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“How is your…” Garrett pressed his lips together and wobbled his head back and forth a few times before finishing his sentence. “Mind?”
Maxwell raised his eyebrows. “Because I think I’m tall?”
“No.” Garrett snorted, and then his brow furrowed and his hand gripped the broom tightly. “Because of what they plugged into you. Sazahk said he had no idea torvars could even interface with a qesh’s mental implants and that the ones you have are some weird black-market shit. When you didn’t wake up, he said it was possible the system had completely overwhelmed you and that you—” Garrett cut himself off, and his shoulders shook.
Maxwell stumbled forward a step, torn between a desire to comfort and a bone-deep fear of what Garrett had just implied. “Sazahk knows about me?”
Garrett’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He rolled his shoulders back, and they stopped shaking. “Yeah.”
“And who else?”
How quickly did he need to run? Did he need to hide his face while he fled? Did he have any allies who could get him out? Sebastian, always, but who else?
But Garrett shook his head emphatically before Maxwell could finish articulating his own escape plan in his mind. “Not many. Just Sazahk, Leon, and Patrick. There might be some other people who suspect, but they couldn’t know for sure.” Garrett took a deep breath and drummed his fingers along the broom handle. Then he dropped his head and said in a voice painfully small and so out of place coming from Garrett. “And me, obviously.”
Guilt wrapped around Maxwell’s heart. “I’m so sorry, Garrett.”
“No.” Garrett shook his head again and lifted his chin with what looked like a massive effort. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Maxwell.”
“I should have told you about me.” Maxwell clenched his fists to hold himself back from running to Garrett and flinging his arms around his neck. He knew how tactile Garrett was, and it felt manipulative to layer physical affection over this difficult conversation—like it would prevent Garrett from seeing him clearly. “Before you even kissed me. And definitely after.”
“No, you had no reason to.” Garrett set the broom to the side and leaned back against a counter, crossing his arms and averting his eyes.
“I had every reason to.” Maxwell let himself advance a few more steps before he caught himself, just trying to see Garrett’s face a little better. Garrett and his heart were all the reasons Maxwell should have ever needed.
“Not with the way I acted.” Garrett’s tone hardened, and he looked up sharply, but Maxwell knew the anger in Garrett’s eyes wasn’t directed at him. “The way I treated Sebastian. The things I said. Fuck, what I did when I found out.”
Garrett shoved himself off the counter and ran his hand through his hair, then turned fully back to Maxwell and dropped his arms down, reaching them out toward Maxwell just slightly with his palms up.
“I’m sorry, Maxwell. I’m sorry I let you down. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you. I’m sorry that I never made you feel safe enough with me that you could be honest.”
“No. Garrett, stop.” Maxwell couldn’t hold himself back anymore, and his feet took him across the room.
Garrett’s hands were shaking when Maxwell took them. “I’m sorry that you couldn’t tell me everything, and I—”
“Stop.” Maxwell squeezed Garrett’s hands and tangled their fingers together. “Just stop. I forgive you.” Garrett let out a shuddering sigh, and Maxwell used their clasped hands to tug them a little closer. “I don’t blame you for anything that happened, Garrett.”
“I blame me,” Garrett said in a wet voice, but when Maxwell opened his mouth to protest, Garrett clasped both Maxwell’s long hands between his and kept talking. “And I know that I should have said this earlier, but I don’t care that you’re a torvar, Maxwell.”
Maxwell’s mouth—poised to argue—slackened in shock.
“Fuck, I’m glad you’re a torvar, because it’s the only reason you’re still alive.” Garrett pulled Maxwell’s hands up to his mouth and pressed his lips to them. “I’m not disgusted by you. I don’t distrust you. I’m not afraid of you. I feel the exact same way about you that I always have. Human, torvar, qesh, it doesn’t matter to me, Maxwell.”
Maxwell’s vision began to tunnel, and he realized he hadn’t breathed for the better part of Garrett’s speech. He hurriedly gulped down a lungful of air and used his grip on Garrett’s hands to steady himself. It was everything he had ever dreamed of Garrett saying to him when he let himself be weak enough to dream it. The idea that his greatest anxiety could be lifted from his shoulders by a prince charming that would sweep him away to a happily ever after was frighteningly beautiful.
And Maxwell had been burned by the idea before.
When Maxwell failed to respond, Garrett’s lips twitched into a half smile that didn’t reach his beautiful eyes, and he lowered their clasped hands back down. “Sebastian says that when torvars are outed, they usually leave. Assume a new identity and never come back.”
Maxwell heard the question in Garrett’s voice but didn’t know how to answer it directly, so he just nodded slowly. “That’s right. That’s what my mother and I did after my father was found out.”
Garrett didn’t say anything. He just furrowed his brow and looked at Maxwell with patient sympathy. This would typically be where Maxwell would deflect—change the subject, shrug off the sentence, pull his hands away, and turn around under the guise of dealing with some chore or another. But he’d usually never even reveal this much, and he was tired of hoarding his secrets.
“I was young, and I don’t remember very much of it. I don’t remember him at all, really, other than his death, and my mother never talked about him other than to warn me that if I wasn’t careful, we’d both end up like my father.” Maxwell mimicked the half-chiding and half-threatening tone his mother had always used when she said those words and dropped his eyes down. He ran a thumb slowly back and forth over the back of Garrett’s hand.
When the next words caught in a lump in Maxwell’s throat, Garrett prompted him with a feather-soft tone. “And how did your father end up?”
“Dead.” Maxwell twisted his face, more at the memory of the pain of his childhood than at the pain still here. “They tore him out of his body and smashed him with a rock.” Maxwell held Garrett’s hands tight enough to stretch the skin over his knuckles. “Like he was nothing.”
