Rowan Clare at Home by Hollis Shiloh

Author:Hollis Shiloh [Shiloh, Hollis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sweet gay romance, Romance, short story, gay, Fiction, Second Chances, gay marriage, gay romance, Short Stories (Single Author), contemporary gay romance, lgbt
Google: RI-qDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07WK7HTVX
Goodreads: 47822150
Publisher: Spare Words Press
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

HUGH KNOCKED AT THE door, feeling like the world's biggest clod. The idea had seemed so sound when Stuart had floated it. But he'd messed it all up somehow, as he always did.

Maybe I should stop trying to get him back. Maybe I should just give up.

He really should. He'd given up so many times. The only trouble was, he couldn't seem to go on giving up.

"Rowan!" he called, raising his voice as he knocked again. "Look, don't leave. I know you value this time. I can go. I can rent the cottage out and stay somewhere else to unwind. Would that make it better?"

He was begging, and he hated begging, but Rowan had looked so hurt. This wasn't a game or a mild annoyance to him. He was really hurt that Hugh had intruded on his neighborhood, his space.

The door opened and Rowan stood there, eyes red around the edges like he'd been crying or was about to. He gnawed at his lip and gave Hugh an indignant look, his shoulders high with all the dignity he could muster.

"Rowan." Hugh sighed. "Look, I'm not trying to make things worse. I miss you. I loved you. I—I keep thinking we could make things right somehow, and start again, with better communication."

"You bought my pieces without telling me." It was a loathsome accusation when Rowan said it like that, full of quivering indignation. "I thought I'd sold them to—to someone who wanted them! Not for you to laugh at me behind my back and do god knows what with them!"

"No, no," said Hugh. "I like your work. I always have. I'm a collector. Besides—" He swallowed back the urge to make this light and airy, and instead dug deep for the raw honesty and pain he would normally do anything in the world to hide. Stuart had said he needed to let Rowan see it, because the fanciest words, the biggest gifts, none of that would mean a damn. But maybe the truth would.

"It was the only way I knew to keep anything of you in my life. Things you'd made. Things you'd touched, and...loved. Like you loved me once." Hugh sighed, head hanging low, ashamed to be saying these words aloud, even though the feelings had been eating at him for so long. He wished it didn't open such a pit of despair in him to feel this way and expose it to the air, and to Rowan.

Rowan, who had loved him once, and then left him.

He could feel Rowan staring at him, but he couldn't lift his gaze to meet those clear gray eyes. "I miss you, Rowan. I try to stop, but it's always there. That void in my life. I try to fill it with other things. But you were the guy. I tried to give you everything. I loved you the only way I knew how, and it wasn't enough, and then you hated me after a while. I've never been able to fix it. But it eats me up sometimes.

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