Enough of this. This morning, I woke up early—before the sun even kissed the canyon walls—determined not to let the silence win. The weight had grown unbearable. I could see it on his face every day, in the way he smiled only with half his mouth, in the way his hands stilled when he thought I wasn’t looking. Billy is many things, but subtlety is not one of them. He’d been waiting, hoping, trying so hard not to push—and I? I had been giving him only shadows.
So today, I reached for the sun.
I greeted him with a full smile for the first time in days, a smile that made his eyes widen like he'd just witnessed a miracle. He blinked, then grinned back so fast it looked like relief. “Well, look who decided to join the land of the living,” he teased, voice bright and warm.
“Careful,” I warned, stretching with dramatic flair. “I might get used to being charming again.”
“Too late. Already hooked.”
We made breakfast together—real breakfast. I let him lead, but offered to flip the flapjacks. We bickered good-naturedly about whose were more golden, and he accused me of trying to turn his biscuits into haute cuisine. “You tryin’ to put powdered gold in the gravy next?”
“Only if you’re lucky,” I said. “Might improve your cooking.”
He laughed. Loud and free. Gods, I’d missed that sound.
After breakfast, we spent the day doing all the things we’d been avoiding. I helped him curry the horses, brushing them down with deliberate care, and he kept glancing at me like I might disappear. He made a game of flicking water at me from the trough, and I retaliated by tying his bandana to the tail of his gelding. We ran each other ragged in the dust, boys again, breathless and filthy and finally alive again.
Later, we found ourselves sprawled on the warm rocks beneath a crooked pine, watching clouds parade overhead. I pointed out shapes, ridiculous ones—a bear riding a bicycle, a fish wearing spectacles—and he added sound effects. At one point, he tried to mimic the voice of the cloud-fish giving a speech about civil liberties and made me snort so hard I nearly choked.
“Admit it,” he said, when the laughter finally faded. “You missed me.”
“I never left you,” I said. The words came easily. Too easily. But they were true.
He grew quiet then, but it wasn’t the painful kind. It was soft, reflective. “I was scared,” he admitted. “Felt like you were drifting away.”
“I was,” I said. “But not because of you. Because of me.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything,” he said. “Just… don’t shut me out completely.”
I nodded. “I can do that.”
He smiled, and it felt like the sun finally reached the canyon floor.
That evening, we made camp in a small valley ringed with whispering grasses. Billy built the fire, and I unpacked the food without being asked. We shared a bottle of something sharp and sweet—some local moonshine he’d bartered for back in the last town—and toasted to “honesty in small doses.”
And maybe it wasn’t a full confession. Maybe the truths still weighed down my tongue. But I let myself be there—with him. No evasion. No detachment. Just Tak, sitting beside the boy who made him laugh until his ribs ached.
When the fire burned low and the stars blinked down through the black, he leaned his head on my shoulder, warm and real. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. The quiet was finally ours again—not hollow, not cold. Just the hush of contentment between two souls who had almost lost their way, and finally chose not to.
Tomorrow, I may falter again. The fear hasn’t vanished. But for tonight, we found our rhythm. And I will not squander it.
Let the gods watch.
I am staying right here.
