Crossing the Touchline

by Jay Hogan

  Knowles didn’t just glance my way, he eyeballed me, and I felt the challenge to the blushing soles of my feet. I didn’t even have to think. I lifted my chin and returned the challenge.

  “And he’ll have it,” I assured him. Hell. If Reuben was prepared to do this for me, I’d damn well eat alive anyone who got in his way—in our way. “You live up to your end and I’ll have his.”

  Reuben snorted.

  I stared at him. “What?” Oh shit. If I didn’t blush, I was doing a damn good impersonation of it. “Back, I meant I’ll have his back. Fuck.”

  Knowles and Kennedy both laughed. “Good to hear. Anyone behind the scene whose behaviour gets out of hand risks their contract, and we will follow through on that. We’ll protect Reuben as much as we can, but there’s obviously limits to that, outside of the team.”

  Knowlesy faced Sean. “Matt Brown is gonna have fucking kittens.” Then back to Reuben. “Matt’s our PR guy, and he’s been chomping at the bit for this ever since he came on board. I’ve gotta warn you, he’s a great guy, and you’ll like him, but he’s got a bee in his bonnet about this. His brother’s gay, and he’s gonna cream himself when he hears about you two, so I apologise beforehand.”

  Reuben half grinned. “It’ll be fine,” he said.

  Would it, I wondered? I didn’t want a PR stunt on the back of Reuben’s and my relationship.

  Knowlesy seemed to catch my thinking. “We’ll keep Matt in hand, don’t worry.”

  Slim chance of that.

  He continued, “Lastly we’ve got The Blues to consider. We’re gonna have to include them in the whole process—a united front—and that’ll take a bit of time to set up. We’d want to do this right—for everyone’s sake, but especially yours. So think about it, and if you decide to go ahead, just give me the word and I’ll get the ball rolling.” He gave a heavy sigh. “Or have I scared you off?”

  Reuben drew himself to his full height and straightened his shoulders, looking every inch the All Black he was. It was all I could do not to climb him like a fucking tree.

  “Not one bit,” he said. “In fact, if you’ll excuse the language, fuck waiting. I’m done hiding and I’m sure as hell done asking Cam to hide for me. I’m so fucking proud of this man, I can’t wait to have him at my side whether people like it or not. That is if Cam agrees, of course. If he needs more time or wants his name kept out of it, I’ll still come out but with no mention of him, understand?”

  The other men nodded. “This is your show, Reuben.”

  He turned to me. “Anything you want to add? Do you want more time? I’m here for you either way.”

  Wait… what? My breath fled my lungs and I choked on a gasp as I stared up at him. But… we hadn’t even talked yet. About what? a voice popped into my head. Was there anything left to talk about, honestly? He’d answered nearly all my questions with his actions over the last few hours. Still…. Fuck a bloody duck.

  I dragged my brain back into my skull and focussed on Reuben. He was watching me wearing an amused expression. Bastard. Did I mention we were gonna have a talk?

  “Is that okay with you, sweetheart?” he said as if he spoke to me like that in public every damn day of his life. Then he winked, fucking winked.

  Ooooh, there were definitely gonna be words had. My gaze narrowed, pointedly. “Absolutely, poppet,” I answered with a straight face, and this time he blushed. Hah! “No more time needed. If you’re coming out, I’ll be there with bells on, probably literally.”

  A huge grin split his face. “Then let’s do this.” He pulled me to my feet, crushing me to his chest and… Jesus… Tim better have that crash trolley handy because my heart was leaping about all over the place.

  Someone chuckled and a card was pressed into my hand, the one attached to the arm currently wrapped around Reuben’s neck.

  “These are our personal numbers, Cam,” Sean said. “Make sure Reuben calls with anything he needs—for his brother or what we just talked about. And that, I think, is our cue to leave.” Next thing I heard was the door closing.

  My hand closed around the card in a death grip, but I was too busy peppering kisses down Reuben’s neck and telling him what a stupid, wonderful, frustrating idiot he was. He clung to me like I was the answer to every question he had, and I knew just how he felt.

