He tenses. Barely. A fractional stiffening that I only feel because he's pressed against me. "Sure."
"Last night. When I asked if you'd done this before."
The stillness that follows is absolute. Not the comfortable quiet of reading together. The held-breath silence of someone waiting for impact.
"What about it?" His voice is even. Careful. The first hint of the mask.
"You said twice. A while ago."
"Yeah."
I wait. Let the silence hold. Sometimes silence is more honest than questions. It gives people space to fill it with what they need to say instead of what they're asked.
Devin doesn't fill it. He lies against my chest, barely breathing, and I can feel his heart rate climbing. Not the good racing of last night. The fear kind.
"Dev." I keep my voice gentle. "Was last night your first time?"
The silence stretches. Five seconds. Ten. His fingers tighten on my arm, then deliberately loosen, and I can feel the effort that takes. The conscious decision to not grip, to not give himself away with his body when his voice is doing the work of staying calm.
"Does it matter?" he asks.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because if it was, I would have wanted to know. Not to stop. I wouldn't have stopped. But to know."
His breathing changes. Faster, shallower. The beginning of something that might be panic.
"I'm not angry," I say quickly. "I'm not — Dev, look at me."
He pulls back enough to meet my eyes. His face is sliding toward the careful blankness, the customer-service mask, the protective shell he built in foster homes. But it's not fully there yet. Underneath the mask, his eyes are bright with tears.
"It was," he says quietly. "Last night was my first time."
The words land in my chest like a stone dropping into water. Ripples spreading outward, touching everything.
"All of it?" I ask, even though I already know.
"All of it." His voice is barely audible. "The — everything. Everything you did. I'd never — none of it."
I close my eyes. Open them. He's watching me with the expression of someone waiting to be told to leave.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay?"
"Give me a minute."
He starts to pull away, the instinct, the retreat, the walking-away skill he's been perfecting. I tighten my arms around him. Not trapping. Holding.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say. "Neither are you. Just give me a minute to — I need to think."
"About what?"
"About the fact that you lied to me."
He flinches. A full-body thing, like I struck him, and the sight of it almost makes me take the words back. But they're true and they need to exist in the room.