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“‘M sorry,” he mumbles, twisting to bury his nose in my neck. It tickles, and I feel him smile into my shoulder when I jerk at the contact.
“Don’t be sorry, Loh. Assfaces will be assfaces.”
He wraps an arm around my torso and nods. “Always protecting me.”
“Of course. I love you.”
He makes a soft, croaking sound in the back of his throat and drapes one of his legs over mine, effectively acting like a Shiloh blanket. “Love you too, Atty.”
And then he’s out again, snoring in my ear and resting all of his weight on me. It’s fine, though. Shiloh is right: I’ll always protect him.
When he cried about his new home at five years old and missing his mom. When he told me at ten that he liked girls. At thirteen when he said he was a boy. When he got his first dose of testosterone. At the doctor’s office for his surgery consultation.
Supporting and protecting Shiloh has been my whole life. He’s my family.
I’d never do anything to hurt him.
Chapter 2
Atlas
I’m not sure how long I sit there with Shiloh wrapped around me, but at some point the noise from the house fades out, and I rest my head back on the fence for just a moment.
When Shiloh and I were kids, we used to camp outside my trailer in some of my siblings’ sleeping bags. We lived out in the middle of nowhere, so there weren’t many of those pesky light posts like they had closer to the city. There was one down the road that flickered all the time, but for the rest of the trailer park, when the sky got dark so did everything else.
I liked to stare out into the nothingness, appreciating the silence, the vastness above. All those little lights in the sky, billions of them with all the room in the world. They weren’t stuffed between two older siblings and two younger ones.
Shiloh loved making shapes with the stars. He loved coming up with the wackiest things he could see. He always said one day he was going to map a path out of there—away from the father who stopped caring about him sometime between the gay-to-trans realization period.
Away from feeling like a burden to his brother, who got a job at fifteen to afford Shiloh’s medications and a therapist. Who knew state insurance would still have such a shit copay on mental health?
“He says he’s not going to college. Has to take care of us. Dad and me. He can’t stay, Atty.”
Since both of my older brothers had moved out and I had the room to myself, I convinced my parents to let Shiloh move in with us. That way Blair—Shiloh’s brother—knew he was safe and taken care of. His dad didn’t really care, was more than happy to lose two mouths to feed, and Shiloh practically packed Blair’s bags himself.
Two years later, Shiloh and I went off to school ourselves. The only real university around willing to give out pity scholarships to two kids from the boonies.
“Atlas? Hey, bud, can you wake up for me?”
My head spins when I try to open my eyes, so I throw an arm over them while I wait for the black mass in my mind to stop swirling like a tilt-a-whirl.
“There you are. Let’s get you two home.”
When I’m sure I can peer out without puking, I crack my eyes open. At first, the world is only darkness, but the headlights of a car shining a few feet away break up the monotony, and I turn my head to find someone crouched on the ground beside me.
I tighten my arm around Shiloh, protective nature jumping into gear no matter how off kilter I feel, but a comforting, familiar touch on my shoulder settles me.
“It’s just me.”
‘Me’ is a man. Dark hair that fans around his neck and blends with the hoodie he wears. Deep brown eyes that are close enough I could count the little flecks of green swimming in them.
“Blair.” I relax my hold on Shiloh, but we’re so tangled that it doesn’t matter. “What are you doing here?”
“A friend told me my brother passed out at a party. I figured you might could use a hand.”
“You might could be right.” I chuckle as I try to free myself from Shiloh’s koala-like cuddle, and Blair helps until we can gently lay him on his side in the grass while the left side of my body wakes up.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, watching the rise and fall of my best friend’s chest. “We got carried away.”
