I furrow my brow. “Niko told you that part, too?”
“Niko knows what I went through. He knew I’d relate.”
I pull in a long, slow breath. “It wasn’t fun. But it’s just a part of me, now. You know?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“There were kids who made fun of me for being dumb, just because I didn’t speak up in class,” I tell him. “They didn’t realize I just didn’t feel like talking.”
He puffs out a laugh. “Little did they know, you don’t shut up when you’re comfortable.”
I grin. “You think I’m comfortable with you, Sev? Not a chance.”
“You’re comfortable shoving your ass back against me in bed. Yeah, I felt that. All night and in the morning, too.”
“Not my fault you were warm,” I tell him.
“Anyway. I just wanted to tell you that you’re a lot stronger than you know, Wes.”
I pause for a moment, glancing down and then back up at his reflection in the mirror.
It’s a small thing, but it feels big, coming from Sevan.
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to be strong, and I still feel like I’m… nothing, sometimes.”
His gaze becomes serious. “The fact that youarestill trying is why I know you’re strong. It matters. You know that, right?”
He’s peering into me again.
Like I’m acutely aware that he’s seeing the dark ocean just below my surface.
An oceanIdon’t even let myself acknowledge.
And suddenly it’s like the tables are flipped. Am I the one who’s actually afraid of intimacy?
Can we go back to sex, please?
Something easier than this?
“I’m trying very hard,” I say. “All of the time.”
My throat goes tight as I say it. Everything is contained in that murky water.
My father’s cruel heart.
His recent death.
The fact that I didn’t get to grow up with a mother, and I unexpectedly lost my sister to a freak accident when I was barely through puberty. All of that on top of the tense relationship I’ve had with my brother, which has only started to blossom in the past few months.
I’m trying so, so fucking hard.
All.
Of.
The.
Time.