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“What’s wrong? Is it the car? Are you okay?”
The dust hasn’t even settled, but I can’t contain my poison any longer. “I’m not gay,” I blurt, staring at the endless stretch of road ahead of us toward a future that won’t be mine anymore.
“What?”
“I…I’m not gay,” I repeat, manning up and facing him this time.
His face. My God, his face—the utter confusion etched all over it.
“Or…I wasn’t,” I continue, wondering if there’s even a shred of hope that this won’t hurt him. “I’d only been with women before I met you. I think that makes me bisexual, or maybe not. I don’t know, but I should have told you. I wanted to tell you when you came to my house, but I thought maybe Randy sent you there to blackmail me, since I wouldn’t give my marketing plans to Preston when he told me to.” Fucking hell. I sound like I’m on narcotics, talking a mile a minute. He’s officially hearing my internal voice word vomit out of my mouth.
“It sounds stupid now that I hear myself say it out loud, and completely paranoid, but fuck. This is me, Cam. That’s how my OCD works. I obsess over everything, over every little detail until I’m a prisoner to irrationality that seems perfectly logical to me. I thought you were there to…to, I don’t even know anymore, because the ideas I had seem so absurd now. I thought… maybe you were trying to trick me, but then I realized you weren’t. You were just you, and I was me, and you…liked me. You actually liked me as me, and then it didn’t seem to matter if I’d never been with a man. I was…bewitched.”
I’ve shocked him into silence. As he blinks at me, I mourn the loss of adoration in his eyes. He doesn’t need to like me. He needs the truth. He deserves the truth, no matter that it probably just cost me him.
“Don’t hate me, Cam. Please, don’t hate me.”
Turning his head, he stares out the windshield as though he’s in a daze. A moment passes, and then he opens the door, getting out of the car.
Is he so disgusted with me that he’s going to set off walking in the middle of nowhere? We’re halfway to Wenatchee. I took the scenic route because I thought he’d enjoy the views, but regret it now. There’s nothing for miles.
He stops a few feet in front of the car. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he stares out at the woods, looking so lost it’s breaking what’s left of me. What have I done to him?
My world just imploded, and the debris hurt a person I care about deeply. Dropping my head to the steering wheel, I wish I could bash some sense into it. My disorder isn’t entirely to blame. It may have misled me in the beginning, but I had plenty of chances to tell him. Still, I hate that my idiosyncrasies played a part in hurting him.
I quit going to therapy in college. I’d reached a place where I knew how to protect my emotions when the world didn’t conform to my needs. I never considered that I would have to protect someone from me.
Why did I let my need to solve his problems overshadow being honest?
“Fuck! Fucking fuck!”
Wrenching open my door, I barrel out and round the front of my car. Turning around, he looks at me like I’m a stranger, not the man who shared the most intimate evening of my life with him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, hating how insufficient the words sound. “I wanted to tell you so many times, and I should have. I had myself convinced that you weren’t gay, and that it was some scheme you and Randy cooked up.
When I saw how you reacted to me at my house, though…I believed you. It changed everything. I hated hearing that you felt like you couldn’t be you. I wanted to give you everything you asked for, everything you told me that you thought you couldn’t have.”
His face twists in pain. “You felt sorry for me?”
“No.” Another lie.
“Yes,” I amend, but that sounds worse than the lie. “A little.” Fuck, this is so awful.
Sucking in a breath, I take a careful step closer. “Of course, I felt sorry for you. No one should be treated the way they treat you, Cam. You should have all those things that you asked for. I just never imagined I’d want to give them to a man, but…but it’s the only thing I’ve never had to think about once it presented itself. I’d give you anything you asked for. I could never say no to you. I don’t know why this never happened to me before. It’s you. You just… I want to be the one in your story. And the more you talked about dating apps, the more I thought about you having those first experiences with someone else… it made me crazy.”
Swallowing, I shake my head at the sound of my confessions. Anyone in their right mind would kick someone with logic that skewed to the curb. This is futile, and knowing it is has me shaking from head to toe.
“I’m fucked up.” The admission comes out choked, making me hate that I’m not being the strong man he thought I was. “I’ll never be normal. I hate body fluids and the sound of loud chewing. I move shit around if it doesn’t look like it’s in place. I didn’t even know what a prostate stimulator was until I searched the internet. I overanalyze everything and hum the fucking birthday song when I wash my hands. I’m not a gentleman, but I’m yours, if you want me. I’d be honored to be yours. Lucky. So damn lucky. I’ll never hide anything from you again.”
“Pete,” he warns, grabbing my wrists. “Stop.”
Glancing down at my shaking hands, my face burns. I was tapping my wrists together again. Fuck. He doesn’t need this. He doesn’t need someone like me.
“I’m sorry.” Pulling my hands away, I shake them out and stuff them in my pockets. “It’s something I do when I…when I can’t control a situation.”
His face scrunches in disbelief. I might be sick.
“No. I meant stop talking.”
