Page 31 of Chasing You

Maybe.

Hopefully.

If he was a very, very lucky man.

eight

KASH

The weekafter they were home, Kash spent his time doing his best to be cognizant of his behavior, but it wasn’t easy. His mobility was frustrating, his pain was making it so he had next to zero tolerance for even the smallest setbacks, and even noise was starting to set him off.

It was the first time he snapped at Gage that he realized it was a problem. Gage had been screwing around with one of his school friends in the kitchen, and when he dropped a pot, Kash lost it.

“If you were paying attention instead of flirting, you wouldn’t be making such a damn mess!” The words left his lips before he could stop them, but the pain in Gage’s face shattered him from the inside out.

He didn’t apologize. He couldn’t find the words. He escaped the kitchen as fast as his body would allow and locked the bedroom door behind him.

Adele came home two hours later and immediately began knocking on his door. Burying his face in his pillow, Kash refused to move, and he was unsurprised when heeventually heard his friend picking the lock. The door creaked open, but Adele didn’t come in.

“I’ll make some calls,” Kash murmured into the fabric beneath his face.

Adele cleared his throat. “About?”

“I know you know what happened.”

He heard a soft sigh, then feet shuffling over the floor as he finally let himself into the room. Kash braced himself for Adele’s body to slide alongside his the way he always did whenever Kash was upset, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Adele stopped a few feet away.

Kash knew he deserved it. He hadn’t earned comfort when he’d been such an asshole.

“Gage is freaking out.”

Kash swallowed heavily, then turned to face his friend. “Like I said, I’ll make some calls and find a new place to go.”

“Stop being dramatic, and quit throwing a pity party for yourself. You fucked up.”

Kash spoke against a dry, aching throat. “Yeah.”

“You scared Gage and then refused to come out and talk to him about it.”

“I can’t…I can’t keep this up,” Kash said. He balled his hands into fists. They were mostly functional, so he dug his nails into his palms to feel the pain. It wasn’t good for him, he knew, but it was grounding. “I didn’t mean to snap at him.”

“Yeah,” Adele said, rolling his eyes. “He knows that.” He froze, then dropped to his knees beside the bed. “Do you think I’m here because you snapped at a noisy, careless teenager?”

Kash blinked at him. “He didn’t deserve it.”

“Probably not, but you know that’s not going to traumatize him, right?” Kash said nothing, and Adele groanedas he dropped down to his ass and twisted so his back was resting against the bed frame. “God, do you have any idea how many times I’ve snapped at him? Taken bad days at work out on him? Not enough that he needs therapy, but enough that he knows adults are flawed human beings who don’t always have total emotional control.”

Kash squeezed his eyes shut. “This is…hard. It’s hard. Everything feels like it’s so much, and I don’t know how to make it easier, and the last thing I want to do is hurt the people I love.”

Adele’s hand reached up and groped around until it found Kash’s hair. He began to pet him, chaotically and recklessly, and in spite of himself, Kash burst into laughter.

“Stop!”

Adele turned with a grin and rested his chin on the mattress. Just inches, and they’d be kissing. Kash shoved that thought away. He’d been shoving a lot of thoughts away since the hotel room, and he was starting to wonder if maybe that was also part of the problem.

He wanted Adele with every fiber of his being. But with every atom in his mind, he knew he wasn’t the man Adele had ever wanted back. It was one thing to cross those small lines in the sand between lovers and friends, but it was another to expect strolling off into the sunset of forever and happily ever after and all that other romance bullshit.

And he was afraid to ask because he was afraid Adele would lie and say he wanted Kash the same way to make him happy. He’d already seen what Adele’s life was like when he resigned himself to settling for someone, and he wasn’t going to trap him in that life.

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