With the soft sounds from the TV as background noise, Trent made his way to Jacob and fit himself against his husband’s back, wrapping his arms around Jacob’s waist.
“So he outed himself to you, huh?” Jacob’s voice was low and quiet. Trent nodded against his back, forehead pressed tight to Jacob’s spine. “Not unexpected, but why now?”
“I woke up to him crying.” That was all Trent had to say; he felt Jacob’s muscles tense everywhere they touched.
“His mom.” The pain in Jacob’s voice echoed the emotions Trent had struggled through earlier as he tried to comfort Jericho. I love him so much. His husband was a good man.
“Yeah. And all the what-ifs that come along with why she didn’t tell him they weren’t alone.”
“Fuck.” Jacob cursed softly, head swinging slowly back and forth in denial.
“Yeah.”
“And he came out to you.” Jacob’s gentle jostling movements as he buttered the toast rocked Trent against his back. “Not like we didn’t already know.”
“Yeah, but to say it straight out like that takes courage.” Trent sighed and gave Jacob a squeeze before releasing him and turning, propping a hip against the counter. “How do we help him through this? I know what I had hoped for when I was forced out of the closet, but what did I know? This poor kiddo has lost so very much, and then to take on something like coming out on top of it. I just want to do right by him.”
“He picked a good person and the right time, but 3:00 a.m. courage only goes so far.” Jacob lifted a piece of toast and held it while Trent took a bite. “You’re good for him. You got this, babe.”
Trent stared at Jericho’s silhouette, framed against the flashing colors of some anime show. He chewed slowly, then swallowed, throat tight.
“I hope so, Jakey. I truly hope so.”
Chapter Six
Trent
“Did you check the bathroom?” One hand placed flat on top of his suitcase, Trent shoved hard as he tried to zip it closed, fingers of his other hand alternating between tugging the zipper tab and tucking the folds and corners of every article of clothing determined to escape confinement. “And the kitchenette thingie?”
Jacob’s arm went around his waist, one palm landing beside his on the suitcase and pressing down firmly. “Yes, and yes.”
With two hands to tackle the actual fastening process, Trent made better headway. “Did you check the drawers in the dressers? How about the couch cushions? The bathroom?” He tugged the tab around the final corner of the suitcase and sighed heavily. “There. Done.” Straightening, he looked at Jacob and didn’t understand the broad grin on his face. “What?”
“Babe.” Jacob pushed in for a kiss, and Trent happily obliged, eyes dipping closed as their lips connected in a quick brushing caress. When Jacob pulled back, he yanked on the suitcase, letting the luggage slip over the edge of the bed as he extended the handle. Without another word, he turned to walk out of the hotel bedroom, and Trent stared after him.
“That’s not a whole conversation, Jakey.” He glanced around the room, moving to the nearby nightstand to pull open the drawer, finding it empty.
“Babe.”
At Jacob’s one-word repeated rejoinder, Trent let his head drop back and asked the ceiling, “Does the man ever answer my questions? No. No he does not.”
“Yeah, I do. And I did.” Jacob’s voice was louder, and when Trent turned, he found him standing in the doorway. “Yes, I checked the bathroom twice. And the dresser. And the closet, even though you haven’t asked about that yet. We didn’t put anything in the nightstands, so I’m not sure what you expect to find except for religious propaganda. We’re ready, Trent. Let’s hit the road.”
“Is Jericho ready? Does he need help packing? Is the suitcase we got him big enough for everything?” Trent walked towards Jacob, expecting him to move out of the way, and was drawn up short when the man stood firm against his determined approach. “Let me by, sweetheart. I want to help Jericho.”
“Trent.” When that was all that was forthcoming, Trent bugged his eyes out with lifted brows. His waiting was finally rewarded by a soft touch against his cheek. “He’s good. Suitcase is good. Everything’s good. Stop. Freaking. Out.” The last three words were interrupted with quick pecking kisses, ending with a loud smack that made him smile. “You good?”
The pressure that had been coiling inside his chest like an overwound spring slowly relaxed, and Trent took in a shaky breath as he nodded. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s just a little court appearance and then we’re on the road.”
