FenceStriking Distance - Sarah Rees Brennan Page 0,89
moment? Then you can say whatever you like. If you still want to.”
Aiden nodded. He’d been hovering near the window as though he might turn and jump out, but now he folded his arms tight over his chest, intent. When Aiden gave his word to Harvard, he never broke it. He was listening.
“Time for the truth, then,” said Harvard, and he took a deep breath and told himself to be brave. “I love you more than anything.”
New light and shock touched Aiden’s face, turning his green eyes pure gold.
“I,” he said. “I love you, too.”
Harvard hurried on, before Aiden could say But not like that. “You’re my best friend in the world. I can’t picture my life without you. This dating mess has to stop now.”
“I admit, it wasn’t exactly working as planned,” Aiden drawled.
Aiden was undoubtedly at this stage extremely sorry he’d agreed to the whole idea of practice dating. Harvard understood how it must have seemed to Aiden: doing a careless favor for a good friend, acting the way he did every Friday or Saturday night, sweet words and gestures that meant nothing. It wasn’t Aiden’s fault that Harvard was made to take this kind of thing seriously, that every word and gesture had meant so much more than Aiden knew. None of this was Aiden’s fault.
“You don’t understand how badly it could go. You don’t know what could happen,” Harvard told him.
A pin-scratch frown appeared between Aiden’s brows, his features shadowed and barely visible with his hair outlined in fire and gold by the burning horizon. “What could happen?”
“A total disaster could happen, Aiden,” said Harvard. “I could fall in love with you.”
That shocked Aiden into silence. Harvard had suspected it might. They were on opposite sides of the room, staring at each other across the shadowed space, darkness making the tiny space between every floorboard a gulf. There was so much between them, more precious to Harvard than anything else, and suddenly what had been rock-solid seemed both fragile and in terrible danger. The most valuable thing in Harvard’s life, and it could be lost so easily, with nothing but worthless fragments between them.
Surely Harvard hadn’t fallen already. There must be some choice involved, some crucial step taken off the edge that Harvard could avoid. Harvard believed in making plans. He could plan for this, too.
At last Aiden murmured, barely audible, “If you did—”
“I don’t want to,” Harvard returned, trying not to shout. “I couldn’t bear that. Anything but that. I can’t think of anything worse.”
Aiden said, “Ah.”
Harvard believed in making sacrifices—for your team and your teammates. Aiden hadn’t asked for anything like this, to feel devastated with guilt for what he’d done to his best friend or for any serious interruption to his golden, charmed, carefree dating life.
There had never been anyone else looking out for Aiden: Harvard was the one who did that. He’d always wanted to, and never wanted to let him down like this. He could imagine only one thing worse than Aiden tactfully turning him down. The worst thing would be if Aiden felt forced to try dating him out of a misplaced sense of obligation.
Heirs to Swiss banking fortunes. Stacks of offerings from hopeful suitors. A legion of pretty boys with no names. A whole glittering whirl of a life that Harvard could barely understand, but he understood Aiden had chosen to live that way. It was what Aiden wanted. Harvard had no intention of taking any of that glamorous adventure away from him, when Harvard had nothing to offer Aiden in its place. His best friend, about as exciting as his grubby old bear? He knew, as he’d known that first day at Kings Row when he took his first step back, that Aiden was born to shine.
“I can’t bear the idea of being without you. I always want you in my life,” Harvard said. “So you can’t be—you can’t be in that part of it. You’re not like Neil.”
“No,” agreed Aiden, as though it was a bleak fact as plain to him as it was to Harvard. It must be obvious to everybody.
It had certainly been obvious to Neil. Harvard had stopped by Neil’s on his way home. To apologize.
“So you finally figured it out, huh?” Neil had asked as soon as he opened the door. When Harvard nodded, Neil burst out: “Can you tell me, was the double date—was dating me at all—just an attempt to show the crazy-hot bestie what he was missing or what?”