Chapter 12
The Quinn estate was the kind of place that should have felt intimidating.
Instead, it felt like a house holding its breath.
By the time I got inside, Adrian’s grandmother was already waiting in the main hall.
She was older than I expected.
Not just old in years.
Old in wear.
Silver hair. Sharp eyes. The posture of somebody who had held up an empire with bare hands for too long.
The second she saw me, the relief in her face was almost painful.
“Our Adu is upstairs,” she said. “Please.”
I ran.
In Adrian’s room at the main house, the closets were enormous.
There were too many of them.
I understood why the second I opened the first one and found nothing.
Then the second.
Then the third.
By the last closet, my chest was hurting.
I opened the door.
And there he was.
Curled inside, arms around his knees, beautiful face streaked with tears.
He looked up sharply, ready to defend himself from the world.
Then he saw me.
His entire expression crumpled.
“You don’t want me anymore?” he asked.
That voice.
That awful, wounded voice.
He crawled forward and clung to my waist like if he let go, he would disappear.
Then, after what must have been the longest and most deranged internal thought process of his life, he looked up with wet lashes and asked in heartbreaking seriousness, “Can… can you have two boyfriends?”
I stared at him.
Then I actually laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because otherwise I might have cried.
I cupped his face.
“No,” I said. “I am not that greedy.”
He looked wrecked.
So I softened.
“Only one boyfriend,” I told him. “And nobody else qualifies.”
For one full second he did not move.
Then joy detonated inside him.
He stood up too fast, forgot the closet roof existed, and smacked his head into it with a loud thunk.
I yelped.
He barely noticed.
That was how happy he was.
Later, after he had calmed down and I had coaxed the full story from him in pieces, the strangest thing happened.
The shame shifted.
Not all at once.
Not magically.
But enough.
Enough that when he walked through a room afterward, he no longer looked like a thief waiting to be caught.
Enough that he began lifting his gaze more often.
Enough that when he held my hand, it felt less like panic and more like choice.
Sometimes love is not the lightning strike.
Sometimes it is the slow, stubborn return of a person to himself.