by R J Scott
“No, it’s not. You deserve to be loved, and I love you too. Now get in out of the hallway before the neighbors hear us pledging our troth.” Oh my God, he smiled a little.
I smiled a lot. “I don’t care if they hear me, Layton. Hand to all the gods above, I do not care. I want the world to know.”
“I can really only douse so many fires at once, Ad. I’m not Smokey Bear.” He waved a hand to encourage me inside. I slid into his space but not into his face. He closed the door.
“Would it be okay if I held you for, like, one second?” I prayed he’d say yes.
“I’d like that a lot. I can’t seem to focus without you close by.”
I opened my arms and let him step into my embrace. Nothing would ever match how good he felt in my arms. The tears just broke loose. I dropped my chin to his shoulder, hissed at the pain, but kept my face hidden. He needed me to be strong, not the other way around.
Layton pressed his hand to the back of my neck. “You can cry if you need to,” he whispered, and that blasted all the bricks in the dam to bits.
This was not how it was supposed to be. I was the hockey player. It was my job to hold Layton and give him succor.
“Oh, Ad, it’s going to be okay.” His hand rubbed small circles between my shoulder blades while the other massaged the nape of my neck. He pressed a kiss to the side of my head as I sniffled and coughed, my fingers tight to his sides.
“I want to be paint with you.”
“Oh…kay. I want to be paint with you too?”
A raspy, coughing laugh rolled out of me. “Cool. We’re going to make one truly vibrant and unique color, Layton.” I clasped him tighter, then spun him around a few dozen times to make sure we were well mixed.
Seventeen
Layton
I had no idea what I was doing.
All the things inside me that told me to back away from Adler had melted away as soon as he’d knocked on my door. Watching him get in that fight, I’d known it was partly my fault. I’d messed with his head, and I was sorry for it—sorrier than he would ever know. To have him there in my arms, clearly emotional, was a moment that would define this thing we had going on between us.
“I called my family,” I said, because I needed him to know what I’d done when he’d left; it was vital he understood my fear. He didn’t lift his head from my shoulder, but he mumbled something that sounded like a soft “Yeah?”
“I wanted to tell them that I felt like shit when I was at home, that it wasn’t their fault, but that we all needed to get over what happened to me and they needed to stop worrying, and I needed to stop avoiding them. It went well for the most part, but after four separate phone calls in which I had to explain myself each time, I was done. So it’s up to Zach to tell anyone left.”
I felt his shoulders shake and I thought he was getting emotional again, but he lifted his face this time, and even though his eyes were bright he was smiling.
“Poor Zach,” he said.
“He can handle it; he’s a big boy.”
“Stan gave me a message for you.”
“Was it something to do with my eating habits?”
“I only made out half of it, given that I was staring at the stitches he had in his forehead.”
I heard the words, but I didn’t immediately stiffen and feel bad for Stan. Adler was right—I had no real control over another man’s hate. Still, guilt did curl in my stomach, and I had to breathe through the tightness in my chest.
And Adler gave me time to do that.
“So what did he say?” I asked eventually.
“Blah blah, ov, dah, blah, coffee, blah, Snickers.”
I smiled at that.
But Adler hadn’t finished. “Anatoly confided in me that Stan’s little sister had an eating disorder. He didn’t go into details, though.”
“Oh.” That made sense. I could see why Stan was sensitive, given that he was also a professional athlete. If anything, Stan’s worry had made me feel a little more conscious of the whole coffee addiction I had going. I made a mental note to research eating disorders and talk to Stan about it. I’d come across research last week about athletes and the amount of food they needed to consume and how strict that could be. I wanted to know everything about the team and what affected them.
“I like Stan,” I said.
“I was jealous of Stan,” Adler admitted. He cradled my face in his hands and pressed a kiss to my lips.
“You’ve nothing to be jealous about.”
Adler deepened the kiss, and I was pretty helpless against him, holding tight to his biceps as he bent me back a little. I wanted to get my hands into his thick hair, but he was still cradling my face, and anyway we had all the time in the world.
He released his hold a little, and without words he took my hand in his and tugged me a little toward my small bedroom. I let him lead me, and silently we removed clothes, each kissing every tiny part of skin we revealed, tumbling back onto the bed in a twist of limbs. Somehow he was blanketing me, and I felt a soft press of fear, but he knew.
Somehow he knew. He understood.
He moved so I was lying over him, and then he cradled my face again, and kissed me again, and I just melted. I wanted him so much, the insistent tug of need had me writhing against him, and he pressed up against me until the rhythm was too much and I slipped to one side.
“What if I’m never ready?” I whispered against his skin. “What if you can never be inside me…?” I couldn’t get past the block in my head.
“What if that doesn’t matter?” he replied. “To me or to you. And what if what we do have is absolutely perfect and right?”
Oh god, this rough, sexy, loudmouthed hockey player was playing with my emotions, and I loved him even more.
“You said you liked to—”
“No more talking, Foxxzee,” he said, drawling out my stupid hockey surname and rolling again so he was half on me and half off. That way I could move, and it quelled the insistent tug of panic that could take me from the moment.
