out of the parking space in front of the hardware store. “Are we going to talk about what happened at brunch today?”

I shifted my eyes right and assessed him briefly before sliding the truck into Drive and turning down the street toward my house just a few blocks away.

Ev looked like he might vomit, which was pretty much how he'd looked ever since Shane had ventured into serious What The Fuck territory at the diner earlier today.

Part of me wanted to scoop Ev up and comfort him, to tell him I hadn't realized Shane was capable of being so ignorant and hurtful. The other part of me, the petty part I liked to pretend wasn't there, was angrily satisfied. I was scraped raw and aching from the way Ev had retreated from me, from us. I wanted him to feel that way too.

“Do we have things to talk about?” I asked.

Ev sighed, like I was the one being difficult or something.

“Silas, I’m sorry I pulled away from you. It wasn’t intentional. I was just shocked by what Shane said and I didn’t have time to process it.”

“That means your instinct was to pull away.”

He sighed again and put his hand over mine where it rested on the gear shift. “You’re reading this whole thing wrong. It was the last straw in a long, emotional morning. It wasn’t me pulling away from you, it was me retreating back into myself, like a human turtle. But it had nothing to do with us and it wasn’t meant to hurt you.”

I said nothing. Of course it wasn’t meant to hurt me. That didn’t mean it hadn’t. And I wasn’t dumb enough to believe Ev didn’t know the difference. He was deflecting. Just like he had for the past three fucking weeks.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Tell me about it.”

“About what?”

“About your long, emotional morning. Help me understand.”

He slid his hand away from mine, retreating again, but I caught it and held it on top of the console.

“Grandpa Hen was telling me stories about my grandmother,” he said. “About losing her. And about how he cared about me and has never hated me for being gay.” He picked at imaginary lint on his pants with his free hand. “It was a lot to take in.”

“I wondered about that,” I said. “The way he looked at you sometimes, I could see that he cared.” I paused and looked at his profile again. “So, how are you feeling about it?”

He turned his head and peered at me, green eyes suspicious and not in a cute way. “Is this a therapy session now? Are we doing therapy?”

“No! Jesus. I’m just asking what your emotional state is right now after your long, emotional morning. It’s a question, Everett.”

“Fine. I’m fine. Emotional state is one hundred percent fine.”

“That’s great,” I said, dropping his hand so I could turn onto my street. “Thanks so much for initiating this talk. It’s been enlightening.”

“What do you want me to say, Silas?” Ev threw up his hands in frustration. “I don’t know what to do here. You’re the one who said we could take things slow, and now you’re upset that I’m not exhibiting enough PDA when we’re eating breakfast.”

“You know what I want you to say?” I demanded as I pulled into my driveway and turned the car off. “I want you to tell me something real, Ev. You and I met six weeks ago tomorrow.” He looked surprised, and I nodded. “Right? Seems like it should be more, doesn’t it?”

Seemed like it should take longer for a person’s life to be turned inside out and upside down. But apparently not, because here I was, with my fucking guts spilling all over the truck.

I turned in my seat to face him, my eyes narrowed.

“The night we met, we had something special. The way you laughed, the way you smiled, the way you just… got me. I have never in my life felt the connection I felt with you. We were together for an hour, and you were all I could think about the next morning. Hell, you were all I could think about every morning after that.”

“Silas…”

“And then you pulled away. And I get it. I do get it. Grief isn’t linear. I said it, I meant it. And I fucked up, because I got scared when I felt myself falling for you and I worried you weren’t feeling that way. I said a whole bunch of stupid shit that I regret, and I think you know just how much I regret it.”

He nodded once, a short bob of his head, but the rest of him was frozen still.

“But then we got together and I thought… I thought this is it. You know? That if we were connected from the first minute, surely it would just grow, right? That everything would get better and deeper as we spent more time together, and I would like you even more, the more I got to know you, and some things about you would drive me crazy, but in a good way. And it has! All of that has been true. For me. But for you…” I shook my head. “It’s the opposite.”

