Gideon let his head rest against the top of Dane’s. “I know.”
DAD WAS drunk again and looking for someone to hit. He pounded on the door. Heart pounding in time with Dad’s fists, Gideon waited for him in front of the closet where his sister was hiding.
Another thump on the door, a real door and not one in a dream, jerked Gideon out of sleep. Hard, deep, sweaty sleep. His stomach lurched with panic as his brain tried to catch up with the sensory input. Someone pounding on the door, calling his name. The bed wasn’t his.
Memory flowed back. The Rose Terrace B&B in Westhampton. He stretched his arm out, opened his eyes. No Dane.
He dragged on his trousers as he hopped to the door and opened it.
“Kieran? Christ, is Theo all right?”
Theo’s husband blinked at him. “Yeah, he’s okay. He’s down at breakfast.”
Gideon shot a glance at his Rolex. Nine thirty. Kieran might be only twenty-three, but he wasn’t the type to institute a search party because of someone sleeping through breakfast. “Is Dane with him?”
Kieran shook his head. “Look. Don’t freak out on Theo, okay?”
Whatever equilibrium Gideon had managed to recover after waking evaporated, literally as well as figuratively, when he banged his still-sore knuckles into the door as he pulled on his shirt.
“What happened to require a warning?” He narrowed his eyes at Kieran, who was unfazed.
Since he wasn’t going to get an answer, Gideon jammed on his shoes and gestured at the door. “Where are we going for me to do my not freaking out on Theo?”
Kieran blocked the way. “I mean it. Theo’s—I get this stuff with Dane is hard for you guys, but don’t do the asshole thing and take it out on him.”
“Theo’s a big boy, Kieran. If he has something to say, he can tell me himself.”
Theo pushed past Kieran and into the room’s tiny foyer. “You are such a fucking idiot.” Theo glared at Gideon and huffed, more out of breath than a simple climb up the stairs should have left him.
“Good morning to you too. What the fuck did I do? I’ve been asleep.” Gideon fought the urge to shove them both out of the room. He would have, if Dane had been with him. Gideon really needed to talk to Dane before family and friends complicated everything.
“Did it occur to you to maybe tell Dane what you were planning before fucking until you passed out?”
Gideon squeezed by Theo to jerk open the closet door. Dane’s suitcase was gone. Damn, Gideon had been really out of it to have slept through that.
“You told him?” Gideon demanded.
Theo threw up his hands. “Weddings aren’t surprise parties. I saw him in the hall this morning and asked if he wanted to keep the fedoras for your ceremony.”
Gideon dragged a hand across his stubbled jaw to avoid covering his eyes. He could just imagine how well that had gone. For a guy who claimed to get bored with the ordinary, Dane hated surprises. He had to be the one with the advance information.
Gideon folded up his tie and tucked it in his pocket. “So he wasn’t happy. Then what?”
“I figured he came up here to tell you what a dick you are, and we went to breakfast. Then Kieran saw him walking past the window dragging his suitcase.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you—?”
Kieran interrupted. “Theo went outside to talk to him. I came up here.” Despite his even tone, he glared at Gideon.
Gideon rolled his eyes.
“Dane gave me a message for you.” Of course, Theo couldn’t just pass it along. He had to draw out the tension. Always the showman.
Gideon wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking what it was. He turned to check his quick dressing in the mirror and tucked in his shirt tails.
Theo gave in. “He said, ‘If marrying Captain Control Freak is my best option, tell him he’d better make that reservation after all.’”
The crematorium? Christ. And Gideon thought Theo was the drama queen.
“Then he told me to fuck off and said he was going home,” Theo finished.
“He doesn’t have a car here. He—” Gideon looked at the nightstand. The bottle of lube was still there, but his car keys were gone. “Shit. He stole my car.”
Charging from the room, Gideon spat Dane’s name into his phone so tightly he had to repeat it with his teeth unclenched.
Of course it went to voice mail.
Instead of all of the things he wanted to scream at Dane, Gideon kept it to a terse “Call me back.”