“It’s them giving Jericho to us, the first step on making it permanently official. I think I’d be disappointed if it didn’t freak you out a little, but babe.” Jacob kissed him again, slipping his tongue between Trent’s lips and drawing a soft moan from him. Their foreheads pressed together, and when Trent’s eyes slowly opened, he found Jacob staring at him. “Trentie, this is over the top, even for you.”
He pulled back, pretending to be offended. “Hey. Not funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny.” Jacob’s hand fumbled against his, and their fingers fell together. “You gotta admit it’s a little funny.”
“I admit nothing.” Arm around Jacob’s neck, he drew himself down for another kiss. “Except the fact that I love you deliriously.”
Jacob stepped back and to the side, pulling Trent forwards. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
“You can blow me.” Trent thought he’d kept his suggestion quiet, but a loud ewwww from the couch made him grin. “Sorry,” he called, grinning too wide for his apology to Jericho to be authentic. “Good habits die hard.”
“You make me hard,” Jacob muttered, and Trent laughed.
“Dad jokes.” He lifted his voice an octave and, adding an extra level of sashay to his walk, trilled out a hyper enthusiastic, “Love it!”
Jericho was watching them closely from where he sat on the arm of the couch. He had an overstuffed duffel at his feet next to the large suitcase they’d bought for him. Still, it made Trent’s heart hurt to know what was in those two pieces of luggage represented everything his nephew owned in the world. Over the past two days, they’d gone through the rental house, donating all of Stella’s and Frank’s clothing to the local charity organizations, doing the same with the mismatched dishes, pots, and pans in the kitchen. Jacob had hauled a small dumpster’s worth of trash bags to the end of the driveway, working quietly and efficiently as Trent had followed Jericho through the house, helping the boy make sense of the few things he wanted to keep. It hadn’t been much, and that had broken his heart, too.
If only Stella had told him how things were for her, he would have turned over every stone in an attempt to make her and Jericho’s lives better. But she hadn’t, and there he’d been, sorting through picture after picture in a jumbled box, mapping the outline of their existence. At Jericho’s birthday parties in the kitchen of whatever house they’d been inhabiting at the time, the only constant was smiling images of Stella and the boy. He knew even those smiles would haunt him, because neither were free and easy. Both had a tightness he’d remembered from his childhood, tension and fear slipping into too many of the images, especially the earlier ones where his parents were present, too.
Whispering to Jacob last night in the darkness of their bed, he’d mused on how different his and Stella’s lives were.
“As tough as it was to start out the way I did, maybe I didn’t get the short stick I always thought I had. Jakey, I think her lot in life was ten times worse than I expected. I wish I could have saved her, too.”
“Babe.” Jacob tightened his arms around Trent, pulling him a little closer. “You were nothing more than a kid; it’s a miracle you were able to save yourself. When I think about all the things that could have happened to you.” Jacob’s voice trembled and broke, and his lips were soft against Trent’s temple as he pressed a tender kiss there. When he continued talking, his tone was gentle, belying
the brutality of his words. “She was your older sister. Older, and from what you’ve shared, she was both smart and capable, and she still didn’t step up for you. Babe, she knew what your parents were capable of, but she still subjected her child to them. What do you think she’d have done if your parents hadn’t passed away and Jericho was questioning his sexuality? She should have been your protector and wasn’t. Would she have been his? I don’t think people deserve bad things to happen, but when you left, she could have saved herself and didn’t. You can’t take that on, and I won’t let you.”
“She was just a kid, too, Jakey. It’s not like either of us knew what we were doing.” He rolled his head and dropped a kiss against Jacob’s chest. “I wish I’d been there for her with the baby, and then after Jericho was born.” They lay in silence for a moment; then Trent whispered, “I don’t think she’d have given him my middle name if she hated me.” Tears welled in his eyes, and he tried to ignore them, hoping they’d dry up and just go away. He’d cried so much over the past week, every nerve felt raw and flayed. “Do you think she hated me?”
