I just hit seven. But it was seven months of ignoring all the ways Max was wrong for him—wrong for anyone. All the signs that told him to get the hell out of there before it was too late.
And to what? Prove some skater kid wrong?
He felt like an idiot, and he had a feeling that was going to dog his steps for a long time to come. Moving to the sofa, he dropped down and propped his feet up, reaching for his journal. He’d stopped writing to his future husband. He’d stopped writing to his dead parents and friends who had stopped coming around years ago and to himself. Instead, he wrote letters to two men who had been so selflessly kind to him even when he hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve it, and there was a huge piece of him that wanted to make sure they were able to read them some day.
…went on the tube for the first time yesterday. I so don’t belong here. I think I had four panic attacks by the time I got to my stop. Allie keeps saying you get to see BBC celebrities all the time, but I think she’s full of shit. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got today. I miss you both. Love Always, Alexander.
As the days wore on and the distance between him and his past grew wider and almost profound, everything he had to say felt strangely…shallow. And the worst part was, he knew Sebastion and Luca would have loved it anyway. They would devour the letters with those little smiles they always got when they felt bursts of tiny joy, and their eyes would be warm and kind when they looked at him.
He didn’t want to think about what it meant that he knew those things about them after such a short time. Because thinking about that made him want to open the app that was still on his phone and check in. And checking in would draw him back. And drawing him back meant he would be too close to falling back into bad habits with bad people.
He needed this space. Desperately.
Xan startled when his phone began to ring, and he glanced at the screen and saw it was Allie. She was supposed to be home late, so he picked up, feeling a little prickle of worry—a constant companion since he’d arrived.
“Everything good?”
“Yep. Some of the guys here wanted to head down to the pub, and it’s in walking distance, so I thought you might want to come with.”
His eyes widened. “You want me there?”
She laughed. “Uh…that’s why I’m asking, dumbass.”
“Right, but,” he hesitated and tried not to hear Max’s vicious whispers in the corners of his mind. “I mean, these are work people.”
“They’re a bunch of nerds like you,” she said. “They’re just IT shit, and you’re history. I get it if you don’t feel like socializing, but I was telling this one guy I’m working with about you, and he said to invite you so…”
For what, his mind wondered, but he had to stop assuming the worst of every situation. “Okay. Text me the name of it, and I’ll head out. When will you be there?”
“Twenty minutes, I think. We’re wrapping up here and then heading over.”
The line went dead, then the phone buzzed with the text, so he hurried into her room where his clothes were waiting and changed into one of the few decent looking outfits he owned. He’d done a little shopping since he’d gotten to London, but everything was expensive, and all the shops were crowded, and after a pair of jeans and sweater, he was done.
Still, he looked put together after combing his hair and washing his face. He looked like a person visiting a cousin, not someone who was fleeing their past.
Grabbing his wallet, Xan locked up behind him, then hit the street. The rain had slowed to a faint mist, and it alleviated the heavy smell of life a little bit as the wind picked up. The place felt the strangest mixture of old and new as he walked down the pavement, and he wondered what it would be like to grow up there.
His first home had felt ancient, because they were the only walls he’d ever known. His grandparents had given it as a wedding gift—a little starter place for the big family they were meant to have. But Xan had been the only one after a rocky pregnancy, and his dad had loved