A question for the elderly woman at the desk got him a sympathetic smile. “Your husband settled up with me this morning already.” She put her warm, dry hand over his clenched fist where it rested on the brightly polished maple counter. “Don’t worry. My husband and I had one hell of a hassle back on our honeymoon. Thought it was over and good riddance at the time. Turned out to be the stress from the wedding. Things will sort out.” She squeezed his still-aching knuckles. Despite the petal softness of her skin, she had quite a grip.
His phone saved him.
“See?” She released his hand. “I bet that’s him now.”
It was a text from Dane.
Your car is at the train station.
He tapped back Call me. The message whooshed away.
Gideon got a notification that the message had been read at 9:51 a.m. The dots indicating the other person was typing appeared and then vanished.
Gideon squeezed the phone in his unbruised hand. Carefully, slowly, he typed out a word Dane had often claimed Gideon didn’t know.
Please.
That one had been read at 9:52 a.m. More dots. Nothing.
He hadn’t been keeping his plans secret. He’d wanted to give Dane a little time. Gideon wasn’t such an idiot he didn’t realize that given what had just happened with Spencer, maybe waiting to share important information might set Dane off. But Gideon couldn’t explain things if Dane wouldn’t talk to him.
Getting married wasn’t about their history, or Spencer. It was about Dane being on the right side of the 63.5 percent average for a whole lot longer than the five-year survival rate. And too important to risk to a misinterpretation in a text message.
Gideon turned back to the woman at the counter. With his charm-the-jury smile, he said, “Would you please call a cab for me? I need to get to the train station.”
Chapter 8
DANE PUT the box at the top of the stairs, stared at it, and then sent it flying down with an angled kick. There was a satisfying sound of wood splintering and glass crunching as it bounced off each wall and then crashed in the dining room.
One thing about having been in a relationship with a photojournalist for ten years, there was far too much pictorial documentation of the memories. He’d spent most of the afternoon taking down pictures and packing them in boxes.
Not that his petty destruction meant anything. Pictures were easily reprinted, and his painfully acute recall had the moments stored anyway. It was his own smiling face he wished he could excise from the images of them in Kenya, Guyana, Iceland, the Hebrides, Tierra del Fuego. No matter the setting, the oh-so-perfect film speed, and framing, every one showed Dane happy, confident with the knowledge that he had life by the balls.
He threw another box down. A picture bounced out, frame and glass intact. Black-and-white, Dane laughing as he stepped into a boat in Cambodia last January. His face, his life, happiness trapped under glass.
Dane chased after the box and picked up the unbroken frame.
You stupid fuck.
He wanted to reach into the shot, punch himself, scream at himself to wake up and realize that it couldn’t last. That seven months later he might as well be under glass, cut off, seeing time expire as he died alone.
Theo, Jax, they’d offer. They’d be with him as much as they could. And Gideon, ready to make the noble sacrifice of marrying Dane to keep him in the treatment protocol with Dr. Fuentes. Gideon would stay, because that was what he did. He sacrificed—no, martyred
—himself for everyone’s happiness.
No need to chain himself to this rock. Dane had already had a full six weeks of the first round. Which had been, according to Dr. Fuentes, the easy round.
Enough with the poison. He’d go out to the West Coast, dust off his board, and ride until the end. Enjoy what he had left, far away from the care and concern that only reminded him that the Dane in those pictures, that life, wasn’t ever coming back.
He tossed the picture against the wall, and the sound of the frame cracking turned into the sound of the front door opening. If that was Spencer….
“Enter at your own fucking risk,” Dane called.
Gideon came into the dining room, hands in the air. “I’m afraid I left my flak jacket at home.” As he surveyed the overturned and broken frames, he added, “I think you may be confused about how packing works. The stuff goes in the boxes.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You wouldn’t answer my calls or texts.”
Dane considered climbing to his feet to face Gideon at eye level, but it seemed like a lot of effort. He dragged himself a few feet to the wall, rested his back against it, and stretched his legs out in front of him. “That should have clued you in that I don’t want to talk to you.”