“No, doll. I don’t. I don’t think that.” Jacob rolled them so Trent faced him across a handspan of smooth pillow. He knew the tears hadn’t disappeared when Jacob groaned and pulled him close, letting Trent bury his face in Jacob’s neck. “Don’t cry, baby. Don’t cry. She didn’t hate you. She couldn’t have. She left you Jericho, the most precious thing in her world. That’s not the action of a woman who hated you. She loved you. You love her, and she loved you. Named her baby boy after her baby brother, to keep a little bit of you alive in her world, no matter she wasn’t strong enough to bring you back. She loved you, I promise.”
Trent’s eyes stung now with the remembered tears he’d shed as Jacob held him, keeping up the continuous stream of comforting words that eventually had worked their magic, letting him drift off to sleep with only good dreams about his husband and Jericho.
Blinking fiercely, he forced a smile on his face, letting it stay in place until the expression felt more comfortable and real, then clapped his hands together and waved at the door. “Let’s get this show on the road, my friends. Time to roll.”
They’d upgraded the rental to an SUV, looking for more comfort as they made the long road trip to California via Memphis, and once the luggage was stored in the cargo area, they made the short drive to the courthouse. As nervous as Trent had felt about it, the actual hearing took less than five minutes, that single piece of paper written in Stella’s precise penmanship making all the difference. Trent had glanced back at the doors with tears in his eyes, ready to escape the stuffy room and tell his guys it was official. Two signatures later, he did just that, and the way Jericho’s face lit up when Trent waved the folder at them made his heart soar.
Trent directed Jacob to a local grocery store to load up on snacks. The inside was startlingly familiar, low shelves allowing customers to help themselves, and the fruit, dairy, and meat sections were in exactly the same place they’d been when he was last here so many years ago.
Jericho was quiet as they walked through the store. With Trent’s constant pestering, he finally selected various junk food options and threw them into the basket Jacob carried. At the checkout stands was the first place Jericho spoke up, his face suddenly animated and almost frantic as he directed them into a particular line. After Trent noticed it was longer than the one at the only other open register in the store, he realized Jericho hadn’t been herding them to a line so much as away from the other one.
Studying the other cashier from the corner of his eye, he saw the young man kept glancing at Jericho—who was doing a terrible job of ignoring him, casting the same covert looks back at the boy. Trent took a step closer to Jericho, leaning into his side to whisper, “Who’s the handsome hunka-hunka who can’t keep his eyes off you?”
“What?” Jericho jerked away, cheeks flaming pink. “That’s not—no he’s not.”
“Oh, yes.” Lips pursed to keep from grinning wide, Trent nodded fast but kept his voice quiet. “Mmhmm. He so is.” Jericho’s eyes widened, and he looked panicked. Trent decided to involve his better half and leaned the other way, resting his cheek on Jacob’s shoulder as he whispered, “Jakey, did you see the cutie on lane four?”
“See what, babe?” Jacob turned away from the magazine rack he’d been looking at and glanced around, quickly homing in on the other cashier, too. “Oh, he’s a pretty one.” He turned to face Jericho and dipped his head when he asked, “You know him?”
“Uh, that’s Marco.” Jericho’s eyes slipped to the side as he looked at the boy again. “He’s in my grade.”
“He’s cute. Did you see his ass? If I didn’t have my own hunky husband and he was ten years older, I’d think about tapping that.” Jacob angled back towards the magazines, pointing at one with an exceptionally gaudy cover. “You think there’s really a bigfoot living outside Seattle?”
“What?” Jericho’s voice had gained a higher pitch than Trent had heard it before, and he grinned at Jacob’s effective normalizing of their appraisal of another male. Something Jericho clearly had no experience with. “You’d…what?”
“Bigfoot? You think it’s real or no?” Their cashier finished scanning everything, and Jacob pulled his wallet out and swiped his card through the machine as Trent moved to bag their purchases. “I’m leaning towards real, because I like to think there’s things out there we just haven’t earned the right to know about yet.” Jericho was suspiciously quiet through the rest of the exchange, and Trent wasn’t surprised to see the boy was deep in thought.
