Rafe
Chapter twenty-one
Max had posted a video.
I sat up in bed. I pressed play before I’d thought about whether I was ready. That didn’t matter. If Max was talking again, I wanted to hear him.
He sat on a stool in Niko’s workshop.
“Hi. It’s me,” Max said. “I want to tell you what actually happened, and I want to do it in one take, so this is going to be a little rough. You can all live with that.”
He described everything that happened in order.
“Nobody was suckered,” he said. “I’ve read every word written about me this month, and I need you to hear this from the alleged victim.”
He looked so honest and believable, and he was doing it for me. I started composing a text to him in my head before he finished talking.
There was a cut, and then Niko appeared. He wore his apron and had his hands on his knees.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Niko had never let cameras into his shop. Max said he asked over and over.
Niko opened it to the world for me.
“My name is Niko Gregory,” he said. “I’m Max’s brother. I build furniture, and I’m going to be brief, because everything my brother just told you is true, and I only have one thing to add to it.”
He looked directly into the lens.
“The papers have spent weeks telling the wrong story. They keep asking whether the relationship between Max and Rafe was real, and they’ve got the wrong relationship.
So I’ll tell you once, plainly, and then I’m done.
” His hands remained still. “The Gregory brother in love with Rafe Mikkelsen was never the one in the photos.”
I almost dropped the phone.
He continued on and then closed with, “That’s the whole announcement.”
The video ended on a frame of Niko, silent with his hands on his knees.
I was standing in the living room. I didn’t remember getting up, and I didn’t remember walking out of the bedroom, but I was standing on the rug in the dark with the phone in my hand.
Niko’s console was a long, low shape against the wall, and above it the weaving held its colors even in near darkness.
I started the video again.
Max’s half played the same, but I heard it differently because I knew where it was going. He wasn’t trying to clear his name. He was preparing the path for Niko.
When I watched him the second time, I caught something I’d missed the first time around:
“Nobody’s asked him about me. He doesn’t know I’m saying this, and I’m not saying it to ask him for anything.”
I played that part a third time.
Ever since the truth of the arrangement came out, people had been asking me for things: confessions and apologies. Niko didn’t ask for anything.
The phone buzzed in my hand and reminded me that the team chat was running.
Varga: THE CARPENTER. That’s a plot twist.
Trier: you didn’t see it coming? I knew in January. and Peaches knew before either of us.
Heath: we like Niko. this is now official team policy.
Kieran: and nobody bother Rafe tonight. let’s pretend he’s sleeping and this doesn’t wake him up
Varga: one more thing and then I sleep. the brother is RIGHT. Rafe, if you’re reading this, call me tomorrow. not tonight. tonight you have somewhere to be
I had another message outside of the team.
Mom: Marlene sent us Max’s video. Dad watched it twice and said the man means it. That’s all he said, and you know your father. We love you. Go to sleep or go to him.
It was nearly 1 a.m.
I started typing a text to Niko, but I realized that every minute that took would mean a minute later getting to his shop. I grabbed my keys and headed for the truck.
The light was on in Niko’s shop, with the blinds pulled. I wondered if Max was still there.
I parked across the street and turned the engine off. My pulse raced.
I was halfway across the street when a shadow moved behind the blinds. By the time I reached the door, I heard the bolt slide.
The door opened before I touched it.
Niko stood in the doorway, wearing a T-shirt without an apron. The bench light was on, and the rest of the shop was dark.
Neither of us said a word.
He stepped back to let me in, and I came in out of the cold. He shut the door behind me and threw the bolt.
“Niko, I should have—“
I didn’t get any further. He pressed a finger to my lips. Then he turned and walked back toward the bench, and I followed.
There was a chair upside down on the bench. It was an old kitchen chair, and beside it, a coffee can holding screws.
“Somebody loved this chair,” Niko said. “She brought it in to have it repaired properly because she couldn’t part with it.”
He reached out and took my hand. His fingers curled around mine and held on. He led me across the shop to the stairs. I followed him.
The bedroom was bathed in the same amber glow from the streetlights as the first time. I stood in the doorway, not sure what to do next.
“You saw the video,” he said. “Come join me.”
“Twice,” I said. “The middle part three times.”
I approached him, and he threw his arms around me. We kissed.
It was nothing like the earlier shop kisses. This one started slow, Niko’s mouth opening under mine. He reached around to the back of my neck.
