Page 36 of Before It's Too Late

“Never mind. I’m just really fucking tired.”

“Sleep deprived, I’d say. Next thing I know, you’re gonna go all girly on me and want to talk about feelings and shit.” Cael laughed, hoping to lighten him up a little.

“Shut up,” Zach snapped, laughing too. Perfect.

“Okay. You. Bed. Go.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going.”

As Zach walked past him, Cael found himself needing to say one more thing before Zach went off to sleep. Cael reached out and clasped Zach by the elbow.

“Hey, Pook?”

Zach stopped and looked up at him, and Cael had to stop himself from taking a fast breath. With the way Zach looked at him so expectantly, it took everything in Cael not to lean down and kiss him. Geez, he really needed to get control of himself.

“Um, about what you said earlier… You’re not alone. I promise you won’t ever be alone.”

Zach pressed his lips into a thin line, his eyes searching Cael’s. Zach moved infinitesimally closer and tilted his head up, jolting Cael’s heart into a sudden, irregular, fast beat before sucking in a quiet breath and stepping back.

“Thanks, Cael,” he whispered, then slipped away, disappearing down the hall and into his bedroom.

Heart racing, Cael stood frozen in the kitchen, racking his brain for some logical explanation as to what had just happened. In that briefest of moments, it had almost felt as though Zach was going to kiss him, but that couldn’t be right, and Cael reasoned that he wanted it so badly, he’d imagined it all. There was just no way that what he thought he saw could have been real.

Chapter 9

Holy shit, I almost did it.

I almost kissed him.

Zach had wanted to. He’d wanted to kiss Cael for weeks now. Part of him was curious to see if he would enjoy kissing another guy, but the other part of him wanted to know if kissing his best friend would be everything he kept thinking it might be. Especially since, after all this time, he’d finally figured how just how blind he’d been.

Others had told him he needed to open his eyes, but when his mom whispered it to him on the day of Abbey’s accident, she’d added four little words that had made him sit up and listen.Before it’s too late.

That’s when Zach realized he was missing something important that had to be right in front of him, and the longer he took to figure it out, the more he risked losing whatever or whoever it was, so he did what everyone kept telling him to do. He opened his eyes.

Zach had remembered Megan telling him he was in love with someone else, so he’d paid more attention to the people around him. He’d asked himself, who, of those closest to him, could he not live without. With whom did he enjoy spending time that he wasn’t related to? With whom could he laugh and cry? Who could he go to for anything? Who knew him better than he knew himself sometimes? Whom would his heart ache for if he waited too long and they ended up with someone else?

As unexpected as it was, Cael was the only person who had come to mind.

At the time, that realization had thrown Zach for loop. After all, he’d never thought of himself as bisexual. It didn’t bother him to think that maybe he was. He just didn’t understand why it took him so long to figure it out.

Since then, he’d looked at Cael a little differently, and had spent countless times imagining moments in his life without him. Moments like today, when Cael stopped him from grabbing another beer, or when he held Taylor while Zach gave her the medicine. When he imagined Cael not being there—not being a part of those moments— it fucking hurt, more than it probably should have.

Zach should have asked Cael to kiss him, but he’d worried that Cael would laugh or worse, simply not want to. Just because Zach knew now that he was in love with his best friend didn’t mean Cael felt the same about him. Just because he kept dropping everything at a moment’s notice to help him these last few weeks or didn’t even hesitate to sleep over and help with Taylor so Zach could sleep tonight or promised him he’d never be alone… it didn’t mean he loved Zach as anything more than his best friend. Cael had always put everyone else first before himself. Zach wasn’t any different.

Taylor’s harsh cry echoed through the walls. Zach groaned, his muscles tensing. Then he heard Cael’s muffled voice and relaxed, so grateful for yet another moment that he was there.

Fuck his brain’s attempt to convince him there was nothing more between them. First things first. Zach needed to somehow get Cael to kiss him.

***

Zach woke to the sun gleaming through his bedroom window and Cael’s voice somewhere in another room, which made him smile. He felt rested and better than he’d felt in weeks, and he owed it all to Cael for, once again, dropping whatever his plans had been to stay and help him.

Zach glanced at the clock. Shit. It was almost ten. He never slept that late.

After enjoying a full body stretch, Zach climbed out of bed and grabbed his pajama pants. He pulled them on before heading to the toilet to take a leak. On his way out to the kitchen, he grabbed the T-shirt wadded up at the end of his bed and yanked it over his head.

The scene Zach stumbled into was way too fucking perfect to be real.