And round and round it went.

Until I left.

Those four words. He knew. Somehow, he knew. He always did.

I’ve had good days over the past four months. I’ve had bad days. I had one day, brought on by nothing more than a fleeting memory (a knock on the door and she’s there, saying, Hi, Tyson! Hi, I’m here! I’ve missed you and I’m here!) that caused me to seize up and struggle to breathe. There’s no bathtub in the apartment. It’s why I moved here.

I ended up under the bed that day. It passed, as these things do. Eventually, I could breathe.

Therapy helped. Now that I allowed it to. It’s easy to be told what my issues are. The hard part is finding a way to fix them.

It probably helped that I started to listen. Never underestimate the power of giving a shit. Trust me when I say it works wonders.

There’s no magical cure. There’s no sudden miracle where one day I’ll wake up and everything that’s plagued me will be a thing of the past. It doesn’t work that way. No matter how much I want it to. It just doesn’t happen. That’s life, though.

But there are ways to push through it. There are ways to beat it back.

I’m Tyson Thompson, formerly Tyson McKenna, aka the Kid. And I can beat anything.

But it’s easier when there’s someone like him waiting.

I talked to him almost every day. About nothing. And everything.

We made plans, though I don’t know if we understood we were making them.

At some point, the conversation changed from I to we.

That part never scared me, even when I became aware it was happening.

It’s inevitable, after all.

Kind of like him. Dom’s inevitable.

And it’s inevitable he’d show up here. In this place. This town, this apartment. My room.

He could only stay away for so long. I’m surprised he was able to last four months, to be honest. Tenacious, that one.

“Me,” he says from behind me, and I close my eyes because they burn. I close my eyes because I shake. I close my eyes not because I can’t breathe, but because it’s all I can do to keep from leaping up and jumping in his arms and telling him he can never let me go. That I’ve been gone long enough and he can never let me go.

But, of course, there’s an almost-naked roommate and a computer screen filled with family to contend with first. My life is so fucking weird.

Thank God for that.

“Holy shit,” Rob breathes. “You weren’t kidding about him. Does he have some kind of growth abnormality? Was he hit by gamma radiation? That can’t possibly be healthy.”

“If you want to live,” Corey tells him, “it’s probably a good idea that you run as fast as you can.”

“Ty?” I hear Bear ask worriedly.

I’m okay. I’m okay.

Because I am.

Things change. Goals. Dreams. Everything about who I am.