Somewhere Only We Know - 21. The Months That Make Boys Older

Time did not stop for boys whose lives had cracked open in winter. It moved the way it always did—steady, indifferent—dragging everything with it. Snow melted off the roofs in Lakehurst and Riverbend, mud replaced ice, and then suddenly there were leaves and heat and the endless, humming stretch of summer. People went on buying groceries and paying bills and arguing on sidewalks. Buses kept running. The sun kept rising. None of it cared that one boy had run into the snow with nowhere to go and another had stood in the street feeling like he’d just watched his world break in half.

Kitt stayed seventeen, but sometimes when he caught his reflection in a window or the streaked bathroom mirror at the restaurant, he thought he looked older. Not in the way birthdays made you older, but in the way months of constant bracing did—shoulders a little tighter, eyes a little sharper, tired carved into the skin under them. His hair grew out a bit and he cut it himself badly once, then let it fall where it wanted. His body stayed broad-shouldered, swimmer-strong; the muscle he’d built years ago didn’t disappear just because his life had. It simply found new things to carry.

His days arranged themselves into a pattern.

In the mornings, the restaurant swallowed him whole. He pushed through the back door into heat and shouted Spanish and the metallic clatter of pans. Steam fogged the air. The dish pit became his station—a universe of dirty plates, slick pans, and the deep industrial sink that never seemed to empty. Early on, the hot water had burned his hands raw and he’d gone back to his apartment at night with fingers so wrinkled they barely felt like his. By early summer he’d toughened, skin rougher, movements faster, body learning exactly how to move between spray and stack without wasting motion.

Sometimes the cooks chirped at him in Spanish he barely understood until one of them translated with a grin. Sometimes Javier told him he was too slow and then ten minutes later gave him a leftover taco without meeting his eyes. There was comfort, oddly, in the predictability: the way the line flared to life near lunch, the way someone always forgot and left a pan to burn, the way the same radio station crackled through the cracked speaker above the fridge.

Then his shift would end, sometimes with his shirt spotted with water, sometimes with his hair plastered to his forehead from steam, and he’d step out into the alley behind the restaurant. The air outside felt thin and cool no matter how hot the day was. He’d sling his worn backpack over his shoulder and walk the few blocks to the youth center, still smelling faintly of dish soap and lime.

The youth center was a different kind of chaos. The building wasn’t much to look at from the outside—just a square brick box with a fading sign and a mural of a whale someone had painted years ago—but once he pushed the door open, noise hit him in a way that never quite felt like an attack. Kids shouting. Chairs scraping. A ball bouncing somewhere it probably shouldn’t. Leah waving a clipboard like a sword as she called names. A few teenagers lounging by the foosball table pretending they didn’t want to be there.

The first week he’d come in as a volunteer, they’d orbited around him like curious planets, keeping their distance. He was tall and quiet and new. By the end of the second week, one of the little kids had decided he was safe enough to cling to during a loud thunderstorm, and after that the rest of them gradually followed. It was little things at first: a shy “can you help me?” at the homework table, a tug on his sleeve when someone scraped a knee, a hesitant grin when he remembered a kid’s name without checking the sheet.

“You’re good with them,” Leah told him one afternoon when he coaxed an anxious boy through three math problems in a row without the kid crying once. “Sometimes they listen to you more than they listen to us.”

“I don’t do anything,” Kitt said, stacking workbooks.

“You listen,” she said. “Most adults don’t. That counts.”

He didn’t know what to do with that, so he filed it away inside him next to all the other things he didn’t know how to hold.

Tom moved through that world like he’d always been part of it. He never barged in; he flowed, somehow, from one space to another, offering help at a homework table here, quietly refilling a snack bowl there. Harbor ambled at his side when dogs were allowed in the building, happily accepting sticky hands and ear scratches. The kids loved him, but not in the bright, loud way they loved Leah. Their affection for Tom was quieter—trust instead of hype, gravity instead of spark.

Most days he wore an unremarkable button-down and jeans, but sometimes he came straight from campus and wore his navy Northbridge University jacket, the one with the stitched crest above his heart. The first time Kitt noticed it, he’d stared for a second too long. Northbridge. The name pulled something tight inside him. It had been the dream school, once. The one he and Matt had talked about late at night, sprawled on the floor of Matt’s room, the one they’d promised each other in a mix of jokes and clenched hope.

