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And yet, as he turned away from the door and toward the wall, he curled in on himself to hold in the torrent of feelings. He wasn’t prepared. Not really. He wrapped both arms around a pillow and buried his face in it, forcing himself to hold in the screams of frustration that were at least better than the tears stinging in his eyes.
Maxwell was safe.
That had to be enough.
Garrett shuddered as he forced himself to lie in the bed.
That had to be enough.
Emotions and thoughts whirled and whirled around in Garrett’s mind and eventually pulled him back under.
* * *
Garrett woke alone.
He didn’t even have to remember why. There were no hazy snatches of memory or dreams to confuse him. It was like he’d blinked his eyes closed to an empty bed in the middle of the night and opened them to an empty bed with the morning sunlight streaming in through the holes in the roof.
Except now it was even colder.
Garrett growled and put the limp pillow on top of his head, curling into the mattress and holding the pillow down to shield him from the rest of the world. He didn’t want to get out of bed. He didn’t want to go out into the world where his home was uninhabitable, the Resistance was falling apart, and Maxwell was gone.
He just didn’t fucking want to. He would lie here and starve until he either died or the world ended. Or, realistically, until Leon came and kicked his ass, probably with Sebastian. He pushed the pillow off his head and hunched his shoulders. He’d keep living his life, he knew he would, but he’d have to do it without Maxwell—after having truly had him for only a moment—and the thought killed him enough that he rolled back onto his stomach and hid his face in the mattress again.
A child’s laughter made him pick his head up.
He frowned at the closed door to the clinic, but no further sound came out. Had he imagined—no, there was another giggle. And then silence.
Distracted from his misery enough, Garrett rolled off the bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes as well as what felt suspiciously like dried tears crusted in his eyelashes. God, Maxwell had made him weak. Rearranging his face so that he didn’t look like he’d just had his heart ripped out, Garrett opened the door to the clinic.
Rhast turned to him with a huge smile. “Garrett, look! We’re the same now!”
Garrett stared, too stunned to move and too ecstatic and too scared of his own joy.
Rhast stood with his bare arm stretched out next to Maxwell’s—matching ribbons of pink swirling over their forearms and hands. Maxwell sat on an examination stool beside him, an indulgent smile on his lips as he shook his head.
“I told you you’d wake him up if you were too loud,” Maxwell chided as he rolled his shirt sleeves back down.
Garrett shook his head numbly. “I was awake.”
“Isn’t it cool?” Rhast asked, eyes shining as he waited for Garrett’s approval. “Doctor Maxwell and I look the same now.”
“It is cool,” Garrett agreed, taking a few cautious steps forward as though afraid that if he moved too fast, he’d shatter this reality that was so much better than the reality he’d just been in. “Do your colors mean the same things?”
“No.” Rhast gave him an almost offended look as though he’d said the stupidest thing. “Everyone’s colors are different.”
“Sorry.” Garrett raised both hands in surrender. “I wouldn’t know.”
Maxwell tilted his head. “Can anyone control their colors?”
“Mmm, some people, maybe.” Rhast made an exaggerated thinking face. “But it’s really, really, really hard.”
Garrett finally joined them and perched on a stool next to Maxwell’s. He searched his face. He knew how private the man was and how much it killed him to have had that privacy torn away. “Is that something you’d be interested in learning how to do?”
But Maxwell just looked at him and smiled. Blue, like the sky over Southern Tava farmland in summer, spiraled up his jaw and tinted his cheeks. “No.”
Garrett stared at that sky blue, remembering what it meant, and words failed him. He swallowed and opened his mouth and then closed it again.
Maxwell’s sweet smile grew. “Rhast, why don’t you go back to your mother now?” Maxwell put his hand on Rhast’s shoulder and nudged him toward the door.
