Chapter One

For the courageous ones who aren’t afraid to love wholeheartedly, even if it’s unrequited.

BEFORE

LAWSON

“Tell me you feel it too.”

Griffin’s words hang between us, too heavy for the room.

Too fucking heavy for me.

I stare at him, waiting for something to happen that will make this make sense. For him to laugh. Shake his head. Punch me in the shoulder and call me an asshole for actually believing him.

Anything.

Because this is Griffin.

My Griffin.

My best friend for more than twenty years. The guy who knows every shitty thing I’ve ever done and somehow still answers when I call. The guy who’s been beside me through broken bones, busted lips, bad fights, worse decisions, funerals, women, hangovers, and every other fucked-up piece of my life.

And he’s standing in front of me looking at me like I’m holding his heart in my hands.

Maybe I am.

“Grif…”

“Don’t.” His voice cracks. “Don’t fucking do that.”

“Do what?”

“Say my name like you already feel sorry for me.”

Fuck.

I drag a hand over my face.

“I don’t feel sorry for you.”

“Then tell me.”

His eyes hold mine.

There’s desperation there, but there’s hope too.

That’s the part that guts me.

Because I know what I’m about to do to it.

“Tell me you feel it too,” Griffin argues again, stepping closer. “Tell me I haven’t imagined all of this. Tell me there’s been something between us all these years and I’m not the only fucking idiot who felt it.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

How the hell do you break somebody’s heart when you love them?

Because I do love Griffin.

I fucking love him.

I’d take a punch for him. A bullet. I’d bury a body for the bastard without asking whose body it was or why the fuck it needed burying.

But not like this.

Never like this.

And judging by the look on his face, he already knows.

“I’m sorry.” The words scrape their way out of me. “I wish I could tell you that I love you the way you want me to, but I don’t. Not like that.”

His jaw tightens.

I hate myself for continuing, but lying would be worse.

“I love you, Grif. You know I fucking do. But I’m not in love with you.”

His eyes drop to the floor.

And just like that, I feel like the biggest asshole alive.

Not because I’ve done something wrong.

Because I haven’t.

Neither has he.

Maybe that’s what makes it worse.

There’s nobody to blame.

No betrayal. No lie. No drunken mistake we can wake up tomorrow and pretend never happened.

Just the truth.

His truth.

And mine.

Two truths that don’t fucking match.

I’m still trying to process what he told me. My best friend of more than twenty years is in love with me.

I didn’t even know Griffin liked men.

Not that it matters.

That isn’t the part fucking with my head.

The part I can’t understand is how I missed it.

How could I know a man for practically my entire life and not know something this big?

Griff fucked women.

Lots of women.

Hell, half our twenties were spent competing over who could get a phone number first. I’ve watched women walk out of his bedroom wearing yesterday’s clothes and that satisfied little smile people get when they know damn well what everyone else is thinking.

Never once did I question it.

Never once did he give me a reason to.

Or maybe he did and I just didn’t see it.

Maybe there were signs everywhere and I was too wrapped up in my own shit to notice.

“I’ve loved you my whole life.”

My attention snaps back to him.

Griffin looks destroyed.

Not crying.

I almost wish he were.

Tears I could handle.

This quiet devastation is something else entirely.

“I’ve loved you my whole fucking life, Lawson. With all of me.”

My chest constricts.

“Grif—”

“No. You wanted to know. Now you fucking know.”

He laughs, but there isn’t anything funny in the sound.

“I stayed because of you.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means exactly what I said.”

He finally looks at me again.

“If you really don’t feel the way I do, then I don’t have a reason to stay here anymore.”

A cold feeling settles in my stomach.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m leaving.”

“What?”

“I’ll be gone by morning.”

He turns away.

For half a second, I’m too stunned to move.

Then instinct kicks in.

“Griffin.”

He keeps walking.

“Grif.”

Nothing.

He reaches his bedroom door, and I catch his arm before he can disappear behind it.

He freezes.

I immediately loosen my grip.

“You don’t have to leave.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you fucking don’t.” I move around until he has no choice but to look at me. “This changes nothing between us.”

His expression twists.

And I realize instantly that I’ve said exactly the wrong thing.

“Nothing?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, Lawson. I really fucking don’t.”

“You’re still my best friend.”

His eyes close.

“You’re my brother,” I continue desperately. “You’re family. Fuck, Grif, you are my family. Nothing you just told me changes that.”

“It changes everything.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes.” His voice rises. “It fucking does.”

I step back.

Griffin almost never yells at me.

