Peter Cabot Gets Lost (The Cabots, #2)

by Cat Sebastian

If Peter couldn’t see his way to going to graduate school without his family’s stamp of approval, then he certainly couldn’t stay in California, nor could he stay with Caleb. Which Caleb already knew, of course. He knew this. It shouldn’t feel like a blow to the gut every time he thought about it.

The problem, Caleb very much suspected, was that he couldn’t quite imagine a universe in which he deserved a person as generous and kind as Peter in his life, let alone his heart.

Peter caught himself staring at Caleb even more than usual, as if memorizing the precise upward tilt of his nose or the degree to which his freckles had multiplied would keep him close. He suspected that Caleb was doing something similar, because he kept staring at Peter with something like confused indignation.

There were a million things Peter wanted to say, but it was too soon, and the past week had been so divorced from reality that Peter worried Caleb wouldn’t think anything Peter said counted for much. But Peter knew how he felt—he might not have been any good at processing emotions that weren’t in the neighborhood of guilt, shame, and anxiety, but he knew what it felt like to be overwhelmingly fond of someone. He knew he wanted to keep Caleb near him, not only in his life, but within arm’s reach.

Peter wasn’t sure whether there was anything Caleb could say at this point to put his worries to rest. Only time would do that. And from the sound of things, Caleb would give him time. They could give one another time. That was all Peter wanted.

last week would recede into the past, into the world of things he had left behind. It would be a memory, and one that didn’t have any relevance to his life. There would be no context for it. He wanted to hold onto it with both hands, wanted to dig his nails in and cling, but he didn’t know how.

“You could stay with me,” Peter said, apropos of nothing. “Are you going to keep saying that?” “Yeah. If you don’t mind.”

It smelled the same, like leather and aftershave, and Caleb realized that he’d spend the rest of his life connecting those scents with Peter.

When he looked more closely, he saw that Caleb had circled the towns where they had spent the night and written in some of the more notable things they had done along the way. In Missouri, “enormous pancakes” was written in Caleb’s neat penmanship. In Oklahoma City, he had written “so many dogs.” Little messages like that were penned in along the entire route, and Peter could imagine Caleb rotating the map around on a table, trying to make sense of it, swearing up a blue streak. “Caleb,” he said. “It’s nothing,” Caleb muttered, which was as good as one of his rare I love yous.

“What do you want to do for supper?” Caleb asked, pitching his voice low enough that Peter could hear the real meaning: take me home. “Come back with me for a swim and I’ll make eggs,” Peter said, and hoped that Caleb could hear his own hidden meaning: always.