Grounded (Up in the Air #3)(34)

“He doesn’t need space! He needs to talk to me, instead of running to you every time he’s upset!”

I started to move towards Javier, to do what, I wasn’t quite sure. Push him from the room? Get in his face? I honestly couldn’t say, but it didn’t matter. Stephan stopped me, clutching me close.

“Leave her out of it, Javier,” Stephan said, his voice toneless and quiet. I hated that tone, because I knew it hid a deep pain.

“No, you leave her out of it—“ Javier shouted back.

“Go, Javier. I have nothing to say to you right now, and I’ve heard what you have to say. Now leave us alone,” Stephan said, still in that alarmingly dead tone.

Javier visibly deflated. He turned and walked away.

Distractedly, I noted that James followed him out, closing the door softly behind them.

Stephan pulled me to a low couch, hugging me to him. I clutched him just as tightly as he did me. If he needed comfort, I needed just as badly to give it to him. He was hurting, and I hurt with him. We had never been able to maintain any level of detachment from each other’s suffering, and we didn’t now.

I stroked my hands through his soft wavy hair over and over, not speaking, just comforting and waiting. If he needed to tell me, he would tell me. I wouldn’t pry.

We hugged like that for a long time, my face buried in his neck, his in my hair, before he spoke in a whisper into my ear. “I told him that I loved him yesterday,” he said finally.

I tried not to tense, tried to stay comforting, relaxing, waiting for him to go on, but I didn’t imagine he’d have good news after that. The I love you obviously hadn’t been met with a positive response.

“He told me that he needed more time to know his feelings, that I was moving too fast. He said he wasn’t sure he could trust me yet, with our history and all. I tried not to be hurt by that, even though it felt like a rejection.”

He didn’t speak for a while. I stroked his hair, rubbed his back.

“I shook it off pretty good, I thought. I could give him time. We have time, yanno? Maybe I was rushing. But then we went out tonight. To Melvin’s bar. Not my idea, but I didn’t figure there’d be a problem. And there wasn’t. At least not on Melvin’s end. Melvin was completely civil, friendly even. Javier took exception to the friendly. He asked me if I’d gone out with Melvin. I said yeah, briefly. He went into a jealous tantrum. I went to the bathroom. When I came back out, I found Javier pinned to the wall, being kissed by Vance. He wasn’t exactly putting up a fight. I left. Javier followed me here.”

“He was mad at me. He had the nerve to turn it around on me, said I was overreacting. I hate this. I just can’t take this kind of stuff, the jealousy and the disloyalty. I’d rather be alone than deal with all of that.”

“I can’t make him love me,” he continued, an awful quaver in his voice. My tear ducts responded accordingly, producing a dreaded tear like a button had been pushed. “I’ve been down that road. Before I met you, that was all I knew. I did everything I could think of to make my family love me, but in the end, they said that I was toxic, and un-savable, and they thought that I was scum. I won’t do that again, won’t be that pathetic kid who can’t make someone love them, not even for Javier.”

“Oh, Stephan,” I whispered, crying like a baby now, because he was crying, and because there was no distance between his pain and my heart. “You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. There is nothing ugly inside of you, nothing bad. If he can’t love you, if he doesn’t already, it can only be because he’s not worthy of your love. You don’t need to try to make anyone love you ever again. You’re the most lovable person I know.”

“I’m not, Bee. My own family threw me away. There has to be something wrong with me. They didn’t throw the other kids away. It was only me, and I tried my hardest—“ he was crying too hard to finish. I was right there with him. We held each other and cried like babies. The tears seemed to be flowing more freely these days. The stoic, hard-eyed street kids we’d once been would have been ashamed.

“I love you so much,” I said quietly into his ear when the tears had passed. “I wouldn’t have survived without you. You saved me in so many ways. You still do, every day. I’m not sure I’d even be capable of loving another person if you hadn’t come along when you did. I was so numb inside, so resigned to just watching my life play out in one horrible episode after another, until one of those episodes finally ended me for good.”

He whimpered, squeezing me so tightly that I had to pause for a moment.

“You saved me from so many horrible things,” I continued. “You kept me from having to make so many of the hard choices that a girl would have to make living out on the street. You were a teenage boy, but you provided for me better, and loved me better, than some parents do for their own children.”

“Oh, Bee,” he whispered.

“We met in the gutter,” I continued, “but even there, you shone like a light in the dark for me. You were the only good thing in my life, but you were so good that I knew it had all evened out. All of the bad was balanced because I got you out of it. Even jaded and abused and dead inside, I saw that clearly. If Javier can’t see it, trust me, he’s not worthy of your love.”

He kissed my forehead.