Lake
LAKE
“Sorry you didn’t get the good dinner,” Ryker says.
I look down at the slice of pizza I’m balancing on my fingertips and raise my brows at him. “You’re kidding, right? You said I’d be eating sheep balls. This is the good dinner.”
Ryker laughs softly, finishes off his slice, and plucks one of the napkins from where we stashed them under the box earlier. He wipes his fingers clean, balls the napkin up, and tosses it into the now empty pizza box.
He grips the edge of the dock we’re sitting on, his eyes on the glowing skyline of Boston. It’s late, and it’s dark, so the view is pretty damn great, at least, even if the mood is somewhat somber.
“That was a shitshow,” Ryker says.
I mean, yes. But I’m not going to say that out loud.
“It could’ve been worse.”
Ryker slowly turns away from the city and looks at me with a dubious expression. “How?”
“A black hole could’ve opened up in Boston and swallowed the earth whole.”
He mulls over it for a moment before he nods. “That would’ve been a bit worse.”
“Or an asteroid.”
“Still worse,” he agrees.
“A meteorite.”
“Umm, sure?”
“A gamma ray burst.”
“Are all these possibilities going to be space related?” he asks.
“Sawyer was watching a documentary when I was at their place a few weeks ago. Turns out there’s a lot that wants to kill us out there, and I’m now aware of it all.”
“But not tonight, luckily.”
“Well, I mean, not tonight so far. There’s still a fair few hours to go, so we’re not in the clear yet.”
He snorts, then starts to laugh for real. When the laughter subsides, he looks at me and shakes his head.
“This feels like one of those knock-on-wood moments.”
He quirks his brow at me, and I roll my eyes. For a few moments, we stare at each other silently.
A few more.
A few more.
“Damnit,” I mutter, rapping my knuckles against the wooden surface of the dock quickly.
He starts to laugh again. “See? I told you I knew you better than anybody else.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
He’s still smiling, but he’s also leaning closer. My heart jumps, and I start to look around.
“Relax,” he murmurs. “It’s too dark to see anything, and there’s nobody here.”
I force myself to follow the order. It helps that he slides his palm onto my cheek and kisses me right then, so all thoughts swiftly evacuate my brain while I lean into the kiss.
His mouth covers mine, warm and sure and familiar. I forget my frayed nerves for the moment. Or, more accurately, he makes me forget them. He nips and tastes, his warm breath in my mouth, nose bumping against mine every now and then.
My hands go into his hair, and he wraps his arm around me, pulling me tightly against him. In another moment, I’m straddling him, and all common sense—what little there was to begin with—flies out the window at the feel of Ryker’s tongue licking over mine. In another moment I’m panting and pushing my hips forward, trying to rub my cock against his. His fingertips sink into my hips.
It’s only when a loud whistle pierces the air, followed by even louder laughter, that some sense finds its way back to us. I scramble off Ryker’s lap and glance behind us. A group of people pass by on one of the trails. My heart is beating wildly in my chest, both from adrenaline and the kiss, as I try to swallow through the dry panic in my throat.
Careless. Not just careless; this was the height of carelessness, and carelessness is not something we can afford right now.
I jump when Ryker’s palm lands on my thigh and snap my head toward him.
He sends me a funny look and snorts out a laugh.
“Just me,” he says.
“I know,” I say quickly.
He holds my gaze, assessing. I must look really freaked out, which was not the goal at all.
“They didn’t recognize us,” he says.
I nod. I know. It’s dark enough, and they were far enough away from us. Of course they didn’t recognize him. That wouldn’t make sense. But it’s better to be hypervigilant about this. It’s stupid to take risks like the one we just took if the goal is to not stand out.
I don’t want to ruin anything for him. Ever. And I’m terrified it will ruin things should the truth about us come out.
Ryker is still studying me, so I force a smile onto my face. The last thing I need is to have him worry about how I’m handling this.
For a while, we’re both quiet. It’s getting late, and we have to head back home tomorrow, but Ryker doesn’t look ready to leave yet, so I don’t make the suggestion.
“Do you think I overreacted?” Ryker finally asks.
“With Genevive?”
He nods, eyes still on the city skyline.
“Maybe?” I say carefully. “I think…” My voice dies down while I’m trying to find the right words.
“You think?”
“I think you had set certain expectations for how she was going to react. But then she didn’t follow that plan, and that was disappointing.”
He meets my gaze and waits.
In the end, I just shrug. “It’s difficult to be generous in situations like these.”
He mulls it over for a long time.
“How did it go for you?” he asks. “Coming out. You’ve never told me.”
“I’ve had a variety of experiences. Most people do. It’s not a one-time thing. You get to do it a lot over the years. Some people will accept you, some won’t. Sometimes it’ll suck a lot, but then some people will surprise you, too.”
“What about your mother?”
I laugh, this time pretty genuinely. “She didn’t care. I’m pretty sure she was having man trouble with somebody back then, so she had other things in mind. I mean, I worked myself up into a pretty decent state beforehand. Wrote everything I planned to say down and rehearsed it and all because I wanted to get it just right. Then I sort of panicked and just blurted it out. ‘Mom, I’m gay.’ Know what she said to that?”
“Knowing your mom, it could be literally anything.”
“‘Oh.’ End of quote. And then she said something like, ‘Uh-huh. That’s nice, honey’ and went back to texting furiously about whatever asshole she was dating back then. I think it was Pete.”
“Magician Pete?”
Yeah. Some of the guys my mom’s dated have been more memorable than others.
Ryker snickers. “Why did those two crazy kids break up again?”
“He wasn’t just doing magic, he was also doing his magician’s assistant. I guess you could say he was an overachiever.”
