IT WASN’T surprising that he was gone when I woke up in the morning. I wasn’t shocked that I took Matt to breakfast at Jason’s house instead of him. I hadn’t expected it to be more than a one-night stand—even though I had hoped in my secret heart—and it looked as though I was right.
Matt and I made the frantic drive back home together for Christmas to Sweetgrass, which was just twenty miles from Dallas. We left on Monday afternoon, the twenty-fourth, after I finished work, and got a head start since we closed early. So there was still enough time left when we showed up for Matt’s mom to feed us and drag us off to midnight mass. It was nice to wake up Christmas morning to a house full of the smells of cooking, turkey and ham, pies baking, and the sound of Matt getting reamed out by both his parents. He had missed being with his family the year before because he had spent his holiday with the girlfriend he had abandoned me for. They had not raised him like that, and while they understood that in the future he would be spending holidays away from them when he fell in love for real, some girl who would come between him and me was not a good choice.
I was on the couch with Jaci, drinking hot chocolate, listening to Matt get it with both barrels and trying not to smile when he stalked out of the kitchen. He flopped down hard beside me on the couch.
“They like you better,” he mumbled.
“That’s because Vince didn’t make Mama cry last year,” she said pointedly, with her patented eyebrow lift. Jaci had it down to a science, and at sixteen she was just brimming with sarcasm.
He rolled his eyes, and I jabbed him in arm with my elbow. His grunt made me smile.
We had to head out early the day after Christmas, because I had to work that night and so did Matt. It seemed liked there was only us on the road in Matt’s same battered Toyota Corolla, which was somehow still running. Since we took turns driving, I was able to check my e-mail, and lo and behold there was a message in there from Carson.
The note was not from his e-mail, but the test results were indeed his, showing me beyond a shadow of a doubt that truly, Carson Cress was disease-free. His word was apparently good; he’d done what he’d said he would, even if the whole thing meant nothing. To have shared something amazing with someone special was one thing, but to trivialize the encounter with silence afterward––I didn’t even get a “Merry Christmas”––stripped all the magic away, leaving behind only a mistake in the heat of passion. I was devastated and I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be as callous as he was, as cool as he was, taking the whole experience for what it was: a hot night and a fantasy come true.
I moved from hurt to anger and finally landed on disgust. And it wasn’t him who came off bad in the scenario, but me. I was the idiot; I was the one who missed the player under layers of fake sincerity and false flattery. There actually was a sucker born every minute—I had just never seen myself as one. How stupid could I be?
By the time the Friday rolled around, I was better. I was, as usual, working. Matt and I were back in sync, falling into old patterns. We were planning our trip home for New Year’s to be with his folks, and I was planning what I was going to do on Sunday, which I had off. Matt didn’t understand why I didn’t have another Saturday off, and I had to explain, again, since he hadn’t listened the first time, that the only reason I had the previous Saturday off was because I’d worked fourteen days in a row.
“Aren’t you gonna drive to the game with me and the guys?” he’d asked.
“I have to work tomorrow,” I told him for the tenth time, “from three to eleven. My clone can’t cover my shift, so I have to be there.”
“Yeah, but Cress is playing in Sun Devil Stadium in Arizona. Didn’t he ask you to go?”
That was the extent of what I’d shared with Matt. “He was just paying me back for the poster thing. I doubt he’ll even realize if I’m there or not.”
My best friend had not looked all that convinced.
So Matt was gone—along with what remained of the student body who had not gone home for winter break. Campus, and everything close to it, resembled a ghost town.
Work was dead. We ran everything in three hours, cleaned, and then resorted to a rubber band fight that degraded further into a rubber band ball fight. Office chair races were hard to do on carpet, and all the porn sites were blocked on the computers.
I let everyone go home since I was the only one who couldn’t bail and worked the last two hours alone. At ten forty-five, I had all the money counted and everything shut down five minutes after I closed. I was already walking to the Pink Lady—so named because the felt on all their pool tables was fuchsia—to meet some people from the other store. When my phone rang, I answered as soon as I saw that it was Matt.
“Hey, how was the—”
“Did you see it?”
“See what? Did we win? Is Cress gonna be drafted to the pros before he even has time to graduate or—”
“Oh God, Vince, it was horrible.”
“What was?” I chuckled.
“You didn’t see it?”
“See what?”
Long silence.
“Matt?”
