Page 88 of Falling

Something in my chest plummeted to somewhere around my knees and the sudden rush of blood to my head left me deaf and dizzy for a few heartbeats.

“I’m n⁠—”

“Don’t,” Seth interrupted, pointing at the center of my chest, “lie to me. C’mon, you’re smarter than that.”

I swallowed.

I should’ve known Seth would know.

I hadn’t done a great job of hiding it, once I’d known Miles was okay with people knowing. I probably hadn’t done a great job before then. I hadn’t wanted to.

And Seth had always had an uncanny ability to read my mind. I’d always figured that was because my older brother was his soulmate. We weren’t the same people, Mark and me, but we were similar enough that knowing him meant, for someone as good with people as Seth was, knowing a lot more about me than might otherwise have been obvious.

Like the way I was when I was in love. Even though he’d never seen it before.

“The stage lost absolutely nothing when you bought a bar,” Seth said, tone kinder than the words might’ve implied alone. “You’re not fooling anyone. You’re definitely not fooling me.”

“No one ever does,” I said wryly, casting around for something to do with my hands that Seth wouldn’t call out as exactly that. I settled on grabbing the cloth again to clean the taps.

The way Seth’s eyes followed me told me I was transparent as the glass he was drinking out of. “So you didn’t tell him,” he spoke up, pausing to sip his drink.

“No,” I admitted, not meeting his eyes. The taps were already clean, but that didn’t stop me wiping imaginary grime off them. “My feelings aren’t his problem.”

Seth’s glass hit the bar with a thump. I risked glancing at him out of the corner of my eye and found his mouth hanging open.

I turned my attention back to the taps to give him a moment to recover.

“Booker,” he said, voice much firmer than before. “I… first of all, your feelings aren’t a problem. You’re not putting a burden on someone by telling them how you feel, and if they behave like you are, well, they’re an asshole. Miles isn’t an asshole so this is a moot point. Being loved is a gift. Especially being loved by you. There are people in this town who’d give a limb for someone like you to love them the way you so obviously do Miles.”

“You’ve said.” Or at least, he’d said words to that effect. The limb thing was, as far as I remembered, new.

“Because it’s true. Contrary to the rumors, I don’t actually say things recreationally. I’m saying this because I love you and I want you to be happy and I love Miles, too, actually, and I want him to be happy and frankly if I could wrap you in a bow and hand you over to him as a bribe to stay, I would.”

I took a breath to say not much of a bribe, but that’d just lead us down the path of Seth telling me I was, that I was worth having, that anyone would be lucky, etcetera.

Which was nice of him to say, but I was tired of hearing it.

The fact was, I wasn’t. At least, I wasn’t worth more than a once in a life time dream job opportunity. I wasn’t worth more than his career, which he clearly cared about. I couldn’t put any obstacle between Miles and the thing he wanted most in the world.

I couldn’t stand the thought of him staying because he wasn’t an asshole. Because he’d hear me say I loved him and want to cling to that because people had treated him badly before, at the cost of his dream.

If I loved him—and I did, I loved him with my whole heart, so much it was threatening to crack in two—then I’d let him go. Wasn’t that what Sting said?

Seth finished his drink while I wiped down the bar, pretending I’d found something stubborn on the edge of it so I could focus on that and not on him.

He set the glass down more quietly this time before standing and heading for the door.

“If he wants to go, I won’t do anything to stop him,” Seth said over his shoulder with one hand on the door handle. “You should give him all the information. Even if it’s as a parting gift. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

31

MILES

“Hey, Theo,” I said as Grinding’s resident chocolate labrador came to sit beside me while I waited, fingers cramping around my coffee mug, for Angela to arrive. He set his chin on my thigh, turned his big, soft eyes up to me, and sighed the heaviest sigh ever known to dog or man.

I wrenched one hand away from my coffee to scratch behind his ear, lips curving despite… everything as his tail started to wag.

Maybe I should get a dog. I wasn’t sure an apartment in Chicago was the ideal environment for one, though. Maybe a chihuahua? Although I had half an idea they were actually very high-energy. I supposed there were lazy dogs who’d be happy enough to sit around most of the day, although I suspected what I was mentally describing was actually a cat.