“That’s not true. I care about you Silas. So damn much.”

“But?” I added, voicing the unspoken end of his statement. “But?”

Ev sucked in a harsh breath and turned to face me, his eyes bright with anger. “You say you get that grief’s not linear. You say you understand why I have hang-ups. But then you push and you push and you push.”

“Because you’re pulling away!” I ran a hand through my hair and tried to calm myself. I hadn’t intended to have this conversation now, or maybe ever, if I could avoid it, and I was really afraid I was fucking it up. “You are one of the strongest people I know, Everett Maior. Showing up in this town with nothing but your cat, to take care of a man you thought hated you, limping along the fucking highway in the dark, scared out of your mind that you’d seen a ghost in the road, but still moving. Not giving up.” I shook my head, willing him to understand. “It wasn’t destiny that put you there, Ev. It was choice. Your choice. Your choice not to stay back in Boston, your choice not to sit in your car and wait for someone else to come along and fix things. You were brave, and you were strong, and you kept walking.”

He shook his head. “This is all… pointless. What does this have to do with anything that happened today?”

I ran a hand over my mouth and let my head fall back on the seat. “If you really don’t know, then maybe I’ve been wrong about a connection between us from the beginning.”

“What exactly do you want me to do, Silas? Hmm? How does a person prove they’re trying?” He cast his eyes to the roof of the truck.

“By talking to me! Like, okay, here’s an example.” I took a deep breath. “Tell me about Adrian.”

His mouth fell open. “What? How the hell would that help?”

“Because you don’t talk about him,” I whispered, reaching across the console to touch his cheek. He was burning hot. “Because he’s important to you, a part of you, and I want to know that part. And I don’t want to have to push, Everett. I wish you wanted to share.”

Everett held my gaze for a long minute. “Fine,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

I smiled, just a little. “Adrian was a finance guy, right?”

Ev nodded.

“How’d you meet?”

“At a party.” His voice was low, hesitant. “There was nothing dramatic. No instant connection. He was a friend of a friend. We, uh, knew each other for a while before we felt a spark. He encouraged me a lot with this art show I was putting together and then we just… started dating.” He shrugged. “It was more like a peaceful river. Less like a crashing waterfall.” His mouth twisted up in a wry smile.

“How did you know you were in love with him?”

“Really?” He made a noise of discomfort. “God, I don’t know. He was good at things I wasn’t good at, I guess. We smoothed each other out.” He huffed. “Why would you want to know this? Doesn’t it make you feel weird or jealous or something?”

“Should it?” I asked, honestly curious. Because hearing this stuff didn’t make me feel bad in the slightest. It was when he refused to share that I wanted to smash something. “Dude, I don’t know. I’ve never had a… boyfriend or whatever before. Am I supposed to be jealous of every person you ever dated or ever loved?” I opened my eyes in horror. “Wait, are you supposed to be jealous of every guy I ever dated? Like, go around giving them all the evil eye?”

He laughed once and some of the tension left him. “I can see myself being jealous. But your men are safe from me. I mean, there have been so many, I’d have to, like, quit my job and devote myself to it, which would be bad since Janice Turner mentioned again this week how badly she wants me to keep it.”

I grinned, absurdly excited that he’d admitted that he could be jealous. “I think she likes you because you keep bringing food to the staff meetings. She’s like Daphne — feed her a couple times and she’ll be your friend for life.”

He slapped my arm lightly. “Are you calling my cat easy?”

“Easier than you,” I said. I reached for the door handle and pushed it open. “Let’s go in.”

Ev climbed down from his side and met me in front of the car, sliding his hand into mine.

“Does this mean the conversation part of the afternoon is over?” Ev teased. “Can we please go on to the fun part?”

“And which part is that?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

“You know, that first night, you told me your game was smooth,” he reminded me as we clomped up the porch stairs to the kitchen door, our arms around each other’s waists.

“Are you saying I haven’t proved how smooth my game is already?”

“I’m just saying you can always try to prove it again.” He gave me a brilliant smile. “Don’t rest on your laurels, Si.”