“Oh God, Vin. I mean, I know you guys aren’t tight and he doesn’t mean shit to you like he does to me and all the other guys who used to love to watch him fucking play, but—”
“Used to?” My stomach dropped. “What’re you talking about? What the fuck happened?”
“Jesus Christ, Vin, I mean… he… God.”
I hung up, stopped, leaned against the side of the closed deli I was passing, and brought up the web browser on my iPhone. Turned out I didn’t even need to search for his name or the bowl game; it was there, one of the top stories, instantly accessible.
After the first one I was in a daze. I watched one after another after another on my way home, blowing off everything, everyone, all my plans meaningless. Nothing mattered except me getting to the television in my living room.
Flipping to ESPN as fast as I could, not even changing, I sat down with my jacket, beanie, and scarf still on, just needing to know, anything else not even worth considering.
At this hour, they were reporting from outside the hospital in Phoenix where Carson was. The concussion, originally the main concern, had turned out to be much less serious than suspected. Even though he had been knocked out on the field, he had apparently regained consciousness very quickly in the ambulance. The concussion was ruled mild and was not in any way life threatening.
The second they finished with the update, they returned to the top story. Carson Cress had been tackled by two defensive linemen simultaneously, and his right arm, his throwing arm, had sustained a multifragmentary compound fracture, and now they knew his bicep had been torn when the bone had snapped in three places. It had occurred in an instant, and as I watched, horrified, the film of the injury, seeing it unfold, my eyes blurred. I couldn’t even imagine the pain. He would need to have surgery to set the bone as well as to reattach the muscle. In all probability, the experts said, he would never throw a football again.
There was so much commentary, so many competing experts; there were diagrams of the arm, a play-by-play of how it had been twisted completely back and then landed on. A helmet crashing into his had caused the concussion; the fall and the tackle of the second lineman did the damage to his arm. The player who drilled him helmet-to-helmet was suspended, but the other guy was just playing ball. There was no fault in his hit; it had just been an unfortunate series of events.
The guy who was suspended refused to talk, the other guy was “damn sorry” for the outcome, but the play itself could have gone down no other way.
And so it went, interview after interview, more doctors, highlights of Carson’s family arriving at the hospital: mother, father, grandmother, his sister and her family, his brother with his, and the family priest. They talked endlessly about how bright his star had been, what he could have meant to professional football, how there had been talk of the Heisman this year, but now… now it was all a dream that would never be. I didn’t remember when I started crying, but I fell asleep still fully clothed, waiting on any news.
I woke up right after three, set my alarm for eight, stumbled into my bedroom stripping off clothes on the way, and collapsed onto my mattress. When my alarm went off and woke me later that morning, I called in sick for Monday, told the other assistant manager that I was sorry, and hung up. I needed to get to the airport. I was finally going to use my Discover card for something more than groceries.
I FLEW from Lubbock to Phoenix, and it was fast. I just had to wait until almost one in the afternoon to catch a flight out. Once there, when I turned my phone on, I saw I had five missed calls from a number marked private. When it was suddenly buzzing and I had a new incoming call from what I assumed was the same number again, I answered.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Is this Vince?”
“It is,” I said, walking through Terminal 3 at Sky Harbor. “May I ask who this is?” All I knew was that I was talking to a woman. That was all.
“This is Amelia Cress, Carson’s mother.”
It was a wonder I didn’t drop the phone. I had enough conscious thought to squeeze tight instead of opening my hand so my cell stayed in my grip. There was nothing else I could manage.
“Hi,” was all I could get out. I had no idea what else to say.
“Vince what?”
“Wade,” I told her.
She cleared her throat. “Good. Now I have a last name.”
But why did it matter? Why on earth was Carson’s mother calling me?
“Vince?”
“Yes, ma’am, sorry. What can I do for you?”
She cleared her throat. “Where are you?”
“I’m in Phoenix.”
“You are?” She sounded surprised.
“I am. I came to see Carson. And I don’t want to intrude, but—”
“That would be wonderful. When can you be here?”
I couldn’t even breathe. What in the world could be her agenda? “Ma’am, I’m not a friend of his.”
“I know.”
“I’m not in his frat.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t think you—”
“I do,” she assured me. “Really, and he’s been asking for you.”
“Asking for me?”
“Yes.”
“Ma’am, I don’t think—”
“He’s been calling for a Vince. I’m not sure how many he knows. When I checked his phone, only your number came up.”