“You okay?” Tom had asked when he caught him staring.

“Yeah,” Kitt had lied, dragging his eyes away.

Tom didn’t press.

He never did, and that was how he became important.

Mateo was different. Loud where Tom was quiet, messy where Tom was neat, always leaning or lounging or draped over furniture like he’d been poured there. He worked nights at the club and mornings at the restaurant when he could get them, slept at strange hours, flirted with half the neighborhood. He banged on Kitt’s door when he thought Kitt had worked too many shifts in a row without a break, announcing himself loudly enough that the whole building heard.

“You’re going to fuse with the dishwater,” he announced once, shoving a paper bag into Kitt’s hands. “Eat. It’s a crime to be this pretty and this underfed.”

“I’m not—” Kitt started.

“Underfed?” Mateo raised an eyebrow.

“Pretty,” Kitt muttered, heat rising to his face.

“You absolutely are,” Mateo said blithely. “It’s just science.”

If Mateo wanted something from him, he never pushed for it. Whatever flirty potential might have existed between them slid naturally into something else—something warmer, easier, more sibling-like. Mateo might like him; Kitt wasn’t blind. But Mateo also liked the idea of late nights and strangers and never being pinned down. That kept things simple.

It was almost enough to make him forget, on good days, that there had been another boy once. A boy across the street in a different town. A boy who’d been loud in a different way, goofy instead of chaotic, all broad shoulders and sunlit grins and a heart that seemed to pour out of him in every direction. Almost.

But never really.

At night, when the restaurant smells had finally washed off his skin and the apartment had gone quiet except for the occasional thump from upstairs, Kitt would lie on his back on the mattress and stare at the cracks in the ceiling and remember the lake. The dock. The feel of Matt’s shoulder pressed lightly against his. The way Matt’s laugh had sounded in the cold air.

Sometimes he cried. Not the unstoppable, choking sobs he’d had in the first nights after running. Those had slowly burned themselves out. These tears came softer, more contained, slipping silently into his pillow as his chest ached with the knowledge that he had walked away from the one place that had ever felt like home.

He told himself Matt would be better off. That Matt had a family, a future, a whole world ahead of him—a world that didn’t need a runaway boy who’d been thrown out like trash. When the thoughts got too loud, he would sit up, turn on the small lamp, and open the notebook Tom had given him.

Write it down, Tom had said once. Even if it’s just three words. It’s better than carrying it alone.

So he did. Not everything. Not the worst things. But small pieces.

The kids were wild today.
Javier didn’t yell as much.
I saw a guy in a Lakehurst hoodie and my heart hurt so bad I almost threw up.
Harbor fell asleep with his head on my foot.
I kept thinking I heard my father’s car on the street, but it was nothing.

I miss the lake.

I miss my family.

But most of all…
I miss him.
I miss him.
I miss him.

He never wrote Matt’s name. Saying it out loud felt too dangerous; writing it felt like tempting something he couldn’t handle. Still, every time his pen hovered uncertainly over the page, the shape of the name sat in his chest, solid and heavy.

By the time the edges of summer blurred into early fall, he had calluses on his hands, a small collection of crumpled pay stubs tucked carefully into an envelope, and the beginnings of a savings habit—three dollars here, five there. Enough that, if something terrible happened, he might last a little longer than he had that first night. He knew which bus line broke down the most, which streetlights flickered, which stairwell creaked the loudest. He knew the names of half the kids and the stories behind why they came to the center. He knew how much milk cost, and which brand of pasta was always slightly cheaper even when the labels insisted otherwise.

He was still seventeen. He was also, undeniably, older.

In Lakehurst, Matt watched summer pass with the feeling that he was moving through water—everything slow and dense, sounds muffled, breath measured. From the outside, it looked like he was doing fine. He woke early every morning to run drills before the sun got too high, ran routes alone on the field, worked on timing, footwork, mechanics. The repetition helped. On some days, the exertion dug his grief down deep enough that he could breathe without feeling like he’d swallowed broken glass.

