Somewhere Only We Know - 37. I’m Home

The Saturday before Thanksgiving started ordinary and wrong at the same time.

Matt woke to the pale strip of light cutting across his ceiling and the smell of coffee drifting up the stairs. His alarm hadn’t gone off yet, but his eyes were open and his chest was tight, like something inside him had been tugged awake before the rest of him was ready.

He lay there for a moment, listening.

His dad moving around in the kitchen. A cabinet closing. The low murmur of the news on TV. Somewhere outside, a car door thunked shut and a dog barked twice. It was a normal Lakehurst morning. He should have felt calm. Grateful. Maybe even excited; Thanksgiving break was close, his sister will be home from college soon, and after that, everything would start sliding toward graduation, toward Northbridge, toward the future he’d fought for.

Instead, the air felt too thin.

He rolled onto his back and pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum.

The feeling was familiar now. It had visited him at random over the past months, usually on nights when the sky over the lake was too clear, or on mornings when snow had started to melt and the world smelled like wet earth and woodsmoke. A restless, aching pull that didn’t have a name, only a direction.

Out there.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, scrubbed his hands over his face, and forced himself into motion. Shower. Jeans. Hoodie. A Northbridge baseball cap his sister had bought as a joke and he now wore religiously. He went downstairs, kissed his mom on the cheek as she stirred something on the stove, accepted a mug of coffee from his dad.

“You okay?” his mother asked, studying him for a moment.

“Yeah,” Matt lied. “Just tired.”

Michael exchanged a quick glance with her but didn’t push. “Practice is off today, remember,” he said. “Coach wants you guys to rest. Active recovery only.”

“Yeah,” Matt said again.

He tried to sit at the table and scroll aimlessly through his phone. He tried to answer a text from Lindsay congratulating him one more time on the scholarship. He tried to read an email from Coach Harding that mentioned playbooks and film sessions and spring conditioning.

After ten minutes, the words blurred.

The tug in his chest wouldn’t ease. It felt like standing in a hallway with a door cracked open at the far end, cold air spilling through, calling him closer.

He set his phone down.

“I’m gonna go out for a bit,” he said, already pushing back his chair.

“Where?” his mom asked.

“Just… walk,” he said. “Clear my head.”

“Don’t forget a jacket,” she called after him.

He grabbed one from the hook by the door and stepped outside. The air hit his face like a shock. It wasn’t bitter yet, not the kind of cold that burned, but it had teeth. Frost glittered on the neighbors’ lawns, thin and fragile. The sky was a high, washed-out blue, the sun barely starting to climb.

He started walking with no real destination.

His feet knew better.

They carried him down their street, past the Everests’ mailbox, past the Wellington house across from his own.

He cut toward the trailhead that led into the woods behind the neighborhood. The sign was weathered and leaning, the letters half-faded: LAKEHURST NATURE PATH. He’d run this trail a thousand times for conditioning, raced Kitt on it in the summer, wandered it alone when everything got too loud.

Today, it felt like stepping into a memory.

The trees closed in around him, tall and almost bare now, branches webbing thinly against the sky. Leaves crackled under his boots. The earth smelled damp and familiar. His breath puffed white in front of him, breaking apart and disappearing with each exhale.

He walked faster.

The path curved and dipped, roots jutting from the ground like rough knuckles. A squirrel darted across his feet and vanished into the underbrush. Somewhere above, a crow cried once, sharp and distant. He passed the fallen log where he and Kitt had once balanced like tightrope walkers, daring each other not to fall. Passed the little clearing where they’d camped out with blankets and snacks the summer before everything started to crack.

The tug in his chest sharpened.

When he reached the last bend before the lake, his steps slowed. Habit. Reverence. Fear.

He turned the corner.

The lake opened up before him, a sheet of pale gray-blue under the November sky, edged with a fringe of reeds and frost-brittle grass. The dock stretched out from the shore, old wood darkened by years of weather and footsteps.

Someone was sitting at the very end of it.

For a second, Matt thought his mind had finally snapped and started projecting his wants onto the world. The figure was hunched, elbows on knees, a backpack at his side. A familiar jacket, familiar line of shoulders, familiar blond head bent forward.

His heart slammed so hard it hurt.

“Kitt?” he whispered, too quiet for anyone to hear.

The figure shifted slightly, turned—

And it was him.

Kitt.

Matt stopped breathing.

