by Aislin, Amy
Sam’s phone rang as he turned off the ignition. He fished it out of the cupholder in the center console and glanced at the screen. Bo saw him pale beneath his summer tan.
“What’s wrong?”
Sam turned the phone around and showed Bo the caller ID. Michelle Lewis it read, then a phone number with a 416 area code.
“Who’s that?”
“My lawyer.” Sam swallowed hard.
“On a Sunday?”
Sam shrugged and continued to look at his phone as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Bo stole it out of his hand and swiped to answer.
“Hello, Sam’s phone,” he said.
The look of utter horror on Sam’s face would’ve been hilarious under different circumstances.
“Uh…” The person on the other end of the line didn’t seem to know what to do with him. “Yes, hello. May I speak with Sam, please?”
“Certainly,” Bo said just as politely, though he was sure Michelle Lewis The Lawyer could hear the sarcasm in his voice. “One moment please.” He held the phone out to Sam with a flourish. “It’s for you.”
Sam grumbled something under his breath but took the phone. “Michelle? Uh-huh… Yeah… Wait, what?”
Bo watched Sam closely, but he didn’t pale any further. In fact, his color slowly returned, so whatever Michelle Lewis The Lawyer had to say couldn’t have been too bad. Half-turned toward Bo, Sam rested his right elbow on the headrest and buried his hand in his hair. Worried, Bo reached over, untangled Sam’s hand from his hair, and held it in both of his. Sam’s eyes softened and his shoulders loosened even as the hand between Bo’s tightened its grip.
“Are you sure?” Sam asked Michelle. “Really, really sure? So, now what? They want to what?” Sam let out a choked laugh and a corner of his mouth kicked up. Bo smiled tentatively in return. “Sure. Why not?” Now Sam rolled his eyes. “No, I don’t want to sue them… Michelle… Michelle… No. No… I don’t care. I just want this chapter of my life over with. I’ll take the money and then case closed.” Jesus, Bo was about to explode from curiosity. “Okay, yeah, come by tomorrow afternoon. I’ll sign the papers then. Bye.”
Bo didn’t even wait for Sam to hang up. “Whose money are you taking? What happened? What did she say?”
Sam started to laugh. Or maybe he was crying. He sat back against his seat and buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking.
“Um, Sam?” Bo rubbed his shoulder.
Those light brown eyes turned to Bo and he was momentarily dismayed to see tears in them. But they weren’t sad tears or angry tears or I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening tears. No, if Bo had to guess, he’d say those were tears of relief.
“They dropped the case.”
Tears of relief. Definitely.
Bo didn’t hesitate. He unbuckled his seatbelt and practically threw himself over the center console and into Sam’s waiting arms. They were both laughing as they buried their faces in each other’s necks. Bo hugged the stuffing out of him.
“I knew they would. God, Sam, I’m so, so happy for you.”
Sam pulled back to wipe his face. “Fuck,” he said, still laughing despite the tears that kept falling. “Fuck, I’m so relieved.”
Bo pressed tiny kisses all over his face.
“Thank you, Bo.”
“For what?” The tears had finally stopped and Bo wiped Sam’s cheeks with his thumbs. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Just for being there.” Sam’s eyes were soft as he gently traced Bo’s cheekbones with a forefinger. “For putting up with me, for being a rock through this whole thing.”
Sam had been so strong and seemingly unaffected about the case. Other than the four weeks in May when he’d been a jerk to Bo, he’d been almost blasé about the situation. It was only now that Bo realized how stressed he’d been.
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize how much this was affecting you,” Bo said. Stupid of him not to catch on.
Sam’s eyes shifted. “I didn’t want you to see.”
Bo rested his forehead against Sam’s. “You don’t have to hide things from me. We’re a team. You can talk to me.” The irony of the moment wasn’t lost on Bo: Sam had said those very same words to him a few weeks ago. “I want to take care of you like you take care of me.”
It took a second for Sam to answer, and when he did it was with a kiss that scorched Bo’s insides. In his enthusiasm about the dropped case, Bo hadn’t really processed that he was sitting atop Sam’s strong thighs.
