Will Foster was a bright spot in a sea of darkness. He was something to hold on to when I was a kid and life at home was caving in around me. It got wires tangled up in my naive brain, convincing me of feelings and ideas that weren’t so much a product of the heart, but driven by fear. By loneliness.

Sure, I’ve appreciated other guys over the years, but it was never anything more than a passing thought. Superficial. I liked girls. I like girls. I might have never felt for any the way I once thought I felt for Will, but maybe that has less to do with my sexuality, and more to do with the trauma I never faced.

I couldn’t let anyone else in.

Rubbing a fist across my sternum, I consider that once-impenetrable wall. That delicately crafted fortress that now teeters and quakes as that...thing within grows. All because I chose to ignore it. All because I grew cocky and thought myself invincible. All because I thought myself safe once and for all.

Then again, I’ve never been quite this tempted to let that thing out. Not like this.

Never have I been so goddamned tempted to watch it all burn.

I suppose the fates are laughing now at the poetic justice of it all. Because who else would be able to demolish my walls other than the boy who set their construction in motion in the first place?

But what if it’s worse than I thought?

What if, after all this time, there’s nothing even left inside? What if I didn’t stop Will last weekend, and I let him...kiss me...touch me...only to realize there was never actually anything to worry about? That beyond all my walls, there’s just now a barren wasteland. One where I can’t feel anything at all.

Hell, perhaps this thing with Will was always nothing more than a point of projection for me. I made him the center of everything because it was easier than accepting the possibility of it all ever being nothing. A void. Because I was already damaged beyond repair, and I just didn’t yet know it.

Maybe Will’s right. Maybe I’ve just always been the man behind the curtain, playing a game of make-believe. What if the truth all along is that my dad was right—and I’m a waste. Worthless. Nothing—and this really has all just been just another vice to drown out the truth?

Perhaps the reality is, I never had anything to be afraid of, where Will’s concerned.

Perhaps that’s what scares me most of all.

“So,” Will says, dragging out the O in a horribly distracting way.

I kick my sock-clad foot at the side of the bar. “So.”

He cuts a glance toward me. “Why didn’t you go with the guys?”