Elliott let his door slam shut and collapsed into his desk chair. It’d been a long day, but he was buzzing, first from test adrenaline, second from the meeting he’d just had with Amanda, nailing out kinks in her thesis that were almost as satisfying to resolve as an orgasm.

Midterms were as tough as he’d expected, which meant he thought he’d done pretty well on all of them. It was hard to know, but he felt good about his prospects of a small scholarship for next year.

What he wasn’t feeling good about was the phone in his hand. He’d sent a text to Kevin, asking him if he had time to video chat, not giving the reason for the call: some bad news.

His phone pinged. He grimaced and read the screen.

Sure, dude! Kevin had sent, to Elliott’s disappointment. Gimme a minute to get upstairs?

Awesome, Elliott typed back, then dropped his phone on the desk like a hot coal and drummed his fingers next to his keyboard until the laptop chirped.

“Hey, man!” Kevin said, his pixelated face smiling at Elliott. He was still in his uniform, probably sweaty and tired from vet-technicianing nervous animals all day, and yet, he hadn’t told Elliott to buzz off. What a good friend. “What’s up? Ready for spring break?”

“More ready than you, you poor nine-to-five schmuck.”

Kevin sighed—as if he didn’t love his job to pieces—then he smiled widely. “Yeah, it’s tough being an actual functional adult, instead of a wittle student, avoiding the real world.”

Elliott scoffed. “As if, small-town girl, you just keep living in your lonely world.”

Kevin rolled his eyes, still smiling. “But for real, are you ready? All your exams are over, right?”

“Done and dusted.”

“I bet you aced them.”

Elliott pushed away from the desk, leaning back in his chair to crack his stiff neck. “You have more faith in me than I do, pal.”

“I know. I always have.” Kevin’s grin gained a fondness that Elliott could see, even across hundreds of miles, through an itty-bitty screen. “So, what’s happening? I don’t think you called me because you wanted to gaze at my beautiful face.” He placed his hands under his chin and batted his eyelashes coquettishly.

Elliott pretended to gag, then he paused, nervous, unsure of how he’d say what he needed to say. He decided, after tense split seconds of deliberation, to lay it all out plainly. “I wanted to tell you I’m not coming home for break.”

Elliott had expected to see Kevin’s face fall—Kevin showed everything, always—but it was still tough to see. It was important to tell him over video, though. It was harder to keep from feeling guilty, but he’d wanted Kevin to be able to see his face, and his regret.

“Dad’s going to feel obligated to pay my bus fare, and it’s way too much. And don’t even try to tell me you won’t take a couple extra days off work.”

He had other reasons that he couldn’t share. This way, he wouldn’t have to skip out on a week of work, or debate with Aiden over whether he deserved vacation pay.

After a pregnant pause, Kevin nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. So, it’s cool.”

“It isn’t really.” As confident as Elliott was in his decision to stay, he was mourning the loss of time with his dad and Kevin.

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed.

“Being an adult sucks,” Elliott grumbled.

“Yeah.”

“I am sorry, Kev,” Elliott said, leaning in to his webcam until his face was huge in the display. “I know we’d planned to do so much, but coming home . . . it just wouldn’t work.”

There was a bit of buried relief, though, deep in the darkest parts of himself. No, he wouldn’t see the people he loved, but he also wouldn’t see the tangled weeds of his mom’s old herb garden encroaching closer to the house.

Kevin tilted his head, smiling his familiar, easygoing smile. “Hey, it’s okay. I get it, man. You gotta do what you gotta do.” His gaze sharpened and he crossed his arms, leaning them against his desk, like Elliott. “So, is it cartoon-watching lawyer guy who’s keeping you from coming home?”

Elliott startled, losing his balance and almost braining himself on his lamp. “What? Why would you think that?”

Kevin blew a loud raspberry, then wiped it away from the screen on his end. “Please. As if anything else could keep you away. Yeah, you have your other reasons, but you didn’t let those stop you before. Logical assumption: you’re sticking around because of some special person.” He grinned while Elliott gaped in silent shock. “Plus, you look happy. Happier than I’ve seen you in a while. You’ve always loved doing what you’re doing. Your history thing, I mean. So it must be something—or someone—new in your life that’s putting that smile on your face.”

