Colton and Will

Colton and Will’s relationship turns workplace concern into chosen-family care: Will is Colton’s boss, but he also makes room for the younger man’s distress, offers the limits and lessons of his own experience, and tells him he is loved. Colton, in turn, trusts Will with a truth he has been struggling to carry alone: he is in love with Marcel.

From workplace concern to confidant

Will’s care often begins with noticing what Colton is trying to conceal. When Colton kneads challah dough so ferociously that it threatens to become stones, Will recognizes the strain and asks what is wrong. Colton initially dismisses it as nothing, then gives voice to a fear that being himself will ruin every good thing. He wants to be seen as the person who survived his past, not reduced to his trauma or treated as someone destined to remain inexperienced and alone.

Will does not pretend to understand Colton’s specific history. Instead, he says that his own conflict with his parents had centered on choosing to run a café rather than attend the prestigious university they had secured for him. The comparison is not presented as equivalent to Colton’s suffering; it is a way of offering personal vulnerability without taking over the conversation.

Will’s history and reassurance

Will explains that before he met Sage, he had stayed for a long time with a mean and abusive partner. He says he feared that no one else would love him, and describes feeling like a failure for turning down a wealthy life in order to scrape by with a small café. His memory gives Colton a concrete counterexample to the belief that a difficult past or an imperfect life makes someone unlovable: Will found a lasting relationship with Sage, even though he says it was hard for him to accept that Sage loved him.

That disclosure leads Will to reassure Colton that he will not be alone forever. He distinguishes the worry Colton sees in his loved ones from a judgment about his capabilities: they worry because he is family and because they love him, not because they believe his future is beyond him. Colton breaks down crying. Will’s acceptance of that emotion matters to their relationship; Colton has cried in front of him before, when he was a teenager dealing with fresh trauma, and Will has never made him ashamed of expressing himself.

Trust and Colton’s disclosure

The conversation changes when Colton tells Will there is someone: Marcel. Will admits he had partly guessed. Colton believes Marcel wants him but has said he will never be with him, leaving Colton caught between hope and apparent rejection. By telling Will, Colton chooses to share the uncertainty rather than keep it entirely to himself. The disclosure demonstrates the intimacy of their bond: Will is not only the person who notices when Colton is struggling, but someone Colton trusts with his romantic vulnerability.

The support fits a broader pattern of Will’s attentiveness to Colton’s material circumstances as well as his feelings. Colton’s financial-aid denial turns on a technical dependency-status rule: although he has spent the last year in foster care, his parents never legally lost custody, so their income is counted against him. When the letter arrives, his housing is also struck by a flood; he saves his laptop, phone, file folder, and backpack, but little else. The novel presents these pressures as part of the context in which Will’s concern operates, rather than as problems that reassurance alone can solve.

A relationship shaped by overlapping vulnerabilities

Will’s support does not erase the differences between their experiences. Colton was sent to Father Benson’s conversion camp after his parents learned he was gay; he ran away because he feared the camp would kill him, lived on the streets, and was eventually sent to Ted House. Will, meanwhile, describes an abusive adult relationship and the fear that no one would love him. Their histories are distinct, but Will uses his own experience to make space for Colton’s pain rather than to rank or explain it away.

That form of care also contrasts with the barriers Colton and Marcel face. Marcel has been rejected from jobs for which he was qualified because employers did not know how to accommodate his blindness, while Colton’s educational aid is blocked by the legal status of his parents despite his time in foster care. Will’s response is interpersonal rather than a cure for these structural obstacles: he listens, shares what he can, and insists that Colton is loved as family. The relationship’s significance lies in that combination of practical awareness and emotional recognition—Colton is not asked to become less complicated before he can be supported.