Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“Help is letting me stay in your house,” I said. “Not trying to force me to settle down in this town.”
His eyes flared with anger.
“Maybe I wanted you to have a fucking reason to like Bestens again,” he said, something breaking in him. In an instant, he wasn’t talking in his typical calm way. “You always said you hated this place, thought I was unattractive, every fucking thing in the book. How else am I supposed to impact your life?”
I furrowed my brow. “What was I going to do, tell my straight best friend he was hot as fuck?”
He froze in place. “You didn’t ever think that.”
“I forced myself to not go there with you,” I corrected him. “Because it was pointless. Of course I wanted to make you feel comfortable. To think there was zero chance of attraction, even though I was gay.”
He looked me up and down. “Ori, when you first left for LA, I thought you truly hated me.”
“So buying me a house you don’t even know if I like is the way to make up for that?”
He rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t going to buy the house. I would have talked to you about it. I never would actually put the payment down without showing it to you first—”
“I’m not charity. You can’t be everyone’s guardian angel, Finn.”
“Then what the fuck else would I be here for?” he said, his tone rising in a way I’d never heard before.
He was upset.
Not in a combative way, like he usually was when we fought.
For the first time, I felt like I was seeing behind the curtain. A lingering plume of smoke slowly filtered out of the grill as Finn fixed his eyes on me, a helpless expression on his face.
Oh, fuck.
Don’t look at me like that.
My heart ached for him, cutting right through the bitterness I’d felt all night.
“What do you mean?” I asked gently.
“I’m the one who is charity,” he said. “Parents didn’t fuckin’ want me. Your parents took me in when I needed it. I followed the rules in school. You were my best friend, and then you hated me, more and more, until you split town and barely called. Why?”
The look in his eyes was so raw. I’d never seen so much pure feeling in them, all at once.
It felt like there was something slowly cracking inside me.
“Because I wanted things to be different,” I said. “I always, always wanted things to be different.”
“What?”
“Maybe I wanted you to like me for who I was, not fix who I was.”
“Ori,” Finn said, his voice catching as he shook his head. “I’ve always loved who you are.”
The wall inside me crumbled to dust. I didn’t know whether I wanted to scream or cry or flee the goddamn state again, but I sure as hell didn’t know how to react to Finn saying that.
“Why were you always telling people in school that I didn’t mean it, when I told them to fuck off?” I asked. “That I wasn’t really different from them? That I was just another Tennessee boy, like anyone else?”
“Because they needed to fucking treat you better.”
“I know. I know,” I said. “But I didn’t need to be swept under a rug. I didn’t want to change. I needed to let myself be different.”
“Fuck.”
“And that’s why I ran away, Finn. You know it.”
He was shaking his head as he walked across the lawn, looking up at the night sky.
“I never gave a fuck about any of those people in school like I did about you,” he said in a low voice. “Not one of them.”
“I know you were friendly with everyone. I’m not upset about that—”
“Friendly, sure,” he said. “But I mean it when I say I loved you, Ori.”
God fucking damn it.
Every part of my body was pulled to him like a magnet. I started moving before my brain could catch up. I felt further away from him now than I ever had in LA, even though I was just ten paces away. Tears welled up in my eyes as I crossed the lawn, and I threw my arms around him from behind, practically tackling him as I squeezed around him in a hug.
“Shut up.”
“You know it’s true.”
But in reality I didn’t know it was true.
I’d felt like a burden to him, growing up. Like if I just fit in and acted like the other guys, he wouldn’t have to deal with me.
Deal with explaining me to his friends. Deal with how different I was. Or the fact that I was gay and other people made jokes about us like it was their full-time job.
I was a nuisance he had to manage.
“Motherfucker,” I muttered, hearing my own drawl come out when I least wanted it.
He spun around in my arms, hugging me, his hands gripping against the back of my head.