I chuckled and pulled him against me. I wrapped my arms around his waist, letting the warmth and ease of being with him replace some of my doubts and fears, at least temporarily.

“I’ll try not to,” I promised. I pushed open the door and led him into the kitchen.

“Oh, hey, you got more apples!” he said, spying my fruit bowl on the counter. He backed me against the door frame. “Want me to bake an apple crisp for dessert?”

I coasted my hands down his back and over the curve of his ass. “I thought I was showing you my game,” I teased. “You’d rather have baked goods?” Honest to God, I didn’t care. I liked the easy domesticity almost as much as I liked the sex.

Yeah, I said that. Silas Sloane, the formerly commitment-cautious.

“I mean, I’d rather have both,” Ev said. His gaze heated as he lifted on his tiptoes to brush a kiss over my lips, letting every part of him rub against every part of me. “I could make this first and then let it bake, and we could have sustenance when we were done. For round two.”

I snorted. “Fine. I can be patient.”

Ev’s smile dimmed slightly. “Yeah. I know you can.”

He grabbed a bowl down from the shelf above the sink and that tiny action tightened my chest. I liked that he knew his way around my kitchen as well as I did, that he felt at home here.

And I fucking hated this tension still between us, like we were both trying to avoid touching a bruise.

“So it turns out you were right about Rena Cobb,” I offered. “And the rest of us are seeing phalluses where none exist.”

“Because I’m always right.”

I rolled my eyes. “God, this will make you insufferable forever, won’t it? Ten years from now, it’ll be, ‘Remember how you were wrong about Rena Cobb’s penis sculptures?’”

Ev giggled. “You and the whole rest of the damn town. That’s one that deserves to live in the O’Leary memory banks forever and ever. The time you all took some perfectly innocent cylinders and imagined it was a field of cocks.”

“I’ll say you were right if you promise me you’ll never say field of cocks again.”

He grinned.

“You know,” I said, hefting myself onto the counter as he grabbed a knife and cutting board. “I’ve been thinking about what to do with that apartment over the garage. I always imagined I’d fix the place up and make it a rental unit. I’m not too far from the center of O’Leary and it might bring in some money. But now I’m thinking maybe the loss of privacy isn’t worth it.”

He glanced over at me. “What do you mean?”

“Just having someone around all the time.” I shrugged. “I mean, what if I want to kiss you out in the backyard or have sex first thing in the morning with the curtains open?”

“Well, I mean, you can’t make decisions based on that,” he said reasonably, turning the apple in his fingers as he cut off a long, spiral peel.

“Based on what? Wanting to have sex with you without giving a potential tenant an eyeful?” I leered at him. “Do you have some exhibitionist kink I don’t know about?”

“I mean, based on me and you,” he began. He paused. “I mean, me and you having sex in every room or whatever.”

My stomach dipped and my smile died. “That’s not what you were going to say.”

He lifted the hand holding the knife and rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead. “Please, can we not do this again? Can’t we just… enjoy the afternoon? Please, Si?” His voice was pleading, a little panicky.

I shook my head slowly and felt about six times my age. “No, Ev. I don’t think we can.”

He slammed the knife and the apple down on the counter. “What happened to everything not being a battle? What happened to letting things go, Si? What happened to slow?” His eyes were dry, but there were tears in his voice, and it almost made me hesitate.

But this had gone on too long. Three weeks too long. Things needed to be said if we were going to move past this or… not. And I was accusing Ev of holding back and not talking to me about important shit, but here I was, doing the same thing.

Choices, Silas, I reminded myself. Choose to move forward or you’ll have no one but yourself to blame for being miserable.

“Maybe this is my fault,” I told him, looking at the dark stone tile a foot below my feet. “Maybe… maybe I’m changing the rules here. I’ve never done commitment before. I don’t know how you’re supposed to define the parameters of it. But when I talk about you bitching at me in ten years, I mean, I want you to do that over breakfast, right here in this kitchen. And when I want your opinion on whether to rent out the apartment, I’m asking you as a boyfriend, and someone who might have a stake in the matter. I’m asking because maybe you want to turn that into an art studio, and you should be able to do that because… because this is your home. With me. If you want it to be.”