Sam’s arms clamped around his back. Bo met Sam’s kiss with his own committed zeal, sucking Sam’s tongue into his mouth. Sam moaned. Bo moaned. Bo buried his hands in Sam’s hair.
A car zoomed by on the road and Bo realized Sam had him pressed back against the steering wheel. Bo ran his knuckles over Sam’s beard and eased out of the kiss.
“For the record,” Sam said, lips kiss-swollen, “I know I can talk to you. The past few weeks have been…overwhelming. I was being sued yet I was still working on my clients’ websites and on Scythe and Swords, and trying not to think about having to find a new place to live. And then there was you.”
Bo’s heart tripped at the tenderness he saw in Sam’s eyes.
“You were completely unexpected,” Sam went on. “I didn’t expect to like you as much as I did, never mind fall in love with you. After we patched things up, I wanted to be on my best behavior for you because you deserve the best, but also because I wanted you to like me back. I knew you wouldn’t run away once you found out how freaked out I was, but I wanted to handle it on my own. I didn’t even tell my family about this.” He winced. “Clearly I don’t handle stress well. Either I take it out on other people or I internalize.”
“You don’t have to do either anymore,” Bo said. It was the first time he was seeing Sam’s vulnerability and his heart melted. “You have me. I’ll help you.”
Sam’s eyes stayed rooted on his as he sighed deeply. To Bo, it sounded like he was releasing all of the pent-up stress and frustration of the past few months.
“You make me feel like a new person,” Sam said. “Like I’m alive for the first time in my life. I want to freeze time so I can always have this moment, always have you.”
Bo eyes filled and his chest constricted. He swallowed past the knot in his throat. “You will always have this moment, and you will always have me.” He pressed a gentle kiss to Sam’s lips. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, you’re stuck with me.”
Sam hugged him hard.
“I love you,” Bo said. He needed to say it, needed to yell it, wanted to write it in the stars for everyone to see.
“I love you too, baby,” Sam kissed his neck. “Come on, let’s get out of here. It’s getting hot.”
The air was just as hot outside the car as inside, but at least it was fresh and clean, smelling of the flowers in Sam’s front garden.
“We need to celebrate,” Bo said. “I saw champagne in Laura’s pantry.”
“I can think of something besides champagne that I want.”
Bo patted Sam’s chest and winked at him. “You can have that too.”
He led Sam through the hedges dividing their driveways but stopped when he realized Sam wasn’t behind him. Instead he was still on his side of the hedges, eyes flicking from Bo to the hedges and back again.
“You know,” he said, “for weeks I’ve been wondering how this little path came to be. I thought it was a giant raccoon family, or maybe ducks, who’d forged themselves a path. And the whole time it was you.” He shook his head in mock sadness.
Bo grinned, unapologetic. “Guilty.”
Sam snorted and walked through the path.
“Tell me about the phone call,” Bo demanded. “What’d Michelle say?”
“Well, they dropped the case because they finally realized they had it wrong.” Sam followed Bo up the walkway and onto the porch. “It just took them forever to realize it. Michelle says they’re very sorry—” he rolled his eyes, “—and in ord
er to rectify the situation, they’d like to pay for all of my legal fees. Michelle thinks that’s just their way of ensuring I don’t take legal action against them.”
Bo paused in his search of his many pockets for his keys. “You don’t want to take legal action against them anyway, right?”
“No, but she didn’t tell them that. And if they want to pay my legal fees, I’m not going to complain.”
The door opened before Bo got the key in the lock, making them both jump. A heartbeat later, he was thrust behind Sam’s tall, broad body. Adrenaline pumping, Bo searched his pockets for his cell—Jesus, if the intruder didn’t kill them, he was buying new fucking shorts with only two pockets ASAP—to call 911, but then…
“What are you doing here?”
Chapter Ten
Sam knew his greeting wasn’t exactly courteous, but seriously, what the fuck? She’d scared the ever-loving shit out of him. He was still holding Bo behind him even though it was clear Bo didn’t need protection from their visitor. At least not the physical kind.