He worked afternoons at the hardware store. He carried bags of soil and boxes of nails out to customers’ cars. He listened to his father talk to people who’d known him since he was a kid, nodding when they asked about senior year, about football, about college. He talked about Northbridge in a voice that sounded calm and determined.

He did not talk about Kitt.

One day he ran into Kitt’s father at the store while he was working. His first reaction was to hide from him, but despite himself, he mustered the courage to confront the man.

“Hi, Mr. Wellington,” Matt greeted Stephen.

The older man looked back at him with a glare. “What do you want from me?”

“I… I was just wondering if you’ve heard anything from Kitt.”

That made Stephen tense up. “No.”

“And have you filed a missing person report yet? Maybe if we did that—”

“Listen here, young man,” Stephen snapped. “The reason Kitt left in the first place was because of you and the influence you had over him. So do me a favor and stay away from my family. I don’t need you telling me what to do,” he said in a low voice, pointing his finger at Matt.

Matt clenched his fists and walked away quietly.

At home, his mother watched him more closely now. Not hovering, exactly, but present in a way that made him feel both grateful and raw. Several times, he caught her opening her mouth as if to ask something, only to close it again and change the subject. Once, near the end of July, she finally said it.

“Do you think he’s safe?” she asked quietly as they stacked dishes after dinner.

Matt didn’t pretend not to know who she meant.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I hope so.”

The words sat between them like something fragile. His mother reached out and squeezed his arm, then let go as if holding on too tightly would make everything worse.

“I wanted to file a missing person report. I wanted them to do it. But Mr. Wellington was adamant that no one meddle in his family affairs,” Matt grunted.

“He will come to his senses soon. In the meantime, we can only hope Kitt is doing okay.”

“And that hurts, Mom. I wish there was more I could do.”

“I know, sweetie. I know.”

And when the ache got too big, he got in his truck and drove to Riverbend.

He didn’t tell his teammates. He didn’t take anyone with him. He just went, alone, following the highway by muscle memory. Sometimes he made the trip once a week. Sometimes he forced himself to wait two weeks, telling himself that if he went every time he panicked, he’d drop everything else and never come back.

He checked the places he’d checked before. The diner first, always, its windows fogged slightly from coffee and griddled food. The little square with its benches and fountain. The bus station, where people came and went without looking back. The park that looked different in summer than it had in snow, trees heavy and green instead of skeletal.

He never saw Kitt. Not once. But the town itself had started to feel familiar—the way the light pooled near the lamppost on the corner, the kid who always rode his bike too fast down a particular block, the older man with the dog and the Northbridge jacket.

He noticed that man without meaning to. The first time, it was just because of the dog—Harbor was big and golden and impossibly cheerful, tail wagging so hard it almost knocked into people walking by. The second time, he recognized the jacket. He’d seen that crest online, pinned to brochures. Northbridge. The third time, he realized the man was always either with kids or near them, talking to one with a hand on their shoulder, kneeling to tie a shoe, standing back and watching with that alert, gentle expression people had when they were keeping an eye out for trouble without wanting to show it.

Matt didn’t know anything else about him. Just that he seemed kind. Just that he belonged here in a way Matt did not. The kind of adult people trusted.

School started again. Senior year. The halls felt smaller somehow, the faces both familiar and distant. Sophomores looked younger than he remembered being. The football locker room tightened around him like a place he’d grown into without noticing—his name on the starting roster, his number on more jerseys in the stands than last year. Recruiters started to show up at games; coaches mentioned them with a kind of restrained excitement, letters on official letterheads making their way into his hands.

He’d always wanted this. A scholarship. A shot at Northbridge. A way out that didn’t depend on his parents’ wallets or luck. Now it felt like more than that. It felt like a lifeline he was braiding with his own hands, one he could someday offer to someone else if they needed it.

To Kitt, if he ever found him.

He tried not to think of the “if” too often. It made his throat close. So he focused on the parts he could control—his passes, his footwork, his grades. He stayed late after practice, running extra plays until Coach Harding told him to go home.

“You’re going to burn yourself out,” Coach warned one evening, arms folded. “You’re playing like every game is the state final and it’s only September.”