He was so gentle, this big man, his hands tracing patterns on my skin, and I closed my eyes and reveled in the tenderness of this slow love he was bestowing on me.
I carded my hands through his hair, tugging him closer, abruptly needing more of his weight on me, and I kissed him as he moved, and groaned into the kiss.
“Not saying you couldn’t do things to me,” he murmured softly, and kissed me again. “Anything you wanted. Anything that felt right.”
The kiss deepened again, and I didn’t release my hands, twisting a little more so I could get closer, under him, our cocks hard against each other. I wanted my mouth on him, I wanted to press slicked fingers into him, I wanted him to come so hard he couldn’t breathe, but that would have to wait, because right now I was chasing this soft orgasm that was just out of my reach.
“I love you,” he said, then repeated it as he pushed himself up on his elbows. I chased the kiss, but he smiled down at me and rolled his hips.
Game over. I was coming so hard that it was me who couldn’t breathe, and when he kissed me, rutting against me into the slickness of my cum, my heart expanded with love for him and I was lost.
“I love you, I love you,” I repeated over and over as he kissed me and lost himself beautifully to an orgasm. I clutched his shoulders, his biceps, willing him over the edge, and his muscles flexed under my touch.
This man was all mine. And I was never letting him go.
“I can’t change everyone’s minds,” I whispered into the darkness. We’d ordered pizza, eaten our fill, and crawled back into bed, wrapped around each other, face to face and holding tight.
“What do you mean?”
“I decided today, whatever I do, even when it’s the best work I’ve ever done, it will never be enough.”
“You can’t give up,” Adler said, with steel in his words. He thought I meant I was giving up? That was far from the truth.
“No, you don’t understand. I would
n’t give up. I’m not, I can’t. I mean, that man with his kid, the one who threw the puck, maybe one day he’ll wake up and he’ll see the world like we do, right? It could be when his child says he’s gay, it could be when his favorite team has a gay player, it could be when he sees an episode of a soap opera and it makes him think. However it happens, one day he’ll see. Maybe. But all I can do now is control the narrative. It’s all I tell myself. I can help people see, and make sure what they see is right.”
“That’s why I love you,” Adler said. “Because you don’t stop, you don’t give up, and you see the good in people despite…”
“Despite what happened to me, you mean.”
“Yeah.” He shifted a little, and I knew he was uncomfortable with this subject, so I stayed quiet. “Does it make you feel… Am I wrong to…”
“Spit it out,” I encouraged, with a smile he wouldn’t be able to see but could maybe hear in the tone of my voice.
“I want you to know that you can talk about it with me—what happened to you. I may not be in touch with my emotions, but that’s because I don’t come from a family that nurtures feelings, and I know that.”
“Bullshit,” I said, without heat. “You have all the feelings, all the time. You look out for your team, you respect others, you laugh, you want desperately to be friends with people—that has to be as far removed from not being in touch with your emotions as it’s possible to get.”
“You think?”
“I know. So, we’ve done me,” I began, and realized that gave Evil Adler, as I’d taken to calling his immature side, a chance to come out.
“Twice,” he said with a soft laugh, before kissing me hard.
“I meant we’ve talked about me. What about you? When do I get to meet your family?”
Silence. I could imagine Adler’s brain churning that over. I expected him to either ignore the question, amble away from the question in an entirely different direction, or make a joke.
When he did none of those and remained silent, I felt a tiny push of concern inside me, and then he spoke.
“They’re not like real parents,” he said. “Not like you have, with all their fussing and loving and being up in your business and worrying about you and knowing things about you that you’d rather they didn’t.” He stopped and moved onto his back, pulling me with him and holding me closer. “But, yeah, I want you to meet them. You need to, I guess, if we’re doing this thing right.”
I knew he didn’t have any siblings, had the impression that his parents had been the sort of hands-off parents that most teenagers would have loved.
“They didn’t like you playing hockey?”
He huffed a laugh, and it wasn’t a nice sound. Instead it was filled with derision, and I wasn’t sure if it was aimed at his parents or himself.
“Cole and Karrie Anne from Brampton, Maine,” he said. “Where do I start? They didn’t like me being born, let alone being a hockey player. The only thing they really had an issue with was with me being gay, but god knows why they did, because they have… let’s say a very open marriage.”
“You don’t call them Mom and Dad,” I said. I’d noticed it before.
“They’re not like parents. I wasn’t the son they wanted.”
“You’re a good man, Adler—”
“Okay,” he interrupted. “I’ll take you to meet them if you’ll just stop with the nice stuff.” He didn’t sound angry, and the kiss was gentle. “I’d like you to meet Apollo’s parents, though—they’re pretty cool, and they were around a lot for me. And to blatantly change the subject, we need to talk about me coming out.”
I tensed—I couldn’t help myself. Somehow I’d lulled myself into a love that I could keep right here at home, but that wasn’t possible, was it? If I wanted to be myself, I had to be myself. That made some sense to me, even though I couldn’t find the words to vocalize it.
“I want to tell the team,” he said. “Ten already knows. We don’t have to make a big thing, but I’d like to feel easier with the team. No big announcements or anything, not for a while, so you can control your narrative or whatever it is you call it.”