“Oh.” Elliott huffed. He shouldn’t be surprised that Kevin saw through him. He’d been able to keep a lot of his life choices secret through distance alone, but there wasn’t any hiding this. He might as well admit it. “Yeah.”

Kevin grinned triumphantly. “That’s what I thought. Can’t hide from me, dude.”

“Guess not.”

“So it is the same guy you were seeing before?” Kevin asked, his eyes wide with his interest.

“Yeah, it is.” Elliott clamped his lips shut. They were tight with his smile and bursting to spill every detail about Aiden and the limbo they were in, but saying it out loud felt like a bad idea. If he said anything, it’d jinx the whole thing, and he needed all the help he could get.

He still hadn’t made a decision about Aiden. He had spring break to decide, essentially, which was why he wanted to spend it alone, or as close to alone as he could in a building with a few hundred other people. Even if he told Kevin a highly edited version, Kevin would have opinions about the whole situation, and Elliott didn’t want to be influenced by anyone. He was already being guided by enough factors as it was. He didn’t need any more food for thought.

“What happened to being casual?” Kevin questioned.

Elliott lifted a shoulder. “We casually slid into being more than that. It was a bit of an accident.”

“The best love stories often are.”

“You think so? Well, then, ours must be the greatest love story ever told, because we were caught completely by surprise. I’m still not even sure it’s real.”

“Why do you say that?” Kevin’s eyebrows had gathered together and he was doing his best I’m your therapist, tell me everything face, all concerned eyes and thoughtfully pursed mouth.

“Well, we haven’t talked about it,” Elliott said, tacking on, “much,” when Kevin’s face got a little thunderous. “We’re sort of seeing how it goes, but without . . . talking. Or labels.”

“Elliott.”

“Yes, Kevin?’

“Are you going down a path that’ll get you hurt?”

Elliott winced. “Maybe?”

“Why? You’re twenty-one, not twelve. You know relationships don’t just happen. There’s effort required, and communication.”

“Hey, I am putting in effort!” Elliott protested. “I totally took him on a date.”

Kevin did not look impressed. “A date? Singular? You’ve only been on one date, outside of your . . .” He made a vague gesture that seemed to mean Inadvisable Non-Romantic Conjugal Relations.

Elliott sat up straighter in his chair. “Not exactly. We’ve had dates. Lots of them. But the context was different, so they didn’t really mean what they mean now, even though we’re doing the same things.”

“Uh-huh,” Kevin said, his eyebrow raised sky high.

Elliott sighed. “It’s complicated, okay? It always is when you don’t meet someone in a coffee shop and fall in love at first sight and date for show because you’re obviously soul mates.”

“So uncomplicate it,” Kevin said, with no mercy. “Talk to him, be honest about what you want, and do it sooner rather than later. Because I will be there to pick up the pieces, but I won’t enjoy it, and neither will you. I love you, man.”

Kevin meant well. Elliott was getting a little choked up, in fact, at Kevin’s heartfelt attempt at giving him advice. Elliott wished it were that easy. What he wanted was a very difficult question, one he’d tried to answer many times during the last weeks.

He wanted to graduate at the top of his class. He wanted his dad to stay exactly where he was but without the crushing worry that one missed payment would mean the end of their hard work.

He wanted to have a normal relationship, in which he cared for Aiden—loved Aiden, a voice in the back of Elliott’s mind whispered—without compromising his other goals.

If he figured out the perfect solution to all of his problems, UCLA would have to give him an honorary doctorate. It would only be fair.

“I’ll try,” he said, smiling valiantly. “We can’t always get what we want.”

“You can,” Kevin insisted. “You can do anything you put your mind to, including your mystery man. Many times, and in many positions that I don’t need to hear about.”

“Yeah, that’s never been a problem for me and him.”

“Don’t want to know! Seriously!” Kevin put his fingers in his ears.

Elliott grinned and leaned on the table, his chin in his hand as he watched Kevin sing tunelessly to block out TMI details that weren’t coming. He didn’t need to go home for break. Kevin brought the feeling of home to him over a fuzzy screen, every time.

Elliott’s hands weren’t shaking, but only because he was clenching them in the pockets of his sweater.

“Hey,” he said when Aiden appeared in the hall in soft, clean clothes, perfect for Elliott to collapse into.

