Page 109 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

“Since your mom.”

“Before that, even.” He glanced over, but then immediately went back to his knuckles, picking at a loose edge of tape. “You could say my father was not a safe man to cry around. Not unless you were his daughter, and even then, you had better have a damn good reason.”

Steven nodded. It explained some things, but he felt no need to say that out loud. Myles had probably covered it all in therapy.

“Doesn’t bother you, though, does it?”

He could practically feel Myles not looking at him, so he reached over and took his hand, keeping him from undoing the tape entirely. “One thing living with Jake has taught me is that not feeling what you feel, not finding a way to express it, only makes it worse, and everything harder than it has to be.”

“Crying is hard,” Myles said, voice flat.

“And something you don’t do until you have no reserves left to hold it back.”

“Said with judgement?”

“No.” Steven kissed his bandaged knuckles. “Said through observation and experience. And I will also say, because I feel it needs to be said, so you know, I’d rather you sob yourself to sleep on my shoulder than hide it until you need a drink.”

Myles grunted. “Fair.”

“I hoped so.”

Finally, Myles looked over at him. “I don’t deserve a guy like you.”

Steven dropped his hand, swung around to straddle his lap, and took Myles’s face in both his hands. “You do. And so much more.” He kissed him, this time with all the command and authority he ever had, to seal his words in Myles’s heart before backing off enough to look him in the eye. “And any time you think otherwise, I will remind you that because of you, my house isn’t holding me captive anymore. Because of you, I’m here, barely freaking out at all. Standing just on the edge of panicking, but so far, I haven’t gone over.”

Myles tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile. “Because of me, huh?”

Steven settled onto him. “Nothing else ever mattered enough to me to risk it.”

“And you figure it’ll still be standing when you get back?”

Steven gasped, his gut falling out from under him with sudden, catastrophic panic. “Are you trying to help me over the edge?”

Myles took his face in hand then and forced him to stop the spiral. “I’m sorry. That was not my intention.”

“I know.” He closed his eyes. Myles’s kiss was tender, exploratory, and sweet. It let Steven ease away from the panic, and he let out his breath as his pounding heart slowed again.

When he eased back and leaned their foreheads together, Steven could breathe again. “I might be a little bit on the edge of sleep deprived,” Steven finally admitted.

“You didn’t sleep?”

“Not your fault, so don’t think that. Just me and my… whatever. It happens sometimes.” He swung off Myles’s lap to settle back next to him. Turning his head to find Myles right there, leaning back, hands in his lap, shoulders down, gazing at him from his deep, beautiful brown eyes, the universe unfolded around Steven.

It should have been terrifying.

It wasn’t. “You slept well, though?” he asked, trying to wrap his head around being afloat in the middle of everything and also secure next to a man who he’d never even imagined could exist.

Myles squirmed around a bit, as if testing how his muscles and connections felt. “Nat would call it a good body sleep, I guess.”

“Would you?” He liked hearing him talk about his sister without wincing this time.

To Steven’s surprise, Myles squirmed and scrunched some more until he could rest his head on Steven’s shoulder. “I would call it a good heart sleep,” he said. “Haven’t had one of those in…” He sighed. “A long, long time.”

“Yesterday was… a day.”

“For both of us.”

“Yeah.”