And that was funny in its own right, because when had he had time to put my number in his phone? And—
“Vince?”
“Sorry. Would it be all right with you if I came to the hospital?”
“I would love that, actually,” she said, and her voice hitched up. “Tell me, do you have a lot of friends in common?”
She wasn’t really listening to me, and I got that. The strain had to be crushing. “No, ma’am, as I said, we’re not friends, we know none of the same people and we definitely don’t travel in the same circles.”
I had six friends, period. I had acquaintances and people who took pity on me and fed me, like Jason and his wife, but actual people who liked me right off the bat with my prickly exterior… there were maybe three. All the others had been lured by the charm of Matt and found out that I wasn’t so bad. As a rule, I repelled people instead of drawing them close. Except Matt—he was the exception, and I would need to call that anomaly when I got off the phone with the mother of my one-night stand.
God.
What was I doing in Phoenix?
“Vince?”
“Sorry,” I sighed.
“So really, when can you be here?”
“I just wanted to be in and out. I don’t want to be in anybody’s—”
“He is very hurt, Vince. I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news, but truly… it’s worse than you see. When he was buried in the pile… all the weight did so much damage with the angle that his arm landed in.”
“How much damage?”
“He won’t ever play again, you understand.”
I didn’t until that moment.
“I’ve never seen him in so much pain.”
My stomach flipped over.
“I feel very helpless right now.”
I didn’t even know what to say. I just wanted to hold him and make it better. Whatever Carson needed, whatever I could give. Anything. Just… anything.
“If you want to tell people, do it.”
What? “Oh no. I wouldn’t tell anyone anything that his family didn’t share. Ever.”
“Well, I appreciate that, but… he needs comfort, and normally, with me being his mother, if I’m the one holding his hand, that fixes things, or at least helps.”
“Of course.”
“But not this time. He’s longing for someone else, and my suspicion leads me to you since it’s you he’s been calling for in his sleep. So I need you to—”
“I don’t think it’s—”
“I honestly don’t care what it is right now, Vince.” She sighed deeply. “I just need him to open his eyes and see a different face.”
“Okay.”
“When can you be here?”
“I’m at the airport, and I just got in, so as soon as I figure out where the bus—”
“Take a cab, Vince. Call me when you’re close to the hospital, and I’ll come down and pay for it. Please.”
She was acting scary, and I had a terrible thought. “He’s not going to die, is he? I mean, there’s nothing vital that was hurt, right?”
“His throwing arm was vital, Vince. Football was all he ever wanted to do.”
But it wasn’t true. He had told me himself. “I’ll call you when I’m downstairs.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she sounded more than relieved. She sounded grateful.
Hanging up, I went to look for a cab.
THERE were reporters outside the hospital, in the halls, but they didn’t bother me because why would they? I went up in the elevator and after I got off and walked into the waiting area, I called Amelia Cress from there. I saw more reporters and just… people. Every available seat was taken. When the reporters moved, shutters flashing, I saw a policeman part them before a woman who walked out of the sea of faces.
She was beautiful, and she looked a hundred years old at the exact same time. Her eyes, the same violet his were, locked on me.
“Are you Vince?”
Clicking shutters, and I squinted against the light. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyes softened. “You were supposed to call me when you got downstairs.”
“I didn’t need you to pay for the cab.”
We shared a long look.
“Come,” she commanded me, hand on my bicep tight, pulling me after her, two more policemen now plowing through the press of bodies until we reached a steel door that was opened from the inside.
It was quieter behind the door, and there were more chairs with people sitting along the walls. She walked me by curious, upturned faces; men leaning against walls; women pacing; and finally through a door at the end of the hall. Inside there were six people, three sitting, three standing, among them an older woman.
“Who’s this?” she asked as Carson’s mother walked me by her.
“A friend of his,” Amelia snapped, her tone icy.
He looked so still in the bed, and his upper chest as well as his entire right arm from shoulder to wrist was encased in plaster. It was bent at the elbow, lying across his abdomen, and it so resembled a broken wing that I had to swallow down a sob. He looked so hurt, and it killed me. Even in sleep, his brow was furrowed, his jaw was clenched… it was painful, and when I saw him bite his bottom lip, it took everything in me not to reach out for him.
“Why is there some of the cast on his chest?” I asked quietly.
“To anchor it so it doesn’t move.”