He stood at the edge of the trees, frozen, as if any sudden movement might shatter the scene into mist. Kitt’s profile came into view—familiar in a way that hit Matt straight in the chest. The same jawline he’d memorized, the same soft slope of his nose, the same way his shoulders rounded slightly when he sat deep in thought.

But there were new things too.
Not older, just… worn in different ways.

He looked tired around the eyes, like sleep hadn’t come easy. His hair was shorter than when they met here last time, the blond strands pushed off his forehead, a little messy like he’d run his hands through it on the bus. He looked fragile and strong at the same time—like someone who’d been holding the world up on one shoulder and finally set it down for a second.

He wasn’t a stranger transformed by months.

He was Kitt.
Still Kitt.
Just carrying a few more nights, a few more worries, a few more miles in his bones.

And he was here.

Kitt’s gaze flicked toward the tree line, as if pulled by the same invisible thread that had dragged Matt out of his house. Their eyes met.

The world lurched back into motion.

“Kitt,” Matt said again, louder this time, voice cracking.

Kitt’s lips parted. He stood up slowly, every movement careful, deliberate, like he was afraid he’d wake up if he moved too fast.

He didn’t say anything at first. He just looked and smiled at Matt like someone who’d been wandering in the dark and had finally stumbled upon light.

Matt’s body decided before his brain caught up. He moved forward, boots thudding on the beginning of the dock, then clattering against the old boards as he walked, then ran, the distance between them shrinking in jagged, disbelieving seconds.

Kitt stepped toward him at the same time.

They collided in the middle of the dock.

Matt grabbed him—shoulders, back, anywhere he could reach—as if to anchor himself. The backpack tumbled to the boards with a soft thud. Kitt’s hands clutched at Matt’s jacket, fisting in the fabric.

For the length of several heartbeats, they just held on.

Matt buried his face in Kitt’s shoulder, inhaling him. He smelled like cold air, travel, and something familiar underneath—the soap he’d always used, the scent that had haunted Matt’s pillow when he couldn’t sleep.

“Hi,” Kitt whispered shakily against his neck.

Matt laughed, a wild, broken sound, and pulled back just enough to see his face. “Hi,” he managed. “You’re— You’re really here.”

Kitt’s eyes were wet. “I told you I’d meet you here again one day.”

“I know,” Matt said. His throat burned. “I just didn’t know if… when…”

Kitt’s gaze dropped briefly to Matt’s mouth.

Matt didn’t think. He didn’t weigh anything or worry about timing or question what he was allowed.

He leaned in and kissed him.

The first brush of their mouths was clumsy and desperate, more collision than choreography. Kitt made a small sound—something between a gasp and a sob—and surged forward, kissing him back.

It wasn’t like the first time at the lake in the late summer, when everything had been tentative and trembling, half fear and half wonder. This kiss was heavier with history, packed with months of distance and hurt and longing. Matt cupped Kitt’s jaw in both hands, thumbs brushing the damp tracks under his eyes. Kitt fisted his hands in Matt’s jacket and pulled him closer, like he could erase the space that had ever existed between them.

Their teeth bumped. Their noses misaligned. Neither of them cared.

When they finally broke apart, breaths ragged, Matt’s forehead dropped to Kitt’s. His hands slipped down to rest around Kitt’s waist, holding him in place.

“I’m back,” Kitt said, voice hoarse.

Matt’s eyes closed. Relief poured through him like something physical, making his knees weak. “You’re back,” he repeated, as if saying it would stamp it into reality. “You’re really back.”

Kitt nodded, blinking hard. “I… got off the bus and I knew I had to come here first. I couldn’t go home alone. I was… scared. I thought about calling you later but then you showed up.”

Matt’s grip tightened. “It’s okay. You never have to go anywhere alone again. You hear me?”

A small, shaky laugh escaped Kitt. “You always say that.”

“That’s because I mean it,” Matt said.

They sank down onto the edge of the dock, their legs dangling over the water. The lake lapped quietly at the shore, barely rippling under the weak November sun. A few stubborn leaves floated near the reeds, caught in place.

Matt glanced at the backpack. “Is that… everything?”

Kitt followed his gaze. “Pretty much.” He huffed a breath. “Some clothes. The GED results. A letter Tom made me print. A stupid amount of granola bars because Leah doesn’t think I know how to eat.”

Matt smiled. “How is everyone?”

Kitt’s face softened. “Good. Javier yelled at me for leaving, then made me promise to come back and eat as a customer, not as staff. The kids cried. Leah cried harder. Tom…” He swallowed. “Tom hugged me and told me to go home. That he’d see me at Northbridge.”

