Page 53 of Spring Breakup
Leo was talking a thousand miles a minute about their adventures. He’d given Tyler two hugs in his excitement.
Once the hellos were out of the way, Leo plopped down at the table. “So what did you two get up to while we were gone?”
Dean sat down too. He was relaxed and smiling and manspreading all over the place. “Went on a few walks. Saw a moose. Watched a show calledBermuda Triangle of Loveand some of one calledThrouple Threatabout Broadway actors in a polycule. Met the other Rossi triplet. Enjoyed the hot tub. Tyler read a book. Honestly, it was nice and boring. Just what I needed.”
A strange, silent beat passed between Dean and Leo. Tyler suspected they had a whole, nonverbal conversation that he had no hopes of understanding.
“What’s wrong with you?” Leo asked Dean. “Are you all right?”
Dean’s gaze flicked so quickly toward Tyler that he almost thought he’d imagined it.
“I’m fine.” Dean laughed, and it sounded real, but Tyler knew with every fiber of his being that it wasn’t.
Leo frowned and leaned toward Dean. “Hey, let’s go upstairs to chat.”
Rosie observed the exchange, her mouth tight.
“I said I’m fine.” Dean cocked his head playfully, but anger—crystal-clear anger—flashed through his eyes, there and gone again in a flash.
An avalanche of realizations crashed through Tyler at once.
It was a mask, not a mind game. Dean’s mask was so practiced and so firmly in place that Tyler had missed it.
But Dean’s best friends hadn’t. Leo and Rosie had seen it immediately.
They could tell Dean’s veneer of nonchalance meant something was very, very wrong. That Dean was in pain.
Dean had all but asked Tyler to go steady on the shore of the lake, and Tyler had panicked and left Dean hanging because there no way Dean actually cared about him. No way it was anything but a sex-fueled holiday.
But the difference between Dean with his walls up versus down was stark.
Dean’s walls had been down for days, Tyler realized.
The late-night drawing of Tyler.
The way Dean looked at him like Tyler was leveling him just by being himself.
The sweet words and promises during sex that seemed to be about intimacy and connection and the future.
Dean claiming to beTyler’swhile in the hot tub with Sarg.
Oh God.
Tyler’s overactive mind provided him with moment after moment after moment where Dean had shown Tyler exactly who he was and exactly how good they could be together. How real they could be. He’d shown Tyler his authentic self.
He’d shown Tyler how much he cared.
Tyler hadn’t seen it until he was presented with how skilled Dean was at being fake. At pretending not to care about anything at all.
“You’ve got your insouciance dialed up to a ten, my friend,” Leo said lightly, handling Dean with kid gloves. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Dean was trying to protect himself from Tyler because Tyler was hurting him.
It was unbearable to Tyler. Intolerable.
“I’m going to fall for you,” Tyler blurted. He wasn’t even facing Dean when he said it. He was looking at Rosie, who froze with her hand halfway to her face. “If we keep seeing each other when we go home, I’m going to fall for you.”
He risked a glance at Dean, whose eyes were saucers.