I nodded.
“It’s just the arm and shoulder, sweetheart. The rest of him, other than bruised ribs and a slight concussion, is okay.”
At least I could breathe again.
“Vince.”
I turned to look at Carson’s mother.
“Honey, you can go over and hold his hand, if you want.”
I heard people in the room gasp; I felt the tension, heard someone ask Amelia what the hell was going on. The words were whispered only because, again, the man in the bed did not look good.
Moving forward, I dumped my backpack on the floor beside him, took hold of his good left hand, and leaned over close to his ear.
“When we were sitting on the couch,” I whispered. “You were talking to me, and you leaned forward to get something and I ran my hand down your back. Do you remember?”
The low rumble made his mother catch her breath.
“I love touching you, your skin… I love the hardness of your body, and not just the one part that gets hard, ya perv.”
His eyelids started to flutter.
“There’s so much power in you, so much strength, and I’m looking at you and all I see is the guy I told myself I shouldn’t want, but….”
I remembered touching him through his T-shirt, feeling the muscles move under my palm, savoring the heat and the virility of the man, the simple act of him allowing the closeness. He was so beautiful, all of him, and now I saw no change, saw no decrease in him, in the desire I felt. If he never threw another football, I hardly cared.
His long, thick golden lashes on his cheeks, the mischievously curved eyebrows, and the dirty-blond stubble made me sigh. I was so happy to see him in one piece.
“You scared the fuck out of me.”
He squeezed my hand before his voice, a gravelly rasp, reached me. “You came.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”
“Oh, but you came.” He shivered. “I knew you would.”
“You did not. I didn’t even know.”
The noise he made, contented and deep, made me smile. “I hoped.”
I wanted to kiss him, the need almost desperate.
“Your smell,” he rasped out quietly, under his breath. “I missed it.”
I smiled in spite of myself.
“Kiss me.”
I cleared my throat softly even though a doctor had come in and so everyone had turned to him. “Your family is here.”
“Don’t care, can’t feel anything unless you’re touching me.”
That comment again, from before. “When you’re better, you’ll tell me what that means.”
“Tell you now.” He took a breath. “Other people touch me, it’s like nothing. When you do it, it’s like electric current on my skin, and it goes right to my heart and other places.”
“Nice.”
“You asked.” He smiled wickedly; the sarcasm had not been lost on him.
“Just lie there and try and look hurt while I listen to the doctor.”
“Okay. Just for a minute, and then you kiss me.”
“Agreed.”
His wrist was fractured, the radius and ulna as well as his humerus. The breaks were all transverse fractures, and I knew that meant basically across the middle. He had a complete tear of the bicep tendon as well as a full-thickness tear of his rotator cuff. Basically, his arm was a rubber band. They had performed surgery to reattach the tendon to the head of the humerus for the rotator cuff as well as the bicep tendon. There were also pins in his arm in three places. When asked what the prognosis was, the doctor said the word “long.” Between the broken bones, the torn muscles, the rehabilitation, and the physical therapy, just… it was going to be a very long road. They should not expect football ever again. A useful arm, a functioning limb, the doctor said, should be the only real goal.
“My boy’s not a quitter,” Mr. Cress—I had seen him on all those sport specials on ESPN, so I knew who he was—told the orthopedic surgeon. “He’ll heal fast and be right back out on the field to—”
“Mr. Cress.” The doctor took a breath. “I appreciate your belief in your son, I do. It’s very admirable. However, the reality is—”
“He’ll play and—”
“Oh no.” Amelia Cress shook her head, cutting off her husband. “No. No, never again. If he gets hit again, he might reinjure his arm and—”
“Honey, he needs to get—”
“No,” she said, and her tone left no room for argument. “It’s over. I spoke to the university and the football coach this morning. He’ll transfer to Davis College in Augusta for the remainder of this year and the next. I paid off the scholarship so he’s all squared away with Everson. The tuition at Davis has already been paid and his grades and credits are being transferred as we speak. He’s off the football team at Everson, that part is done. They know he won’t play again, and they need a new quarterback going forward. I—”
“Amelia, that’s Carson’s choice to—”
“It’s mine,” she insisted. “Until Carson can afford to pay his own way, what I say goes, and I say he’s done. Carson signed the papers this morning, I witnessed them, and they are being notarized and filed as we speak.”
“That’s why your lawyer was here,” Mr. Cress whispered.