  Then reality hit me like an electric shock to the balls. Holy shit. Reuben was actually going to do this. We were going to do this. Fuck. My. Life.

  Reuben

  TIM WAS good enough to get our meals sent to the room, and the psych team arrived not long after we’d got Cory cleaned up and breakfasted. We left them to it for a bit and took a short walk.

  When we got back, Craig was still awake, barely, but he remained pretty zonked, drifting in and out of a fitful sleep. Michael opted to keep him another day before they signed him off to the psych team, but he was happy enough for Craig to be transferred to a general ward.

  My brother managed to get together a hug for Cory and a brief apology for me, but that was about it. I was torn between feeling desperately worried about him and wanting to break his fucking neck for being such an irresponsible arsehole. No telling what might have happened if I hadn’t been able to take that call. That he wanted to kill himself was one thing, but risking Cory like that? Fuck, I couldn’t even imagine where his head had been. Unfair or not, I was still bloody furious with him.

  Cam caught my eye from his seat on the floor, where he was trying to stretch out the kinks in his back. I’d rung Georgie before breakfast, and she’d arrived to take Cory off our hands after our walk. It was the first time she and Cam had officially met, and they got on like a house on fire once the inevitable circling of wagons was done.

  Cam and I needed time together, more than just a few hurried conversations, but it was a luxury we didn’t exactly have right then, and until we did, I needed to be content with being driven insane by his proximity, his soft touches and brief kisses… and those infuriating glimpses of smooth olive skin above his scrubs. If I didn’t get my hands on him soon, things were gonna get embarrassing.

  As if reading my mind, the fucker sent me a smirk and openly adjusted himself. My arousal level shot from five to fifty in a split second. Goddammit. I was still debating the merits of dragging him into the nearest bathroom for some relief when Craig’s hand wrapped around my wrist, and I turned to find a pair of stricken eyes locked onto mine. My brother looked the most awake he’d been but also devastated, and so very, very old. In that moment, I knew I’d forgive him, eventually.

  “I wouldn’t have hurt him,” he whispered, still hoarse from the tube they’d shoved down his throat to keep him breathing on the trip in to hospital. “I fucked up, Ruby. I’m a crap dad, I know, but I wasn’t going to hurt him, I swear.”

  My heart squeezed. He hadn’t called me Ruby since we were kids. God. How had we let things get so fucked-up between us?

  “I thought I had time. I thought…. Fuck, I don’t know what I thought. Then my head went all fuzzy and I got scared. I knew I’d screwed up. And when Cory started in with that whining shit… I just couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t mean…. Fuck. I just wanted everything to go away, you know?”

  Tears coursed down Craig’s face, and Cam’s hand came to rest on my lower back. I brushed my fingers over my brother’s damp cheeks and pulled him close, letting him sob against my chest. My own heart ripped open, and I felt the tears well. “It’s okay.” I rocked him slowly. “We’ll sort it out. Nothing’s too big that we can’t sort it out, right?”

  “But… Dad—” Craig’s voice broke against me.

  “Hey,” I cut him off. “You let me worry about Dad. You don’t even have to see him if you don’t want to.”

  “But the garage….”

  I pulled back and eyeballed him. “No. Now, you are going to listen to me, dammit. Dad has to be out of this picture, right? You let him back in your life like before and you’ll end up here again, nothing surer. I’ll make sure both you a
nd Cory are safe, understand? But you have to do two things for me.”

  I wasn’t sure it was the best time to lay the law down, but Cory was my priority right now, not my brother. Craig was still a while away from getting out of hospital or getting his son back. His eyes were too dull, too void of emotion.

  “What two things?” he asked.

  “First, I need you to promise to really work with the psychologists to get yourself back on track, to take it seriously. And second, I need you to give me full guardianship of Cory, at least temporarily, till we can sort everything out.”

  His eyes popped.

  “That’s nonnegotiable, Craig. I need to know Cory is legally safe with me—that Dad can’t just turn up and take him. Once that’s in place, we’ll make a plan—together.” I took a deep breath. “I’m coming out, Craig, officially. So, Dad and me? We’re pretty much done, and any help I can give you will depend on Cory being safe from him, because I won’t be able to protect him otherwise. Do you understand?”

