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Then he picked up the phone. Stared at it. And made the call.
Matt answered on the first ring.
Robby gathered his courage. “Can you come over?” He hated how small his voice sounded.
“I just got out of class. I’m on my way.” No questions. No delays.
He was there in ten minutes. “Tell me what you need.”
Robby growled. His own weakness made him want to put a fist through the wall. Instead, he sank into the sofa and dropped his head into his hands. “I need to be someone else. Anyone else.”
The cushion beside him sagged under Matt’s weight. “No. No way. I like who you are.”
It was only true because Matt didn’t really know who he was. Robby looked up. “My own family didn’t like who I was.”
At least not once they learned the truth about him.
“I grew up in a very religious household. Small town. Almost a relic from the past. It was all I knew, though. My parents, my brothers and sister. We were all close, you know? But they didn’t know I was gay.”
Matt scratched the back of his head. “They never suspected?”
Robby hugged a pillow to his chest. “Who knows? My dad sure seemed shocked enough to find me kissing Luke Potter in the barn when I was sixteen. He threw me out on the spot. I had nothing but the clothes on my back and twenty-three dollars in my wallet.”
“Which is how you ended up alone in Atlanta.” Matt nodded like something had clicked in his head.
He didn’t even know the worst of it. None of his friends did.
They only saw the Robby he wanted them to see.
The sweet people pleaser was second nature. Seven years ago, in fact, it was the only way he knew to be. Loving, innocent, and earnest. That kid was the best version of himself. But unlike his sixteen-year-old self, the adult version had experienced every emotion on the flip side of the coin. He knew what hate felt like. Desolation. He’d been jaded before he turned eighteen.
The things he’d done—just to survive—would shock and horrify the people who knew him now, the people who loved him.
Those sides of Robby: the whore, the thief, the chameleon, the addict…and worse…those facets of him still lingered beneath the surface. But if he shoved them down hard enough, he could pretend like they weren’t there. Like they’d never had been.
Like he’d never committed the ultimate sin.
His father would have never been right about him.
“Things were hard. I don’t want to go into it all, but in the end, drugs helped me get through the worst of it.” Looking back, he hated himself for it. For the drugs and for so much more.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?”
“No. I want to forget it all. I would, but all of a sudden, my past is right here, and it’s like it wants me back. I don’t want to go.” He wanted to grab onto Matt with both hands and hold on until everything else went away.
“Your ex seems like a bastard.”
Yeah, well, Robby’s threshold for bastards was pretty high. “I’ve known worse. I don’t want to talk about John. I don’t want to think about John or the person I was when we were together. I want to be better and stronger and to be able to deal with stress without wanting to drown in oblivion.”
Matt grabbed his hand. “You are better and stronger, because whether you wanted to or not, you didn’t choose oblivion. You chose me.”
If you were mine, I’d always choose you.
Robby looked down at their linked hands, squeezed, and pulled away. Matt wasn’t his, at least not in the way he wanted. He was here, though, which counted for a lot. “You want to check out those new map downloads?”
Matt swiped the controller from the coffee table. “Your account or mine?”
Chapter FIFTEEN
