I wanted to coach high school football.
I wanted to help the kids realize their dreams and aspirations early on and give them the tools to build brighter futures. To be the positive influence in their lives. It was the perfect way to continue doing what I’d discovered I enjoyed—working with teenagers—and still have football.
Later that evening, after working out with Daniel and getting back on good terms with him, I sat on the couch with Hunter. We were at my house, watching something on TV after having eaten the amazing Italian food he’d made us for dinner.
I played with the hair at his nape, twirling a longer strand around my finger before finding another. He leaned his head on mine, and I turned my face to kiss his temple.
“I want to coach football,” I said. “Hanging out with D today got me thinking about it, and it’s something I really feel I’d be good at.”
Hunter tilted his face up to meet my gaze. He didn’t look surprised at all.
“You already knew,” I stated, unamused. Okay, maybe a little amused. It was scary how much Hunter knew me.
“I had a hunch,” he said before leaning forward and touching his lips to mine. He tasted like red wine—that he’d insisted we drink with dinner—and he’d had another glass afterward too.
He hardly ever wanted to drink, so I suspected he had something to tell me.
I turned my body more toward him and guided him to his back on the couch. His hands roamed my sides before squeezing the globes of my ass through my joggers.
“Okay,” I said, nudging his legs apart and sliding between them. “What’s up?”
“You, apparently,” Hunter said with a grin. He looked between our bodies before focusing back on my eyes. “And me. We should do something about it.”
Fuck, it was hard—pun not intended—to refuse him. I’d never been the best at denying sexual urges with Hunter, but a bigger part of me took control; the part that was madly in love with him and didn’t want to do anything to fuck it up.
“Hunter…” I scrutinized him.
He laid his head on the couch cushion and peered up at me through his dark lashes. “If you still want me to move in with you…I will.” Then he did the Hunter thing and started talking really fast. “I still don’t want you paying for everything. I’ll help with the utilities, groceries, and things like that. I want it to be equal between us, and I don’t want to take advantage of your money, and—”
And like usual, I shut him up with a kiss.
Hunter moaned in the back of his throat and squeezed my ass again as our tongues tangled and our teeth clanked.
My heart was full.
Hunter and I were going to live together, he’d be able to spend most of the summer with me in Kansas City for training, and our lives were finally on track for what they were always meant to be.
Two halves of a whole finally connected.
Chapter 27
Hunter
Friday evening, Corbin and I wanted to get out of Willow and have a night out. Fayetteville, the bigger city about thirty minutes away, was bustling with life as we drove down one of the main strips. Bars lined each side of the road, as well as restaurants, a bakery, an outlet mall, and one bar that was also a hot spot for concerts.
After parking, we got out of the car and walked down the sidewalk, hand in hand.
Funny enough, I think I was more nervous about the public hand holding than Corbin was. Not that I was ashamed, but no matter how progressive the place was becoming, I still had that fear in the back of my mind about not being accepted.
“You okay?” Corbin asked, drawing my attention back to him.
He wore a simple T-shirt, baseball cap, and jeans that night, but even dressed that casual, he still looked like a damn model. Which he was. And from what Jennifer had said, apparently him coming out had made even more agencies reach out to him, wanting him for cologne ads, fashion magazines, and one who wanted him to model a new line of underwear.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” I said, squeezing his hand a bit tighter as we passed a group of college kids. “How about you?”
“I’m fucking great.” He brought our joined hands up to kiss my knuckle before turning to the entrance of a bar. “Wanna go in?”
I smiled when I saw the place: the same bar I’d gone to months before when I’d been trying to work out my feelings for him.
“Sure.”
When we entered, we were greeted by classic rock blaring over the speakers, wafts of cigarette smoke, and a lot of laughter. The place was small, but still nice. Far from a dive bar, even though its location and size would’ve normally pegged it as such. Spotting two seats open at the bar, we headed that way and sat down.
“What can I get for ya?” the bartender asked. She was the same one from the other time I’d gone there: short, spiky black hair, dark lipstick, and eyeliner that came into sharp points at the edges of her eyes. She had purple highlights now.
“I’ll have a Michelob,” Corbin answered, pulling out his wallet.
Before I could say what I wanted, the bartender narrowed her eyes at me. “And you’ll have an Angry Orchard?”
I gave a light laugh. “Yep. You remembered.”
“Well, you kinda have a face that’s hard to forget,” she answered before turning and getting our drinks.
Corbin lifted a brow. “Damn. I’m not used to you being the one to get all the attention while we’re out.”
I bumped his arm. “Jealous?”
“Nah,” he said with a smirk. “People can flirt with you all they want, but I’m the one you’ll be going home with.”
I leaned closer to him on the bar stool, and he slipped his arm around my waist, holding me. He looked freaking hot in his blue Kansas City baseball cap, and I fantasized about throwing him onto the bar top and fucking him right then and there. Something about him wearing a hat just did it for me.
Thankfully, I had way more self-control than that.
The bartender gave us our beers and Corbin handed her his card.
