28. Gil
CHAPTER 28
GIL
I was clammy and shaking by the time Rowan and Fisher made it out to the car. Fisher complained the whole drive back to their house about his lost earbud, about how the new ones needed to charge before he could use them, about his bike, about the awkwardness of the cast. He’d had Rowan sign it as soon as it was dry, then asked me to do the same. My name looked like a seismograph around his wrist, but he’d smiled at it just the same.
Maybe because it was so close to his dad’s name.
As soon as we got back to their house, Fisher was out of the car like it was any other day, like he hadn’t just given the both of us the fright of our lives.
“Hey, Fish,” Rowan called out the window, waiting for his son to turn around. “Gil and I need to talk, so I’m going to his place for a bit. Will you be okay?”
Fisher mouthed the word talk , making questionable air quotes with his fingers, and I dreaded what the actual teenage years were going to be like for Rowan…for me.
“A bit presumptuous, don’t you think?” I teased him, even as I put his car in reverse and backed out of his driveway. Fisher was safe inside the house, lights turning on as he made his way from the front door to his bedroom, no sense of the cost of electricity to be found.
“I just…I thought…” There he was again, with his pink cheeks and that nervous stammer, and I settled my hand on his thigh with a low laugh.
“I’m just giving you a hard time,” I said softly.
“Oh.”
“We do need to talk.”
He chuckled and exhaled loudly through his nose like an annoyed little bull. “That sounds ominous.”
“Does it?”
I pulled his car into my driveway and the two of us walked up to the door. Rowan was close, but not too close, and I gave in right before I got the key into the lock, taking his hand in mine and brushing a kiss across the top of his knuckles.
“It’s fine, Row,” I promised.
He followed me into the house and I only bothered to turn on one light, the standing lamp in the corner of the living room that cast the cozy space with a low amber glow. I gave Rowan a push down onto the cushions, went to get us water, then joined him. He was upright and fidgety, his fingers knitting together some unseen masterpiece in his lap. He looked like he wanted to crawl out of his skin and the tension in his shoulders made me uncomfortable.
“I don’t want to fuck you anymore,” I said, grimacing when he winced. “I mean, I don’t want to just fuck you. I very much want to keep fucking you. Sorry. I’m a little out of practice with this kind of thing.”
Relief flooded his face and I gave him a weak smile.
“I want to more than fuck you too, Gil,” he said.
“I mean I want to like…date you. I want…” The words coagulated in my throat, thick as molasses but far more bitter.
“Fisher and I are a package deal, Gil.” Rowan took my hands and tangled our fingers together, turning them around until he found a comfortable way to hold me. “That hasn’t changed.”
“I know,” I said quickly. “I want that. I want him too.’
Rowan blinked slowly, eyes turning glassy as he studied my face quietly.
“I was scared today,” I told him softly, jaw tight. “When you showed up frantic about him. When I couldn’t find him for you.”
“Me too.”
“I was scared about that, and I was jealous about the other things.”
“Other things?” he asked.
“You being with other men.”
Rowan huffed. “I’ve only been with you. I only want to be with you.”
“You went on a date,” I reminded him.
“You told me Fisher was a deal breaker,” he countered, and I looked away from him, ashamed of the man I’d been weeks before.
“Kids were a hard limit for my ex and me,” I explained, not wanting to talk too much about Philip, but needing him to understand. “His family was—is—extremely homophobic. Religious. Judgmental. He thought if we had kids, it would make the fact he was with a man easier for them to swallow.”
“That’s…” Rowan snapped his mouth closed, and I nodded in agreement.
“It’s fucked,” I said.
It was his turn to smile weakly.
“I never wanted to be a dad anyway, but I really never wanted to be a dad with him. It felt wrong to bring children into that life.”
“Sounds like it, but, Gil, I’m not asking you to be Fisher’s dad.”
“I know, but also…it’s different with him. With you. I don’t know.” I was fucking this all up, the words still caught in the train wreck of my throat, failing to translate from how my heart wanted them to be heard. “I want to be a good role model for him.”
The tears Rowan had been holding back finally broke free, sliding down the slope of his nose toward the bow of his upper lip. He smiled at me like I’d offered him the moon, when I’d done anything but.
“You are,” Rowan said. “And for me too.”
“How do you figure?”
“I’m so protective of him because he’s the only thing I have in this life. He’s the last parts of Lisa and I did love her so much when she was alive. I love her still.”
I shook free of his hands so I could reach for his face, cradling his damp jaw in my palms. I dragged my thumbs across his cheekbones, heart twisting at the watery smile he gave me.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from a man like you, Rowan.”
“You’ve shown me how I can hold both,” he said. “How to not be afraid of both.”
“I love you,” I blurted, before he could say anything else, before he could have the chance to say it first.
He whimpered my name and I caught it against my lips, slanting our mouths together and kissing him so he could understand how sincere my confession truly was. Rowan let out a garbled cry and grabbed my wrists, leaning into me and parting his lips wider so I could kiss him deeper…so he could kiss me back harder. It didn’t take long after that for him to find his way to my lap, for him to struggle out of his pants, for me to find the bottle of lube I’d stashed in the cushions.