He wanted to. He felt like he was only just letting the exhaustion of three years of school catch up to him. The past two days of spring break, he’d been alone in his dorm, sleeping or reading for hours, only surfacing when he couldn’t ignore his hunger pangs any longer or when Amanda came and hauled him into the common room for some fresh air.

He couldn’t say he minded, however much he grumbled about villains disturbing his slumber. It was strange how quickly someone he’d ignored for so many months had become accustomed to mom-ing him into taking care of himself once he’d opened his metaphorical—and literal—door to social interaction. Kevin would have approved.

“Hey.” Aiden stepped over Elliott’s discarded shoes and pressed him to the door, kissing him hard against the unyielding plane. Elliott let his hands roam, giving them something to do that wasn’t plucking anxiously at his sweater’s pocket lint. Aiden’s mouth distracted him well enough that by the time his hands came up to card through Aiden’s hair, messing up the work-appropriate style, they weren’t trembling at all.

When it was over, Elliott smiled. Did he look as happy as he felt?

“Hi,” he said, some of his tension releasing its grip on his body.

“Hello,” Aiden said, smirking. “How’s the vacation going?”

He pulled Aiden by the arm to the couch. “Oh god, it’s amazing. I never knew there were so many hours in a day.”

“There aren’t twenty-four, like usual?”

“Maybe that’s usual for you, but when I’ve got an essay due and three chapters to go over with Amanda, there’s definitely less than twenty.”

“Oh, are you still meeting with her?”

Aiden’s arm had come around Elliott’s shoulder, but it didn’t stay there long, dislodged by Elliott’s eagerness.

“Yeah, actually. She asked if I’d keep working with her, which is awesome, because it’s great practice, and I actually enjoyed it. We’re going to meet once a week.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Aiden’s face, devoid of any expression other than attentiveness. Elliott rushed to add, “Don’t worry, it won’t interfere with . . . you know.”

With a quizzical squint, Aiden smiled a little. “I wasn’t worried.”

“Okay. Good.”

Aiden didn’t appear to notice the tension. Elliott sure had, though. It felt like his every attempt at conversation was going south.

“Do you miss home?” Aiden asked, softly.

Elliott blinked and squirmed a bit on the couch, the nerves coming back full force. This was what he needed to get used to: personal questions that went beyond idle chatting during a slow part in a movie. If he was going to start something with Aiden, he needed to stop being surprised that Aiden cared.

“Yes, but no more than usual. It isn’t long until summer break, though, and I’ll go back for a couple of weeks then, and really get some quality bonding time in.”

“That’s great. You know I wouldn’t mind if you went back, right? You could go tomorrow, skip our dates on Friday and Sunday.”

Elliott scratched his thumb lightly on the seam of the leather cushion between them. “I know. I just wanted to talk to you instead of going back. I wasn’t sure if it would take me the entire break to work up the nerve.”

Aiden sat up straighter. “Talk? About . . .”

“About us.” Elliott laughed, half-heartedly. “That makes it sound so serious. Like we’re in a soap opera. Riccardo, we must talk. I’ve fallen in love with your evil twin brother.”

Aiden widened his eyes comically and played along with a completely straight face. “You mean, my evil conjoined twin brother, who was separated from me at birth? That evil twin brother?”

“That’s the one. Not to be confused with your other, non-twin brother, the one who dated my sister and left her at the altar, then dated me and left me at the altar.”

“Oh, no, I could never confuse the two. Curse him for stealing you away.”

Elliott snorted and couldn’t resist giving Aiden a quick, closed-mouth kiss. “It’s not that dramatic. But we do have to talk.”

“So talk,” Aiden said, his expression honest and open. “I’m a lawyer, I talk about serious things way too much. It’s your turn.”

“What, and I don’t talk too much?”

“You talk about everything and nothing. You talk about what’s in your head, and there’s a lot going on in your head. But, at the risk of sounding completely cheesy, you very, very rarely talk about what’s in your heart.”

The heart in question pounded. “You’re right. That’s so cheesy, I wanna grate it on my pasta.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I wanna pair it with some expensive wine. Melt it—”

“Okay, I get it. It was corny.” Aiden shot him a quelling look. “But my point still stands. You only let me see parts of you. Which is fine. I like what I see.” He placed a hand over Elliott’s fidgeting fingers.

