Page 17 of Loverboy

I was sick of him acting like anything he could need from me was too much. Nothing was too much if it kept him from hurting himself. I knew his seamless string of girlfriends always ended with them thinking he was too much to handle. And maybe he was too much for them—but he wasn’t too much for me.

“I feel like I’m asking for too much,” he explained, but I wasn’t having it.

I withdrew my hand from his hair and gripped his chin instead, squeezing it with pressure that bordered on punishment, silently urging him to ask for more.

“I don’t want to see you hurting.” I frowned. “If this is what you need right now, I’ll do it. Even if it hurts someone else.”

There was shock in the slight lift of his brows, his swollen eyes shimmering with unshed tears. He searched my face, looking for a lie that wasn’t there. I meant it. If it came down to the wire, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to keep him alive.

“I don’t want to burden you.” He squeezed his eyes shut, always hiding.

I sighed, releasing him and pressing my forehead against his. “You’re not a burden, Milo. You never have been. Especially not to me.”

8

Milo

I EXPECTED TO wake up alone. I’d only just begun adjusting to my new reality, bracing myself for the inevitable sinking feeling that came with looking around my bedroom, which had once been full of things. Her things.

But that weight never came.

I blinked the blurriness from my eyes and burrowed deeper into the sheets. Somehow, I hadn’t slept like shit for once, and my demons hadn’t come for me in the night. My gaze landed on Jasper’s sleeping form in the exact spot he’d been last night, and fearful that I might wake him with any sudden movement, all I could do was stare.

He was slumped against the side of my bed, head resting in the crook of his arm, only inches from my face. He hadn’t bothered to take off his glasses, the frames resting crooked on his nose. His lips parted on a deep inhale, and my heart missed a beat.

It reminded me of nights back home, where he often lingered in my space, like he didn’t have his own room upstairs. He’d hang out with me in my makeshift bedroom in the basement until he accidentally fell asleep, but I knew the truth. Back then, being apart was unfathomable.

I knew now that I’d fucked up leaving. It’d been stupid to move out on a whim, leaving him behind. In this moment, with him sound asleep next to my bed, it was like we were back at home again, and I missed it more than anything. I wanted to take it all back and return to the days when we’d hang out every day, go to school together, and come right back to each other.

The days when we were still the center of each other’s orbit.

Slowly, I reached out and peeled the glasses from his face. To my surprise, he didn’t stir. I set them down on my nightstand and froze again, watching him shift once before settling.

I wanted to stare a little longer. I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but it still felt like I was committing a crime. My attention traced the slope of his nose, down to the thin layer of stubble along his jaw, and finally landed on his lips. They were a little thinner than mine, and the longer I looked, the tighter my chest drew. The only real similarity we had was the fact that we both had piercings, only his were arranged in a stack of three gold hoops on one ear, and another on his brow. I knew it made sense. We weren’t real brothers, so we were never going to look like siblings.

My stomach soured over the reminder.

“Is there a staring contest going on that I didn’t know about?” Jasper’s voice was rough with sleep, one eyebrow lifting as he lazily opened his eyes. I didn’t move away.

“Yeah,” I said. “And you’re losing.”

“It’s cheating if you started before I was even awake.” He yawned, looking disgruntled as he straightened with an audible crack. Guilt washed over me for making him sleep on the floor.

“Skill issue,” I argued, heat creeping up my neck as I sat up.

“Uh-huh.” He grinned sleepily, rose to his feet and stretched. “Alright, let’s figure out how this is gonna work.”

“What?”

“Moving in.”

Oh.

He grabbed his glasses from the nightstand and pushed them onto his face, then rubbed his chin in thought. I struggled with the idea of him voluntarily dropping everything for me, when what I really hoped for was a fight, a smidgen of resistance. Even a scolding about how he was right and I shouldn’t have jumped the gun in a new relationship by moving out would have been enough. That would have been normal. It would have been earned. I hated that I got what I wanted so easily, because the resistance made me feel something real.

Loved.

“You don’t have to do it right away.” I scrambled to my feet to follow him out of the room.