Bo popped his head around Sam’s shoulder. “Laura?”
“Hey, Bonobo!”
Laura’s faked enthusiasm made Sam grit his teeth. It was the kind of enthusiasm one projected when they knew they’d done something wrong and were trying to hide it. Like, “Hey Mom! I accidentally broke your favorite souvenir from that month-long trip you took to Australia last year! But you don’t care, you have others, right? Anyway, moving on…!”
All of the anger at Bo’s family that Sam felt on Bo’s behalf had been suppressed the past few weeks. Laura’s unexpected early arrival threw the lid off those emotions. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at her. She wasn’t hurting his man, not ever again.
“What are you doing here?” Bo asked. He came around Sam to stand next him. “Not that you shouldn’t be here,” Bo said, backpedalling. “I mean, it’s your house. But…” His eyes blinked up at Sam, asking the same question Sam had asked himself only seconds ago. What the fuck? “Are you on a break between classes or something?”
They both still stood on the porch. Sam had been coming and going from this house for weeks. He and Bo had gotten into the habit of leaving their back doors unlocked for each other. But now, with Laura here, he was uncomfortable walking in without an invitation. Bo must’ve felt the same, though Sam could imagine he was probably also feeling like his space had been intruded on.
“Come in, guys.” Laura fake-laughed and opened the door wider to let them in. “No need to stand out there. Besides you’re letting out the air conditioning.”
Sam almost didn’t follow Bo into the house, thinking he’d give brother and sister privacy to catch up, but when he hesitated a second too long on the porch, Bo turned toward him. His eyes pleaded for Sam to stay. So he did.
“I was just fixing myself a snack,” Laura was saying as she led them all into the kitchen. She had the ingredients for an egg salad sandwich scattered on the counter along with sliced celery and cucumbers. “I can make you guys one too?”
It was closing in on dinnertime and Sam and Bo had been planning on barbecuing steak, potatoes, and veggies. Fuck it. They’d take their meal over to his place if they had to. She wasn’t interrupting their night.
“No, thanks,” he said. “We have dinner plans already.”
She must’ve heard the tightness in his voice because she shot him a frown then turned her attention to Bo.
“How are you, Bonobo?”
“Fine,” Bo said, the inflection at the end turning the statement into a question. “Seriously, is everything okay? I thought you weren’t back until September first.”
“Oh, no! Everything’s fine!” She fake-laughed again. “I’m off again tomorrow morning. This is just a stopover.”
“A stopover on the way to what?”
Bo stood on one side of the counter, Laura on the other. They didn’t hug. They didn’t shake hands. Hell, they barely made eye contact. It spoke volumes.
Laura added a spoonful of mayonnaise to a bowl of shell-less hard-boiled eggs and used her fork to mash everything together. “Oh, just on the way to London.”
“London…Ontario?” Bo asked. “Is that where the rest of your courses are?”
“Ah, no. London, England.”
Bo blinked at Laura, then at Sam. Sam shrugged. He had no fucking clue.
“I don’t understand,” Bo said. He sounded so small and confused Sam wanted to kiss the frown off his face and tell him to find that fire of his, because it was clear that something here wasn’t right.
“Well…” Laura cleared her throat. She added salt and pepper to her mixture and kept mashing. “My course was two months, May and June. Now I have travel plans with some friends for July and August. Are you sure you don’t want some of this?”
“Jesus Christ,” Sam muttered under his breath. Was she fucking kidding?
“What do you mean your course was only two months?” Bo asked. Sam saw him go from confused to indignant. There was his boyfriend! For some reason Sam couldn’t explain, watching Bo get all fired up turned him the fuck on. “You said it was four.”
“I’m sure I said it was two and that I was travelling after.” Laura’s smile was strained. She knew she was lying through her pearly teeth yet she continued the charade anyway. Had Laura been a man, Sam would’ve smacked her.
“No,” Bo said, voice hard. “You said the course was four months long.”
“That’s what you told me, too,” Sam piped in.