“Good,” Elliott croaked. He cleared his throat. “I mean, I’m glad. I like you too.”

“Well, thank god.”

Aiden’s smile was a tender slant, so familiar and valued by Elliott that he was worrying about losing it before he’d even started talking. The anxiety that had been simmering in him for nearly a month started to boil over until words were pouring out unchecked.

“I do this for a reason. My job, I mean. I don’t have a rich family who can pay my tuition. I didn’t play a sport or overachieve in high school enough to get the good scholarships.” He looked down at his hands, away from Aiden’s patient gaze. “I could do what everyone else does and take out loans that would bury me as soon as I graduated. Let my dad flounder and lose the house after barely holding on to it for years. Or I could work every spare minute and see my grades suffer for it. I could do a bunch of things to make it unnecessary for me to make my living from having sex and maybe it’d be easier than I think it is. But I do this job because I want to and I have the balls to. I do it so that I can have the kind of life I want.”

“I get that,” Aiden said softly, and Elliott forced himself to meet his eyes.

“Do you? If you do, then you understand that I can’t stop out of the blue to fall in love with you. I want to.” He reached out and straightened a piece of Aiden’s dark hair that had been messed up by Elliott’s fingers. “I’m already most of the way in love with you. It’d take one more tiny push and I’d be done for.”

“Me too,” Aiden said, even as he leaned in. They kissed again, high on their revelations. Elliott could have kept on kissing him for hours, but he pulled away instead.

“If I loved you like that,” he said. “It would be easy for me to rationalize a decision to quit, but it wouldn’t fix all of my problems.”

If the roof on the house fell in, and the bank wouldn’t lend Dad money to fix it, how could Elliott look him in the eye if he hadn’t done all he could? And if he stopped working now, and allowed himself to rack up debt for the rest of his undergrad and then his master’s degree, the work he’d done for the past two years would be undercut. He’d end up with loans hanging over his head and no home to go back to. Why had he bothered if he was going to give up when he was two-thirds of the way there?

“But there’s a better way.” The quaking in his ribs increased. There was no going back once he told Aiden what he wanted. They were already far past the point where they could forget this month ever happened and go back to being strangers.

“A better way,” Aiden said, tonelessly.

“Yes. We could be together like we have been this past month, but with no more boundaries. When we’re with each other, I could be completely in it, nothing holding me back.” He swallowed, his throat clicking. “And when I’m not with you, I could still do my work.”

Aiden didn’t have a ticking clock anywhere in his apartment, and the fridge was too far away for its hum to help break up the painful seconds of silence that followed. Elliott tried not to fidget and tried not to panic.

“Your work?” Aiden repeated slowly. “Sex work, you mean.”

Elliott’s optimism took a hard blow.

“Yeah,” he said, still forcing a smile. “I’d have a client, or clients, maybe, but I’d be with you. You see? It could work perfectly. We could make our agreement null and void starting this month, and then it wouldn’t be weird. We wouldn’t have to worry about the money coming between us. We’d know our relationship was real, not like this halfway state we’ve been in this month, with you as a client but also my boyfriend.”

“But I . . .” Aiden leaned back, staring at Elliott hard, like he was waiting for him to say Gotcha! “Elliott, I know you didn’t want to define what we were to each other, but I sort of assumed that the agreement we had was already void.”

Elliott’s fists clenched in time with his stomach. He asked, numbly, “Why would you think that?”

“Because we were dating.” Aiden huffed and his hands twitched in front of him. “We were falling in love, doing the exact opposite of what we’d agreed on.”

The agreement. Sex and physical intimacy, no-strings companionship. There were a hell of a lot of strings now.

Aiden still looked baffled. “You met my parents.”

Elliott pushed himself backward, putting his knees between them. His breath rose and fell harshly in his chest as he said, more angrily than he meant to, “And that meant that what we both agreed to didn’t count anymore? What did you think I was going to do? Live off of your charity?”

Aiden stiffened and his jaw tensed, hardening in a way that reminded Elliott of the way he’d been before Elliott had truly known him. “Well. In a way, yes. I don’t think of it as charity, but I assumed—”

“That I’d let you pay my way? You’d just . . .” His arms flew up in front of him, and his thighs quaked with the urge to get up and pace. “Take over paying for everything I needed with nothing in return?”