“Oh yeah. That was when your mom caught them and Pete was trying to tell her he was trying to saw the assistant in half, wasn’t it?”
“Yup. And Mom said, ‘There’s already a hole there, so you didn’t need to waste your time with that part.’”
Ryker laughs out loud before he grins at me. “Good ol’ Pete.”
“It all went downhill from there.”
Ryker’s still smiling at me. “She was okay with it?”
“Genevive’s okay with it, too. She just seems to have concerns and didn’t know how to address them that well. It could’ve gone worse.”
“Are we getting some more space references?”
I push at his shoulder. “She could’ve been not okay with you being bi. She could’ve asked you why you can’t just find a nice girl to date. She could’ve told you it was just a phase, and she should know because she went through the same thing in college.”
“That would’ve been fun,” Ryker says.
“A real mom and son bonding moment right there,” I say before I pat his knee. “All I’m saying is that she accepts you. She’s probably just worried about you. I’m worried about you. You might say I kind of get where she’s coming from.”
Ryker lets out a frustrated breath and glowers. And glowers. And glowers.
“It shouldn’t be such a fucking thing,” he bursts out after a little bit. “It’s nobody’s business but ours, so why the fuck would anybody need to care who any of us is sleeping with?”
I watch him calmly. I’m pretty sure most of us have tried to find an answer to that. Why it’s such a big deal. Who cares.
It shouldn’t matter.
But to some, it still does.
“Maybe I should just do it. Just come out and deal with the noise that follows.”
“Only neither of us is that interested in the noise,” I point out.
His shoulders slump. “Still,” he grumbles.
It’s not that either of us can really know what would happen if Ryker officially came out. We can speculate, but there aren’t really that many examples in professional sports. And none of the people who have come out have done it because they married their stepbrother. There’s a good chance that would be an issue. Or maybe I’m cynical, and it wouldn’t be. But the thought that I could somehow make Ryker’s life more difficult is a daunting prospect, and what it boils down to in the end is that I don’t know if I’m willing for Ryker to take the risk.
“I don’t want you to miss out on anything,” he says. “I want you to be able to hold my hand on the street and go to Pride and tell people you’re married to me.”
“All I want is to be with you,” I say. “That’s all that matters to me. The rest is just details.”
“I’m pulling you back into the closet.”
I sigh, put my hand on his cheek, and turn his face toward me. “Stop. We’ve been over this. I’m good with things the way they are.”
“But—”
“No buts.”
He clamps his mouth shut, searching my eyes before a small smile tilts the corners of his lips. “That’s just wrong. There should definitely be butts.”
My own lips start to twitch. “One butt,” I allow.
“I was thinking two.”
“Are you negotiating the number of butts in our relationship?”
“I’m being the voice of reason. I really like yours, and I’m not giving up mine, so two is kind of the minimum number of butts for us.”
“I see you’re putting that math degree to good use.”
“You like that I’m good with numbers. Admit it. You think it’s sexy,” he says.
“You’ve figured me out. The way you know two whole numbers gets me all hot. Say them again. Do it slowly.” I fan myself with my hand, then throw my head back and laugh when Ryker sends me a dirty look.
“Some days it’s a mystery what I see in you,” he says.
I lean my head on his shoulder. Just for a moment, but I do it.
“Aww, baby. You know I love your brain.”
“Well, come on. Soothe my ego and tell me how much.”
I hum thoughtfully. “I love your brain so much I’d like to take it out on a date.”
“You just know my brain would show you such a good time.”
“It always does.”
“You might even put out on the first date for my brain.” His grin is luminous in the darkness of the night.
“Might? Come on. You know as well as I do there’s no might about it. I would fuck your brain so hard.”
“It’s weird how something can sound so flattering, yet also wildly unappealing.”
“Ouch.” I do my best to look appropriately offended.
“I mean, how would you even do that? It’s not like my brain has easy access.”
“You’ve got ears.”
“Those holes are not that big,” he says.
“You say the nicest things to me.”
I grin at him, and he grins back. Everything is so easy when it’s just the two of us.
“You’re taking this whole thing pretty well,” Ryker says.
“It’s because I always expect the absolute worst from people. By my standards this whole evening was a raging success.”
“Maybe I should take a page out of your book,” he muses.
“Then we’ll just be two insufferably pessimistic dickheads no one wants around because we’ll suck the joy out of everything.”
“Well, yeah. But?—”
“No, that was in the pro column of this list we’re making. Keep talking.”
He snorts and shakes his head, and I nudge him with my shoulder. “You two will sort it out.”
“Promise?” he says. Self-deprecation mixes with humor in his voice.
“Your mom loves you, so whatever she meant to say, it most likely comes from a place of caring. Just… let’s try and give people we plan to keep in our lives the benefit of the doubt, okay?”
He looks at me for the longest time. “I think I’m rubbing off on you.”
“Right now? Because I’m not going to say no to that offer.”
“That was mature and optimistic and reasonable,” he says, ignoring the jokes.
“I don’t think anybody’s ever used those words about me.”
“That’s because you hide that side of you from everybody like it’s your life’s savings and you’re afraid somebody’s going to steal it.”
“They aren’t?”
He laughs and pats my thigh before he gets up and holds his hand out.
“Come on. Let’s go back to the hotel and see about that fucking.”
I get up too. “Are you getting your brain ready for me?”
He starts walking backward, and I follow him. “I maintain that it’s not possible to fuck somebody’s ear,” he says.
“We’ll do some research at the hotel. If somebody’s done it they’re also the kind of person to put it up on the internet.”
“It’s a date.”
“A porn date,” I say solemnly.
He swats at my ass, and I try to retaliate.
And everything is nice and easy.