“Then I’ll be ready when it is the state final,” Matt said, managing a half-smile.

Coach squinted at him. “You doing okay, Everest?”

Matt thought about lying. He thought about saying yes the way he always did, the way people expected him to. Instead, he shrugged.

“I’m working on it,” he said, knowing the coach meant about Kitt.

It was more honest than anything he’d said in weeks.

Late in October, he drove to Riverbend again.

The sky hung low and gray, the kind of day that made everything look washed out. Damp leaves clogged the gutters. Kids bundled in too-big jackets were heading somewhere together, backpacks bouncing. He followed them with his eyes without meaning to and realized they were all converging on a squat brick building he hadn’t really looked at before.

The sign above the door read RIVERBEND OUTREACH CENTER. The whale mural on the side wall made more sense now—this was where the kids came in the afternoons, the place they disappeared into when school let out. He watched them push through the double doors, faces lit with a kind of relieved energy that made his chest hurt.

It looked like the kind of place Kitt would like. Kitt, who gravitated to small kids without even realizing it, who had always been the one to hang back with someone who felt left out, who tolerated Matt’s friends but lit up in a different way when he was explaining something to a nervous freshman at the pool or running drills with a scrawny wide receiver who couldn’t get the steps right.

His feet carried him closer without him fully deciding to move. He stopped across the street and just watched for a while, hands in his pockets, wind biting at his cheeks. Every now and then, the door opened and a burst of noise spilled out. A lanky teenager darted out, chased by a little girl wielding a marker like a knife. A woman with a messy bun and a clipboard stepped outside to call a name.

Then he saw the dog.

Harbor burst into view first, head poking through the doorway, tail already wagging. A second later, the man followed, one hand on the leash. He wore the Northbridge jacket. His hair was a little mussed. He looked exactly like he had the other times Matt had seen him—from a distance, walking streets, part of this town in a way that suggested roots.

Matt’s heart started to pound.

He waited until the man had finished talking to the clipboard woman, until he’d stepped a few paces away from the door. Then Matt crossed the street before he could chicken out.

“Excuse me?” he called.

The man turned, alert, cautious. His eyes flicked over Matt—taking in his height, his age, his posture—before softening just slightly when Harbor trotted forward to sniff at his hand.

“Hi,” the man said. “Can I help you with something?”

Matt swallowed. His mouth felt dry all of a sudden.

“I… I hope so,” he said. “My name’s Matt. Matt Everest.”

He pulled his phone from his pocket, thumb already swiping to the photo he kept at the top of his gallery. It was a selfie they’d taken at the lake late last summer—Kitt’s hair still damp from the water, clinging to his forehead, his smile wide in a way he rarely let anyone else see. Matt was half in the frame, sunburned and grinning, shoulder pressed against Kitt’s as the evening light turned the water gold behind them.

They looked happy.
They looked safe.
They looked like they belonged in the same picture.

“I’m looking for someone,” Matt said, and there it was again, that crack in his voice he hated and couldn’t stop. He forced himself to meet the man’s eyes. “Have you seen him? His name is Kitt Wellington. He’s my—”

He faltered. Friend wasn’t right. Boyfriend wasn’t accurate, not in any official way. Other half felt too dramatic. Everything felt both too big and too small.

“He’s someone very important to me,” Matt finished helplessly.

The man’s gaze dropped to the screen. For a moment his face was unreadable—just a blank, professional carefully arranging itself into something neutral. He studied the picture, then looked back at Matt.

“How old did you say he was?” the man asked.

“Seventeen,” Matt said. “Same as me. He… left home. Months ago. He didn’t have anywhere to go. I think he might have come here. We… we used to come to Riverbend together for swim meets and stuff. I keep checking, but I haven’t…” He stopped, breath shuddering out. “I haven’t found anything.”

The man’s eyes were no longer blank. They were careful, measured, maybe even a little pained.

“I’m Tom,” he said slowly. “I work here. And at the university. And no, I’m sorry but I haven’t seen him.”

The words landed like stones. Matt’s shoulders slumped a fraction. He nodded, staring down at the cracked pavement for a second.

“Okay,” he said, voice small. “I just thought… in case he came here, or someone like him…” He shook his head as if trying to clear it. “Never mind. Sorry to bother you.”

