My lion says home.
I know. I know.
Chapter 20
Devin
I'm awake and listening to everyone below us. The bar goes quiet around eleven. I can track the sounds of people settling. Knox's door closing, the steady weight of him moving in the room he shares with Toby. Ezra and Nico's low murmur, indistinct, the language of two people who finish each other's thoughts. Vaughn left with Robin an hour ago.
I'm in Silas's bed. Toby's blanket still around my shoulders because I haven't taken it off and Silas hasn't asked me to. My face aches, the bruise deeper now, the purple spreading into green, and my knuckles are stiff from the punch I threw Thursday night in a common room that isn't mine anymore.
Silas is behind me. Spooned around my back, his arm across my waist, his breath against my neck. We've been lying like this for a long time and neither of us is asleep and we both know it.
"You're thinking," I say.
"Yeah."
"Loud thoughts?"
"The loudest."
I turn in his arms so we're face to face. The room is dark. Just the streetlight through the window, the orange glow that makes everything look like it exists outside of time. His face is close. His eyes are open and steady and looking at me with something that isn't anger or pity or even the tenderness I've gotten used to. It's harder. Something that costs him to hold.
"Tell me," I say.
"I need to say something and I need you to hear all of it before you respond."
My stomach drops. The instinct fires, the old one, the survival one. This is where they tell you it's not working. This is where they say you're too much trouble. Pack your bag. I feel my face start to go blank, the mask reaching for the surface, and I fight it. Push it back down. Stay present.
"Okay," I say.
Silas is quiet for a moment. Gathering. I've learned his rhythms by now, the way he thinks in full paragraphs before he speaks, the way he builds sentences the way he reads books, carefully, with attention to every word.
"I love you," he says. "That's not in question. That was true in the laundromat and it's true now and it'll be true tomorrow. But I need something from you, and if I don't say it now, it's going to sit between us and rot."
"Okay."
"The wall. The virginity. The shelter." He says each one separately, giving them weight. "Three times, Dev. Three times you've hidden something from me because you were afraid of how I'd react. Three times you've edited yourself, managed me, controlled what I knew, given me the version you thought I could handle instead of the truth."
I open my mouth. He shakes his head.
"Let me finish. Please."
I close my mouth.
"Each time, you had a reason. A good reason. On the wall, you walked away because I taught you that your inexperience was dangerous. With the virginity, you lied because you were afraid honesty would cost you the thing you wanted. With the shelter, you hid because asking for help felt like failure." His hand is on my hip, steady. "I understand every single one of those reasons. They make sense. Inside the logic of your life, the foster homes, the system, the way you've had to survive, they make perfect sense."
"Then —"
"But I can't live inside that logic." His voice is quiet but there's no hesitation in it. No waver. "I can't be with someone who decides what I can handle. I can't build something with a person who curates the truth because they think the full version will break me. It won't break me, Dev. The truth won't break me. But the editing will. Eventually, it will."
The words settle in the dark between us.
"I'm not giving you an ultimatum," Silas continues. "I'm not saying tell me everything or I leave. I'm saying, I need you to try. I need you to choose honesty even when it's terrifying. Even when your brain says if I tell him this, he'll spiral or if I tell him this, he'll rescue me or if I tell him this, he'll see the version of me that isn't worth keeping. I need you to tell me anyway. And trust that I'll still be here."
"What if you're not?"
"What?"