Chapter 19
Nineteen
Hawk thought he and Caleb were doing pretty good together.
Better than he’d done when he’d first come home from the hospital, when he’d injured his knee.
He’d had his family and team, of course, but for the most part they hadn’t been able to come help too much, and he’d had to have home health care come in and help him out for things like bathing to begin with.
That had been humiliating, and he was glad he could save Caleb that kind of trouble.
He’d moved some stuff around in the condo so Caleb could use his knee scooter or his walker, either one.
The knee scooter got a little hard sometimes, but the walker had a nice hard metal frame, and he could just sort of hop along using one foot.
It was easier than the crutches too. Hawk knew all about that because he hadn’t been able to use a knee scooter with his injury.
Caleb hadn’t been up for exploring too much the first two days. He’d slept a lot and had a shower and slept and eaten and slept. Now he was sitting on the edge of the bed, grinning at Hawk. “I want the tour,” he said.
“Sure babe, no problem. Obviously we’re not going to be able to go upstairs and see the other bedrooms and stuff, but I’ll show you around down here.
” His condo was an old industrial space over an art gallery, and it was one big open room as far as the kitchen, living room, and dining room were concerned, then there was a powder room right inside the front door where guests could go; and then a walled-off area where his bedroom and the en suite bath sat.
Upstairs there were two more bedrooms that shared a bathroom and a kind of mezzanine area off to one side where he had put his workout gear.
“I know. Bring on the knee scooter. I’m ready.” Caleb had managed to get dressed in a pair of loose basketball shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, along with a grippy sock on one side and his boot on the other. Hawk brought in the knee scooter and they started off.
It took Caleb a hot minute to get the scooter figured out but he did it by the time they left the bedroom.
He laughed when they rolled into the main living area, where Hawk had pushed the coffee table out of the way and left just the sectional and the big recliner open so they could go flop on the couch if they wanted to.
He’d invested in a couple of those little sliding tables he could move up as soon as Caleb sat down so they could eat at them.
“Wow, I don’t think I ever really even looked around when we first came in the other day.
This is awesome, man.” Caleb stood in the middle of the room on his knee scooter, looking around at the exposed brick, the industrial piping, and the Edison light bulbs hanging from the ceiling over the dining room area.
Hawk was pretty proud of it. He liked the vibe a lot. It wasn’t like the kind of place he wanted to live the rest of his life, but for right now it worked.
“When you get where you’re getting around better, we’ll go to my house in Idaho Springs.”
Caleb blinked at him, tilting his head. “Why on earth do you have a house in Idaho Springs?”
Hawk chuckled. Idaho Springs wasn’t quite halfway between Denver and Vail, probably just off I-70.
It was kind of a weird little town that was growing but it still wasn’t huge.
It had a bunch of hot springs, but it was more of a winter-sports-dude place than a resort.
“Beau Jos’s, of course,” he said, referencing a pizza place that was kind of famous for its Colorado pie.
Caleb hooted. “Yeah, I’ve heard that crazy big crust they have with honey on it is so good.”
Hawk shook his head. “I was always there for the salad wagon.”
“You are so weird with your super healthy diet.”
“I can’t help it. You can take the boy out of hockey, but you can’t take the hockey out of the boy.” Hawk waved. “That’s the kitchen. That’s the dining area. This is the living room. That’s the loft.” He indicated everything with sweeps of his arm. “Any questions?”
“Hold up. I’m still on Idaho Springs. I mean, Beau Jo’s is fabulous from what I hear, but you can get that at Aurora so why Idaho Springs?”
Hawk felt his cheeks heat up a little bit.
“Okay I like real estate, and I was looking at some point for a house in one of the smaller towns, not here in Denver. I checked all sorts of places: Glenwood, Carbondale, even Aspen, Vail. All that kind of stuff, but Idaho Springs was quirky and small, and I found this house.”
He’d fallen in love with this weird, crooked house that sort of faded back into side of the mountain and had a huge misshapen barn and really bad interior fixtures, and it had been incredibly cheap for Colorado. Like ridiculously cheap, so he’d snapped it up.
“I’m still fixing it up but it’s this bizarre clapboard, crooked house with a huge barn, and I love it.”
Caleb beamed at him. “That is so cool. I would love to see that. Fuck, my condo in Vail is just in one of those awful high-rise things. Did I tell you about this?”
“I think you mentioned it once upon a time.”
“It’s horrible. It’s completely faceless and nameless and bland, but it was in my price range, and it was what I needed at the time because, really, I wasn’t spending any time at home.” Caleb rolled his ass over to the couch and then sat, putting his foot out against the floor.
Hawk slid an ottoman to him, and Caleb lifted his foot to prop it up on top. It was very soft and pillowy, and Caleb moaned for him with pleasure.
“Oh, that’s almost better than sex.”
Snorting, he went to the fridge to grab them both a bottle of Gatorade and a bottle of water to share.
He thought Caleb needed the electrolytes.
“Yeah, and this place is great, but it is sort of an industrial loft, right? I wanted something with character, that I could work on and get my hands dirty.”
“I’m all over it. I want to see.”
“Let’s get you through your first check-up appointment, and then I’ll have to work a couple weeks, but after that I’ll have some more time off because the team will be taking a pretty hefty road trip, and I won’t be going along.”
