18. Gil
CHAPTER 18
GIL
I had one bite of donut left when Jack pulled into the parking lot. He drove up alongside the spot my bike was parked in and unrolled the passenger side window down to leer at me.
“Fancy running into you here?” I asked, shoving said last bite into my mouth.
“Any other day, sure.” He slid his sunglasses down his nose. “But I knew exactly where to find you today because your boyfriend and step-son pointed me in the right direction.”
“He’s not…they’re not…” I glared at him.
“Get in the fucking car, Valentine. We need to talk.”
After plucking the keys out of the ignition of my bike, I sank down into the passenger seat of Jack’s car with a groan.
“Rowan spent the night on accident,” I explained. “Fisher came over for help with his bike and Rowan walked out.”
“How does someone spend the night on accident ?”
“Well, sometimes, when two people don’t care about each other very much at all, they have really exhausting fucking sex and then fall asleep.”
Jack sucked his tongue across the front of his teeth and turned his car into an empty parking spot at the other end of the lot. He cut the ignition and reclined the seat all the way. I angled my back against the passenger door and glared down at him.
“Did you come all the way here to harass me about my sex life?” I asked. My fingers were still sticky from the donut…from the sex. “I swear you were just on my ass about not having one, and yet…”
“I absolutely am not here to harass you about developing feelings for a man who has the exact red flag that drove you and my brother apart.” Jack folded his hands together behind his head and sighed. “Though it is ironic.”
“Rowan and I are just sleeping together.”
“His kid seems fond of you.”
“I just help him with his bike sometimes.”
Jack made an indecipherable noise in the back of his throat and I blew out an exasperated breath. “What did we need to talk about, Jack?”
“My brother.”
Dropping my head against the back of the seat, I rubbed the bridge of my nose between my thumb and first finger. The grimace on my face at the mere mention of Philip was enough to have my scar aching like it used to do when it was fresh. I pressed gently against the jagged bottom edge of it, right below my cheekbone, and waited for the pressure to abate.
“What about him?”
“You know I try to keep him out of our relationship.”
“I know,” I said.
“He’s getting married.”
“You told me.”
Jack scrubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t even know how to say this to you.”
“Words help,” I said simply.
Jack knew me well enough by now to know I wasn’t one of those guys who needed grand gestures or declarations. I was a simple man and I appreciated simple communication. It was something Philip, who preferred to beat around the bush instead of facing things head on, never understood. I appreciated, in the present, that Rowan had a good enough head on his shoulders that we’d been able to have the talk we had the night before, to trust we were on the same page about whatever the thing between us was.
Even though I hadn’t been scared when I woke up to sunlight streaming through the blinds and his body still soft and warm in my bed. Even though it was the sound of his kid banging again on my door for help with his bike that had woken me up far too early on a Saturday morning. Even though I left them both alone in my garage to discuss whatever the two of them needed to discuss after Rowan had strolled right in on us wearing the same clothes he’d undoubtedly had on for dinner the night before.
Maybe it had been fucked up of me to leave Rowan on his own for that conversation, but I meant what I’d said to him and to Jack. I was not looking to be a boyfriend, least of all a step-parent. Whatever Rowan needed to tell his pre-teen about what he and I did behind closed doors was between the two of them and the two of them alone. I wanted no part in it.
“He’s asked me to be his best man,” Jack said.
“You told me.”
We were not, in fact, covering any new territory with this conversation. He’d already told me Philip was engaged and that he’d been asked to be best man. There had to be something else, but Jack was definitely taking his sweet time getting to it. A loud peal of laughter outside caught my attention and I frowned at the young kid who was running far too close to my bike for comfort. Her parents were distracted, and I wanted to yell at them how dangerous motorcycles were, even when they weren’t running. My bike weighed hundreds of pounds and would have easily flattened that toddler into a pancake.
Which begged the question…why had I agreed to take Fisher for a ride?
“It’s…” Jack groaned. “They’re all coming down pretty hard on me.”
“Why? Did you tell him no?”
“My parents are…the way they are,” he said.
“I remember.”
Their oldest son bringing a man home had been a huge deal for them. For all of us, really. I didn’t know at the time that Philip had never even hinted at his bisexuality to his parents—or his brother, for that matter. So, there I was, young and dumb, and walking on sunshine because I thought Philip hung the fucking moon. And I’d found myself on a battlefield filled with hateful glares and vile accusations.