“Yes.”
“You had no right to—”
“I had every right. He’s my son.”
“He’s my son too!” Henry Cress yelled.
“And we’ve done what you wanted since he was nine years old,” she told him flatly. “All the choices for football were yours. Well, now, that’s over. I won’t have my son lose his arm for a game.”
“It’s not a game, Amelia. It was never just a game.”
“Which I understand to some degree,” she allowed. “But football has ceased to be a priority, has ceased to be a part of Carson’s life. I will not have him work hard simply to go back and play again and become irreparably damaged. Not to mention that simply the rehabilitation itself would mean that he would have to red shirt for all of next year and not graduate, simply for the chance to play again.”
“Amelia. Listen to—”
“No.” She shook her head, her voice rising, cracking just a little with the volume. “He’ll graduate with his degree in Construction Management next year and then go from there. Football is done, Henry. You need to come to terms with it.”
The room erupted in sound, and as they closed in on themselves, the surgeon and his team walked over to the bed where I was.
“Hello.” One of them smiled at me, offering his hand. “I’m Dr. Behari. I’m from the Mayo Clinic, and I was flown out to care for Mr. Cress after he sustained his traumatic injury.”
“Thank you so much for coming.”
He nodded. “And you are?”
“I’m his—”
“Boyfriend,” Carson offered quietly, and when I turned to him, I saw that his eyes were open. They were red and raw, and you could see the pain, but they were clear. “He’s with me. Tell him everything.”
Dr. Behari nodded. “He did very well in surgery, but he has a long road ahead of him. I am sorry—and you are welcome to get a second, third, hundredth opinion—but I’m telling you truthfully, professional football is not possible. That kind of repetitive physical abuse is simply not something the arm will ever be able to sustain on a recurring basis.”
I nodded even as I squeezed Carson’s left hand tight.
“My hope is that with therapy he will be able to lift with it, pull, and that his range of motion will not be severely impacted.”
“When does he get to go home?” I asked.
“By the end of the week.”
He had five more days there, and I had to go home and work. But the thought of leaving him was horrible.
“I will be back, Carson,” Dr. Behari said before he gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze and left.
At the same time, I was treated to the power Carson Cress’s left arm still possessed when he yanked down hard and I ended up almost sprawled on top of him. I stopped myself with my left hand flat on his sternum.
“What are you—?”
“Gimme kiss now.”
My hand stroked over the washboard abs under my palm, I couldn’t help it. “Your family will freak out.”
“They won’t, you heard my mother. She took care of everything already.”
“But your father—”
“Doesn’t matter.” He sighed. “Mom’s the one with the money, and her prenup was scary, from what my grandfather––her father––told me before he passed away last year.”
I only looked at him.
“Rich people.” He chuckled. “Don’t know what to tell you.”
“Well just in case you missed it, your mother’s kind of terrific.”
“I know, right? I had no idea she didn’t give a crap that I was gay, though. It’s a nice surprise.”
“You’re not gay,” I told him.
He scoffed. “Oh no?”
“You’re bi,” I informed him.
“I don’t think so.” He grinned up at me. “I don’t look at girls and get a hard-on.”
“Could you please keep your—”
“But just smelling whatever shampoo you use gives me wood.”
“Lucky you’re under lots of blankets, then,” I teased.
“Yes, it is.” His smile was pure evil.
“So… construction management.” I arched an eyebrow at him.
“You thought I was what, a big dumb jock? I told you I was smart.”
“Yes, you did, baby.” I smiled at him because he simply steamrolled me flat.
“Don’t patronize me,” he grumbled. “Just kiss me already.”
“Kissing leads to other things,” I told him, leaning closer. “With us.”
“Yeah, to sweating on your sheets.” He chuckled, and the sound was rich and decadent, even though he was lying there in pain.
And it hit me suddenly that I was in so much deeper than I’d thought.
He cleared his throat. “So I gotta move back home.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I heard.”
“Come with me, ’kay?”
It took me a second. “What?”
“Come to Davis College with me in Augusta. It’s nice, you’ll like it.”
“I can’t just—”
“Yes, you can. My mom’ll help you.”
“Carson, you don’t even know what you’re—”
“I do, and I have plans.”
“Carson—”
“I wanna move in with you.”
I shook my head. “How drugged are you?”
“Pretty drugged.” He laughed softly, tugging on my hand. “Can you lie down on top of me? I would love that.”