Matt felt his chest swell. “He really thinks you’ll get in.”

“I passed the GED,” Kitt said, voice trying to be matter-of-fact and failing. “My scores are good. Better than good, Tom says. I don’t know if Northbridge will actually accept me, but… for the first time since everything blew up, it feels like I have options again.” He glanced sideways. “You’re really going?”

“Full ride,” Matt said quietly. “Coach called to say I’m their ‘priority recruit.’” He made air quotes with his fingers. “My mom cried for like three hours. My dad bought beer for the neighbors like I scored a Super Bowl ring.”

Kitt laughed softly. “You deserve it. You worked so hard.”

Matt shrugged, a little embarrassed. “I worked hard because… I needed something to hold onto. Something that wasn’t just waiting.” His jaw flexed. “I kept thinking… if I made it, then maybe one day you’d be there too. Walking across the same campus. Sitting in the stands. Somewhere I could find you.”

Kitt’s fingers inched across the weathered wood until they brushed Matt’s.

Matt took the hint and laced their fingers together.

“I wanted that too,” Kitt said, voice small. “When we talked about Northbridge before… it was the only dream I had that felt like it belonged to me. Not to my dad. Not to church. Just… us.” He looked out over the water. “I thought I lost it when I left.”

“You didn’t,” Matt said. “You just took a detour.”

Kitt let out a breath that quivered in the middle. “It was more like running off the road into a ditch.”

“And then climbing out,” Matt said gently. “With help. On your own. Both.”

Kitt smiled weakly. “Riverbend… it wasn’t all bad. It was hard. Worst kind of hard at the beginning. But people were… kind. Mateo, Tom, Javier, Leah, the kids at the center. They kept me alive.” He turned, eyes shining. “But I never stopped wanting to come back here. To you. To—” He swallowed. “To home. I just didn’t know if I was allowed.”

Matt’s thumb stroked over the back of his hand. “You are,” he said. “You always were. It just took the adults a while to catch up.”

At that, Kitt’s expression flickered. “My parents…”

Matt’s stomach tightened. “They’re different now,” he said carefully. “Your mom… she hasn’t stopped worrying. She cried when she got your postcard. Your dad…” He hesitated. “He’s trying. It’s messy. He talks to our pastor a lot. He met with John again.”

Kitt’s brows furrowed. “John?”

“The guy who saved his life,” Matt reminded him. “The one with the same rare blood type. He and his partner came to see your dad in the hospital, remember?”

“I remember you mentioning him and the accident last time we met,” Kitt said.

“They’ve talked more,” Matt said. “Your dad came over to our house. He apologized to me. He asked for help… finding you. He…” He looked at Kitt seriously. “He knows he was wrong, Kitt. He hates what he did. I’ve never seen him look so… broken.”

Kitt went very still.

“That doesn’t erase anything,” Matt added quickly. “He doesn’t get a free pass. You don’t owe him forgiveness on a schedule. But… I think… if you decide to go back, you won’t be walking into the same house you ran from.”

Kitt swallowed hard. “And if I don’t go back?”

Matt squeezed his hand. “Then we figure that out too. You’re not stuck. Not anymore.”

For a moment, the only sound was the soft slap of water against the dock.

Kitt stared at the lake, at the place where last time they’d met here he’d given in to desire and fear and love all tangled together and let Matt touch him in ways he’d only ever dreamed about. That afternoon had felt like a miracle—like the world narrowing to breath and skin and whispered confessions.

Now, sitting here on the cusp of actually changing his life again, it felt… different.

Calmer. Deeper.

“I told Tom I’d go back before Thanksgiving,” Kitt said quietly. “To Lakehurst. To my parents. I didn’t tell him the exact day. Just… before.” His mouth quirked. “I guess… this is me keeping my word.”

Matt’s chest warmed. “You really came back for good?”

Kitt nodded once, firm. “I don’t know exactly what ‘for good’ looks like. I still have to clean up things in Riverbend—call, maybe go back for some stuff, keep my promise to visit. But… yeah. I don’t want to live there anymore. I want to live here again. Finish this with you. Try to… build a life that’s ours, even if it’s complicated. Or even if it’s not here if we get into the same university, I just want to have a place I can call home and come back to again.”

Matt exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since February. “You have no idea how much I wanted to hear you say that.”

Kitt looked at him, eyes glassy but steady. “Say it with me then.”

“Say what?”

“That I’m home,” Kitt whispered.