Gideon squatted next to him, wearing jeans and a leather jacket over a T-shirt. Not a work day, then. Was it only Sunday? After taking the train back to Queens, Dane had slept for what felt like a week before waking to start separating his stuff from Spencer’s.
Gideon dropped his sarcastic tone. “You’ve never done that before.”
Dane was surprised to realize that was true. All these years, no matter what was going on, he’d always been able—been willing—to talk to Gideon. He never put off a call or e-mail. Not that Gideon asked for much.
“So you decide to break in?”
“I have a key.” Gideon was staring at Dane’s face. Not with pity or even concern, which would have given Dane something to fight against, but with that familiar, intense focus. He was almost always sexually aware of Gideon. One touch, a shift that brought Dane close enough to smell his skin, a friendly kiss that turned into something more, it didn’t take much to tip them from awareness to arousal.
But this expression, when Gideon dropped the impassive mask and looked at Dane like this, it wasn’t as easily defined as sex or the warmth of affection. It made Dane feel like he was close to understanding something important, close to catching that perfect wave, close to finding the ever-renewing adrenaline high.
Dane shifted, put his hand on a piece of broken glass, and jerked the hand to his mouth. Shit. He was bleeding.
Remember the reality of now? That’s all over. No going back to having it all.
Gideon’s brow creased in concern. “C’mon.” He straightened and offered a hand.
Dane just stared at Gideon’s hand.
No more letting Gideon take care of shit for me.
Gideon made an impatient sound. “Or do you plan to commit suicide slowly? Roll around in a room full of broken glass? Death of the Thousand Cuts? I could bring you a razor, help you out.”
Dane smacked Gideon’s hand away and bent his knees to press himself up with the help of the wall.
“Bloody handprint. I like it. Gives the place the lived-in, horror-movie feel.” Gideon nodded. “Christ. Your feet are bare. Of course.” He made a pained sigh.
Dane glanced down to the hem of his sweats, to his bare toes. When he looked back up at Gideon, Dane batted his eyes. “Carry me, stud?”
“No.” It was clipped. “Wait there a sec.”
Gideon came back with a pair of sneakers. Spencer’s, damn it. Dane stuffed his feet into the narrow toes and limped into the kitchen. He kicked the shoes off and leaned against a counter.
“Need to wash that.” Gideon nodded at Dane’s bleeding hand.
Dane knew he’d have said the same thing to anyone else. Resenting Gideon for reminding him was completely childish. But Dane was full of resentment today. He slumped over to the sink and spun on the faucet.
As the water streamed over his throbbing hand, he saw the slice. A half-inch crescent moon just below the base of his thumb. He watched the blood well up and then wash away. “I do vaguely recall how to be an adult. Back from before I had cancer.”
“Prove it.”
“By what? Marrying you?”
Gideon stayed reasonable, the bastard. “By taking care of yourself so you survive cancer. If that means making sure a cut doesn’t get infected or signing some paperwork so you keep getting the treatment Dr. Fuentes believes will work, you do it.”
“Signing some paperwork? That’s all it is?”
“You want me to go down on one knee?”
You could stop at just going down.
The response died on his tongue. Gideon’s voice had become brittle, and Dane didn’t feel much like teasing either.
Gideon came up behind him and put paper towels and the first-aid kit from the bathroom cabinet on the kitchen counter. Dane pumped a squirt of hand soap over the wound, trying to ignore the sting. Pain happened, but Dane really wasn’t one to stand there and take it or inflict it on himself.
“Just make yourself at home,” Dane said.
“Thank you.” Gideon ignored the sarcasm, grabbed Dane’s wrist, and pulled his hand from under the stream of water. “Doesn’t need stitches.”
“Did you get a medical degree while I wasn’t looking?”
Gideon picked up the paper towels and patted Dane’s hand dry. The blood was at a slow seep. Gideon lifted it closer to his face, then farther away. Thirty-six was on the young side for presbyopia, but as Dane was learning, bodies didn’t give a shit about the rules.