Aiden looked him right in the eye, lifted his chin. “Yes.”

Elliott lost the battle with his legs, stood up from the couch, and put distance between them. He crossed his arms over his middle and placed himself behind the overstuffed leather chair, his mind fuzzy like white noise.

Aiden had been dating him the whole time. Having sex with him, paying for his bus fare, fighting to pay for more, all while being his boyfriend, not his employer. Elliott hadn’t even known.

“You thought I’d be okay with that,” he said. “Just letting you provide for me.”

Aiden shrugged, but his body was tense, so it came off as an aggressive roll of his shoulders. “Husbands and wives don’t always make the same salary. Stay-at-home parents—”

“This is not the same, and you know it,” Elliott snapped. “That’s a partnership. It’s a decision people mutually make after years of dating, and there’s usually children involved. As much as I love my degree, I don’t think it’s on the same level as a helpless infant. What if you started to resent having spent the money on me?”

Not if. When.

Aiden’s chin lifted mutinously. “I wouldn’t. It’d be my choice, and I’d live with it, regardless of whether our relationship panned out.”

Elliott scoffed, and it made his throat burn. “Sure, you think that now. Down the road, though, what if I decide I want to break up with you, but I can’t because where am I going to get tuition for my next semester? I could tough it out, put up with a relationship I don’t want to be in until the day I graduate, and then bam, you’re dumped. You think you’ll still be okay with having shelled out all that money?”

The press of Aiden’s lips was stubborn and bleak. He shook his head. “You’d never do that.”

“How do you know?” Elliott demanded. “We can’t tell the future. And what about you? You might start to think of me the same way I’d think about myself. As a leech and a user. I couldn’t stand to see myself turn into the kind of person who’d stay with someone they didn’t love just because they need to know where their next meal ticket will come from.”

Elliott’s mouth tasted bitter around the words. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He’d had a hundred rebuttals planned out in his head, but they hadn’t been anything like that. He wanted to cover his ears and walk away, but he felt sick at the thought that Aiden might take that as his final answer on whether their fragile connection should be allowed to fully form. One big miscommunication was enough for him for one day.

His chest ached at the tiny, treacherous thought that maybe he should walk out and never come back.

Aiden stood up, taking a tentative step toward the chair Elliott shielded himself with, but ultimately holding his ground. “It wouldn’t be like that. I don’t do nice things for people just because of what it’ll get me. I’m not like—”

“Like Innes?” Elliott’s wretched satisfaction cheered quietly at Aiden’s nearly unnoticeable flinch. “How do you figure? You think just as little of me as he does if you think I’d be okay with you being my sugar daddy.”

Aiden was as angry as Elliott had ever seen him, his fists clenched at his sides. Elliott wanted to snatch back the words.

“No, I don’t,” Aiden gritted. “I’m not like him at all, and I think it’s a bit hypocritical of you to be angry with me for thinking ‘so little’ of you when you try to compare us. We might be related, but we are nothing alike, not least because we wanted totally different things from you from the beginning. He would have been okay with you having other people on the side, but I’m not.”

And there it was. The final blow to Elliott’s overly optimistic fix-it to their first—and seemingly last—big problem.

“That’s it, then?” Elliott said, his words as brittle and blank as he felt. “No discussion about that? You won’t even think about it?”

“What’s there to think about?” Aiden said, his slumped posture far from his usual straight-backed confidence. “I wish I could say I was cool with it. Some people could, and I envy them. But the thought of you having sex with someone else while you’re supposed to be my boyfriend doesn’t—” He made a twisting, clawlike gesture next to his head. “Doesn’t click.”

“It wouldn’t be the same with someone else as it would be with you.” Elliott grimaced at the whine in his own voice. “How can you know that it wouldn’t work if you don’t give it a shot?”

Aiden shook his head slowly. “I just do. I’m almost thirty, Elliott. I know myself well enough by now to know that. I get that monogamy is a— What do you call it? A social construct. But that’s what I want and I can’t help the way I feel. I just wouldn’t be able to let it go. Not with you.”