“You’ve been taking notes.”
“Always. I want to share and help with what Ten is having to handle, along with Jared. Does that make your job harder?”
I smiled into another kiss.
“Having someone who loves me, and whom I love, makes my life easier,” I reassured him, and ignored the concern that scratched at the edge of the words. Nothing worth anything was ever easy.
“So we’re doing this, then,” he said.
“Yeah. I love you.”
“Love you too,” he murmured, and buried his face in my neck, sighing against my skin. “So much.”
Epilogue
Adler
June
It was stupid to check. I knew that. Yet…
“Are you still not ready?” Layton padded up behind me.
I gave him a quick glance over my shoulder. The shoulder that still didn’t have a shirt covering it. He held up a pale blue sweater and shook it. Then his gray eyes flickered to the phone in my hand. He lowered the sweater he’d bought me as concern darkened his incredible eyes.
“Maybe they’re just out of service somewhere.”
“Yeah, maybe not.” I shoved my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, then took the sweater from Layton. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s only my birthday. Why should they stop being Cole and Karrie Anne for ten fucking minutes and wish their only son—” I pulled in a calming breath while tugging the sweater over my fat head. “Forget it. We can’t make people be what we want them to be, right? We can only control our own narrative.”
“That’s right.” He gave me a wan smile, then handed me my wallet and car keys. I crammed them into a front pocket. “You really do listen when I talk.”
“Always, Foxy Man.”
I leaned over to steal a fast kiss. His lips were soft, warm, and just too damn tempting. Knowing where one innocent kiss could lead, Layton slipped away before I could get my hands on him.
“The show starts in thirty minutes,” he reminded me.
“A night at the arena. Yay.”
His scathing look was top notch. “It’s not like you’re out on the ice.” It was a special final show featuring several Olympic figure skaters at the ice that was being melted tomorrow and removed for the summer break. “It’s the perfect gift for the man who skates for a living.”
“Layton, they wear toe picks.”
I pushed my arm into the sleeve of my lightweight dark grey jacket. I’d bought it because when I wore it I was reminded of Layton’s eyes. Not that I needed a coat to trigger any kind of memory of the man. He was with me everywhere I went. Buried deep in my heart, calming my brain and making me feel still. That’s a rare feeling for me. Only Layton Foxx has ever been able to do that. And make me come so hard with just a whispered word that I nearly black out from sheer pleasure.
“Yes, they wear toe picks.” He sighed dramatically. I’d explained the sort-of-friendly rivalry between hockey players and figure skaters. How we chirped each other about who was tougher, better skaters, and which ice sport was harder. “And bright costumes.”
I followed him out the front door of his place and waited as he locked things up. I was there pretty much 24/7 now, which gave Apollo all kinds of privacy. I wished he could find someone as amazing as Layton to love.
Since Layton had gone to great trouble to get tickets to the show, I stopped whining about it being a busman’s holiday, toe picks, and Trent Hanson, the big star of the ice extravaganza that had rolled into Harrisburg for a one-night-only show.
We hustled to my car parked next to his, a soft summer breeze ruffling his hair.
“Hey,” I called, and tossed him my keys. His eyes flared. “You drive.”
“Wow, this really must be love.” He grinned, grabbed a hard kiss, then got behind the wheel of the Beemer.
“Must be,” I said after slidi
ng into the passenger seat. He gave me a sly look, then cued up one of his CDs. “Okay, I’m not sure I love you that much,” I groaned when “Young and Beautiful” by Lana Del Rey drifted from the speakers.
“Yes you do.”
“Yeah, I do.”
He eased us out of the parking lot and out into light traffic. We talked about nothing and everything. His cell chirruped about halfway to the arena. He pulled over to the curb to see who was calling. I could tell it wasn’t a cheery call by the way the skin on his forehead furrowed.
“Let me take this,” he said. I turned the stereo down and leaned back into the seat, watching people walking by enjoying the early summer sun. I caught sight of one woman in a Railers’ jersey with Stan’s number on the back. Even though the team hadn't made it past the second round of the Stanley Cup finals we had done this city proud, and our following was growing.
Every journalist said one thing; next year we could go further.
“No, Dieter, just let me continue working on the problem. I know. We’re going to handle it, but it has to be done properly. Yep. No. I didn’t forget. It’s okay, I know you’re worried. Okay I’ll... No, just… Right. That’s probably for the best. Good, okay, we’ll talk tomorrow.”
He ended the call, closed his eyes, and searched for some Zen while I waited.
“Can’t talk about it yet?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It’s confidential.” He opened his eyes and looked at me. “You know I’d tell you if I could.”
“It’s cool. He’s entitled to his privacy. I mean, look how long we kept us a secret.”
“This one is complicated.”
“You’ll get it worked out. You’re the best at what you do.”
A snort bubbled out of him. “Leaping from one potential social media nightmare to another, you mean?”
“We do keep you busy, huh?” I thought of all the stuff he’d handled since his first day as the Railers social media guru. Tennant and Jared had been huge. Then there had been me, with my mouth that didn’t connect with my brain. And now, it seemed, Dieter had something brewing that required Layton’s touch.