I stretched him while we kissed, lube pooling on my lap and probably also the upholstery, and then Rowan batted my fingers out of the way, taking my erection into his hand and sinking down low until he’d taken me all the way inside of him. Seated fully on my lap, Rowan shuddered and went still. Carefully, I petted my hands up his sides, waiting for him to adjust to the feel of me in this position, biting the inside of my cheek when he finally started to move.
“Just like that,” I whispered, holding on to his waist for dear life. My legs shook violently beneath him, but he rode me like he didn’t feel a thing. “I love the way you take my cock, Rowan. Like it was made for you.”
“Too big for that, I think,” he murmured, giving his hips a slow circle.
I pulled him down hard on my lap, impaling him deeper than his own thrusts had gotten him.
“Too big, you say?” I took control of the pace, moving him up and down my shaft until his legs shook more than mine. “This feels just right to me, Row.”
“Oh, fuck.”
He grabbed his cock and stroked himself with quick twists of his wrist, the sound lost to the slapping of his ass against my thighs. I lifted off the couch to get more leverage, pumping into the tight channel od his body until I managed to get my cock to land just right against his prostate.
Rowan shouted my name, his release flying out of him with so much force, it splattered against my chin. His pleasure turned into choked-off sobs, and I kept up the same pace I’d set, even after his balls were finally emptied.
“You made a mess of me,” I said, tilting my head back to give him access to my chin. “Clean me up so I can finish, Rowan. Let me taste y?—”
He cut me off, a hot swipe of his tongue across my jaw and my chin, straight into my mouth. Rowan kissed me in a way he never had before, scooping his cum past my lips with a moan that vibrated all the way down to my bones. It was the taste of him that finally did me in, his eagerness to let me defile him in all the ways we’d both become so accustomed to.
I slammed into him one more time, crying out against his devious tongue as I emptied into his body. Violent bursts of cum poured out of me, one after another until my body was nothing more than sensation and need. Nothing more than an extension of Rowan, somehow living outside of his body when all I wanted was to crawl inside of his chest and live there instead.
Still lodged inside of him and not ready to leave, I laid us down on the couch, arranging Rowan on my chest. Both of us struggled for breath, sweaty and spent, but when I searched out his mouth for another kiss, he came willingly. His lips were already wet from my spit and kiss-swollen, and I was happy to kiss him harder still.
“I love you,” I told him again, long after my cock had softened and slipped out of him. He rolled onto his side, tucking himself in the small space between the couch and my ribs, sighing happily at my words.
“I love you,” he finally said back to me, kissing my armpit.
I stretched my arm farther above my head and Rowan made a happy sound, snuggling closer in every way he could, taking a deep breath and kissing me there a second time and a third.
“You smell so good,” he murmured.
“I smell like sex,” I said. “I smell like you.”
“Well, I like it,” he said.
I hummed, letting my eyes fall closed as he made himself at home with me. “Just like?”
“I love it,” he corrected. “I love you.”
Rowan yawned, and I yawned. I gave us five more minutes, then pushed us both back into seated positions on the couch. He grumbled the whole way, shivering when he landed on my leg and my cum trickled out of his hole, dripping down the top of my thigh.
“You should get home to your son,” I suggested, kissing the top of his head.
“He’ll be okay awhile longer.”
I exhaled into his hair, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and holding him as tight as I could without worrying about breaking his bones.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“He’s a resilient kid,” Rowan said, lips stretched into a tight line, almost a frown but not quite there. “He can do a lot more on his own than I realized, I think. Or more than I wanted to admit.”
“You’re pretty resilient too,” I said, sliding my hands down to his hips and flexing my fingers around him. “You packed up your whole life and moved into a house that needs a professional renovation crew, not a single dad with a cable subscription and a dream.”
“I don’t even have cable,” he said.
“Even more impressive.” I smiled at Rowan’s softness and kissed the freckles on his cheek. His tears had long since dried, and I liked the way exhaustion looked on him.
“I’m just doing what I have to do.”
“You’re doing so much more than that. I see it, and Fisher does too. You’ve raised a good kid, Rowan. You should be proud.”
“I’m too tired to be proud.” He yawned and dropped his forehead against my shoulder. “I think the adrenaline from earlier is finally wearing off.”
“We can go back to your house or Fisher can come over here,” I said. “The choice is yours, but it’s one of the two.”
He grumbled, throwing himself off my lap with as much dramatics as he could muster, which was a shocking amount. I must have not fucked him well enough. I’d have to do better next time.
Which…
There would be a lot of next times, and I was so thankful for that.
Rowan loved me, and I wasn’t going to lose him anymore.
I took a deep breath, my lungs rattling as they filled to the brim, but when I exhaled, all I felt was peace and belonging…the comfort of home with Rowan in my arms.
“Let’s go back to mine,” he said.
I helped him to his feet, helped him get dressed, sat him back down on his shaking legs while I went to pack myself an overnight bag.
“Ready, Rowan?” I asked next, hand on the door, his car keys in my hand.
He smiled up at me and took my hand.
“Ready.”