  Craig hesitated just a second, then nodded with what seemed like relief. “I don’t want Dad to have Cory, I never did,” he said, and I rallied at the determination I heard in his tone. “I might be a crap father, but I never wanted that.”

  “You might lose the garage,” I warned. “He’s gonna be mighty pissed.”

  A broken sigh fell from his lips. “It’s not like it was ever gonna be mine anyway, not really.” His expression turned even more miserable. “Jesus, Ruby. I tried to fucking kill myself. It doesn’t get much more fucked-up than that, right?”

  It was the first time he’d admitted it, and my eyes burned with his confession, my heart breaking just a little more. He buried his head in my chest, and I rocked him slowly.

  Cam leaned over my shoulder and spoke softly, but loud enough for Craig to hear. “I’ll page the on-call social worker to get things going. Shouldn’t be too hard since you already have power of attorney.”

  I prodded Craig. “You okay with that?”

  He deflated against me. “Yeah.”

  Cam pressed a kiss to my cheek. “After I get the social worker, I’m gonna try and catch up with Tim for a bit to thank him. You alright here?”

  I nodded, and he left the room.

  The social worker arrived fifteen minutes later, having already been in the hospital on another call. She spoke briefly to Craig on his own, then called me in, and we got the ball rolling on the paperwork. It took less than thirty minutes, though she cautioned us about presuming anything ahead of time even with a standing power of attorney, but she saw no immediate problem with a temporary guardianship, and promised to call as soon as she had any news on progress with the legalities. Finally, something seemed to be going our way.

  But when Cam returned five minutes later, rigid fury burned hot from every pore on his body. A sense of dread prickled my spine. Goddammit, what now?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Reuben

  “AS IF Reuben Taylor hadn’t pulled enough jaw-dropping rabbits out of his hat last night in the third Bledisloe, bringing home two tries and a brilliant assist to make himself an overnight household name, he’s outdone even that this morning, if the photographs currently going viral on the internet are to be believed.

  “A source close to the fullback has apparently outed the young All Black, releasing a photo of him sitting vigil beside his hospitalised brother. Keeping the young fullback ‘close’ company is a man we can now identify as Cameron Wano, charge nurse of Auckland Med ER. The two were photographed in each other’s arms. To date there has been no response from Taylor, Wano, the Blues or All Black management regarding the compromising photos.”

  Lee Thomas, New Zealand News online

  “FUCK.” I threw Cam’s phone on the bed, just missing Craig’s sleeping form. It had taken less than ten seconds to google the photos—they were fucking everywhere. The first image was a little dark and fuzzy—not much more than the outline of two people wrapped closely together and impossible to identify. But in the second photo, someone had switched the damn light on, transforming dark and fuzzy into bright and crystal fucking clear.

  My face was turned to the camera, scrunched against Cam’s chest with his cheek resting on my head, our arms around each other. The image screamed boyfriends in every damn language on the planet. We may as well have been painted in glitter with a rainbow blanket thrown on top. Goddammit.

  Cam dragged a weary hand down his face. “I remember the flash during the night. It woke me up but at the time I just thought a nurse had hit the wrong light switch, now we know.”

  I pulled him in and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “How did you find out?”

  He lifted his face. “Tim’s boyfriend alerted him. It’s apparently all over the TV as well. We’re the talk of the sporting media in a dozen rugby nations. And it’s not even ten in the morning. Not bad going, right?”

  He summoned a ridiculous grin, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “No points for guessing who the unnamed source was. Gee, thanks, Dad.”

  Cam’s scowl returned. “I swear I’m gonna fucking kill that man, Rube, and no jury would convict me. Why did he do this? I thought the whole thing was about him not being embarrassed by his son’s gay arse.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, well, he probably realised that cat was too far out of the bag for that, so he had nothing to lose and outing me himself helps him retain some bravado with his mates. You know, doing the team and nation a favour and all that. Get rid of the fag. It’s a Hail Mary payback. And I guess he’s hoping the AB management will run scared and let me go. It’ll piss him off no end when they don’t.”