“Matt,” Tom said, stopping him gently. “Wait.”

He hesitated. Matt looked back up, hope flaring too fast in his chest.

“If someone like him showed up here,” Tom said, “we’d do whatever we could for him. I can’t promise anything else. But if I see a boy who looks like this, who gives that name, or anything close… I can call you. If you want.” He held out his hand. “If you’re comfortable leaving a number.”

Matt scrambled for it like it was a life raft.

“Yes,” he said a little too quickly. “Yes, please.”

He rattled off his number, Tom typing it into his phone. Harbor nosed at Matt’s fingers, and Matt let them scritch gently between the dog’s ears. There was something grounding about the weight of that big head against his palm.

Tom watched his face with the expression of someone who hadn’t decided yet whether the person in front of him was dangerous or desperate or both.

“How long has he been gone?” Tom asked quietly.

“Since the winter,” Matt said. “Since…” He swallowed hard, the memory of snow and shouting and a slammed door crashing into him. “Since his dad kicked him out.”

Tom’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “Did you report him missing?”

Matt shook his head once. “His dad didn’t want to. Said he ‘left by choice.’ My parents… they had tried. But they aren’t his legal guardians. It got messy. And I didn’t want…” He trailed off. “I thought if I kept looking…”

He couldn’t finish that sentence either. Tom seemed to understand.

“I can’t give you any information about the kids who come here,” Tom said. “Or about anyone else. I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Matt said. “I just… I had to try.”

Tom nodded once, slowly. “You did the right thing.”

It didn’t feel like it. It felt like dropping pebbles into a well and hoping they built a ladder.

After a moment, Matt stepped back.

“If you see him,” he said, “please tell him… tell him I’m still looking. Tell him I’m… okay. That I got my act together. That I’m… I don’t know.” He laughed, a small, broken sound. “Just tell him I haven’t forgotten him.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Tom said.

It wasn’t a promise of success, but it was a promise of attention, and for now, that was the only kind Matt could offer.

Matt got back into his truck feeling both lighter and heavier. On the way out of town, he glanced at the youth center one more time in the rearview mirror, the brick building shrinking in the distance. It felt like leaving something important behind.

Tom watched the truck disappear around the corner, Harbor sitting obediently at his heel, leash slack.

“Come on, boy,” he murmured, giving the dog’s head a soft pat. “We’ve got work to do.”

The words had meant the youth center when he said them. By the time he locked up later, they meant something else too.

He waited until the next day to bring it up with Kitt.

He told himself it was because the afternoon was quiet and he had a sliver of time. Really, it was because he needed a night to think, to sit with the image of the boy with earnest eyes and shaking shoulders who had come all this way to ask about someone he might never find.

Kitt arrived that afternoon with damp hair and the sleeves of his hoodie pushed up, smelling faintly of dish soap and the restaurant’s spices. He smiled at a couple of kids who shouted his name, ruffled one boy’s hair, collected a stack of coloring sheets from Leah. Tom watched him for a few minutes, cataloguing the small differences from the boy who had first appeared at his door months ago—straighter shoulders, quicker smile, more confidence in every step. Harder edges too, around the eyes. The kind that came from having learned exactly how little the world owed you.

“Kitt,” Tom called softly from the doorway to his small office. “Do you have a second?”

Kitt glanced up, eyes flicking instinctively around the room to make sure no one needed him. When he saw Leah slip into his spot at the homework table with a wink, he nodded and followed Tom inside.

Tom closed the door. The click sounded louder than it should have.

“Am I in trouble?” Kitt asked, trying to joke. It came out thinner than he intended.

“No,” Tom said. “Not at all. Sit?”

Kitt sat on the edge of the chair, hands resting awkwardly on his knees, heart starting to hammer for no logical reason. The office was familiar enough—paper stacks, a mug of pens, a framed photo of Harbor as a puppy—but something in Tom’s posture made his stomach tighten.

“Is something wrong?” Kitt asked quietly.

Tom studied him for a moment, as if weighing how to start.

“Yesterday,” he said slowly, “a boy came by the center while you were at the restaurant.”

