Page 21 of Should the Sky Fall

Ellis stops in his tracks and looks at him. “What did you say?”

Dawson squares his shoulders. “You heard me.”

Ellis doesn’t move straight away. He stands there, his mouth opening and closing. He turns to the cupboards, eyes them, then begins to open them. He stills when he opens the third one.

“Jesus. Fuck.” He pulls out one of the bottles, staring at it like he just found poison. He gives Dawson a wide-eyed look. “He drinks?”

This time, he does laugh, putting as much deprecation into it as humanly possible. “Just a little.”

All defensiveness seems to leave Ellis, and he looks at Dawson with that pitying look he hates so much. “Dawson…”

“You know what? Maybe you should find that hotel for tonight.”

If the abrupt change of mind shocks Ellis, he doesn’t show it. He nods, putting the bottle away and studying the cupboards for a while before finally closing it. He turns to Dawson to say something, but his gaze falls onto the kitchen island.

“What’s this?”

Dawson puts two and two together too late. By the time he does, Ellis has the divorce documents in his hand and is reading the first page.

“Are you getting a divorce?”

Dawson looks away. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” Ellis echoes flatly.

No, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything anymore. He thought he could do it, he almostdid.But throwing this in Cal’s face after he nearly died? What kind of person would do that?

Yeah, carry on making excuses for being such a wuss.

The cosmos clearly hates him, because the one time Dawson finally decides to grow some balls and stand up to his abusive asshole of a husband, life throws him a curve ball.Oh, you think you’re leaving? Guess again, loser.“It doesn’t matter. I can’t leave now, anyway.”Serves you right, too. You’ve been one pathetic wuss your whole life, so you might as well stay one.

“Dawson, look at me.”

He jumps when Ellis is suddenly in front of him, a look on his face Dawson would’ve never imagined him capable of. “Is there anything else?” He lets the question hang in the air for a moment. “Anything besides the drinking?”

Does he know? Can he tell because he knows Cal’s temper, or is Dawson just that obvious?

After a small eternity of battling with himself, Dawson gives a defeated nod, unable to look him in the eye.

Ellis lets out a shuddering breath. “Okay. I’m gonna get you some water.” He speaks slowly, like one would to a child. “Then we’ll sit down, and you tell me. Okay?”

He doesn’t want to air his dirty laundry, but, more than that, he wants to finally tell someone. Someone who doesn’t know him, who won’t be disappointed in him for enduring this shit for so long and never standing up for himself.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Fuck,” is the first thing Ellis says when Dawson finishes giving him the run down on the past six years of his life. “I can’t believe… Dawson, I’m so sorry.” He takes Dawson’s hands between his, surprising him. “I never knew.”

“No one did. No one else does.”

Ellis frowns. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

For a million different reasons. “They’d tell me to leave.” He laughs self-deprecatingly, pulling out of Ellis grasp. He doesn’t really want to be touched right now. “I don’t even know who I am.”

“Youwereabout to leave.”

As if he needs a reminder. There’s no way to explain it to Ellis and not sound completely pathetic, so he keeps his mouth shut.

Ellis isn’t finished, though. “You can’t stay. You know that, right? It will only get worse. Especially with everything that’s just happened.”