I sound like I’m saying it through my teeth. Because I am.
I peel away from him and flex my hands, try again.
“Orok. That’s—”
He takes a step toward me, a step back. “I’ve been thinking about this for… weeks. The recruiter, Savasea? She sent the official contract over a few days ago, but Vegas has been interested since the beginning of the semester—”
The beginning of the—
He’s known that long? Known it was a possibility that long, at least.
“—and it’s why I’ve been dragging my ass about it. But I’d have money.Realmoney. I thought, that’ll be fine, I’ll fly us back and forth whenever we want. Or I looked, and Clawstar has a branch in Los Angeles. That’s crazy though, asking you to move across the country to be a few hours closer to me. You have Thio here, and I’ll be traveling so much anyway, andyou’llbe working, and—”
He cuts himself off. Silence hangs. I loop my arms around my chest, holding myself together.
Orok sucks in a breath. “I kept thinking. Over and over. How it could work. I talked to my therapist, too. I—it’s been killing me.”
“You should have told me.” It’s killing me, too. And I want to say it’s only because he felt like he couldn’t tell me, but I’m not that selfless.
He’ll be in Las Vegas.
And I’ll be here.
“I wanted to figure out where I stood before I told you,” Orok says. “Whether I wanted it. And if I did want it, whether I wanted itfor me. I was worried I’d be doing it for my mom. Yet another thing I’m doing to please her. But it’s not. Iwantthis. I’m good at it. This could be… this could be big.”
He smiles, easy and hopeful, and it brings a matching one across my face.
“You are good at it,” I say. “You deserve this. So gods-damned much.”
“And—” Another sigh. Another wounded look. “I was worried it’d break us. That’s why I kept trying to figure out ways to makethis”—he points between us—“work before I told you. But I… it won’t work. What we are, how we are. When I go to Vegas.”
I almost offer to go with him.
“No,” I whisper. “It won’t.”
“It won’t,” Orok repeats, his eyes bloodshot. “I love you. You’ll always be one of the most important people in my life. But you don’t need me as much anymore, and I’m so glad for that.”
My arms unwind from my chest. “I need you, O. I’ll always—”
“But not as much.” His smile wobbles. “Not as much as I’ve needed you. Not in the same ways. And I… I need to stop needing you. We’ve both been clinging to what’s safe for too long, which is why—”
His eyes go to the floor.
“If you want to do what your dad said,” he whispers. “If you want to go after the people at Camp Merethyl. I’d back you, Seb.”
My chest lurches. “You’d be in the lawsuit, too. It happened to you, too.”
“But he’s your father.” Orok looks back up at me with a one-shouldered shrug. “It’s your family dynamic that’d be at the center of this. Although, I’d have money with this contract, too. To fund a lawsuit.”
“No.” I shove toward him. “This money, this opportunity, it’s your future, and like hell are you going to use even a cent of it for anything from our past. If we do it.”
Orok’s smile is lopsided. “We will. I think we need to.”
I want to argue. Deny it. We don’t need it. It’ll be messy and painful and dig up everything we’ve spent six years trying to forget.
But Orok takes my hand. “Watching you break out of our past this semester? Seeing you have a healthy relationship? Seeing you fall in love? It isn’t enough to ignore what happened. We owe it to ourselves, now and back then, tolive.”
Tears pour down my face and I barely get out a whimper before Orok snatches me into his arms. He trembles against me, crying, too, a sloppy hug that keeps us both from collapsing.
