“Were you busy?”

Robbie walks slowly toward him, following the direction of his glance into the office space. “No. Just reading.” Their eyes meet and Robbie smiles. “Sometimes, I can’t sleep.”

The thought that he’s not the only person along the creek who lies awake at night makes Lance uncharacteristically bold. “I love you, Robbie,” he murmurs, and the admission seems to open the dam on his tears. His cheeks are wet in a flash, his vision blurred.

Robbie unfolds his arms and quickly sits next to him on the edge of the bed. A warm arm encircles him. “I love you, too, buddy.”

Lance winces and hunches his shoulders even as he helplessly leans into the strong, warm presence of Robbie next to him.

“That’s not what I mean. I love you.”

Robbie’s hand was making circles on his bicep, but now it freezes. “Lance,” he whispers.

What was I thinking?

He jerks away from Robbie and dashes at his tears. “I know you don’t want me back.”

“Lance, I care about you so much. I love you, so much.” Robbie’s voice is pleading, but he’s clenched his hands on his lap like he thinks he’ll infect himself with something if he touches Lance.

Suddenly furious, Lance leaps to his feet and spins around. “I don’t want you to love me!” Robbie stands, too, and steps toward him, but Lance shoves him back with all his strength. Robbie staggers, eyes wide with alarm, and then a sound from the hallway makes him turn away from Lance for just a moment. In that moment, Lance backpedals and collides with Robbie’s nightstand. He catches himself on it, knocking a paperback to the floor as his hand lands on top of something else. Something soft and cool.

There’s bunched silk against his palm. Lance knows at once what he’s touching without even looking; he closes his hand instinctively over the prize before Robbie turns back to him. It’s like muscle memory, instinct, the same impulse that has seized him so many times before, and yet this feels so much more forbidden than taking something with a price tag.

He puts the faded paisley scarf in his pocket, and then he runs.

Johnny is in the hallway, shirtless and squinting, obviously waking up to their shouts. And past him, standing in his darkened doorway and draped in a full set of pajamas, Danny is putting on his glasses.

“Lance?” Johnny asks, blinking.

“Lance!” Robbie calls from behind him.

But Lance is already down the stairs, and then he’s out the door, what he took weighing like lead in his pocket, and what he said like lead in his chest. He’s set fire to the only place of refuge he’s ever had with those words—he knows it. And he can’t go back to his father’s house. So, when he reaches the woods, instead of crossing the creek, he walks down the bank and sits on a stone at the mouth of the stream, where it pours its muddy heart into the river. And when the sun rises, he digs his cell phone from his pocket and calls his aunt.