Doyle’s eyebrows drew together, the glint in his bright eyes gone like storm clouds had vanquished the sun. He took a step back, motioning with both hands in irritation, saying, “Evie, you can’t be—”
Larkin said loudly, bluntly, over him, “I love you.”
Doyle stilled. He turned to look at Larkin again.
In June of 2002, Larkin had gone to an amusement park with Patrick while staying at the Hamptons with his parents for summer vacation. They’d spent two tickets each to ride the Gravitron—and with their backs pressed against the walls of the spinning ride, the floor dropping out from under their feet, Larkin had, for a moment, been weightless. He’d closed his eyes and imagined he was a baby bird flying from the nest, a balloon that’d slipped from the grasp of a child, anything that would get him out of there—out of this life that had been preconceived and strictly controlled by parents who’d only wanted a trophy to flaunt, to the detriment of the boy who yearned to one day grow into an autonomous man.
For eighty seconds, Larkin had been in control of his own destiny.
He’d been free.
But when the ride had come to an end, when his feet touched the ground, when the weight of Larkin’s world slammed back into him like a meteor hitting Earth, he’d cried.
He’d cried as they walked out of the Gravitron, and he’d cried when Patrick bought him a soda, and he’d cried even harder when Patrick asked how he could make Larkin feel better because he didn’t know what to do. Larkin had kissed Patrick that night—the two of them behind the carnival game tents, the air smelling like imminent rain and hot grease and the powdered sugar used for funnel cakes. Larkin had admitted his longtime crush, his boyish first love, his puppylike innocence.
Patrick had returned the sentiments.
And on August 2, they’d gone camping by the lake.
Larkin blinked a few times to shoo the encroaching memory away.
Doyle still stood in front of him.
Not Patrick.
Doyle.
And wasn’t that something?
They had found each other. An affluent, private school kid from the Upper East Side and a poor public school boy barely scraping by in Hell’s Kitchen—both tormented by abuse and trauma and guilt like a stain that couldn’t be scrubbed away—they had crossed paths at the most unlikely of intersections, and they’d both known.
Since that moment.
This was different.
From anything else.
And like the floor was dropping out from underfoot again, like Larkin was weightless again, the remorse that’d been infecting the small undergrowth of beauty in his soul for eighteen years glimpsed the sunshine born from Doyle’s smile, and Larkin felt…free.
“I love you,” Larkin said again. “I should have told you last night. I should have told you every night.”
Doyle stepped close, his thighs pressed to Larkin’s knees from where he still sat on the stool. His eyes were wet, and the muscles in his neck were tense. Doyle cleared his throat before saying, “I feel like I’ve waited forty years to hear someone say that.” He took Larkin’s face into his hands, affectionately rubbing his smooth jawline. “And I’m so glad it was you.”
Larkin murmured, “There’s a sense of partnership with you that I’ve never felt with anyone else—not Noah, not Patrick. And it’s not that you make me whole. It’s that you make me better. You remind me that I’m alive.” Larkin wrapped his hands around Doyle’s wrists. “I want to be those things for you too.”
Doyle unexpectedly burst into tears. He leaned down, kissed Larkin, and said against his lips, “I love you. I love you so much.” Another kiss. “Since the day we met—I knew I was in love.”
Larkin thumbed away tears from Doyle’s face.
Doyle took a step back, hastily wiping his cheeks with the heel of his hand.
Larkin tugged his yellow, white, and black pocket square in an abstract, swirl design from his coat and held it out.
Doyle shook his head. “It’s silk.”
“Fair is fair.”
With a smile as delicate as a bead of dew on a blade of grass, Doyle accepted the pocket square. He dried his eyes with one corner and said in a steadier voice, “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting to hear that.”
