Page 24 of Doors & Windows
“Us,”Jonah echoed, desperate to taste the word for himself.
“What we have has always been real to me,” Liam said. “But I want to be able to define it. I want tocall itsomething real, too.”
It was everything Jonah wanted. It was everything he feared. These two truths stood in tandem, hand inhand, each one nonexistent without the other. He was being offered the love of Liam Cassidy, and the risk of losing it. Jonah had never been taught how to hold something precious like this; it felt slippery in his fingers. In his limited history, love was a fleeting thing, never his to hold for long, always caught on a condition.
Liam had already spent the better part of a year teaching him how to swallow love in smaller doses, and even then it had been beyond the scope of his understanding. He didn’t know if his body could hold this much at once.
“You want to be my boyfriend?”
Liam smiled, wry and nervous. “We can talk about labels. But I want a relationship with you, yes. A romantic one. If that’s what you want, too.”
Wantwasn’t a big enough word for it. Words were rarely big enough when it came to how he felt about Liam.
“I want to be fair to you,” Jonah said. “You’ve never been in a relationship like this. You deserve…”Better. More.“Liam, what happened the other night…”
“If this is about sex,” Liam said, uncharacteristically blunt, “and whether or not you think that’s on the table right now, or ever… Jonah, that’s not a big deal.”
White static filled all the spaces inside Jonah’s brain where a response might have formed. He pushed the words apart and back together again, trying to make sense of them.
“Maybe that didn’t come out right,” Liam said. “I… No, sorry. Having sex with you would be avery big dealto me. That’s not what I’m trying to… I’m not trying to diminish the weight that would hold. I’m just trying to say that sex, in general, has never been that important to me.”
It was so completely the opposite of everything Jonah had come to learn about the rules of attraction. Men had taught him, over and over, that his body was a non-negotiable in the bargain of their interest. Even the ones who were nice to him. Even the ones he thought might have cared on some level. Even Dominic. That was just the way the world worked. For some, what he could do with his body was theonly thingthat mattered.
It shouldn’t have surprised him that Liam was different from the others, even in this. He wanted to understand. Jonah took half a step back without releasing Liam’s hand; he didn’t want to put distance between them so much as he wanted to be able to read Liam’s face more clearly. “Are you not interested in any of it?” Jonah asked. “What we’ve done already, was that…? I would never want to push you to do something you don’t like.”
The idea twisted in his stomach like barbed wire. Suddenly Jonah found himself less concerned with what theyhadn’tdone and more worried about what theyhad. He mentally combed through every second from his bedroom, from Liam’s old bedroom all those months ago, trying to remember if there had been any signs he overlooked, any hesitation he had misread. After all the care Liam had shown him, if Jonah had been the one to inadvertently cross a boundary—
“No! God, sorry. I’m saying this all wrong. I’ve never really… tried to put this into words before.” Liam took a breath. “Let me make something very clear: I’ve loved every second of what we’ve done together. And I’m…” He rubbed the back of his neck, pink rising beneath his skin. “I’m very open to doing more. With you. If you want. Butonlyif you want. I’m just trying to say it’s not a dealbreaker, okay? Not for me.”
At the soft tug of his hand, Jonah let himself be pulled back into Liam’s space, nodding his assent when Liam raised his arms to wrap around Jonah’s shoulders. Their foreheads touched, breaking away only quick enough for Liam to place a chaste kiss on the tip of his nose.
“This could be enough for me,” Liam said, placing his palm over Jonah’s heart. “Youare enough for me, just as you are.”
Jonah let the words wash over him again and again. He let them run like river water over the jagged stone of his heart, hoping one day it would be smooth to the touch. Looking in Liam’s eyes, this close to their brilliant green, Jonah had no choice but to believe him.
“Boyfriends, huh?” Jonah said.
There was a fleck of half-dried paint on the peak of Liam’s cheekbone. Testing these newfound grounds of their relationship, Jonah pressed his thumb to the blemish and dragged it under his eye. He laughed when all it did was spread the streak of lavender further across his skin.
“I like the sound of that,” Liam said. Jonah didn’t know if he meant the sound ofboyfriendsor the sound of Jonah’s laugh, but it didn’t matter, because then they were kissing against the backdrop of their ownprivate sunset, and nothing in the world mattered but that.
Jonah snaked his arm around Liam’s waist and pulled him close, no tolerance for even an inch of space between their bodies. Liam acquiesced like putty in his hands, melting into him.
“Can I just say?” Liam broke away after a minute, breathless and close. “Now that we’ve made things official? This whole construction worker thing”—his hands slid down from Jonah’s shoulders to his arms, where the hems of his sleeves pulled taut against newly defined muscle—“isreallyworking for me.”
It was so unexpectedly brazen; a new flavor from someone usually so shy and sweet. The laugh that it pulled from Jonah was pure elation. He felt high off the rush. Chasing that feeling, Jonah spun them around, keeping Liam carefully away from the balcony’s ledge, and bent down to hook his hands under Liam’s thighs. Liam let out a squeal, all surprise and delight, as he was lifted off the ground.
“Is that so?” Jonah asked. His pulse beat against his sweat-sticky throat, so much wild joy in his body that he didn’t know what to do with it. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Liam’s fingers dug into his shoulders, scrabbling for purchase as he locked his ankles behind Jonah’s back. He was giggling—there was no other word for the heady sound bubbling out of him, like fresh-popped champagne spilling over Jonah’s own mouth.
It was a clumsy stumble back through the open sliding door, Jonah’s foot nearly catching on the lip of the frame. He clutched hard at Liam’s thighs, refusingto break the stride of their kiss as he spun them again, pressing Liam’s back to the wall opposite the mural.
The lavender paint was still damp, staining into their clothes on contact, but Jonah didn’t care. Not when those long legs were wrapped around his waist, hands in his hair, Liam’s weight like an anchor keeping him tethered to earth.
“For the record,” Jonah whispered. “I do. Want more with you.”
“Whatever you’re willing to give,” Liam said. “That’s what I want.”
