Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
HENDRIX AVERY
Walking through Aleks’ giant house, I try not to appear as if I am searching for anyone in particular. My hands fumble with the small wrapped package in my hands, and I mentally plan out how to give it to Tahegin. God knows I’ll make this awkward as hell, no matter how many play-by-plays I run in my head. My antisocial personality is partially to blame, but mostly, it is just Tahegin. He makes me nervous in a way I’m not at all accustomed to.
I haven’t seen him since our game on Sunday—Christmas Day. I’d had the chance to spend the day with him, if his previous invitation was still standing, because the dinner with Micah’s family had been canceled due to the entire household coming down with the flu. I’m pretty sure Micah ended up spending the day with Aleks, and I’d . . . Well, I’d sat at home. Alone. Wishing I had taken Tahegin up on his offer.
Things have gone back to normal with Tahegin—which means I have gone back to deluding myself into thinking I might one day convince him to give us a shot. I can’t seem to make myself stop, though. Not when he is the one who asks me to sit with him on the hotel bed, or come home with him after practice, or spend our off day at the animal shelter where he volunteers. I’ll take those platonic moments without complaint because trying to put distance between us only hurt last time.
We’re going to the playoffs, that much is for sure after our game on Sunday. It’s nerve-racking as a rookie, but my teammates partying tonight without care for the game tomorrow is somewhat consoling. They don’t seem too worried about it, though they are all most likely already drunk and have forgotten about the New Year’s Day game.
I’d purposefully arrived late to avoid having to mingle with drunken, social brutes. My goal is to find Tahegin, exchange gifts, maybe talk some if we can find a quiet enough place, ask how his Christmas went with his family, ring in the New Year, and then gracefully bow out.
Step one is locating Tahegin, and Aleks’ huge house is not helping. It seems as if everyone employed by the Rubies is here tonight—I wouldn’t be surprised to find the coaches here, too. Music thumps throughout the place, the kitchen just as loud as the living room. Even the man cave is full of partygoers playing beer pong.
I’ve just about given up when a low voice murmurs in my ear.
“Is that present for me?”
Spinning around, I find Tahegin standing in an alcove I’d managed to overlook. It’s small, filled with bookshelves, and it doesn’t appear as if Tahegin was purposely hiding there. Perhaps we simply happened to cross paths at just the right time.
I tilt my head up to see him better because we’re so close a deep breath would send our chests touching. His sapphire-blue eyes, free of glasses tonight, lock on me, and he gives me a crooked smile so bright my breath stutters in my chest.
God, he’s . . . gorgeous. Can a man be gorgeous?
“Hi,” I breathe, and I might be smiling back. I’m not entirely sure what my face is doing at the moment.
Tahegin raises an eyebrow, amusement twinkling in his eyes. “Hi, Rix.”
My fingers wiggle under the edge of something, and I look down to see I’m nearly unwrapping Tahegin’s present by accident. Damn nerves. And— “Oh, your present,” I suddenly recall his earlier question. “Yes, this is for you.” I thrust it unceremoniously into his chest, and he takes it with a small chuckle.
“Let’s go somewhere quieter,” he suggests. When I nod, he grabs the hem of my shirt, tugging me down an empty hallway. The light isn’t on, but Tahegin seems to know where he is going well enough without it. He opens a door near the end and ushers me inside, and once the room is shut off from the rest of the house, I can actually hear myself think over the now-muffled music. “Here.” Grinning down at me, he blindly passes a small wrapped box into my hand at my side.
My gift.
Once he’s sure I have it, he steps around me to flick the bedside lamp on, illuminating a pristine guest room. I eye the doorknob and make the quick decision to flip the lock, just in case a drunken teammate decides to go checking doors.
Turning back around, I see Tahegin gesture at the bed in invitation, so I toe off my shoes and assume the familiar position against the headboard, legs spread wide for him. As always, he makes himself comfortable between my thighs, adjusting as I bend a knee, leaning on me and with me in a way that makes us fit together.
My arms fall around him as I toy with the seam of the gift in my hands. Tahegin does the same, our movements mimicked in each other yet neither of us making a move to fully open our gifts.
“You first,” he whispers, the volume of his voice a perfect match to the stillness of the forgotten bedroom.
“Together,” I suggest.
He agrees, and we rip into the presents at the same time?—
—and promptly fall into matching fits of laughter.
In Tahegin’s hand are the football cards I’d bought from Micah, the elaborate drawing of Tahegin in his Rubies outfit with football stats on one, and another of him in everyday clothes, surrounded by shelter animals, with stats such as novice in ASL, number one for prettiest eyes, entirely too tall.
In my hand is also a set of football cards made by my best friend. It seems Tahegin and I had similar ideas for each other. Mine are much of the same as his, though I think some of the personal facts have been exaggerated. I most certainly am not the funniest guy he knows. I haven’t seen any of the recent drawings Micah has made of me, especially not in my Rubies uniform, so it is a pleasant surprise to be seeing them now. And the one in plain clothes? He drew me smiling. Smiling . How dare he?