“It’s a deal.” Caleb stared up at the ceiling, probably looking at the lights. He didn’t know. “Is it weird that I’m hungry?”
“Baby, all you’ve done for the last two days is sleep and eat soup. Of course you’re hungry.”
“Yeah. Can we get food delivery?”
“Sure.” Hawk shrugged, grabbing his phone where he’d left it on the counter. “We can literally get anything from Thai to Mediterranean to steak.”
“Hmmm.”
Hawk opened the food delivery service on his phone in order to show it to Caleb. “Here, you pick.”
Caleb immediately started scrolling faster than he ever could. “Is there anything you hate?”
“Nah. I’m more fond of Southern Indian stuff like dosas than I am the heavier breads, and Russian food isn’t my jam.”
When Caleb blinked at him over the phone for a moment, Hawk shrugged. “I had a roommate when I was a rookie who was Russian. I remember some wild shit.”
“Huh.” Caleb grinned and shook his head, going back to the phone. “You’re way more adventurous than me. I was thinking something like pizza or subs. Anything super yummy that doesn’t taste like hospital food.”
“Ah.” He held out his hand for the phone. “If you want that I have a local pizza place that delivers. We can get both pizza and subs from them.”
“Cool-cool.” Caleb slumped back against the couch.
“Just tell me what you like on your pizza or what kind of sub you like and I’ll make an order.”
They decided on splitting some bread sticks. Caleb got an Italian sub with all the trimmings while Hawk ordered a medium pepperoni and mushroom.
Once his phone was tucked away, Caleb looked around curiously, really studying his condo. “This is way… homier than my place. Warmer.”
“A lot of that has to do with the designer who did it before I moved in, you know?” Hawk chuckled, shaking his head, because honestly he wasn’t into matching furniture or picking out curtains. This loft just had great bones to it.
“Yeah, but I can tell you live here; you’re not on the road near as much as I am now. Like you were, I know, when you were playing, but—”
“Sure, totally, and I travel to some games, but most of the time I just do home games. The podcasting stuff is working out really well for me.” He was still sucky at certain social situations, and he sometimes faltered when it came to broadcasting, having to be on the spot and in the moment.
The podcast stuff, where they recorded it, and where he could do his job mostly remotely from home, was super cool.
Hawk didn’t mind sitting and talking about shit for hours when there was nobody watching him.
“That’s really awesome. Caleb gave a wry sort of laugh that also sounded a tiny bit hysterical. “I guess I’m going to have to figure out what I’m going to do now. Maybe I can get a job with the X Games or something.”
Caleb held out a hand and Hawk took it. “Do you not have savings or…”
That made Caleb laugh again, but this time the sound was stronger.
“Oh, I do. I mean I won a lot of shit right? I have a lot of prize money tucked away that I’ve never touched and this little surgery won’t even put a dent in that.
I could go for a long time without working, but I’m used to being busy. ”
Hawk got that. The enforced inactivity that had happened to him while he was healing up his knee and having several surgeries… It had made him want to lose his mind.
“You wanna watch a movie or something?” Hawk asked. “While we wait for the food?”
“As long as it’s not like a Food Network thing or one of those shows they played on marathon while I was in the hospital, because God!”
“Yeah, no, I won’t make you watch anything that you hate. We could play video games too if you’d rather.” There was this feeling unfurling in Hawk’s chest and he was trying to examine what it was without giving himself away, but it felt good.
It felt right to have Caleb here in his house and to be spending these moments with him. It was just time… as if they had all of it in the world to spend together.
Okay so maybe it was weird to feel that way when Caleb was convalescing, but shit, the man was convalescing at his house so if he was going to feel in some kind of way, maybe it should be this way.
He handed Caleb the remote, then messed around with pillows and blankets and all sorts of stuff to make them more comfy while they sat and waited there for the food to come.
He looped an arm around Caleb’s shoulders and damned if the man didn’t arch up and kiss his chin. Simply a warm press of lips and a tiny hint of teeth that made him tingle.
Caleb, leaning against him, hand on his side, fingers idly drawing circles, was threatening to make him hard, in fact. But Caleb wasn’t up for any kind of acrobatics, so he grabbed that hand and held it tight.
A soft puff of air escaped Caleb, sounding a little bit like a laugh, and Hawk squeezed his fingers gently. “Not tonight, baby.”
“No? You don’t think so?” Caleb’s voice rang with laughter, his smile wide and happy.
“Nope. I don’t think your body can handle an orgasm right now, and don’t argue with me.”
“Damn you’re harsh.” Caleb didn’t necessarily sound put out though. Hawk thought he was probably pretty tired.
They settled on reruns of The Big Bang Theory while they waited for food. They chose that Skull Island King Kong movie for after they got the delivery.
They’d both seen it, but it didn’t matter. There was Tom Hiddleston and a giant gorilla. There was nothing wrong with that at all.
Hawk had to admit he could see doing this a lot with Caleb, and he hoped he wasn’t putting the cart before the horse. This was about getting Caleb back up to speed physically, not about having a deep, long-lasting thing.
But that didn’t mean a guy couldn’t feel hope deep in his chest.