There was a tiny stretch of silence between each word. It felt like someone pulling a string tighter and tighter in Kitt’s chest.

“A boy?” he repeated.

“About your age,” Tom said. “Dark blond. Tall. Looked… like he hadn’t slept much in a while.” He paused. “He gave me a name. He was looking for someone.”

Kitt’s mouth went dry.

“Who?” he whispered.

“Someone named Kitt,” Tom said. “Kitt Wellington.”

It was like time folded in on itself. For a second, Kitt thought he might actually pass out. The room tilted. He grabbed the sides of the chair to keep himself from sliding off.

No.
No, no, no.

“He showed me a picture,” Tom added gently. “It was you. You and him. At what looked like a lake.”

There it was—the confirmation that this wasn’t a cruel coincidence. It wasn’t another Kitt, another boy with the same haircut. It was him. Matt had literally held his face in his hands, in some other place and time, and asked a stranger for help.

Kitt’s breath hitched. His vision blurred.

“He’s been looking for you,” Tom said. “For months.”

The tears came so fast he didn’t have a chance to stop them. They burned hot as they spilled over, slipping down his cheeks and falling onto his hands. He made a sound he didn’t recognize, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, and folded in on himself, elbows digging into his thighs as he dropped his head.

Of course.
Of course Matt had kept his promise.
Of course Matt had done exactly what he always did—thrown his whole heart at something and refused to let go.

He had spent months telling himself Matt was better off. That Matt had probably moved on, found someone else, turned all that brightness onto a life that actually made sense. He’d clung to the idea because the alternative hurt too much.

The alternative was this: that Matt was out there somewhere, hurting, searching, blaming himself. Carrying Kitt like a ghost he couldn’t lay to rest.

“It’s my fault,” Kitt choked out, voice raw. “I left. I didn’t—I didn’t call, I didn’t— I couldn’t. My dad smashed my phone and I… I didn’t go to his house. I could’ve. I almost did. I thought if I went, he’d let me in his house and—” He broke off, squeezing his eyes shut. The image rose up anyway: Matt’s house glowing warm across the street, his own body frozen on the sidewalk, his father’s shouted words echoing inside his skull.

He’s influencing you.
Stay away from my son.
You brought this on yourself.

“I was scared,” Kitt whispered. “I was so scared. My dad… he said things. Hurtful things. And I thought if I went to Matt’s, he’d drag him into it too. He’d blame him. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t wreck his family the way I wrecked mine. I thought if I disappeared it would be better for him. He’d forget me. He’d… be okay.”

Tears soaked his jeans. His chest hurt.

Tom didn’t interrupt. At some point he moved his chair closer, one hand resting lightly, firmly, on Kitt’s shoulder. The weight of it felt like something Kitt could anchor to.

“You didn’t wreck anything,” Tom said quietly when Kitt ran out of words. “You were thrown out. That’s not the same thing.”

“I left him,” Kitt said. “He was there. Across the street. I saw him standing there. Yet I walked the other way.”

“You were seventeen,” Tom said. “You were terrified. You had just been told, in the cruelest way, that there was no place for you in your own home. You did what you thought you had to do to survive. That doesn’t make you a villain in someone else’s story. It makes you a boy who was hurt.”

Kitt let out another shuddering breath. “You didn’t see his face,” he whispered. “When my dad was yelling. When… when everything happened. He looked so scared. I keep thinking about it. I keep thinking…”

He swallowed.

“How could he still want to find me after that?” Kitt asked. “How could he not hate me for running?”

Tom’s fingers squeezed gently on his shoulder.

“Because he loves you,” Tom said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “That much is clear, even from five minutes of talking to him. And love isn’t neat. It doesn’t check whether you handled trauma perfectly before it decides whether to stick around.”

Kitt laughed weakly, a broken little sound. “I never told him,” he said. “Not really. Not in words. I thought… if I said it out loud it would make everything real. And then my dad would know. And everything would explode.”

“And it exploded anyway,” Tom said softly.

“Yeah,” Kitt whispered.

They sat there for a while, the air in the office thick with the sound of Kitt’s quiet crying and the muffled noise of the center on the other side of the door. Somewhere, a kid laughed too loudly. Harbor barked once in the hallway.