When we finally broke the kiss, neither of us stepped back. “Okay,” he said quietly.
He reached out for my buttons, unfastening them one at a time. I stood still and watched his hands. When he got to the last button, he pushed my shirt off my shoulders, and his thumbs dragged slowly along my collarbones.
I reached out to tug his T-shirt off over his head, and I looked at his hands. I’d watched him at work, striking lines, easing drawers home, and repositioning my grip on a block plane. I’d memorized their movement.
Now I picked one up and turned it over in both of mine. It was heavier than it looked; the palm ridged with calluses at the base of every finger. The knuckles were scarred pale from a hundred minor collisions with wood.
A vein ran across his forearm, rising every time he reached for or tugged on something. When I kissed the middle of his palm, his arm went slack, and he exhaled slowly.
We undressed each other the rest of the way, standing up. When he eased my jeans down past my hips, a fresh bruise made me wince.
“When did you get this?”
“Yesterday. Against the boards. It’s nothing.”
He looked at the blackish-green color. Then he put his hand over it, barely touching it.
We lay down together. He stretched out against me and the entire length of our bodies touched. I ran a hand down his back, feeling the muscles move beneath his skin.
He shivered when my mouth touched the hinge of his jaw, so I stayed there a while. I found out that if I flattened both hands on his back and held them still, he breathed out long through his nose and leaned toward me.
When I straddled him, he said, “You’re heavier than you look.”
“I’m exactly as heavy as I look.”
“Heavier.” He reached out and wrapped fingers around my half-hard cock. I hissed.
He rolled us onto our sides, careful of the headboard.
“Walnut,” I said.
“Every joint’s hand-cut.” He started to stroke me.
I closed my eyes.
He remembered to go slowly. He brought me up to a peak, close to the edge, multiple times, then stopped until I settled again.
“I want—“ I said. “I’ve never—”
“What?”
I gripped his shoulders and slid my body down the sheets. “Oh,” he whispered.
His cock was heavy and hard in my hand, and I took a second just to look. He curled his fingers into the sheets.
He was uncut, and I kissed the tip of his head. He let out a low moan, and he reached for my hair, not steering, holding on.
I’d watched men suck on video, but this was my first time. I felt the weight of him on my tongue and was careful not to involve my teeth. Then I took too much at once and pulled back, coughing.
“Sorry—“
“Don’t apologize to it,” he said.
“I was apologizing to you.”
“That’s completely unnecessary.”
I laughed with my forehead against his hip and went back to sucking, slower.
I found a rhythm that worked, wrapping my fingers around the base and stroking with the same rhythm as my mouth. I listened to the grunts, moans, and held breath. My cock was fully hard, pushing against his leg.
“Rafe, close,” he warned me, giving me the opportunity to pull off. I didn’t. He came with a deep, almost bellowing sound, and one hand curled into a fist in the sheets. The other reached up for the headboard.
I kept my mouth in place through all of it. When I finally lifted my head, he was looking down at me.
Niko pulled me up the bed and kissed me, sharing the taste of him. He reached down and stroked me. It didn’t take long. My body shuddered against him, and I let out a long moan.
For a while, neither of us moved. The apartment was quiet around us.
“Niko.”
“Mm?”
“I love you too.”
His breathing stopped for a moment and then continued. He didn’t say anything. That was enough. He pulled me in, arranged my arm across his body, and kissed the top of my head.
I fell asleep with my hand over his heart.
When I woke the following morning, I stayed. It was an optional morning skate day.
Niko was already downstairs, working. I listened to the sound of sanding for a few minutes before I got up.
He had coffee ready in the kitchen and left a mug out, ready for me, next to the pot. I drank it standing at the counter, looking at the bookshelf he’d built at twenty-three and the chair that leaned. My socks lay folded on one arm of his sofa.
The sanding sounds stopped, then started again. I found my phone in my jacket.
It was loaded with new messages.
Hal: call me, good news for once.
The team chat was off the rails. I skipped it for the moment.
Mom: Dad’s watched it four times now. He says the man looks you in the eye. Marlene is beside herself. Call when you’re up, no rush, we’re just happy for you.
I was about to put the phone in my pocket when it buzzed in my hand.
Mark: Got a minute Friday? Nothing bad. Might even be fun.