CHAPTER NINETEEN
By the time Thad got back from walking Murphy and making sure he had food and water for the night, Graham was nearly asleep.
Thad shucked off his clothes and crawled into bed with a sigh.
Graham muttered sleepily, pressing back against Thad as he wrapped an arm around his waist.
Thad held him close, trying not to be annoyed Graham had fallen asleep. Ordinarily, it would be good. Sleep was important for post-game recovery and Thad never wanted to interfere with Graham’s playing.
But Thad had spent the entire time he was out in the courtyard—watching the dog sniff every fallen leaf before he peed—psyching himself up to have a conversation about why he’d left the other night.
The stupid thing was, there was no big reason why. Or, at least not that Thad had ever figured out.
Under the best of circumstances, Thad didn’t sleep particularly well.
He wasn’t used to sharing a bed with anyone either.
But Thad knew Graham would at least want to hear him say it and he was trying to do all the stuff he knew was important in a relationship, like talking about his feelings and shit. Even if it didn’t come that naturally to him.
Harlan would be so fucking proud.
So he settled in to try to sleep, resting his head against the pillow beside Graham’s as he resigned himself to having that conversation another time.
Graham’s skin was warm, a welcome feeling after the chill of the October night air.
A moment later, Thad felt the bed vibrate a little. He frowned before he realized Murphy had jumped up.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to sleep up here,” he whispered but Murphy apparently didn’t give a shit because he walked around Thad’s feet, made a little circle, then settled into the crook of Thad’s bent legs.
There wasn’t really much Thad could do about it, since he’d left the bedroom door half-open, allowing light from the lamp in the living room to spill in.
Thad reached down to pet the dog. He got a lick to his fingers in thanks.
He settled his head against the bed again, inhaling Graham’s scent and trying to breathe out slowly like his therapist had taught him. It was supposed to help his system figure out it was safe enough to go to sleep but some nights, it didn’t really work.
Sometimes Thad wondered what he’d be like now if he’d never gone to prison.
If he’d made it to the NHL and was merely some player like Graham. Some dude without all the fucking baggage.
Of course, he might have ended up with other baggage. He certainly wouldn’t have been as free to fuck men if he’d been playing pro hockey.
Not as openly, anyway.
Not until Boucher came out, which probably would have been toward the end of Thad’s career or even after it, depending on how his body had held up to injuries and when he’d retired.
So … maybe there had been somewhat of an upside to being an anonymous, ex-con nobody. The kind of guy no one gave a shit about. No one cared who the busboy or the barback went home with as long as he showed up more or less on time for his shifts and wasn’t too hungover.
No one had cared about his sexuality at the print shop or at the startup either.
Thad would have fucking hated having to second-guess every touch. Every look.
Honestly, it was amazing Graham didn’t have more hangups about being bi or whatever. Then again, he’d only come to this realization about his sexuality recently. And Graham had still been in college when La Bouche came out.
Ugh. Thad stifled a groan at how old that made him feel.
He started to roll onto his back before he realized he’d crush the dog if he did.
So he lay there, staring blankly at the wall of windows across the room as he tried to slow his breathing, calm his thoughts, push away the panicky feeling of being trapped.
Thad did everything he was supposed to do while Graham slept beside him, oblivious, the light filtering in through the half-open door not even bothering him.
Eventually, Thad couldn’t take it anymore and carefully shifted, thankfully only earning a sleepy grumble from Murphy and a soft exhale from Graham.
Thad pressed the heel of his hands into his eyes, trying to will away the twitchy, restless feeling in his limbs.
He fucking hated this. He was supposed to be sleeping.
He’d hated it when he slid out of bed last time and took the solitary ride home to his apartment. Hated leaving Graham and feeling like a shitty boyfriend.
But he had slept better there. Back home in his shitty studio apartment, on his sagging mattress with the bargain-priced sheets and lumpy pillow, he’d passed out and slept hard until his alarm went off.
But in Graham’s far more comfortable bed, with the high thread count sheets and perfectly fluffy but supportive pillows, Thad felt like he’d accidentally dosed himself with speed.
Ask him how he knew what that sensation was like.
You can fucking do this, Thad chanted silently in his head. You can fall asleep next to the guy you’re dating and wake up with him in the morning. You can have a totally normal relationship.
But the crawling sensation under his skin told a different story.
After an hour, Thad finally gave up.