“So, this is the guy you were telling me about last time?” she asked me, nodding to Corbin.
Corbin snapped his head to me. “You told her about me? Awe.”
“Shut up,” I said to him, shaking my head. Then, I looked at her, feeling my face heat. “Yeah. This is him.”
“Well, would you look at that?” She leaned against the counter and winked. “Looks like I was right about the whole fate thing after all.”
When she left to help another customer farther down the bar, I looked at Corbin. The way he was staring back at me made the breath leave my lungs. There was a softness in his eyes that just wrapped around my heart and refused to let go.
His face inched closer, and before I registered what was happening, he kissed me, right there in the center of the crowded bar.
But I didn’t think about the eyes that were probably glaring daggers into the backs of our heads. I didn’t think about anything other than the way Corbin’s lips felt against mine, and how even after all of these years, he still had a way of making me feel like we were the only two people in the world.
After we kissed, I looked around and was surprised I didn’t see the glares I’d sworn I’d felt. Mostly everyone was going about their own business, drinking and chatting with their buddies. There were only a few guys looking at us, but the stares weren’t venomous. More curious. When one stood up from his table, I saw the Raptors shirt and smiled.
“Hey, man,” the guy said to Corbin once he’d approached us. He was young, probably a handful of years younger than us, and he had a lean, athletic build. “I just wanted to say congrats on the great season last fall, and good luck on the upcoming one.”
“Thanks.” Corbin shook his hand before motioning to the guy’s shirt. “Not used to many KC fans around here.”
“I live there,” he responded, putting a hand in his front pocket while holding his near-empty beer in his other. “I’m just down here visiting a buddy for his bachelor party.
Can I buy you a drink?”
That one drink turned to two, then three, and within an hour, Corbin and I had ended up at that guy’s table with all of his college buddies. They were a great group of guys, and the groom-to-be seemed excited about getting married.
He talked about his girl so much that his best man—the guy who’d first approached us and whose name was Grant—forced beer down his throat to shut him up. That caused the guy to sputter and spew a lot of it on the table, causing us to erupt into laughs.
“So are you two a thing?” Grant asked us with a smile. His eyes were a little pink and he swayed a bit.
The other guys at the table looked at us, waiting for an answer, and I froze, not sure what to say. Anyone with eyes would’ve seen us making out at the bar earlier, but the years spent hiding our relationship made me hesitate.
“Yeah,” Corbin answered, throwing his arm around my shoulders and tugging me toward him. He nuzzled the side of my head before resting his cheek on mine. His breath smelled like alcohol, and I knew he was drunk. I wasn’t any better off, not used to drinking so much. “He’s my guy.”
“Which one is the girl in the relationship?” another guy asked—I think his name was Brandon.
I rolled my eyes at him, hating when gay men were asked that.
There were no girls in a gay relationship. That was kind of the fucking point. Same went for being asked who the top was and who was the bottom. There were a lot of us who didn’t prefer one over the other, and even for the ones who did, it was personal and not something we wanted to tell random people about.
“Dude, you don’t fucking ask that,” Grant slurred to Brandon, slapping his chest.
Brandon’s eyes went wide. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
The tension vanished, and within minutes, we were all laughing again. Tyler—the groom—wanted to take a group selfie, so he held out the phone with one arm, and we all gathered around him and made crazy faces. That inspired Corbin to want to take even more pictures, and he had us all posing and acting like jackasses.
Funny how when I was drunk, I wasn’t shy anymore. Go figure.
Corbin put his arm around me and kissed my cheek before taking a picture of us. He showed me the picture, and I was surprised I actually liked it. In it, I had a soft smile and my eyes were closed as I leaned against Corbin, who stared at me with a lovesick smile of his own.
“I’m posting it,” he said, clicking his social media app. “People are gonna lose their shit.”
That sobered me up.
“Wait. What?” I tried to grab his phone, but he held it out of my reach. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, no one knows who I am yet.”
“Yeah,” Corbin answered, still grinning like the demon he was. “But I want the world to know that I love you.” His smile faltered, and he lowered his arm. “Do you want people to know, Hunt? Because if you don’t want me to tell anyone who you are, I won’t. I just…I fucking love you and I’m tired of hiding you.”
The hurt in his eyes crushed me. He thought I didn’t want people to know I was with him?
“Post it,” I said, grabbing his hand.
In a huge way, it was my own public coming out—telling a shit load of strangers I was gay. That was something I’d have to do for the rest of my life anyway. Any new person I met and friended, I’d eventually have to tell. Which was a major case of bullshit, but it’s just how the world worked.
“When y’all get married, can I be the best man?” Grant asked before finishing off his beer.
Tyler took away the empty bottle—that Grant was still trying to drink out of—and bopped him on the head with it. “Dude, you can barely be the best man for mine.”
I knew they were best friends, and had been for a while, when Grant shot Tyler a smug smile before jabbing him in the ribs. Tyler countered the hit with one of his own, and the two drunk men started giggling like school girls as they wrestled in the booth.
