Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
SLONE
Trey’s face burned bright red under me.
“I’ll just be going,” Ewen said, snickering.
I lifted so I could see Ewen, pinning him with a glare. “You’ll stay fucking put.”
Leaning over, I kissed Trey’s forehead, remembering how much he fretted about Ewen not accepting Trey’s and my dynamic, but I also remembered him saying something about applying for the job if Ewen and I were together and needed a third.
I whispered, “There will be no sharing you. Remember? Don’t even hint at it unless you want me to beat your ass.
I have a closet full of belts and a dungeon full of canes, crops, and whips. ”
He nodded with the tiniest pout. The fucking little shit. “A dungeon, you say?”
“Don’t even go there?” I slipped from his ass. “Get yourself upstairs and clean up. And remember the new rule—”
“When here, Trey must wear Slone’s clothes because he’s a possessive fucker,” the boy said with a smirk.
He knew what it did to me when he dressed in my things. If he only knew how much I thought about locking him down permanently. Too soon. I knew it. Knowing it didn’t make me quit thinking about it.
“Brat,” I said affectionately, kissing him quickly before sitting back on my heels.
He scrambled to his feet, walking unabashedly naked toward the open tread staircase. At the bottom, he winked at me, then waved at Ewen and said, “Appreciate you waiting to barge in until I came. Twice.”
“Get your sexy ass upstairs.”
Trey giggled and walked slowly enough that my great-aunt Freya, who had just turned ninety years old, could’ve beaten him up the stairs.
Once he was out of sight, I turned my attention to my snickering and giggling, meddling, nosy ass best fucking friend who I wanted to fucking hang off the roof by his fucking toes.
“I fucking hate you,” I said, walking through the kitchen to the bathroom to wash my hands.
“So, looks like little Slone’s perked back up along with big Slone,” Ewen said when I returned.
I ignored him to go back to the sofa for my joggers. I picked them up, turning to Ewen as I shook them out from where Trey had folded them, just the way I liked. If I preened a little, Ewen’s ass deserved it, the interrupting asshole.
“I hate you,” Ewen said as I pulled the pants on and adjusted the legs of them so they didn’t pull against my calves.
“You’ll get over it. Maybe you should quit dipping your wick in all the little honeypots throwing themselves at you and find a boy of your own.”
“Don’t you start, too. Gunny gives me enough shit about finding someone. At least you’re nice enough not to push me toward a particular someone.”
I knew exactly who the particular someone was that our former gunnery sergeant turned EDGE Chief Security Officer pushed Ewen toward.
The same guy I thought he should quit avoiding.
Gunny showed up in town a year ago for a job with MPD’s SWAT Unit, looking for the camaraderie and family he’d lost when the Marines forced him to retire.
He promptly found a boy of his own. Since then, he’d been a pain in everyone’s ass.
We should’ve been used to it, given he’d been a pain in our asses when we served under the man, too.
“How is Gunny? I’ve not seen him in the last few weeks.”
“Dude,” Ewen said, glancing at the top of the stairs, “I’m surprised this place doesn’t smell like a bathhouse.
The two of you have been holed up for weeks.
” He paused, then added, “I’m happy my friend is feeling more like himself, though.
You are feeling more like yourself, right? I can quit worrying about you so much?”
I shrugged. I refused to apologize for locking myself away with Trey.
And I didn’t know if this shift out of the rut would hold.
Because I didn’t know how long I had with the boy.
Every day felt both like a gift and a shoe waiting to drop.
The moment the Wardens pulled their repressed heads out of their collective asses, I’d lose him.
So, sue me for taking advantage of what time I had with him.
“So, what did you feel was so important you barged in without a heads up?”
“Will, Ollie, and I are throwing a bash next weekend. We wanted to…”
“Next weekend?”
Ewen rolled his eyes. “Whatever disinfectant and air fresheners you’re using in here need to be added to the cleaning supplies list for the orgy room downstairs if you’re this fucking clueless.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Memorial Day, you clueless, fucking hermit. We’re going to throw a party, but we don’t want to interfere with anyone’s family plans, so we’re going to have it the weekend before.”