Elliott’s body temperature shot up, and his cheeks began to prickle. Shock and the wave of anger that came with it chased away his achy sadness and the urge to plead and cajole.

“What do you mean, ‘not with me’?” Elliott asked.

Aiden didn’t answer right away. He looked at the floor instead, his jaw moving back and forth.

“You think you could keep it impersonal,” Aiden said, after a while. “Separate your sex life from your love life.”

Elliott managed to keep from stamping his foot like a child having a tantrum. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Aiden let out a breath that was almost a laugh, but too fragile and viciously sharp to be real. “How do you know that you won’t fall in love with the next guy too?”

Elliott stumbled away from the chair he’d taken refuge behind, his fingernails scraping across the top of it. All the air in his chest had been stolen, as if he’d been blown back by a blast instead of softly spoken words. His chest burned as he filled it with enough oxygen that he could scream for a long time if he wanted. He didn’t. He turned away from Aiden and walked toward the door without another word.

“Elliott, wait,” Aiden said. Elliott could hear his footsteps behind him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just think that if you don’t make a clean break, you might always wonder if you made the wrong choice.”

Elliott didn’t turn around. He kept on his straight path to his shoes and his escape. “Well, I think the answer to that question is already pretty clear,” he couldn’t keep from saying. “I chose to give us a chance, but apparently that was the wrong one, because you think I’m a slut who’d get heart-eyes for anyone who told me I was pretty.”

“I don’t think that,” Aiden said, from a few feet away, a distance Elliott appreciated more than he could say. He was so angry, he felt like he would shake apart if Aiden touched him. “It’s my fear talking, my fear of losing you before I even had you. I never thought that, and I never will.”

He glared down at his shoes as he shoved them on, regretting taking them off in the first place, and spat, “Are you sure? You might change your mind in a fucking second, with no reason or logic behind it. Because that’s so easy, right?”

There was a muffled thump, as if Aiden had punched the wall, but Elliott still didn’t turn around, not even when Aiden said, “I’m sorry. Please believe me,” in a voice so urgent and wrecked that it made Elliott’s throat tighten, despite his righteous fury.

He shook his head, his shoelaces blurring in his hand. “No. I’m leaving. I’m not coming back, either. This isn’t going to work, so there’s no point. Consider this my resignation.”

“Elliott, please, don’t. Just listen—”

“I’m done listening,” he said, his voice reverberating against the walls in the cramped hallway. “Now please excuse me, I have a résumé to update so that I can go out and find a new job—or, wait, no. A new person to fall madly in love with. Because that worked out so well for me last time, didn’t it?”

“You haven’t done any listening at all, only talking,” Aiden said, suddenly loud and urgent. Elliott finally looked at him, in spite of himself. Aiden’s face was pale, his eyes wide and wild. His calm and cool demeanor had shattered at last. “Maybe if you’d let me talk for one minute, I could convince you that you don’t have to do this anymore.”

“‘This’?”

“Working. Being a prostitute,” Aiden said, enunciating every letter clearly. “However well-paid and comfortable you might be, I can take care of what you need. I know this is frightening for you, but I would never trap you. You can trust me.”

Elliott flinched away, even though Aiden hadn’t moved. He put his hand on the doorknob but didn’t push it down. “God, please stop. How many times do I have to tell you, this isn’t Pretty Woman. I don’t need saving. Nobody is forcing me to sell myself.”

“Except yourself. You’ve convinced yourself that you want to, that you have to, but the truth is, you’re scared to stop and think about how much you hate it.”

Elliott bristled, his spine snapping straight. “I don’t hate—”

“Yes, you do,” Aiden said, loud, slow, and clear, like what he said was law. “There’s nothing wrong with what you do. Did. Absolutely nothing. But you stopped being okay with it, if you ever were, or else you would never have allowed yourself to fall in love with me. You’re looking for a way out. We met at the perfect time. You can stop now.”

By the end of his little speech, Aiden’s voice was soft and soothing again, though not anywhere near the smooth, even sound of his normal voice. This was so far from normal now. Elliott tightened his fingers on the handle and cursed himself for thinking for a second that he could have something approaching normal. He’d given that up two years ago, when he’d given his number to a stranger who’d wanted to buy his body along with his time.

“No.” Elliott sounded steadier than he felt, even to his own ears. “There is nothing perfect about this. Whatever we might have been, it was never going to be anything but fucked-up.”