Corbin tilted my face back to him and lightly kissed me. “I love you. You sure this is okay?”
I nodded, pressing my face against his hair.
He typed out a message to go with the photo and posted it.
***
“Hey, babe, you need to see this,” Corbin said from the other room.
After pouring water into the coffee machine and starting it, I left the kitchen. Corbin was laying on the couch, one leg on the floor and the other stretched outward across the cushion, and scrolling on his phone.
I was a little hungover from the night before and had popped some pain killers earlier, but the damn headache refused to go away. A reminder as to why I didn’t like drinking.
“What is it?” I plopped down between his legs and lay backward; my back on his chest.
“We’re trending,” he answered, holding his phone out to where I could look at it with him as he scrolled down his page.
He clicked on the picture he’d posted last night, and I read the message he’d sent with it.
Corbin_Taylor: Out with my guy. We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs, but through it all, we found our way back to each other. He’s my heart, my soul, and makes me a better man.
“Wow. I didn’t see what you’d actually said with it,” I admitted, blinking back tears.
“I meant every word too.” Corbin kissed my nape before tightening his hold on me. “Looks like some of my fans are trying to find us a ship name.”
“A what?” I turned my head to look at him.
“You know, like our names meshed together to form one word. Like our relationship name,” he explained, staring at me with amused gray eyes. “Fuck you’re old. You really don’t know what a ship name is?”
“Shut up.” I gently elbowed his stomach. “But anyway, what about your fans?”
Corbin nipped at my neck before resting his head back on the pillow and holding out his phone again for us to see. “Turns out, our names fucking suck. They were having a hard time finding one, so one of them created a poll and people are voting on which one they like best.”
“Corber?” I asked as I read one on the list. Then I snorted as I saw the next suggestion. “Huntin. That makes us sound like rednecks.”
“Oh, it gets better,” Corbin said with a smile in his voice. “Keep reading. Take a look at what’s currently in the lead.”
When I saw it, I had to do a double take. And then once it registered what I was actually seeing, I choked out a laugh. It was completely awful, but funny as hell.
“Are you fucking serious?” I said, fighting another wave of giggles. “Out of all the possible names on this poll, Cunter is winning?”
Corbin started laughing too, and we read a few comments from his fans. Of course, there were the homophobic assholes that never seemed to mind their own business, but the majority of the comments and mentions were in support of us.
ShyGuy: Thx, Corbin_Taylor! Becuz of u, I came out 2 my parents. Dad was kinda pissed, but I think he’ll come around. Ignore the h8ters.
After that post, there were over a hundred more. We got up to make our coffee before sitting down at the kitchen table and reading through as much as we could. Although he tried to hide it, Corbin’s eyes watered as he went through them. So many kids reached out to him, and some were guys our age too.
He started replying to them, and as he did, I sat back with my coffee and looked out the patio doors into the backyard.
Ever since the night I’d said I would move in with him, I’d gradually started bringing my stuff over. I was renting my house, so I had another month on the lease before I could officially be out of there. I’d brought over everything except for my furniture and appliances, like my refrigerator, washer and dryer, and the temperamental toaster that sometimes worked, sometimes burned everything.
We had taken one of the spare rooms and were in the process of turning it into my home office and study. All of my books would go in there—inside the built-in bookshelves—as well as sitting chairs and my desk. There was even a f
ireplace in there too, which reminded me of those classic detective movies where the men sat in their studies in front of the fire and smoked tobacco out of a pipe. Not that I’d do that, but that’s the visual I got when I pictured it. Like a Sherlock Holmes type setting where instead of solving cases, I’d grade papers and recite Shakespeare.
I loved the images that came to mind when I thought about me and Corbin a year from now. Two years. More than that.
Us sitting together at breakfast, sleeping beside him every night and waking up to him every morning, hearing him laugh as we worked outside in the garden he wanted to build, and feeling his strong arms around me as we cuddled on the couch. They were all things I looked forward to.
He was my soulmate. It might’ve been overly sappy to think such a thing—especially since I was a bit of a skeptic and had a hard time opening myself up to most things—but I knew, without a doubt in my mind, that Corbin and I were meant for each other.
“What are you thinking?” Corbin asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Us,” I answered. “And how happy I am. When you first came back here, I never thought I’d let you back into my life. But now, I can’t imagine my life without you. You said in your post that I make you a better man, but, Cor, you do that for me. I’m better for knowing you. And for loving you.”
Corbin cleared his throat. “Can people stop fucking making me cry today? Damn.”
I left my seat and kneeled in front of him, taking his hands in mine and looking up into his watery eyes.
“Will you marry me?” I asked, feeling my heart beat faster. Maybe it was from hanging out with the bachelor party guys the night before combined with my own happiness, but I couldn’t stop the words. I realized I didn’t want to, even if I could. “Not right now because you have a lot going on in the upcoming months. But when your season is over and you’re home, I’d love nothing more than to be your husband, Corbin Taylor. We can’t change the past, but we can make the most of every day and create a future together. I don’t have a ring, because I just now thought of this—”
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