Fuck. Maybe he was right. The last few weeks—however many it had been—had gotten away from me. How the hell was it almost Memorial Day weekend?
“Gotcha. Yeah, Mama has demanded my appearance. She says she let me get away with not attending family functions for years because of the Marines, but I live too close not to attend now.”
“Gotta love a Mama Slone guilt trip.”
“Shut up.”
“Dude, I’d love it if my mom were still laying on the guilt.”
“I know. I’m sorry, that was insensitive,” I said with a grimace.
Ewen’s parents were both dealing with some horrifyingly tragic health issues.
He and his brothers had been caring for them with my help since their diagnoses, but they’d recently had to place them in a care facility because they needed specialized care.
“Don’t apologize. I know you love them as a second set of parents. My comment wasn’t meant to make you feel bad. It just smarts still sometimes, you know.”
I nodded. I couldn’t imagine Mama or Pops not being their larger-than-life crazy selves. And I really couldn’t imagine putting them in a nursing home. The thought of losing one of them gutted me. To have them both go downhill so fast and at the same damn time…fucking shit nightmares were made of.
“What about your boy? Will he be heading to Green Bay with you or back to New York?”
Before I could respond, footsteps sounded on the stairs, and I turned, expecting to see the happy, bratty, sexy boy that had gone up the stairs a few minutes ago, coming back down.
But instead of the usual bounding tread that sounded like a stampede in the Sahara coming down the stairs, the steps were sluggish with a dragging, scratchy sound.
The change became even clearer when Trey stepped off the bottom step.
His face shouldn’t still be so red, nor should his eyes be that red. There also shouldn’t be tears on his cheeks still. And those were not my clothes.
“Trey?” I asked, stepping toward him.
He gasped, holding his hands up as if to ward me off. His eyes locked on the center of my chest as he swallowed and sniffled before stuttering, “I…I…I’ve gotta go. I’ll…umm…” He stopped talking. His eyes closed. Devastation was the only emotion I could come up with to describe the look on his face.
“Slone,” Ewen said, but my gaze didn’t move from Trey’s face. He continued, “I’ll talk to you about the cookout later.”
A moment later, the sliding metal door grated along its track as it opened and closed. Ewen’s key turned in the lock. But none of that mattered.
“Baby, what’s going on? What happened to my happy little brat?” I asked, hoping the little laugh I added at the end would lift his spirits enough for him to look at me.
It didn’t.
His face screwed up even more, if that was possible. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I have to go back to New York.”
Shit. What had his fuckstick parents done now? The way they talked to Trey, both in the snippets of conversations I’d overheard and the messages I’d caught glimpses of since he’d shown up at my door, could only be characterized as emotional and psychological abuse.
Taking a tentative step toward him, I sighed when he looked up at me and flew into my arms. He slammed into me hard enough that he knocked me back a couple of steps.
Sometimes, I forget my boy spent his life playing and preparing to play a very physical sport, where he beat the shit out of people and took hit after hit, all the while racing after a rubber puck with blades on his feet.
I maneuvered us into our spot on the sofa, cuddling him close. “I figured you’d have to go home over the summer. But this seems different. Has something happened? What I’m not understanding is what has you so upset.”
“I didn’t plan to go home this summer. I arranged to stay in the team’s housing for the summer. I even hired a trainer to work with me here in Manchester.”
“I didn’t realize that. I like that idea. Not sure I want my boy over twelve hours away.”
“I didn’t want to be twelve hours away.”
I kissed his forehead, squeezing him to me, dreading the question I knew needed to be asked. “So, what’s changed?”
“If I don’t go back, my parents refuse to pay my tuition, and Dad said he would report my truck as stolen.”
My eyes closed. But for my military training, I would be losing my fucking shit right now and packing for a road trip to New York.
“Aren’t you on scholarship with The U?”
He shook his head. “No. They offered it, but I turned it down, so the team could offer it to the guys who actually needed it.”
“You’re such a good kid, Trey. Such a good man.”
“Well, that’s shot me in the ass, because if I were on scholarship I would mail the keys to the truck back to my parents and tell them to fucking jump off a cliff into shark-infested waters.”