After a long time, the tears slowed. Kitt scrubbed at his face with the heels of his hands, embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Don’t be,” Tom said. “You’re allowed to feel things. You’re allowed to be hurt.”

Kitt stared at the floor. “What did you tell him?” he asked, voice hoarse. “Matt.”

“That I hadn’t seen you,” Tom said. “Which, at the time, was true as far as my role here goes. I didn’t… I wasn’t ready to say anything else. I needed to talk to you first. This is your life, Kitt. Your story. I’m not going to hand it to a stranger just because he wants it badly enough.”

“He’s not a stranger,” Kitt whispered.

“To you, no,” Tom said. “To me, he was. You never mentioned him before.”

That realization hit Kitt with a different kind of weight. He had been living this half-life in Riverbend, building routines, collecting people who cared about him, learning how to stand on his own—and he’d kept Matt completely walled off from that, like a room in his heart he refused to open.

“I couldn’t,” he said. “If I said his name out loud it would make it real. That I left him. That I never even tried to call. That I…” He trailed off, helpless.

Tom nodded slowly. “You were surviving,” he said again. “Survival sometimes means shutting doors to things you don’t have the capacity to handle yet. That doesn’t mean those things aren’t important. It just means you were trying to stay alive.”

Kitt looked up at him, eyes red. “What do I do now?”

Tom didn’t give him an answer. He didn’t hand him a neat solution. He just held his gaze and spoke quietly, each word careful.

“Right now,” he said, “you breathe. You finish your shift if you can. You eat something. You go home. You sleep. You understand that knowing he’s looking for you doesn’t mean you have to make a decision tonight.”

Kitt opened his mouth, ready to argue that he didn’t deserve that kind of grace, then closed it again.

“Eventually,” Tom continued, “you ask yourself what you want. Not what your father would say. Not what you think Matt deserves in some abstract way. What you want. Whether you want him to know you’re alive. Whether you want to see him. If the answer is yes, we figure out how to do that safely. If the answer is no, then we respect that, too, and I can let him know that you’re okay without saying more than you’re comfortable with.”

“You’d… do that?” Kitt asked.

“Yes,” Tom said simply.

Kitt’s throat closed again. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough,” he admitted. “To see him. To see his face. To see what I did to him.”

“You didn’t do this alone,” Tom said. “And you’re stronger than you think. But no one is going to force you. Not me. Not him.”

They sat in silence a little longer. The weight of everything hung there, but it felt different now—less like a crushing block on his chest, more like a heavy box someone had finally helped him put on a table instead of making him carry it alone.

“Can I ask… what he looked like?” Kitt asked softly. “When he came.”

Tom thought of the boy on the sidewalk outside, every inch of him strung tight, words tumbling out in a rush as if he were afraid they’d choke him if he kept them in.

“Worried,” Tom said. “Tired. Determined. Like he’d decided he wasn’t going to stop, even if it hurt. Like the idea of you being out there alone was worse than any risk he was taking by looking.”

Kitt bit his lip until it hurt.

“He hasn’t given up on you,” Tom added. “Whatever you choose from here, you should at least know that.”

Kitt nodded once, a jerky motion, as if anything more would break the fragile control he’d regained.

Tom didn’t ask him to decide. He let him sit there until his breathing evened out, until the redness faded a little from his eyes. When Kitt finally stood, wiping his face with his sleeve one last time, Tom squeezed his shoulder again.

“We can talk more,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Kitt stepped out of the office into the brighter, louder world of the center. A couple of kids barreled into him, arguing over whose turn it was with the foosball table. Leah shot him a quick look, eyes flicking from his face to Tom’s door and back again. She didn’t say anything, just nudged a box of markers toward him.

“Art corner’s exploding,” she said. “You’re up.”

He sank down onto the small plastic chair, letting the kids’ chatter wash over him. His mind was a tangle of memories and possibilities and fear, but somewhere under all of it, a single clear note rang out now, undeniable and steady.

Matt was still looking.

Matt had never stopped.

And for the first time since that night in the snow, Kitt let himself consider something he’d been too afraid to even picture:

Not going back to his old life.

But letting Matt find a way into the new one he’d built.