Elliott opened the door and Aiden let him. Elliott kept waiting for another plea, another attempt to convince him to come inside, but there was only the sound of his own feet walking to the elevator. It opened mercifully quickly, and he was alone, so no one could see him lean against the mirror-paneled wall except the eye of the security camera.

There were no tears. Sadness, sure, but anger and a hollow hopelessness covered it up. Resting his forehead on his fisted hand against the cool glass, he kept himself from punching a jagged crack into it by grinding his knuckles against it, leaving smears with his clammy skin.

It wasn’t only Aiden he was angry at. He was angry at himself. He’d hurt himself as much as he’d been hurt, and all because he’d been too stupid and besotted to remember that nothing just worked out. Not for him.

His father had taught him to work hard for the things that he wanted, and he’d done that. The moment he’d stopped and simply lived, letting himself fall deeper in love while hoping for a miracle, of course he’d gotten dirt kicked in his face.

He was angry at Aiden, though. Every one of his careless words had drawn a little bit of blood until Elliott imagined himself to be covered in it. Aiden didn’t trust him. Aiden didn’t understand, after all this time, that Elliott needed to look after himself. He hadn’t given Elliott’s solution a chance. He hadn’t thought about it at all, even though it was the only way they could have been together without Elliott feeling like a grasping parasite. They would’ve finally been on equal footing, and Aiden hadn’t considered it for a second.

Biting his lip to keep a rough sob inside, he shook his head at his own unfairness. He couldn’t be mad at Aiden for not agreeing to a new situation like that. Aiden had a right to ask his boyfriend not to sleep with other people. But he hadn’t wanted to try, and in the process of refusing, he’d made Elliott feel like absolute shit.

The urge to scream out his grief and raw pain built up, pushing at his throat until it was tight and hurt more than his stinging eyes. He didn’t let it out, but he did wrap his arms around his torso, sink down into a ball, and clench his whole body until every muscle shook and he couldn’t hold it anymore.

The elevator dinged and the door opened. Elliott straightened up, walked through the familiar lobby, past the front desk, and the security guard who might or might not have witnessed his near-breakdown. The sun was still shining outside, warm and obnoxiously bright. He couldn’t stand the thought of getting on a crowded bus with a bunch of strangers, so he started walking, until he saw a cab and hailed it.

After swinging into the back seat, he slammed the door on the facade of Aiden’s apartment. Vaguely, he felt his phone vibrate against his thigh, but he ignored it.

The driver asked, “Where to?”

Elliott opened his mouth to give the address of his dorm, but the words dried up. He was using his anger to chase the sadness away, and once he stopped, he didn’t think he could start that engine again. He wanted to cling to it until there wasn’t a drop of it left. He wasn’t ready to go home and cry into his pillow and eat chocolate until he felt like throwing up. Right now, he wanted to hurt as he’d been hurt.

An address came out of Elliott’s mouth. The driver nodded and Elliott switched off his brain as best he could so he wouldn’t think about what he was doing.

Because what did he know? He bared his teeth at his reflection in the car window. How did he know he wouldn’t fall in love with the next guy?

Simple. He’d never let anyone get close enough again.

The trip wasn’t a long one. Elliott tipped the taxi driver generously with money he’d earned from Aiden. He entered the building at a brisk pace, nodding to the security guard, who sat at a desk that was a carbon copy of the one at Aiden’s building: sleek and expensive looking. The guard nodded back, then blinked and squinted. Elliott didn’t slow down to watch the man attempt to place him. Instead, he entered the elevator, just like he had at Aiden’s. Like he had for two years.

This one had walls of opaque bronze instead of mirrors, which he was thankful for. Vindictive wasn’t a good look on him.

The door was the same as he remembered. He didn’t waste time second-guessing whether he should be standing outside it again. He knocked loudly three times and waited, heart pounding. His stomach plunged. He wanted the door to stay closed as much as he wanted it to open. He wanted the decision to turn back and forget he’d ever come here to be taken out of his hands.

The door opened soundlessly. Elliott didn’t say anything.

“Well,” Innes said. “Isn’t this a surprise?”

Elliott lurched forward and planted his mouth on Innes’s in a punishing kiss.