He wanted to say, I don’t exist without you. He wanted to say, Kiss me. But he had to step back, because he couldn’t be what Thomas wanted, and for that he was going to lose him completely. This was why they should have left it. Been whatever they were without words. He knew there was nothing wrong with intimate, platonic affection—but for him, under all his rotted and tremulous layers, there was nothing platonic about what he felt for Thomas. Andrew loved this boy so deep and whole and obsessively that he couldn’t breathe, and the weight of it terrified him. “I can’t.” Andrew tucked his
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