He was about to tease Gideon about needing reading glasses, but there was that look. Intense focus, beautiful dark eyes. This time it hit Dane nice and sweet in his balls. Good to know the time under the deck hadn’t been a one-off as far as his libido went.
But he was still pissed and seeking a target. “What makes you so sure your insurance will cover Dr. Fuentes and his nonstandard protocol?”
Gideon used a gauze pad to put antibacterial ointment on the cut. “We’re lawyers. Insurance lawyers. We wrote our contract. We cover everything now or hereafter designed for treatment of anything the human body can come up with.”
“Right,” Dane grunted. “Why deny yourself what you can deny others?”
“You can complain all you want.” Gideon looked through the box of plastic bandages and then put another gauze pad on. “However, you will be taking advantage of it.” He tore off a strip of tape.
“I will?”
“We’ll get the license Monday. Theo and Jax can be there or not, but we’re doing this. What time is your chemo appointment on Thursday?”
“You do know you can’t just get a summary judgment on this. I have to agree.”
Gideon laid down a strip of tape. “I’m aware of that.”
“Wait, don’t tell me. You have a contingency plan.”
Gideon finished his first aid. He put his arms around Dane’s neck. Dane’s hands went to Gideon’s waist, an instinct. Habit.
“Of course I do.” Gideon’s voice was quiet.
His eyes were more open than Dane could remember since… that time in college.
Gideon gazed at him steadily. “I’ll sell my loft. My car. Withdraw my IRA. Whatever it takes, you’re getting through this.”
That bad habit almost had Dane pulling Gideon closer, resting his chin on Gideon’s shoulder.
Let him fix it.
Guilt churned Dane’s stomach, souring the promising tingle in his balls.
“I’m done with getting through it.” Dane shoved Gideon away.
Gideon stumbled and then caught his balance with a hand in the sink. Straightening slowly, he folded his arms across his chest, face going blank, voice snide. “I see. Can’t live without Spencer? He should be touched by your devotion.”
Dane swun
g back hard. “Jealous?”
Gideon’s face remained blank. “I can honestly say I don’t want anyone dying over me.”
“Well, don’t break your long tradition of dishonesty just for me.” Dane held Gideon’s gaze as long as he could before looking away. Bastard always won.
“I can’t believe you want to die.”
Dane could actually do with a little less honesty right now. Some euphemisms would be nice. He shook his head.
“Then what?”
“I can’t do it.” The admission snapped out of him.
“Marry me?”
Dane let his brain twist that, hear it as a proposal, in a voice that actually asked, rather than asserted. “Any of it.” He met Gideon’s eyes. “I told you to leave me alone. That I needed time.”
“Time is something you don’t have an infinite supply of anymore.”
An electric shock of rage made Dane want to lash out. Physically. With fists.
The realization stunned him, and then the anger drained away, leaching the tension from his muscles and taking a huge store of energy with it.
“Don’t you think I know that?” His voice shook, and there wasn’t anyone or anything in the world he hated more than himself in that moment. “But I can’t. You don’t know. You can’t.”
“You just have to get through it.”
Gideon had said that before, back when Dane had asked again about the scar on the back of Gideon’s scalp, the reason he kept his hair short.
Dad hit me with a wrench. Hated the times he broke my ribs more.
“Maybe I’m not as strong as you are.” Right then, Dane didn’t feel strong enough to keep standing up in his own kitchen.
“Bullshit. You’re as strong as you want to be.”
“Fine. I’m not the hardass with the ability to bury my feelings under three feet of concrete that you are.”
Gideon’s eyes lightened even though his mouth stayed in a thin, straight line. “Well, we can’t all be perfect.”
Dane let the counter hold him up. “It’s not only my hair or the puking or the inability to even drag myself off the couch. It’s all of it plus knowing it’s going to be like that and worse, next week, and next week, and maybe I’ll die never feeling any better.”
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