“Right, well, I must’ve, uh, misspoken.” She didn’t look at either of them, just continued to mash her eggs. If she mashed them any further they’d be inedible.
“Misspoken? Are you fucking kidding me?” The incredulity in Bo’s voice had Laura finally looking at him. His eyes were murderous. Sam’s dick twitched. “Did it ever occur to you that I had my own life in Ottawa that I gave up to come here and help you?” Angry spots of color slashed his cheeks. “And you lied to get me here.”
“I—”
“What are you doing here?” Sam interrupted her to ask. His mind was going in circles and something didn’t add up.
Laura’s eyes swung to his. He’d never noticed their color before. While Bo’s were deep pools of chocolate, his sister’s were an icky puce. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I have to assume that you never meant for Bo to find out about this,” Sam said. “Which means you never meant to come back between your course and your vacation. So what changed?”
“Oh, well, uh, it turns out that it’s cheaper to fly to London from Toronto than Vancouver.”
Bo scoffed. He paced around the kitchen, shaking his head, laughing the laugh of someone who was at his wits’ end. The kind of laugh that said if-I-don’t-laugh-at-this-I’m-going-to-punch-someone. On his next stride by Sam, Sam reached out and ran his hand over Bo’s shoulders. Bo looked at him and his eyes softened. Sam wanted to pack Laura up and ship her off somewhere—back to Vancouver, away to London, he didn’t care.
Bo hooked a finger through Sam’s belt loop. It looked like he was trying to anchor himself. Laura kept looking from him to Bo and back again, clearly wanting to ask, but seeming to realize that now wasn’t the time.
“I didn’t think you’d come for four months if you knew I was planning a vacation for some of that time,” Laura told Bo. It wasn’t an apology, not even close. Just an excuse.
Bo’s eyes closed and he sighed deeply. The shoulders under Sam’s hand slumped. Sam ran his thumb over Bo’s neck, silently imbuing him with his strength. When Bo’s eyes opened again, they were sad yet resolved and, looking as though he’d come to a decision, he turned toward Laura.
“You and I are done,” he told her, in a voice that was quietly firm. “Don’t ever call me for help again.”
He walked away. In the loud silence he left behind, Sam heard his footsteps on the stairs, then a door being closed upstairs.
Laura forced a smile and scooped some of her egg mixture on
to a slice of bread. “Sorry you had to see that, Sam.”
“You know, he had to quit his job to come here,” Sam told her. Her eyes flicked to him in surprise. “What did you expect? It was four months.”
She was quiet as she stared down at her sandwich. Did she have nothing to say for herself?
They’d been friends once, he and Laura. Before Bo. Before he’d found out how she treated her brother. Before he’d witnessed this act of pure selfishness. She finally looked like she might be feeling a bit guilty, and he felt bad that he and Bo were both so angry with her, but Sam was firmly in Bo’s corner. Always and forever.
“Had you told him the truth,” Sam said, “he probably still would’ve come help you. He wants you to respect him.”
“He’s my brother, of course I respect him!”
“Do you?” Sam stared her down. “Because before you left, you told me Bo was a flake, and that he was never around when you needed him. Yet hasn’t he always come to help you when you’ve needed it? You and I must know two different people, because that guy upstairs? Is loyal to a fault.” The sun’s rays reflected off the kitchen sink, catching Sam’s eyes. He looked out the back door, past the animal enclosures and the chicken coop to the fields beyond the house and the big blue sky. “He has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met,” he said to Laura. “It’s as big as the sky he loves to look at.”
Laura looked perplexed, whether at Bo’s huge heart or his love of all things astronomy Sam didn’t know and didn’t care. He remembered what he’d overheard Bo tell PomPom weeks ago: “I was really looking forward to being his friend.” He still felt like a complete shit for letting Laura’s pre-conceived beliefs about Bo affect how he treated him. It was so obvious now that…
“He just wants you to love him for who he is,” he said. “And if you can’t do that, then I agree with Bo: Don’t call him for help again.”
Leaving a shocked Laura in the kitchen, he went in search of his boyfriend.