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Derek was roped into helping them carry one of their ladders to Calvin’s truck. When he came back, Dylan sat on the floor next to Gus. Gus’s large head took over his lap, and when Derek stepped forward, Gus looked at him without moving an inch from where he was. Derek was probably being paranoid, but it was like Gus knew Dylan needed his protection.
Dylan’s face was all concentrated angles—an expression Derek had only seen when Dylan was at his workstation. There was no fidgeting. It was as if there was a problem in front of him, and he hadn’t worked out the answer.
“I wish I could stop myself from asking if the photo was like…” His breaths sped up. “Was it a…”
“Oh my god, no. As much as I think your brothers are complete fuckheads, they wouldn’t have brought a photo like that here.” He gritted his teeth together until his jaw cracked, and he slid the photo from his pocket. No more lies. No more hiding anything. “It was just from the last time I saw him.”
Dylan scanned the photo. His teeth sank into his bottom lip so hard Derek was worried he’d start bleeding. “The last time you were with him?”
The word with held so much. Derek didn’t know what to say.
Dylan’s hand swiped across his face. “I remember him being really good-looking, but I guess I never really thought about it in the context of the type of guys I’ve seen you with… They all kind of looked like Jake, didn’t they? Hudson… Hudson could’ve been his younger brother.”
Derek blinked. “What?”
Dylan looked down at the photo again, his thumb right over Derek’s face, over Derek’s odd not-quite smile. “You could’ve just said you didn’t want to talk about him yet.” Dylan handed back the photo and rested his hand on Gus’s belly. “I’m trying to work out why you said what you said. You know, I wondered because it seemed like you were avoiding the question, but I thought I was being paranoid. I didn’t want that insecure part of my brain to screw this up.”
“I fucked up, Dylan. I’m sorry.”
“Are you still… I know he’s gone. And I’m so sorry he’s gone. My heart is breaking for both you and Olive after hearing what you lost tonight. I didn’t know what he was like with other people. I didn’t see the best side of him that night…”
“Jake was… Jake… Everything your brothers said was true. But he had his own shit.”
“I think I pushed you into starting this with me, and you aren’t ready. It’s too soon after losing someone so important. Maybe that’s why, but…”
“No.” He was just feeling far too much to think clearly, but Dylan needed to understand. “I put Jake on a pedestal. I know that, and I was wrong.”
Dylan’s head dropped. “I can’t compete with some perfect guy. I’m sure that’s selfish of me to say given everything you’ve been through. But I just started to think that I don’t deserve the shit my family has put me through, and I can’t… I’m so fucking messed up, Derek. I am not that guy. The perfect, confident, cocky, life-of-the-party…” His gaze flicked to the folded-up photo in Derek’s hand. “And I get it that if he was what you wanted and you ended up with me—”
“Can you stop for a second?”
“It’s not about you having dated him. It’s about… shit.” Dylan’s voice shook. He wiped his nose on his shoulder.
“Can I explain?”
Dylan’s sadness shifted into something else. “I asked you. I fucking asked you. We sat in that restaurant, and you looked me in the eye. Christ, it wouldn’t even have been a big deal no matter what your answer was as long as you told me the truth or even said you weren’t ready to talk about it yet. But you didn’t do either of those things. And then later… you were talking about him, and you intentionally didn’t say… He was the guy you were ‘so gone on’ and then he was conflicted about it. You could have told me then too.”
“I know. And I tried to tell you, but I kept overthinking it. I didn’t want to bring it up while you were gone because I thought it would’ve made it seem like a bigger deal than it even was. I didn’t want to be with him even then, not really.”
“And you think me finding out this way was better?” Dylan’s focus fell to the folded photo. “Losing him must have been unbelievably heartbreaking, and knowing you were hurting that badly kills me. I wish I didn’t even have to make any of this stupid conversation about me. But… it just felt like a lie.”
“I know it did.” Derek wanted to leap at Dylan and tell him everything else he figured out tonight. He wanted to fix it. Of course he did. “Olive doesn’t even know about what happened between us. In retrospect, it was kind of this weird thing, and honestly, Jake was completely right, and it never would have worked because whenever I woke up next to him, I didn’t want to watch him sleep.”
“So, you slept with him. More than once. I know that probably should’ve been obvious… Okay.”
“Fuck…” Derek flinched. He was messing this up worse. “That’s part of what I was coming back to tell you. I was walking tonight, and I had this moment where everything made sense. I needed to tell you about it. Before anyone—even Olive. You were the only one I wanted to tell.”
Dylan’s forearms rested on Gus as he put his fingers in his hair. “I don’t think now’s the right… I’m just trying to wrap my head around this.”
Derek bent to meet his gaze. “Dylan, please. I was wrong. It was years of thinking I was completely in love with someone, but—”
“You thought you were completely in love with him for years?” Dylan’s blue eyes were wet. Every contour of Dylan’s beautiful face showed a devastation he’d only seen there one other time in a very different context. When he’d seen that photo on Anderson’s phone of Dylan as an eleven-year-old kid holding the proof of everything he thought was broken inside him.
“It wasn’t real. I know now it wasn’t real.”
“Real enough you didn’t want to tell me.” His soft sadness hardened into a waxwork mask. The mask that came back whenever he had shut down. “And you knew I wouldn’t push the issue.”
“I’m sorry.”