  “Not to mention screwing with your plans and getting back at you for having the audacity to stand up to him,” Cam pointed out.

  “Yeah, that too.” I reached for my phone, turned off the mute, and promptly turned it back on again. “Son of a bitch.” Fifty-two messages winked at me, and they were still coming. Sean Mitchell, Knowlesy, and the AB media guy, Matt Brown, were top of the list, followed closely by the Blues’ equivalents and an endless barrage from media hounds and teammates. Holy shit. This had all the makings of a grade A clusterfuck.

  Cam shifted awkwardly on his feet, looking decidedly frayed around the edges and nervous as hell. Oh. Hell no. I was having none of that.

  After a quick check that Craig was still asleep, I sat and pulled Cam into my lap, wrapping him tight in my arms. “Quit that, Mr Wano.”

  “Quit what?”

  He threw me an innocent look, and I made sure to eyeball him. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not changing my mind because of this, so stop worrying. It might fuck up the whole let’s-all-just-sit-down-and-make-a-nice-little-plan shit that Knowlesy was so keen on—I’m thinking that whole scenario just got blown the hell out of the water—but it isn’t changing us. I’m still in this. Are you?”

  I felt the air whoosh out of Cam’s chest, and the grin that split his face from ear to ear said everything I needed to know. The full-frontal lip attack he followed with kind of sealed the deal, and then when he straddled me on the chair and owned the rest of me, well, that was just icing on the cake. I’m sure the only thing that saved me getting stripped bare and ridden where I sat was my brother sleeping on the bed less than a metre away, and I wasn’t sure whether to be thankful about that or pissed.

  When Cam decided I’d been debauched enough, and not a second before, he pushed to his feet, taking me with him, wiped the lip gloss from my chin and other places, straightened my collar, tucked in my shirt, and handed me my jacket.

  “Better get ready for your adoring public,” he warned. “Tim said it’s a nightmare out front—news crews, the works. I’ve rung security, and they’re heading up to walk us out. We’ll leave by the kitchen delivery bay, but I can almost guarantee someone will have thought to cover that as well.”

  “No,” I stated flatly. “We’re going out the front. I’ve spent twenty-three years hiding who I am, and I’m done with it.
If you’re worried about the hospital, or your job, or your family, then that’s different, we’ll slip out quietly, but don’t you dare do it for me.”

  Cam shook his head in disbelief. “Jesus, Rube. When you decide something, you go the full enchilada, huh?” He eyed me seriously. “But I’ve already warned Mum. She says hi, by the way. And you’re summoned next week for Sunday dinner.”

  My brows must have shot to my hairline.

  “I know, right? Still, may as well jump in the deep end.” He looked pensive for a moment. “Actually, it will be the first time I’ve ever taken a boyfriend home. Huh, boyfriend. I kind of like the sound of that.” He grinned for a second before it slid into a scowl. “Goddammit, Mathew’s gonna be all over my arse.”

  Holy hell. Dinner with his parents. I’d somehow slid sideways into a parallel universe. But once I got my chin off the floor, I couldn’t hold back what I’m sure was the loopiest grin I’d ever worn. “Tell your mum yes. Then take my damn hand, boyfriend, and walk out that front door with me as the man I’m so fucking proud to be in love with.”

  He stared at me as if I’d lost my freaking mind, like he was seeing me for the first time, until I finally reached across and closed his jaw with my fingers. “Catching flies, charge nurse?”

  He slapped my hand away, dragged me behind the bed curtain, and grabbed me roughly by the balls through my crumpled dress trousers. I winced reflexively.

  “The only fly I’m interested in,” he said, pulling me closer through my trousers, “is this one.” And he had my zip half-down in a split second, adding a couple of teasing strokes that had me on the edge in a ridiculously short amount of time.

  I arched into him. “Fuck,” I hissed out in a whisper. “You better be careful or you’re gonna get a lot more than you bargained for, mister. I haven’t had your hands on me in two weeks, and things are gonna go ballistic any minute.”

  “Jesus Christ, would you two get a fucking room,” Craig growled from the other side of the curtain. “I’m trying here, but I’m not down with all this gay shit yet.”