I’d held Philip later that night while he cried about the whole thing, and I often wondered if it was the pressure from his parents to give them grandchildren that had made the “no kids” thing such a line in the sand for him. Philip and Jack’s parents were old-fashioned on a good day, and when I said old-fashioned, I meant racist and homophobic. There was no way around it.
They had learned to tolerate me over time, but…
After Philip and I broke up, all of that initial hate was dumped solely on me. They implied that I’d tricked Philip into being gay, into living in sin. Whatever their issues with him, they all became issues with me. I figured that was easier for all of them so I let it slide off my back as best I could. When Jack resurfaced in my life, to spite all of their words and opinions of me, it had truly meant the world. He never rubbed our continued friendship in his parents’ face, and while I knew they thought less of him for it, I imagined they let it slide since there was no risk of me ruining their youngest son’s future the way I’d almost done with Philip.
“No one thinks it’s right for me to stand up for Philip if you and I are friends,” he said softly.
“No one being whom?”
“My parents,” he answered. “My brother.”
“His fiancé?”
“His future wife.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Of course he’d gone and found himself a nice girl to marry.
“Where did they meet?” I asked. It didn’t matter, but I wanted to know.
“My parents set them up.”
“Church?”
“Yes,” he answered.
I hummed thoughtfully in the back of my throat, hoping it would vibrate the donut right back into my stomach so I didn’t throw up all over Jack’s pretty leather dash.
“Is it an ultimatum then?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And what of it, Jack?”
“He’s a prick, Gil, but?—”
“Right.” I didn’t need him to say the rest of it. I didn’t think I had it in me to hear the words. I grabbed the door handle and shouldered my way out of his car. Jack was quick to raise the seat up, reaching for me over the center console but my legs were too long and I was too fast.
“He’s your brother,” I finished the sentiment for him, slamming the door closed and bending down so I could see him through the window.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Ultimatums generally are, Jack.” I straightened up and slapped my hand twice against the door. “Thanks for the talk.”
I went back to my bike and made quick work of my helmet and the ignition, so even if Jack did call after me, I wouldn’t be able to hear him. The last thing I wanted were excuses from the second man in the Sydney family who’d managed to hold my heart in some capacity and break it.
I was stupid.
I should have known better.
My friendship with Jack had always stood on shaky ground after my breakup, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d always known it. It had been a good two year run, and I’d just forgotten, that was all. I’d forgotten and I’d let my guard down, and I was doing the exact same thing with Rowan and his annoyingly endearing gap-toothed kid.
Flipping down the visor on my helmet, I sped out of the parking lot, heading up the winding mountain roads far faster than I had any right going. It had been a very long time since I’d ever taken my bike over eighty, but as I hit the midpoint straightaway and I opened her up to one hundred, I had no clue why I’d ever stopped. The wind whipped against my throat, up and off my arms as I raced down the highway. My muscles hurt from the tension it took to stay on the bike at those speeds.
I downshifted quickly as the road sloped into another turn, dropping back to sixty as I finished the ride up the mountain. I’d reached the summit in record time, and since it was still relatively early on a Saturday, the parking lot was mostly deserted. A couple sunrise hikers no doubt had been on the trails for hours, but other than that…
Blessed silence.
I parked on the edge of the lot and yanked off my helmet. My scar ached far more than normal, and when I reached up to massage the tight skin, I found my lash line and my cheek damp. Cursing under my breath, I balanced my helmet on the gas tank and stalked toward the edge of the cliffside. I was by no means suicidal, but being so close to taking myself over was as exhilarating as the speed on the ride up had been.
I’d just lost the most important person in my life, and I had nothing else left to show for it. Life was funny that way. Before Rowan, before Jack, before Philip, I’d been happy with the things that were mine, with the decisions I’d made. But I was losing these people one by one, and the holes they left were far too massive to fill with other people or with other things.
“Think harder,” I said to myself, resting my forehead in my shaking hands. Philip, whom I’d once loved beyond reason was gone. His brother, my best—my only—friend, was on his way out. And Rowan…Rowan shouldn’t have even been there in the first place. He’d been dropped into my life unceremoniously and uninvited, but now that he was there…he’d already dug himself a hole too big for anyone else to ever fill.
It was careless of me, maybe, to have been so insistent about things between us staying casual. It was a self-defense mechanism that had already backfired. There was no denying that Rowan stoked a flame inside of me that I never even knew had been lit. When he flushed so red with embarrassment, when he found the strength to be bold and brave.
Everything about him turned me on, made me feel alive.
But some things were still indisputable. I didn’t want a relationship and I sure as shit didn’t want to be a step-parent.