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“What about what I wanted? All I wanted was the truth.” Ian angrily brushed the tears from his cheeks. “I want to fix this. I don’t want to walk away. But nothing will change, nothing will convince you that I’ll stay, nothing will make you feel safe until you trust me. Please, love—” Ian faltered at the term of endearment that hadn’t slipped past his lips since they broke up. He cleared his throat. “Alek. Trust me. Let me in. Please.”
Alek stabbed out the cigarette and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You think the truth will set me free, but it won’t. If you knew the truth, you’d hate me.”
“Let me decide. Don’t I deserve that?”
“You want to know the truth? Here’s one secret. One of hundreds.” Alek’s words came fast—manic—like he knew he was being self-destructive but he was going to go through with it anyway because he’d rather burn down his entire life than be vulnerable. “I can easily buy you out of the Victorian. I only let you assume we didn’t have enough money because it kept you here with me. If you don’t want me, then go. There’s nothing keeping you here, least of all me.”
“Wait… What?”
It was like Alek was speaking a different language. One Ian knew, but wasn’t fluent in. When the words finally registered, it wasn’t just a kick to the gut. Alek’s betrayal was eviscerating. All of the extra jobs Ian had worked, the money he’d pulled from his retirement to pay his crew, the fears he’d lose his business if the Victorian didn’t sell. He thought the only lies between them were the lies about Alek’s past. But if Alek was lying to control him, what else was he lying about?
Alek rolled another cigarette on the window sill in the space between his legs. He lifted his eyes to Ian’s as he licked the edge of the paper to seal it in place. After lighting the cigarette, Alek inhaled, and on the exhale said, “I told you you wouldn’t like the truth.”
“I wish I never met you,” Ian said. “You ruined my life. You ruined me.”
Alek shrugged, flicking the ash from the tip of his cigarette. “Likewise.”
“Do you know what the worst part is? I could move across the country—the world, even—and it wouldn’t be far enough. You’re always here inside me,” he thumped a fist over his heart, “like a tumor, and even if I could escape, I can’t, because you have nobody in the world except for me. Do you have any idea what kind of burden that is?”
At first, Alek said nothing, his eyebrows raised imperiously, like Ian was a child too old to be throwing a tantrum. That was how Ian knew he’d really hurt him. When wounded, Alek leaned on apathy.
“There’s no need to martyr yourself.” Alek’s voice was deadly cold, his face wiped clear of all emotion. “I’ll buy you out of the Victorian and pay you for the work you’ve done.”
“Would you really let me go?” Did Ian want him to?
“I don’t know.” Alek met Ian’s eyes. His bottom lip trembled like he was trying not to cry, like he was scared. It was nearly undetectable. He almost thought he imagined it. Alek never cried. He was never scared.
Ian took a step backward. His thoughts were getting tangled. He had to think and he couldn’t think with Alek looking at him like that. He took another step back.
Alek turned, throwing his other leg over the window sill and planting both feet on the floor. “Wait. Please. Don’t go—” He lurched forward and grabbed Ian’s wrist.
Ian couldn’t bear to feel Alek’s fingers on him, not after everything he’d done.
He wrenched his arm free and then time slowed down. Alek’s eyes went wide as he lost his balance, fell backward out of the window, and disappeared.
Ian ran to the window and looked down.
Alek was hanging onto a branch of that godforsaken wisteria. The same monster wisteria Alek worried Ian would one day water with a gallon of Roundup, and although he might have considered it, he’d never destroy something that Alek loved.
Ian held onto the window frame with one hand and leaned out, any fear for himself overshadowed by the terror he felt at the sight of Alek hanging twenty-odd feet above the ground. Alek scrambled up the vine and Ian reached his other arm out,stretching his muscles farther than he thought they could go. Their fingers grazed. They were so close.
Alek didn’t look afraid. More like he’d expected it. Of course, he would die in such a melodramatic way, falling out of a window after his lover told him he wished he’d never met him.
The trunk of the wisteria snapped ominously as it strained to hold him.
Alek said, “For what it’s worth, I really am sorry.”
The wisteria ripped away from the wall, inch by inch at first, and then all at once with a sickening crack like bones breaking. Alek was falling and Ian was running.
He pulled out his phone and nearly dropped it, then called 9-1-1 as he stumbled down the stairs and out the front door to where Alek was laying, flat on his back, lifeless, his face turned to the side, blood pooling around his head like a macabre halo.
“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?” The female operator said.
“My—” What was Alek to him? After everything that was said, they were hardly friends and they weren’t lovers anymore. “My partner. He… He’s…” Ian’s voice shook as badly as his hands did. “He fell. His head’s bleeding. I think he’s—he’s not moving.”
Alek’s face was expressionless. Ian half expected him to jump up and say he was only joking; it was all an elaborate prank, another punishment for rejecting him, but he was so still.
“Help is on the way?—”