Laughter bubbled in my chest. I kissed his head again.
“You laugh, but I’m not fucking joking. I’m over this shit. I’m over being talked to like I’m an idiot. My dad literally called me retarded when I told him my plan to stay here this summer. That shit’s not cool.”
“No, it fucking isn’t. And anyone who says it in my presence gets fucking schooled. My youngest aunt who isn’t much older than me, has Down’s, and the way the world talks about her and those like her makes me want to burn the place to the motherfucking ground. She’s no less than anyone else.”
He scooted up my body, fully draped over my chest. His chin rested on his stacked fists. “You are the best human being I’ve ever met in the entirety of my life.”
Wrapping my arms around him, I murmured against his lips. “You make me better, baby boy. You make me so much better.”
We shared soft, languid kiss after soft, languid kiss.
Unlike all the other times we kissed, the surge of lust never came.
The heat between us stayed banked while we enjoyed each other’s presence and mouths.
I hated that his family treated him so poorly.
I hated that he needed to make the trip home instead of spending the summer here with me, where I could take care of him and continue showing him how valued he could be, how good and smart and… Fuck.
Yeah. Not going to follow that thought. Too soon, and this will never last. The boy may be worried about getting signed, but I knew he would, and when he did, I would lose him. So no. The word…emotion that rounded out that thought…would not be said. Not even in my damn head.
We parted, and I gazed at him, trying to burn his face and the color of his eyes onto my soul so when he left, the way he made me feel stayed with me.
Because somehow this twenty-one-year-old hockey player, the NHL’s Prince of Hockey, had made me feel whole again.
I felt like I had as a Marine—ten feet tall and bulletproof with the fucking world at my feet—before life became a rut of the same old same old, day after day and minute after minute until the weight of existing crushed me.
“What?” he asked, a soft smile turning up that gorgeous mouth that I couldn’t get enough of.
“What do you mean, what?”
“You’re staring at me.”
“Just looking at the most beautiful man I’ve ever met.”
“I doubt that, old man. I mean you’re approaching twelve hundred or something like that.”
My eyes rounded. “You little shit!” I growled playfully, digging my fingers into his sides. He writhed and squealed as I tickled the fucking brat. I would show him fucking old. The fucking infant.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he yelled, twisting even more, trying to slither out of my grasp. “Stop! Stop! Shit! Red!”
My hands fell away. Trey hurtled the back of the couch and raced to the bathroom near the front door, and I laughed at him as he yelled, “I nearly pissed myself, you asshole!”
“That’s what you get for calling me old,” I called back.
I stood up, stretching and popping my back and shoulders, ignoring how every crack seemed to say ‘old man’ in Trey’s giggly tone when he teased me. Little shit made me feel like a kid again and ancient all at the same time.
Reaching down, I picked up one of the couch cushions we had half wallowed into the floor.
Trey’s phone dropped to the floor. It must have fallen out of his pocket while we wrestled.
The screen lit up when I picked it up. I couldn’t have missed what the texts said if I tried.
Trey had them set to show on the lock screen, and Donnie Malachek either didn’t know you could use the enter button in a text or always sent texts a sentence at a time.
Dad
I’m over dealing with you and your stupid shit.
Get your ass home.
You have two fucking days, or I’m cutting you off.
And your trust fund? You won’t have access to that either.
It’s under my control.
Until you’re twenty-five.
And you only get it if you sign with a team.
See how well you fare without the Malachek bank account funding your stupid ass.
Legacy only takes you so fucking far.
And clearly it’s doing you no good since you’re still riding a fucking bench in the NCAA.
You are such a fucking disappointment.
A fucking failure.
“My dad texted again?”
Turning, I gathered him in my arms, crushing him against my chest while trying not to crush the phone I still held in my now clenched fist.
“Slone?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t talk right now.
If I did, I’d fucking lose my shit, and he didn’t need or deserve that.
He had to deal with a raging, out-of-control bastard already.
Adding my meltdown to it would only cause him more pain.
And I would burn this world to the ground to keep him from experiencing another moment of his dad’s unhinged bullshit.