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Auden couldn’t speak. The hum in his ears grew louder, more insistent.Stop. Stop. Stop.
“Part of me wanted to push you away from that, to challenge it,” Len said, “but that’s because I thought you couldn’t be yourself in that life. But I was wrong. Seeing you with O’Neal, I saw that I was wrong.”
Auden pressed his fingers against the now throbbing spot behind his brow bone. Something deep inside him had gone frantic, panicked, ready to shatter.
Lennox gave him a resigned smile. “O’Neal is fantastic. And, shefits.You love each other. She’s kinky. You’d make your family happy, bringing home a smart, respectable girl they already like.” He sniffed. “Well, your sister may murder you first. But when she got over that, you could have a storybook life there when you’re done with school, while still getting what you both need behind closed doors. Best of both worlds. No one disappointed.”
No one disappointed? What the actual fuck?His brain came back online in a rush, too many responses surfacing at once, and he made a garbled sound of disbelief. “When have Ievergiven you the impression I’m looking for a storybook life back home?”
“Come on. You’re going to go back home. You always were. You and your family don’t agree on everything, but you love them too much to hurt them.” Len rubbed at the pencil smudges on his fingers—a tell. He wasn’t as chill about this as he was trying to project. “All I’m saying is that O’Neal is…she’s good for you. And I think you could be good for her. And not just in a ‘makes your families happy’ kind of way. In a real way. She’s got the image you need for your outside world, but in private, matches up with the parts of yourself you keep secret. She also isn’t afraid to go toe to toe with you—which you need, believe me. You two make perfect sense.”
Len glanced up, resigned.
“So right now,I’mthe only complication in this equation. I don’t doubt that O’Neal cares about me on some level, but what she did with us wasfor you.So she may be running in part because she’s too nice to hurt my feelings or she’s overwhelmed by the thought of managing two guys. She wantsyou.So simplify the math for her. Leave me out of it and get the girl. Get the happy ending.”
Leave me out of it.The words made Auden’s skin go clammy. He’d never had a panic attack, but he imagined this was what the beginning of one felt like. He breathed through the anxiety.
“What and you just go on your merry way?” Auden asked. “Go hop in other people’s beds? Just be our friend who comes over for movie nights?”
Len made a dismissive sound. “I mean, I guess. Long term, it’s not like it could turn out any other way. Whether it’s O’Neal or someone else down the line, that’s where this was always going once school ended. Your dad’s business is waiting. Your family is waiting. You’re their golden boy. You’re not exactly going to roll into town with a harem. You couldn’t even roll in with a boyfriend. What we’ve been doing always had an end.”
Auden sat on the back of the couch. Len’s speech had knocked the wind out of him. The things Len was saying were, of course, thoughts he’d had before. He knew what kind of life was waiting for him at home. Who he was here couldn’t be who he was there. But he’d never let himself think about how this would end. Hearing it come out of Len’s mouth, imagining Len just being some friend he saw on occasion sent a wash of deep, sickening grief through him.
“Lennox…”
“I’m just the third, Aud,” he said, a somber edge to his voice. “Expendable.”
Expendable.
Expendable?
“The fuck you are,” Auden blurted.
Len gripped the back of his neck with both hands, his tattoos rippling with the movement. “Don’t make this harder. I’m trying to be decent here. I can’t compete with what you could have with O’Neal. I won’t. I care about you too much to get in the way of that. You and O’Neal both deserve to be happy.”
Auden’s gaze drifted over Len’s face, down his bare torso to the tattooed words from the W. H. Auden poem, and an ache went through him. “And what do you deserve?”
His lip curled. “I’m already playing on house money. I’ve gotten more than I ever expected. I’m not going to press my luck.”
“She has feelings for you too, you know?” Auden said, tone careful. “Hell, sometimes I think she likes you better than me.”
Lennox laughed softly. “Well, can’t blame her. You can be a dick. And have you seen me?”
The joke took some of the edge off the sadness moving through Auden. “I have seen you. And she’s not wrong.”
Len’s gaze flicked to his, wariness there.
Auden gripped the top of the couch, trying to steel himself for what he needed to say. “I’m not going to lie. My head is completely scrambled with all this. But I do know a few things for sure.” His throat was on fire, the words burning there. “One is that you’re not expendable to me.”
“Aud—”
“You’re fuckingnon-negotiable.”
Len’s nostrils flared, but his gaze remained guarded.
“This big plan you have is utter bullshit,” he said, voice hard. “Because if you walk out of my life or just become some old college buddy I see every now and then…it will punch a hole right through me. One that would never be able to be stitched up.” He blinked back hot tears that were trying to form and looked at his best friend with as much honesty as he’d ever shown him. “So stop fucking acting like you don’t matter to me.”
Len’s natural fidgeting stopped, his body going stock-still.
