Page 69 of Oh, Sacred Dark
“Sure.”
They settled back to the same position after they had drank, although now Roman was facing him.
“Thank you,” Roman whispered. “For coming to get me.”
Tyler closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Roman…that’s not something you need to be thanking me for. I was…when I realised you were gone…” He shuddered, chin tucking down as if he wanted to hide his face from Roman.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry about how I acted before, when I—”
“That wasn’t you. There’s nothing to apologise for.”
Silence fell over them for a while. Roman tried to gather enough courage to speak. “I was trained as a Worm. When I was there.”
Tyler blinked at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s…my father taught me that I was something to be used. That I needed to obey. It was my only purpose. I shouldn’t have a mind of my own.”
Tyler’s face screwed up in disgust. “That’s bullshit. They weren’t even good enough to breathe the same air as you,” he spat.
“Yeah, well…they didn’t really do a good job. I could never truly accept that as my role. But I was scared. And when they began dipping into Chaos…I know you’re going to say it wasn’t my fault. But when they started using it, I didn’t even think to stop them. Do you get that? All I cared about was my own safety. Peopledied. Were tortured. Were used up and…”
Tyler gripped him closer. “I get what you’re saying. If I was in your position, maybe I’d feel the same. But seeing it from the outside…there can be a lot of victims in a crime, Ro. The truth of it is, you didn’t have the power to do anything. That’s it. The question of whether you did something or not doesn’t hinge on your, like, will to do it. You get what I’m saying? When you don’t have agency in a situation, it’s not something you do—it’s something that’s done to you.”
Roman let that percolate inside him. “It still feels like I did something wrong.”
“I get that. I do. But I’m never going to share that opinion. We have different views of what it means to be at fault in a situation. So…I’m sorry that happened to you, Ro. I’m sorry you had to go through that. And whether you accept it or not, I’m so, so proud of you. I’m so happy to have met you. I’m so happy to have you in my life.”
Roman buried his face against Tyler’s chest, overwhelmed, swallowed up by the feeling of those words. OfTylersaying them.
Reciprocal words stuck in his throat. Instead, he held Tyler close, not letting go for a long, long time.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TYLER
Tyler didn’t know how to deal with what had happened. Everybody seemed to settle in, returning to normal—even Roman seemed mostly unchanged. Maybe he had gone through enough to know how to handle it. Maybe it had been cathartic, in a way, having someone fault him for his past and then forgive him.
Maybe Roman was better at keeping it to himself.
Tyler wasn’t sure how to do that.
He helped Roman put his home back in order, sitting down on the couch afterwards as Roman told him why he had done it. How Tyler’s magic had burned.
“I think it was trying to protect me,” Roman said quietly. Tyler didn’t know whether to feel proud of his magic for doing that, or guilty it hadn’t succeeded.
Roman seemed more subdued in the following week, spending a lot of time curled up with Tyler, seeking him like a sunflower following the sun. Tyler was more than happy to provide the comfort, taking from it as much as he gave.
It was when Roman was out of his sight that things went sideways. Tyler would wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, a sense of urgency pulling at his skin. He’d clutch the sheets and convince himself that going over to Roman’s at that hour would be crazy. That he was being ridiculous. That Roman was safe.
Tyler was exhausted every morning. This one was especially bad, his eyes burning at the edges, mind foggy and splintered.
He stared at his phone, sending Roman a completely normal message. Waited with an aching gut until he responded.
He was fine. He was safe. Unless someone had gotten his phone and—
Tyler closed his eyes. He couldn’t keep doing this. He had to let it go. If Roman could get over beingkidnapped, Tyler could deal with his own overprotective bullshit.
The last thing Roman needed was a Dom hovering over him, being needy and suffocating. Despite how Roman was acting, he’d gone through something traumatising—somethingelsetraumatising, actually—and Tyler wasn’t going to add to it.
