12. Gideon #2
He caught me staring, and his smile changed, smaller, just for me.
I smiled back, and that was when I noticed the man two tables over.
Mid-fifties, expensive suit, too much whiskey already in his glass.
He wasn’t looking at the roulette wheel.
He was looking at Ryan, and his mouth had gone thin and tight.
I’d seen that look before, on other faces, in other rooms, and I knew exactly what it meant before he ever opened his mouth.
He set his glass down and started walking my way.
“I need a word,” he said and nudged my elbow.
I dragged my attention off Ryan and back to the table. “Sorry. Bets are closed.”
“Not betting.”
“Okay.”
He leaned closer, close enough that I got the whiskey off his breath. “My buddies are messing with me, right? Tell me that’s not your date?”
I glanced over at Ryan, laughing with a group by the silent auction. “He’s my date.”
I waited while he took a drink. “Huh. I don’t get all this now.”
There it was. “All what?”
He gestured vaguely toward Ryan without looking at him again. “You know.”
“No. Explain it.”
His expression flickered. People liked vague comments, liked saying all this and you know what I mean, because then they could pretend they hadn’t said anything at all. He gave a short laugh. “Come on. Hockey used to be hockey.”
“It still is.”
“Sure, but now everything has to be about this queer stuff. Pride nights. Rainbows. Men dressing like women. Kids seeing it.”
My hand tightened around the edge of the table.
I didn’t need to punch him, raise my voice, or give anyone a video to post online by morning.
I just leaned in. “His name is Ryan, and he’s my date.
” Maybe I sounded too menacing, but then I was channeling the big bad hockey alpha shit to throw right back at him.
He blinked and held up his free hand, pasting a good ol’ boy smile on his florid features. “I didn’t mean anything by it, son.”
I should leave it there, but fuck this noise. “You did.”
His face reddened even further. “Now wait a minute. I’ve been supporting this team since before you were born and—”
“Then you should know we’re here tonight raising money for kids and nothing else is important.”
“That’s not my point.”
“Then maybe your point isn’t needed.”
His mouth tightened. “You think the organization is happy about this he/she stuff?”
I glanced around the room. Walker had one arm around Finn while they argued over blackjack.
An assistant coach was dancing badly with his wife.
Chip was talking to Dane, who’d become a human wall to stop Chip having to talk to people unless he wanted to.
Ryan was still laughing at the auction table, completely unaware. “Seems fine to me.”
“It’s humiliating to see, and upsetting.”
That one hurt, not because I believed it, but because Ryan had spent years believing comments like this. Hiding. Scrubbing glitter from his eyes. Changing his clothes before work. Believing that being himself would embarrass everyone around him.
“If it offends you, then you should leave.”
His eyebrows shot up. “What the hell?”
“You don’t have to stay.”
“I’m a donor.”
“Then thank you for your donation.”
His jaw worked. “I’ll be speaking to someone about this.”
“Okay.”
“About both of you.”
It didn’t scare me. Maybe tomorrow it would.
Tonight it didn’t. “Make sure you spell Taftwell right,” I said, then turned back to the table before he could answer.
“Next bets, please.” He stood there a few seconds longer before he walked off.
My heart was hammering, and I kept spinning the wheel anyway.
“Black seventeen.” Someone cheered. I paid out chips, and the room kept moving around me as though nothing had happened.
Nobody died. Hockey didn’t collapse. The sport didn’t fall apart because Ryan wore a dress.
Ten minutes later, Ryan appeared beside me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just some guy had too much to drink and too many opinions.” I nudged his shoulder with mine. “He didn’t like that I told him to leave.”
Ryan’s eyes widened. “You told a donor to leave?”
“He was being an idiot about a lot of things. Pride nights. Rainbows. The usual list.”
Ryan went still, and I could see him doing the math anyway, filling in the gap I’d left out on purpose. “He said something about me, didn’t he?”
“It was him not liking anything he doesn’t already understand.” I took his hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong tonight. Not one thing.”
His fingers curled around mine. “What did you say to him?”
“That his point wasn’t important tonight, and that if he didn’t like it, he could go home.”
Something in Ryan’s face eased, just slightly. “Gideon Taftwell.” Damn, he full-named me.
“He might complain to the team about me. That’s on him, not you.”
Ryan looked at me for a long moment then leaned his head against my shoulder, right there at the roulette table, in front of the entire fundraising committee. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I know.” He squeezed my hand. “Thank you anyway.”
The rest of the night was the best date I ever had.
Admittedly, the competition wasn’t strong, but still.
We ate tiny food off tiny plates. Ryan explained that canapés were supposed to be tiny while I argued food should be large enough to identify without a microscope.
He stole two shrimp from my plate. I stole one of his miniature cheesecakes.
We worked the roulette table together for half an hour.
Ryan turned out to be considerably better at talking people into putting more chips down than I was.
We bid on a weekend cabin stay in the silent auction and lost. Ryan was disappointed.
I snapped a photo of the place for later because if Ryan wanted to go to a cabin, you bet I was booking a cabin.
A slow song came on toward the end of the night, and he held out his hand.
Fuck no. “I can’t dance.”
“You can skate.”
“Not remotely the same.”
“Gids.”
“No.”
“Please?” He pouted and was so damn cute I wanted to pick him up and put him in my pocket. Fuck. So, I danced—badly—one hand on Ryan’s waist, the other holding his, trying not to step on his feet because those shoes looked expensive and painful, and I had no desire to send my date to the ER.
Ryan moved closer. “You’re very tense.”
“I’m trying not to kill you.”
“With dancing?”
“With my feet.”
“You skate professionally.”
“Exactly. Blades. I know what I’m doing with blades.”
He laughed and rested his head against my chest, and everything inside me went quiet.
Not empty. Quiet. There was a difference.
For years I’d thought peace meant nothing hurting.
Maybe it didn’t. Maybe peace could be this instead.
Ethan still gone. My family still broken.
The black dog still somewhere nearby. And Ryan in my arms. I could be sad and happy, broken and healing, could miss my brother and want Ryan at the same time.
The thought scared the shit out of me. I held him tighter anyway.
By the time we were leaving, Ryan was carrying his shoes. I picked him up bridal style, and he squeaked. “Gideon! Put me down!”
He was close enough again that I could catch the scent of him under the smoke and champagne of the room, warm skin and that same clean, faintly sweet smell that had been driving me quietly out of my mind all night. “You can’t walk in bare feet. It’s cold.”
“I can walk.”