Matt’s throat swelled. “You’re home,” he said.

Kitt blinked fast and smiled crookedly. “I’m home.”

They sat there until their fingers were stiff from the cold and their cheeks burned from the wind and their hearts had settled into something that felt less like shock and more like a fragile, precious reality.

Eventually, Matt squeezed his hand and stood.

“Ready?” he asked.

Kitt looked back at the water one more time, at the dock where they’d almost kissed a hundred times as kids and finally did as almost-men, at the trees that had held so many versions of them over the years.

He nodded.

Matt slung the backpack over his own shoulder without asking and kept their hands linked as they left the dock, walking up the path through the forest together. The world felt both impossibly changed and exactly the same—bare branches, rustling leaves, the crunch of their boots in unison.

At the edge of the trees, Lakehurst unfolded beneath them like a memory: rooftops, chimneys, the faint line of the main road, the water tower with its faded blue paint.

Kitt’s grip tightened.

“Hey,” Matt said softly. “Look at me.”

Kitt did.

“I’m not letting go at the door,” Matt said. “Not unless you want me to.”

Kitt inhaled slowly, then exhaled, fogging the air between them.

“I don’t want you to,” he said.

They walked down the sidewalk like that—two boys who had once played tag in these streets and now moved through them as something else. Neighbors glanced through their windows. Mrs. Donnelly from the corner waved absentmindedly as she carried groceries in. The world did its normal small-town spinning while something huge and quiet shifted inside Kitt.

When they turned onto his street, his steps slowed.

The Wellington house looked exactly the same.

Same pale siding. Same front porch with the slightly crooked step. Same hanging plant that had finally given up against the cold. The only difference was the way Kitt saw it now—not as a fixed, unquestioned center of his world, but as a place he could choose to enter or walk past.

Matt stood beside him, their shoulders almost touching, their hands still joined.

“You don’t have to go up yet,” Matt said. “We can… walk more. Or we can sit on your porch until you’re ready.”

Kitt stared at the front door. He thought of the last time he’d stood here—the slam, the shattered phone, his father’s words like knives, the way his lungs had burned as he ran into the snow.

His chest constricted.

Then he remembered the parking lot outside the game. His father’s voice breaking on I’m sorry.

He took a breath.

“I’m ready,” he said. “Or at least… I’m done running.”

Matt nodded, something like pride flickering in his eyes. “Then let’s go.”

They climbed the steps together. The wood creaked under their combined weight. Kitt’s free hand shook as he reached for the doorbell.

He pressed it.

The chime echoed faintly inside.

There was a shuffle. A voice. The sound of someone hurrying.

The door opened.

Susan stood there, her hair pulled back into a messy clip, apron dusted with flour. For a second, she didn’t react—like her brain refused to register what her eyes were seeing.

Then everything in her face crumpled.

“Kitt,” she breathed.

He barely had time to take in the way her shoulders collapsed, the way her eyes instantly filled, before she surged forward, hands flying to his face, his shoulders, like she had to check he was tangible.

He grabbed her like he was falling.

“Mom,” he choked.

She pulled him into her arms so tightly he could barely draw breath. Her body shook with sobs against his. She buried her face in his neck like a woman who’d been watching for a ghost and finally had her child back instead.

“Oh, baby,” she cried, over and over. “Oh, sweetheart. Oh, thank God. Thank God.”

“I’m sorry,” Kitt sobbed, words breaking apart. “Mom, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I—”

“No,” she pulled back just enough to look him in the face, hands on either side of his jaw. “No. You don’t say sorry. Not first. Not for surviving. Not for leaving when this house made you feel unsafe.” Her voice cracked. “That wasn’t your fault.”

Kitt’s vision blurred completely. “I missed you.”

“I missed you more than you will ever understand,” she whispered. “Every single day.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Kitt saw movement deeper in the house.

Stephen stood in the hallway, one hand braced on the wall.

He looked smaller than Kitt remembered. Not physically—he was still tall, still broad—but something in his posture had changed. The old rigid certainty was gone, hollowed out, leaving behind a man who seemed like he’d spent months walking around with his own shadow turned against him.

His gaze found their joined hands.

He froze.

Kitt’s fingers spasmed around Matt’s.

The air between them seemed to thicken. For a heartbeat, the old fear rose in Kitt like a reflex—bracing for loud voices, for condemnation, for the word abomination he’d heard too many times from the pulpit and once in his own kitchen.

Stephen’s jaw clenched.

His hand flexed against the wall.