As they walked past the other register, Marco called out, “Hey, Jerry, sorry about your mom. Are you okay?”
Jericho’s head had dropped even farther between his shoulders as he mumbled a response, but it whipped up as Trent stopped and turned to face the boy.
That name.
Back in the hospital, under the influence of potent painkillers, Jericho had shared it was something Frank had caused, drunkenly declaring Jericho was a fancy name for a fancy boy. Stella’s response was to immediately start calling him Jerry instead, trying to keep things on an even keel, but Jericho had hated it. Trent found he wanted to make a statement, but he knew he needed to try and do it without humiliating his nephew.
“Jericho will heal and survive, thank you for those sweet words, Marco.” Hand on one hip, Trent pulled a tiny layer of flamboyance out of hiding, just enough that if the boy was curious, he’d likely recognize it. With a slinky one-shoulder shrug, he added, “Sorry you’re losing him to the lure of California. San Diego has so much to offer, we just have to take him back with us. You decide you want to come out, give Jericho a little ringy-ding.” He twirled to face Jacob and Jericho, laughing at their very different expressions. Jacob’s was affectionately amused, and Jericho was clearly scandalized. “Ta, Marco.” Trent looped his arm through Jacob’s and grabbed Jericho’s hand, leading them from the store.
They were on the highway before Jericho said anything, and when he did, it wasn’t what Trent expected.
“Is that really a thing? Just like…looking at someone?”
“Looking’s free. It’s never good to embarrass a person, but there’s no law against looking, Jericho.” Jacob’s response was quick and easy, his competent control of the car not changing. “Plus, that boy had a fine ass.”
“He really did, didn’t he?” Trent threw that comment in before Jericho could respond, and Jacob’s eyes sparkled as he glanced Trent’s way. “Bubble butt like that, you know that boy’s doing his squats.”
“Marco’s not…like that.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” Jacob answered before Trent could once again, and the laughter in his voice made Trent grin. “There’s a mirror above the door, and I caught him checking out not just your ass, but the sassy man sitting here next to me, too.”
“So that’s a thing?”
“Yeah, Jericho.” Trent reached over and gripped Jacob’s hand, tw
ining their fingers together. “It’s a thing.” He stifled a laugh. “Did you see his face when I offered to help him come out? He caught the reference, no doubt. I think your crush is crushing on you, too, Jericho.”
“What? I’m not—that’s not what—” Jericho stopped trying to force his words out for a moment, and his tone was more serious when he asked, “How do people do this?”
“It’s easier when I’m with him.” Trent tipped his head towards Jacob. “Or with people I trust. And knowing when and where to be open is a skill that we all learn out of self-preservation. That’s an unfortunate truth. I won’t ever pretend to be something I’m not, but just like we did in the hospital, there’s a time and a place.”
“Marco’s face.” Jericho sucked in a deep breath, then surprised Trent by laughing softly. “You might be right.”
“Yeah, I might be.” Trent turned to look out the side window. “There’s a first time for everything.”
“Jericho, was there anywhere you wanted to drive past before we leave town?”
Trent smiled at the passing scenery, loving Jacob just a little more for his thoughtful offer. In the side mirror, he could see a blurry outline of Jericho’s face as he stared out the window. The movement meant Jericho’s headshake preceded his quiet “No,” by a few moments, and as much as Jacob’s kindness had lifted up Trent only a second ago, the pain in Jericho’s ragged voice dragged him to the edge of tears again.
“Okay. Anything you need, just let me know.” Jacob once again set the mark for normalizing things, acknowledging Jericho’s response without drawing attention to the tears clogging the boy’s throat.
“I love you, Jakey.” Trent closed his eyes as Jacob’s grip on his fingers tightened and relaxed, a sweet squeeze that communicated more than any verbal response would have. He sniffed, blinked, and leaned his head against the back of the seat, hoping both of the people in the car ignored the false note in his enthusiastic cheer. “On to Memphis.”
Bet On Us Page 8