He carefully wiggled out of bed, intent on not disturbing Graham or Murphy.
For a moment, Thad stood beside the bed, staring down at Graham’s sleeping face and ached, because all he wanted was to stay.
Yet the instincts in his body telling him to run were too strong and, with a sigh, he picked up his clothes and dressed. He ordered a ride, left a note for Graham, then went downstairs to wait for the car.
The concierge in the lobby gave him the same polite but searching look he’d given him the last time but merely nodded as Thad passed him.
Out on the street, Thad lit up a cigarette.
He guiltily smoked it, hating the way the nicotine soothed the restless feeling inside him. For a moment, he briefly considered going back upstairs and seeing if the cigarette was enough to calm him.
But his phone buzzed, and a car rounded the corner a moment later. At this point, he might as well fucking go home.
He needed fresh clothes for work tomorrow anyway. After all, he had a lunch meeting with the boss tomorrow.
Or, his brother.
He wasn’t entirely sure which guy would be sitting across the table from him as they ate.
“Wow this is good,” Thad said the following afternoon, a little surprised Gavin had sprung for sushi from the fancy place he liked so much.
“Yeah, it’s the best,” Gavin agreed, smiling in a way that made Thad vaguely uncomfortable with how dirty it looked. Like he was remembering something particularly hot.
Thad really didn’t want to know what his brother and Dakota got up to, with or without sushi, so he shuddered and forced that thought out of his brain.
Thad honestly had been kidding when he teased Dakota about having a threesome with him and Gavin. He’d been trying to shock him, but it hadn’t really done anything but gross Thad out when he imagined it.
“So why are you buttering me up?” Thad asked now.
Gavin stammered out some nonsense, but Thad raised an eyebrow and stared at him until his shoulders slumped.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” he finally said.
“No shit. What about?”
“Umm, have you thought more about talking to Mom and Dad about me?”
Thad set down his container of sushi and the chopsticks, suddenly feeling a little queasy.
“Honestly, no.”
Gavin set down his food too. “Why not?”
“Because …” Thad hesitated, not sure how to explain it.
Because their relationship with their parents was fucking complicated as hell.
They’d always had high expectations for their boys. And were weirdly obsessed with what their friends and acquaintances thought of them.
“I think maybe it’s time,” Gavin said in that cautious, measured tone of his that drove Thad absolutely up the wall, even though he knew Gavin was trying to choose his words carefully so as not to piss him off.
“It’s probably past time,” Thad admitted. “But I … it’s hard for me.”
Gavin frowned. “Well, it’s hard for me to know they think I forced you to confess to save me.”
“They don’t—” Thad protested, then stopped because … did they? “Do they?” he asked.
Gavin shrugged. “That’s certainly what they implied the last time we spoke.”
“Fuck.” Thad rubbed his jaw. “I thought they understood I jumped in to protect you. Not that you somehow made me do it.”
With a sigh, Gavin sat back in his chair. “I think at the time, they were so fed up with my bullshit they were willing to believe anything about me.”
Although there was a trace of bitterness in Gavin’s voice, he didn’t sound angry.
“You didn’t make it easy on them back then,” Thad pointed out. He hadn’t made it easy on any of them, to be honest.
Gavin let out a short bark of a laugh. “No, I didn’t.”
“You were out of control there for a while,” Thad said, wondering how that reminder would go over. But to his surprise, Gavin nodded.
“Yeah, I was.”
“I never really got why,” Thad admitted.
“I don’t know.” Gavin winced. “I think the pressure from hockey was getting to me. The expectations for our draft. And Mom was so … she was kinda fucked-up about the way she treated us.”
“Yeah, I know.” Thad winced at the thought. Because yeah, his mom had been … weird about the whole twin thing. Always obsessed with them dressing alike and doing everything together.
Hell, she’d even named her sons after her father, Gavin, and his twin brother, Thaddeus.
“Dakota says it’s not healthy the way she kept trying to mold us into some idea of … like a redo for the original Gavin and Thaddeus.”
“He’s not wrong,” Thad admitted. Because seriously, it was weird. The first Thaddeus had died tragically in the Korean War, and everyone had always said the first Gavin hadn’t been the same since.
Thad didn’t have a ton of memories of their grandfather but what he did remember was that he’d been a bitter, miserable old man.
“It can’t have been easy for Mom growing up with someone like that,” he said.