We’ve fought before. Hell, we’ve thrown punches before. But this isn’t anger.

This is pain.

And somehow that’s worse.

“We can’t go back to what we were,” he says, quieter now. “Don’t lie to yourself because you’re scared of losing me.”

That shuts me up.

“Knowing I love you changes things for us, Lawson. Every time I look at you, you’re going to wonder what I’m thinking. Every time I touch you, you’re going to question what it means. Every time you bring some woman home, you’re going to wonder if it’s hurting me.”

My stomach drops.

Because the bastard is right.

“And I’ll know you’re wondering,” he continues. “So then I’ll start watching everything I say. Everything I do. Every fucking look I give you. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to convince you I’m over something I’ve spent most of my life hiding.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“Then give it some fucking time.”

“I’ve given it twenty years!”

The words explode from him.

Silence follows.

Neither of us moves.

Twenty years.

Jesus Christ.

I think back over all of them.

Being kids and riding our bikes until the streetlights came on.

Sneaking beer from his dad’s refrigerator when we were too young to know how fucking awful cheap beer tasted.

The first time I got my heart broken and Griffin sat beside me on the hood of my car until nearly sunrise without saying a word because he knew I didn’t want to talk.

Every fight.

Every celebration.

Every woman.

Every mistake.

He was there.

Always.

And apparently somewhere in all those years, he was loving me in a way I never understood.

“How long?” I ask.

Griffin looks away.

“How long have you known?”

“That I love you?”

I nod.

He swallows.

“A long fucking time.”

“How long?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

His laugh is bitter.

“Why?”

“Because you’re my best friend and apparently there’s an entire part of your life I knew nothing about.”

His eyes flash.

“You think this was easy for me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You think I wanted to lie to you?”

“I didn’t say that either.”

“I was fucking terrified.”

That stops me.

His shoulders sag.

“For years, Lawson.”

The anger leaves his voice.

What remains is so raw I almost wish he’d start yelling again.

“I was terrified that if you knew who I really was, I’d lose you.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I fucking do.”

“No.” Griffin shakes his head. “You know who you are now. You don’t know who you would’ve been at sixteen. Or eighteen. Or twenty-one.”

I want to argue.

I can’t.

Because he’s right.

I’m not biased against men loving men. Or women loving women. Or anyone loving whoever the hell they love.

I don’t give a shit.

Life is hard enough without people deciding who somebody else is allowed to love.

But maybe Griffin didn’t know that about me when we were kids.

Maybe I never gave him a reason to know.

“I could’ve kept my mouth shut,” he says. “I tried. God knows I fucking tried. But it was killing me being around you while lying to you and lying to myself.”

My chest aches.

“Then why now?”

He looks at me.

Really looks at me.

And I swear I see every year of our friendship in his face.

“Because I couldn’t do it anymore.”

His answer is barely louder than a whisper.

“I couldn’t keep watching you search for something with everyone else while some stupid part of me kept thinking maybe one day you’d look at me and finally see it.”

Fuck.

“Grif…”

“I know how pathetic that sounds.”

“It doesn’t sound pathetic.”

“It feels pathetic.”

“It’s not.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“No,” I say. “But I get to tell you that loving somebody isn’t something you should be ashamed of.”

His face crumples for half a second before he gets control of it.

“Even when they don’t love you back?”

My throat tightens.

“I do love you.”

“Not the same way.”

“No.”

One word.

One fucking word, and I watch it hurt him all over again.

I wish I could change my answer.

Not because I want him.

Because I don’t.

And that’s the goddamn problem.

I wish I could give him what he wants because Griffin has given me more than almost anyone in my life.

Loyalty.

Friendship.

Family.

Twenty years.

But love doesn’t work like a debt.

You can’t repay someone’s heart by handing them yours out of obligation.

That wouldn’t be love.

That would be cruelty dressed up as kindness.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“I know.”

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

“I know that too.”

“Then don’t leave.”

He looks at me for a long time.

“I have to.”

“No.”

“Lawson.”

“No.” I shake my head. “You don’t get to drop this shit on me and disappear. Be pissed at me. Hate me for a while if you need to. Punch me in the fucking face. God knows you’ve done it before.”

The corner of his mouth almost moves.

Almost.

I grab onto that tiny reaction like it means something.

Like maybe I can save this.

“Stay,” I say. “We’ll figure it out.”

“That’s the problem with you.”

“What?”

“You always think you can fix everything.”

“I’m trying to fix us.”

“There isn’t an us to fix.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“It’s the truth.”

He pulls his arm away.

