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Your foundation might be a little rockier than others, but you still have one at your core. Nature might outrank nurture when it comes to things like your eye color, and those dimples, and your predisposition to certain diseases.” I snort lightly at that. “But nurture,” she says softly, ignoring me. “Nurture is what makes or breaks us.”
“You were loved and cared for. Nurtured, Waylon. Maybe not by who you should have been, but you should know by now that blood isn’t always what it’s chalked up to be.” No shit.
“Nurture might be the thing that makes or breaks us, but just because we break, doesn’t mean we stay broken,” she tells me. “I’ve worked with dozens of cases similar to yours, and while I can’t say that everyone found their happy ending, I can tell you that it had nothing to do with what they’ve been through. It wasn’t the trauma that determined the outcome.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He cocks his head. “He wasn’t just terrified I’d hurt him for it, Will…” My vision blurs. “...he was terrified I’d hurt you.”
I nod. “Just TV.” And I mean it. For once, the ball’s in his court, not mine. So if slow is what he needs, then slow is what he’s going to get. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove I’m not going anywhere. Prove he’s not a whim or a fix or any-fucking-thing else in between. He’s the beat of my fucking heart. And that? That’s everything.
“You asked if boys get princes too.”
“You didn’t make anything worse, Will,” I tell him after a long, quiet moment. “You woke me up, that’s all. You brought me back to life.”
“It’s not your job to love who brought you into this world unconditionally. It’s the other way around. You don’t owe me anything.”
Life isn’t a fucking black hole, as much as grief and trauma and pain would have us think that. Light can always prevail. And there is so, so much light to be found. We just need to hold out and wait for the sun to shine, because fuck, when it shines—it shines hard. Harder than any starless night.
