Chapter 2
Bennett woke sometime later in bed, the sun’s warmth on his face, a Gino-shaped space heater at his back. He eked open his eyes and stared outside their bedroom windows, watching the ocean lap gently against the horizon. God, he loved their home; their own little oasis by the sea, midway between Los Angeles and San Diego, equidistant to work and family. They hadn’t escaped here enough the past five years, gone more days than home. He missed it, same as he missed the weight of Gino’s arm over his waist and the brush of his lips on his nape.
A satisfied sigh slipped out, and Gino’s arm around him tightened, tugging him closer. “How long have I been out?”
Bennett asked.
“Most of the day.”
He’d guessed as much, given the distance between the sun and the waves. Guilt snaked through him, stealing the warmth Gino and the sun had imparted. He closed his eyes and moved to roll away. “You don’t have to stay.”
Gino held him tighter, hand splayed over his abs. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Bennett’s gulp was loud in the quiet room, his “I’m sorry”
scratchy and painful to his own ears.
“Don’t ever apologize for how you feel.”
Using the arm around his waist, Gino shifted him onto his back. “Especially not to me. But I do need to understand it better.”
Opening his eyes, Bennett stared up into the warm brown ones that had been his world for three decades. Hurt and pain—confusion—swirled there, and he hated that he’d been the one to cause it. He opened his mouth to apologize again, but Gino’s fingers lightly skimming over his face, smoothing the lines of his forehead, stopped him.
“I get that you’re tired, that you’re burned out,”
Gino said. “I heard you. But why did you think divorce was the answer?”
He tangled his fingers with Gino’s. “Handing you those papers was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
Just remembering it made his stomach roil and his eyes refill with tears, made his breath hitch and his voice scale several octaves higher as he spoke. “I didn’t mean it as an ultimatum. I wouldn’t. I don’t want you to think I’d manipulate you like that.”
“Shh, shh, shh,”
Gino coaxed, fingers squeezing his. He lifted their joined hands to his lips and kissed Bennett’s knuckles. “I don’t think that. I know you better than that.”
Bennett lowered their hands to his chest, and when his pulse was slightly less frantic, when the panic had ebbed enough to breathe in time with Gino’s calmer breaths, he started again. “It was the only exit ramp I could see. The only way to give you the freedom to go forward with the band and the music you crave while also taking back some freedom for myself, away from the band.”
“Babe, open your eyes.”
Bennett hadn’t realized he’d closed them. When he opened them, Gino’s brown ones, wet at the corners, stared back with fiery conviction. “There is no music for me without you.”
The hand in his slipped lower, Gino’s thumb skating over the barely-there scars on Bennett’s wrist, the ones hidden by the tattoos that decorated his arm from shoulder to fingertips. “And if I didn’t walk away twenty years ago, I’m not walking away now.”
Bennett’s relieved sigh wobbled as he turned into Gino, burying his face in his warm, inviting chest, his ear pressed over his pec, the rhythm of his husband’s heart steady. The music that had kept him going that awful night on the bathroom floor in a shitty Knoxville motel. So far away from home, from everyone who loved and accepted them, from who and what they’d wanted to be. Decades later, they’d drifted again, and with all the distance life had put between them, it hadn’t occurred to him that Gino still loved him like that. That he’d be willing to step back with him.
Gino dropped a kiss on the crown of his head. “Can we table the divorce discussion for now?”
Bennett breathed another measure easier and nodded.
“Do you still want to do the tour?”
Gino asked.
That heavy weight was still on their shoulders. “We made commitments—to the band, the crew, the label, all those promoters and venues. We can’t just cancel.”
“It happens. We wouldn’t be the first.”
“I want to play our songs.”
He spread a hand over Gino’s chest, bracing for impact, for Gino’s reaction to his next words. “One last time.”
He jolted, as Bennett expected, but a cleared throat later, he asked, “What do you need to make it bearable? To make it the farewell tour you want?”
Gasping, Bennett drew back and gazed again at his husband. Conviction shone in his eyes, expression unwavering. “Are you for real?”
He laughed, and the gentle rumble was even better than the music of his pulse. “Yeah, babe, I’m for real. Tell me what you need to put one foot in front of the other, to get behind that mic and be the sexy, fierce front man of Middle Cut everyone is there to see.”
“I think they’re there to see the sexy bassist.”
Gino smiled. “Let’s both be honest, they’re really there for Roscoe.”
Bennett laughed out loud, the last thing he expected on a day that had started so awful. How their beefy drummer with his knotty nose, grizzly smile, and missing canine tooth had the entourage he did would forever be a mystery. Maybe it had something to do with the flannel or being an ex-hockey player, two things Bennett, being from San Diego, knew little about.
Gino gave him a soft shake, refocusing his attention. “What do you need, B?”
He rolled onto his back and considered this new possibility, a different road than the freeway he’d thought was the only option. A slower, more scenic route they could drive along at thirty-five miles per hour instead of their usual breakneck speed. “I’d like to enjoy the places we visit, maybe stop at some new ones along the way. Not do three nights on the same stage, then dash to the next. And if we have to sacrifice any cities, I don’t want them to be places we’ve never played before. I want to go to those places and explore.”
“Not gonna argue about a couple days off in San Francisco with you.”
Gino shifted down onto the bed, draping himself along Bennett’s side, arm over his waist, head resting on his shoulder. “What else?”
Fingers carding through his husband’s chestnut hair, Bennett remembered a time when it was longer, when their lives and shows were simpler. Not easier—those were the days of cup of noodles and bad coffee—but the music, and playing it with each other, was the center of their world. “Do you remember that charity gig we played in Santa Cruz when we were nobodies?”
Gino laughed. “We were like six-point font at the bottom of that show poster.”
“It was one of the best sets we ever played.”
“Your beat-up old Martin, my upright bass from high school. Was that the night we found Roscoe?”
Bennett nodded. “He played piano with the group before ours. You told him to stay there on the bench and keep up.”
“You want to go back to the trio? Or just you and me?”
He shook his head. “No, I like our fuller sound now, but I want to do it simpler. Acoustic, like we did for that show. Stripped down and laid bare. That’s what I want to leave our fans with. The real us.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m sure that’s enough turmoil for you and Gavin to sort.”
Their manager wouldn’t be happy, but he was their friend first. He’d met them at that same show all those years ago. He’d get it, even if it did make his life a temporary living hell. “Do apologize to him for me.”
“I told you, no apologies. But I want you to do something for me too.”
He picked up his hand again, thumb skating over the scars once more. “Call Britt. Make an appointment. Don’t reschedule it.”
He chuckled at how well Gino knew him. He’d already rescheduled three times with his therapist. His laughter died, though, when Gino added, “And ask her for a referral to a couple’s therapist.”
He wound their fingers together. “I’m not giving up on us.”
This time Bennett lifted their joined hands, lips lingering over Gino’s knuckles, hope infusing his words for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long. “I don’t want to give up on us either.”