“Carson—Christ, just close your eyes and go to sleep.”
“I wanted you to look at me for so long.”
“Everybody looks at you.”
“Not anymore. No one gives a shit anymore,” he said, his eyes searching mine. “But you do, huh? Vince? You do?”
My vision blurred, and I felt the hot tears welling up. “Of course.”
“And the quarterback thing, that wasn’t something you cared about.”
Easing my one hand free of his hold, I put both on his face. He turned his head, kissed my right palm, and then stared up at me as I stroked over his eyebrows and cheekbones.
“Vince,” he pressed.
“No,” I assured him.
“No what?”
“No, the quarterback thing was not the important part.”
He exhaled deeply and closed his eyes. He was so drained. “I knew it. I knew you’d wanna do me whether I’m that guy or not.”
I shook my head, seeing the tension drain out of him, watching him take hold of my wrist with his left hand, feeling his thumb rub over the underside, gently stroke the pulse point. “Carson, it’s too fast for you to like me this much.”
“Do you like me?”
“Car—”
“Do you?”
I whimpered in the back of my throat. I couldn’t help it. And his eyes drifted open, the deep violet, so much the melding of the two colors blue and purple that it was hard to say which they truly were.
“You do.” He smiled slowly. “You came a long way just to make sure I was okay.”
I trailed my fingers through his hair, and I saw his eyes flutter over the sensation.
“I was terrified that you wouldn’t come. I mean, I must’ve checked a hundred times to see if you used your ticket, and when the game started and you still hadn’t, I—”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” he promised me, making a noise of pure pleasure as I ran the backs of my fingers down his throat. “Just glad you made it.”
“Carson—”
“I needed you.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough. Gonna keep you.”
God, the things that came out of the man’s mouth. “You’re insane. You—”
“I was trying, you know?”
I went along because he was out of it and rambling. “Trying to do what?”
“Not get hurt, not fail. I took your advice. I was being careful. I was making sure that I had a future.”
“You still have a future.”
“I know,” he whispered. “Just not doing what I thought I would.”
“Sleep for a while.”
“First you kiss me.”
“Carson, honey.”
He rolled his head so he could see his mother, who had moved up beside me. “Awww, Mom.” His breath hitched. “I always figured it was Dad, ya know, who liked me.”
Her eyes scrunched up as she bit down on her bottom lip.
“I mean, you were so busy with all your stuff and… we weren’t close, yeah?”
Furious nodding.
“But….” His eyes filled fast, and it was just heartbreaking to see a man who was so broken let his emotions swell and swamp him. “It’s you. You listened when I thought you weren’t.”
She leaned over and kissed his forehead, pressing her cheek there before she straightened up to look at me.
“Thank you for being here.”
“Thank you for letting me.”
She took a breath. “Are you coming to Maine, Vince?”
Even though she had said my name it took me a minute to process.
Jesus.
“Vince?” she said, trying to get my attention.
“Yes?”
She cleared her throat. “I can transfer you as well, if you like. I would be happy to do it.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“My son knows you, and that’s enough for me.”
I stared at her.
“I’m so sick of expectations—I won’t have them anymore.” She was irritated, but not with me, and her voice was firm. “From now on, we’re going to do what we want and not hide. Let the chips fall where they may.”
I needed a minute to think.
“Let me know.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Vince,” Carson whined, and it would have been really cute if he weren’t in quite so much pain.
I turned fast and bent and pressed my lips to his, and it would have been quick, the kiss, but he opened under me and all my fear and panic went into the grind of my mouth over his teeth, my tongue dragging over his, sliding, rubbing, and the sexy moan in the back of his throat.
His hand was on the back of my neck to make sure I couldn’t pull away, and I felt his surrender, his desire, all of it, all of his need there in the kiss he gave me.
I touched the sides of his neck, and I could feel his pulse beating under my fingers. Amazing that it was me who filled him with excitement, who brought a flush to his skin, who made his pupils dilate and his breath catch.
It was me.
I pulled back just enough to unseal our lips and then smiled. “You’re crazy about me.”
“Have you even been listening?”
“I’m an ass.”
“I’m aware.”
I glowered but he must not have noticed since he was nuzzling his nose under my chin. “And you’ll be the only person I know in Maine.”
“So you’ll be dependent on me,” he growled, and the sound let me know that just the idea of that pleased him.