“I’m not leaving because I hate you. I’m leaving because I love you.”

I stare at him.

“And staying here means waking up every day hoping you’ll change your mind. It means torturing myself every time you smile at me or hug me or tell me you love me because some pathetic part of me will try to make it mean more than it does.”

His eyes shine now.

Mine probably do too.

Fuck if I care.

“I can’t do that anymore.”

“So that’s it?”

“For now.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means I need to figure out who I am when I’m not standing next to you.”

That one lands somewhere deep.

Because I don’t know who the fuck I am without Griffin standing next to me either.

We’ve always been Lawson and Griffin.

Griffin and Lawson.

Two dumbass kids who grew into two dumbass men and somehow managed to survive everything life threw at us.

Together.

There was never supposed to be a version where one of us left.

“I’m not going to stay,” he says. “Because if I do, every day I’m around you I’ll regret telling you the truth. And I don’t want to regret it.”

He reaches for the door.

“I don’t want to regret finally being honest about who I am.”

My hand falls uselessly to my side.

“I can’t pretend this never happened,” he says. “I can’t pretend I don’t feel this way. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”

“Griffin.”

“In time, I’ll be okay.”

I fucking hate those words.

Because they sound like goodbye.

Maybe because they are.

He steps into his room.

“Grif.”

He stops but doesn’t turn around.

“I meant what I said.”

Silence.

“You’re my family.”

His shoulders rise with a slow breath.

“And if you need to leave, then leave. If you need space, take it. If you need to hate me for a while—”

“I could never hate you.”

My throat closes.

Griffin finally looks over his shoulder.

That’s when I see it.

Not anger.

Not embarrassment.

Not regret.

Love.

Pure, painful, unconditional fucking love.

The kind everyone spends their entire life hoping someone will give them.

And somehow I’m standing here wishing he’d given it to somebody else.

Somebody who could return it.

“I hope somebody loves you the way you deserve someday,” I tell him.

His smile is fucking heartbreaking.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Me too.”

Then he closes the door.

The click of the lock sounds louder than the slam ever could.

I stand there staring at it.

Waiting.

For what, I don’t know.

For him to open it again?

For him to tell me he changed his mind?

For the last fifteen minutes to rewind so I can go back to the moment before everything changed?

Nothing happens.

Eventually, I walk to my own room.

I don’t sleep.

I lie there staring at the ceiling, replaying every second of our lives together, searching for things I missed.

Every hug.

Every drunken love you, brother.

Every time Griffin stayed when everyone else left.

Every girlfriend who complained that Griffin came first.

Every holiday.

Every birthday.

Every fight.

Every goddamn memory looks different now.

And I hate that.

Because Griffin was right.

Knowing changes things.

Even when you don’t want it to.

Sometime around three in the morning, I hear movement in his room.

Drawers opening.

Closet doors sliding.

A suitcase zipper.

Each sound tears something loose inside my chest.

I could get up.

I could knock.

I could ask him one more time not to go.

But what would I really be asking?

Stay here and keep loving me even though I can’t love you back.

I can’t do that to him.

So I stay in bed.

And I listen to my best friend pack twenty years of our lives into a fucking suitcase.

Eventually, everything goes quiet.

I must fall asleep sometime after that because the next thing I know sunlight is cutting through my blinds.

My eyes open.

For one beautiful, stupid second, I forget.

Then I see the time.

8:17.

“Fuck.”

I’m out of bed before I’m fully awake.

“Griffin!”

I yank open my bedroom door.

His door is already open.

The room is empty.

Bed made.

Closet half bare.

The stupid framed picture of us from when we were seventeen is gone from his dresser.

My heart starts beating harder.

“Grif?”

Nothing.

I search the apartment even though I already know.

Kitchen.

Living room.

Bathroom.

Nothing.

Then I see his key sitting on the counter.

Just his key.

No dramatic note.

No long goodbye.

No explanation.

He said everything last night.

I pick it up.

The metal is still cold.

And for the first time since Griffin told me he loved me, I understand something I hadn’t been able to understand while he was standing in front of me.

Love doesn’t always mean staying.

Sometimes loving someone means knowing when you have to leave them.

Sometimes telling the truth costs you the person you were most afraid of losing.

And sometimes somebody can love you with everything they have—

and it still won’t be enough to make you love them the same way.

Griffin and I grew up together.

We were practically born to be best friends.

Twenty years of friendship brought us here.

To an empty bedroom.

A key on a counter.

And a silence so fucking loud I can barely breathe through it.

I close my fist around the key.