Then something in his eyes broke.

He stepped forward slowly, like a man approaching a wild animal he was terrified of spooking. He stopped just in front of Kitt.

Up close, Kitt could see the new lines carved into his father’s face. The gray in his hair that hadn’t been there a year ago. The tremor in his fingers.

For a long moment, Stephen just looked at him.

“Kitt,” he said. His voice was hoarse, roughened by disuse or too many swallowed words. “You’re here.”

“I am,” Kitt whispered. His whole body shook.

Stephen’s gaze flicked down to their hands again—the way Kitt held onto Matt like a lifeline, the way Matt’s thumb stroked slow, calming circles over Kitt’s knuckles.

Stephen’s throat worked.

Old instinct flickered across his face.

He shoved it aside.

He closed his eyes briefly, as if in prayer. When he opened them again, they were wet.

“I was wrong,” he said. “So wrong I don’t know how to stand here and look at you and not drown in it.”

Kitt made a small, wounded sound.

Stephen stepped forward one more half-step, hand hesitating in the air before landing, carefully, at the back of Kitt’s neck. It was the same place he’d grabbed him in anger months ago. Now his fingers were gentle. Shaking.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. The words trembled on the edge of breaking. “I am so, so sorry, son. I threw you out when you needed me most. I chose my fear over you. I chose what I thought was righteousness and it almost killed you.” His face contorted. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t expect you to trust me. I don’t deserve either. But if there is any mercy left for me in this life, it will be if you let me try. If you let me spend whatever years I’ve got left proving to you that I know I was wrong.”

Kitt’s knees buckled.

Matt shifted his stance instantly, supporting him with his free arm without breaking their grip.

“I… I was so scared,” Kitt gasped. “Every day. Out there. I kept hearing your voice. I kept thinking… it was my fault. That I ruined everything just by being who I am.”

Stephen’s face crumpled. A sound tore out of him—something halfway between a sob and a groan. He pulled Kitt into his chest, holding him as tightly as Susan had, his cheek pressed to the top of Kitt’s head.

“That’s what kills me,” he choked. “That my voice was one of the things that hurt you. That my words followed you more than my love did. I don’t want that to be your truth anymore.”

Kitt cried against his father’s shoulder, tears hot and endless. The anger he’d carried, the terror, the shame—it all tangled with the memory of bedtime stories, of bandaged knees, of the way his dad used to hold him up in the pool when he was too small to float alone.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Kitt sobbed. “I don’t know how to come home and pretend none of it happened.”

“We won’t pretend,” Stephen said. “We will remember. We will learn. I will listen. I will go back to that pastor and argue with him if I have to. I will keep talking to John. I will keep unlearning every cruel thing someone put in my head before you were born.” His hand tightened at the back of Kitt’s neck. “I just… I want you home. Safe. Loved. Here. And I want you to know that whoever you love—” His eyes flicked to Matt. “—is welcome too.”

Matt swallowed hard, standing on the threshold of this family moment, feeling both like an intruder and like someone who’d been stitched into their story long ago.

“I love him,” Matt said quietly, because he couldn’t not. “I’ve loved him for years.”

Stephen’s gaze met his.

Matt didn’t flinch. Not this time.

“I know,” Stephen said, voice rough but steady. “And I’m sorry for what I said to you too. For… accusing you. For shutting you out. You chased after my son when I shoved him away. You looked for him when I pretended he’d come back on his own. You were the better man. I should have been grateful. I am now.” He swallowed. “Thank you for not giving up on him.”

Matt’s eyes burned. “I never could.”

Kitt pulled back slightly from his father’s chest, tears still wet on his cheeks. He turned his head, looking at Matt, then at his parents, then down at their joined hands.

His voice shook, but the words came clear.

“I’m sorry, Mom. Dad,” he said. “I’m… I’m home.”

Susan began crying again, softer this time, like relief had taken some of the sharpness out of the sound.

Stephen’s hand stayed at the back of Kitt’s neck, not gripping now, just there—a warm, anchoring weight.

“Welcome home,” he said.

The foyer of the Wellington house smelled like whatever Susan had been baking, like the laundry detergent they’d always used, like the faint cinnamon candle she lit in the colder months. The air was warmer inside than out. It wrapped around Kitt with a familiarity that made his chest ache.

He stepped over the threshold with Matt’s hand still in his.

For the first time in his life, he did it knowing exactly who he was, exactly who he loved, and not apologizing for either.

And the house, the parents, the boy beside him—

This time, they made room.