Feeling heartsick about Ilya in Tampa leading up to the Feelings Talk.
Before the bar, the leadup of maybe I can convince him, she doesn't need to know, what's one more secret. I can teach myself to be okay with it. If that's all I can get, I'll make myself okay with it.
Then the tentative, overwhelming, heart-clenching hope of maybe I'll get a second chance, he said they were incompatible, maybe he'll come back to me, at least for a little while, at least until he finds someone new. Please, all I need is a little bit longer. It won't ever be enough but I need to have you just a bit longer. I had months but I couldn't figure out how to stop fucking wanting you, and the only cure is to feed my addiction.
How adrift and bubbly and uncertain and strange he must have felt in that time between the bar and the bed, sick with the fucking hope of it all and the fear that it'll be crushed again like it was last time but still unable to stop fucking hoping. On tenterhooks through their whole game, through their time at the pool, seeing how Shane was looking at him like he wanted him again but knowing to be careful this time, and how different that must have felt, having it come back after being ripped away instead of taking it for granted.
But most of all, the newly cowed affection - the restrained, desperate mantra of I promise if you take me back I won't mess up this time. I promise to make things just like they were before. I promise to never ever want anything again. I promise never to show you just how viscerally I want you, down to my very core. I'll rip away every part of me you don't like if that's what it takes. Even if my soul sings for you, I'll shut it up if you don't want to hear it. You want me to hide it, and I'll do that until it kills me. Anything to keep you. I don't care if the hiding mutilates me from the inside out as long as I can bleed out at your feet. As long as I can be good for you. Please just let me stay.