I chanced a glance up at him and the sadness on his face made me want to cry, myself.

“I’m guessing… you don’t want it to be.” I sucked in my lips and nodded. “Looks like we were dealing with different definitions of not-just-friendship, huh?”

He stared at me, wide-eyed and horrified. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he whispered. “Commitment isn’t something you do. You don’t even know what it is. You’re Mr. Commitment-Cautious. You… you’ve never had a relationship in your life. You have half a car sitting in your damn garage because you can’t even commit to fixing it.”

I scowled. “That’s bullshit Ev. I haven’t fixed that car because it doesn’t need to be fixed. I like having it there, I like having it in pieces. It never needs to be finished because the work is the point.”

“You were mad that I pulled away from you in the restaurant today.”

“Not mad. Hurt.”

“Because it risked your reputation,” he insisted shakily. “You don’t want to be committed to something unless it’s a sure thing. That’s what’s wrong here. You think you’re ready for a commitment, b-but you don't want to be tied to anything that causes gossip. You want something risk-free and there is no such thing."

I jumped off the counter. “That's not true. You know it's not!”

But he’d tuned me out completely, arms folded over his chest like he wanted to protect himself.

“What I know is that I have been in love before. I have been committed before. And if you truly are committed to someone, you take care of them. You don’t… you don’t push them to do things they’re not ready to do just because you are feeling insecure.”

“I haven’t pushed…” That was a lie. I’d totally pushed. I was pushing right now. I sliced my hand through the air. “I just want to know we’re on the same page. That we’re moving toward something.”

“How can I move toward anything, Silas? How is that fair?” Ev shouted. His face was mottled red and his eyes were shining with tears. “Tell me, how is it fair that I get to move on and he doesn’t? It’s selfish, that’s what it is.”

He stopped short and sucked in a deep breath, eyeing me warily like he was frightened by his admission. And holy shit, I was too.

This was the crux of the problem, right here. Not that he didn’t care about me, but that he did. And it was killing him that he did.

“Why is it selfish to want to be happy?” I said softly, my heart breaking for him and for myself. “Ev, why is it a betrayal to remember that he made you happy, and to want to feel that again? If it was me, I’d be proud to have that as my legacy. And the real betrayal would be you thinking that happiness had to end just because my life did.”

Ev shook his head, tears streaming down his cheeks, but I pushed on because I didn’t know how to turn back. “If love is an eternal thing, Ev? Then he loves you still. And he wants you to be happy. Your grief is a monument to his death, just like my mom and her endless fucking memorials. Your happiness is a monument to his love.”

“You’re wrong. That’s not…” He broke off with a harsh sob that I felt resounding in my own chest. “You don’t know what it’s like to love someone Silas. You don’t know what it’s like to lose them.”

I was pretty sure he was wrong about that.

I was pretty sure I was going through that very thing, right then and there.

“I love you, Everett Maior,” I told him. “And yeah, that scares me. It scares me that everyone in town will know it, and they’ll be pairing our names together until the end of time, because I don’t want to be endlessly reminded of someone who didn’t love me back. Unlike you and fucking Shane Goode, I don’t want my life to be a shrine to lost love.”

His eyes widened, his chest heaved, his hands clenched on air, like he was fighting some kind of monster, some demon in his head that no one could see but him. And for one second, I almost believed he was going to beat it. That he was going to take one single step towards me — just one, and I would have met him the rest of the way, I swear it — but instead as I watched, his eyes shuttered and he finished that brick wall he’d been building between us.

He pushed past me to the kitchen door and threw it open.

“You say you love me? That you want to be committed to me? Well, love isn’t a stick you beat your beloved over the head with, Silas. It’s not a thing you can push or manipulate or threaten.”

And not a thing I could stop, either, I realized, as I watched the man I loved walk out the door.