“It will be hard for me to leave Matt.”
“He’ll live, I won’t.”
“You—”
“My life just changed,” he informed me, and we were so close, nose to nose, his hand once again on the back of my neck. “And I’m about to lose more because my father will not have a gay son, and—”
“Oh baby, I’m so—”
“Stop,” he hushed me. “I’m so lucky. Every day kids tell their folks they’re gay, and they get thrown out on the street like garbage. All that history between parent and child just disappears because of who they choose to love.”
I was quiet, listening.
“But that’s not me. I’m blessed. I’m not gonna spend a second feeling sorry for myself. My mother loves me. She’s giving me the opportunity to finish my education, and then I have to make my own way after that. I couldn’t be more thankful.”
I nodded quickly as his fingers traced over my jaw.
“Yeah, football is over, and I think the fact that I’m not dying right now tells the real truth about who I really am. Football was never my dream; I want to build things. That’s why I’m getting a degree in Construction Management. And now I have the opportunity to finish that and you—please, just look at the program at Davis, okay? See what you think before you say no.”
“It’s gonna be hard for you,” I predicted even as my eyes fluttered with the sweep of his tongue over my throat. “You’ve been the big man on campus, the guy the world stopped for, and now you’ll become just another guy.”
“Won’t I be your guy?”
“Th-tha-that can’t be enough,” I stuttered, so thankful that everyone was still fighting and yelling, because I was seconds away from ravaging Carson’s mouth.
“Man, was that cute.” He smirked at me, his left hand fisted in the collar of my shirt, still strong enough to hold me immobile in his grip. “And yeah, it’ll be enough, idiot. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“How?”
“Because I finally made you stop and look at me.”
“I told you, everybody looks at you.” I sighed.
“And I told you… not anymore,” he said, and amazingly, it didn’t sound like he was sad about that one bit.
“What if you miss the glory days?”
“What if I don’t?”
I shook my head. “Carson, you haven’t even given yourself a second to let this all sink in or to see how you’re—”
“It’s life, Vince,” he said, pulling me closer to him.
“You might not feel like this in a month. You might want someone different.”
“Nope, I won’t. Just you.”
“But if you do—”
“I won’t.”
“Carson,” I pleaded.
“Fine, we’ll get a contract. If I wanna screw other boys, I’ll still pay my half of the rent or whatever. You’ll still finish your education.”
“And I’ll be all alone.”
He started laughing.
“In Maine!”
“Ow ow ow.” He winced and smiled at the same time. “You jerk, I’m in pain here. Don’t make me laugh.”
“I want guarantees!” I exclaimed, indignant.
“We can’t get married in Maine,” he informed me, “but we have a domestic partnership law on the books.”
“I—”
“We can get married in Massachusetts if you want, or Vermont.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“You want a ring?”
I was going to pass out. I just knew it.
“Whatever you want that will make you say okay.”
“Carson, you—”
He grinned up at me. “Yeah, I love you.”
My hands smoothed down his sides, over his ribs as I held on.
“You look like you’re gonna faint.”
“I… you can’t. It’s too fast.”
“You know your eyes look like chocolate icing on cake.”
A noise got stuck in the back of my throat.
“You’re gonna engineer that plant, right? The one that’s gonna make it so no one ever goes hungry again.”
I nodded.
“See, I was listening.” He arched an eyebrow. “So somebody will have to build the biodome for you, someone will have to build the aqueducts and the facilities where you’re gonna work. Somebody will have to be there to hold your hand when you get the Nobel Peace Prize and will have to pass you the books when you have your signings. I’ll be the most important guy on your team, and I’ll hold you down in bed whenever I get the chance.”
He was reading my mind.
“You need a partner in your dream, and that’s me. I’ll do the for richer or poorer thing with you since you’re doing the in sickness thing with me right now.”
I tried to squint so I wouldn’t cry. He was turning me into a total sap.
He wiped away my tears with his fingers. “Just stay, okay? Don’t leave me. As weird as it is, I’ve never asked anyone else for anything my whole life. But I’m asking you, Vince.”
“Let me think,” I insisted as I saw him struggling to stay awake.
“Fine, do that. But don’t leave.”
“I won’t leave.”
“Swear.”
I nodded.
“Okay,” he exhaled, hand reaching. I took hold, and he laced his fingers with mine. “Okay,” he said again.
He was asleep seconds later.