We both have two cards of each pose, so four total—at least, I think we do until I realize I’m missing one of my smiling ones. Did I drop it?
Tahegin clears his throat. “I, uh— I kept one of yours. I hope that’s okay?”
I both love and hate the way I can feel my heart thumping against my sternum, trying to escape. With his back pressed to my chest, Tahegin has to feel it, too. “No, that’s— It’s fine. I should have thought to do that.”
Separating a card from his stack, he passes it over to me. “There. Something to remember me by.”
I want so much more to remember you by. So much that it’s impossible to ever forget.
Instead of making myself sound like one of Micah’s sappy romance movies, I ask Tahegin about Christmas with his family as I pocket my box of cards. He’s eager to share, as always, and I laugh along to his stories of everything Willow and he got into—the cookies for Santa they’d nabbed and had to rebake, the presents they’d sneakily opened a day early, and the candy canes they’d hidden in their mom’s Christmas tree.
Fuck, I wish I had nutted up and gone with him.
He doesn’t ask how Christmas went with Micah’s family, and I wonder if maybe Aleks told him it had been canceled. If so, why hadn’t he reached out? Or maybe he is wondering why I hadn’t reached out.
The conversation remains easygoing and lighthearted—until Tahegin changes that. He adjusts himself, his shoulder leaning against my bent leg so he can look over his other one to meet my eyes. I catch a whiff of sweet, familiar coconut as he does, but no amount of that scent can prepare me for his next words.
“I want to tell you about my birth parents. If you still want to listen.”
“I do,” I solemnly promise not even a heartbeat later, voice barely audible with the emotion clouding it. How long have I been waiting to uncover the last of his secrets? Too damn long. He finally trusts me enough to confide in me, and I take it as a gift from the heavens.
“You asked once if I ever tried to track them down,” he muses. My forearm is resting on my knee, and he takes the opportunity to trace a prominent vein down my arm to my wrist before tangling his fingers with mine. We link together as comfortably as if I were holding my own hand. “I couldn’t.” He takes in a heavy breath, letting it out in a rush. “Because my birth parents aren’t in the system.”
That’s . . . unusual. “How?—”
His sapphire eyes meet mine, and I have never seen them so, so sad. “There isn’t a record of my birth parents because they—one or both, I don’t even know—left me in a cardboard box outside of a fire station when I was only a few weeks old.”
I jolt, instinctively pressing my chest more firmly against his back. My arms come in, and my legs slide closer, as if to cocoon him within the protection of my body. “Are you serious ? What the actual fuck?”
The smile he gives me is bitter and grim. “I’ve wondered my entire life what happened. Did my mother die giving birth and my father couldn’t stand to look at me? Was she so young that she didn’t think she could raise me well? Was she a victim? Did I come out the wrong color, proof of infidelity? Did they hate how blue my eyes were? Why not leave me at the hospital? Then again, I don’t even know if I was born in a hospital. My response to abusive substances could be genetic, so maybe they waited until I wouldn’t test positive for drugs when they dropped me off. I’ll never know, and that kills me.” He squeezes my hand, so tight I almost wince. “But then I look at you, and I see the pain you feel when you remember how— why— your birth parents left you, and I can’t tell which of us is the luckier one.”
Me. I’m the lucky one because everything I endured has led me to you. Even if we are just friends from now until forever, I want that with you .
On the other side of the bedroom door, the forgotten partygoers begin to chant a countdown, calling in the New Year with cheers and celebration, completely oblivious to my world being wholly and thoroughly turned inside out. “Ten . . . nine . . .”
Tahegin stares at me, eyes sparkling with tears I hope to God he doesn’t shed. I don’t think I’ll be able to bear it if he does.
“. . . eight . . . seven . . .”
Enraptured, I stare back at the man in my arms. Have I ever met anyone so unbelievably strong? After everything that has befallen him, the hardships, the trials he’s faced, he lives every day with a smile and laughter, with a soul as bright as the sun, with a heart as generous as the ocean is vast. Tahegin deserves to be protected because he is too goddamn good for this cruel world.
“. . . six . . . five . . .”
Who would dare give him away? I hold him tighter; I will not let him think for a moment that I could ever do something like what his birth parents did. I want to make him forget about them, about how they hurt him. I want to heal his wounded heart so he never has to worry for a second that he isn’t good enough.
“. . . four . . .”
I used to hate how perfect he is, but now that I see all of him—his flaws, his pain, his hurt, his tragedy, his perseverance—I realize his perfection comes from all those broken bits, like fractured stained-glass windows pieced together to make something new, something entirely different and a hundred times more beautiful.
“. . . three . . .”
So what if I’m not his usual type? So what if, up until him, I’ve believed I was straight? All I know is that if I don’t try, I might be letting the most perfect thing I’ve ever had the pleasure of holding slip right through my fucking fingers.
“. . . two . . .”
I bring my free hand to his throat, tip his head using my thumb and index finger on either side of his jaw, tug him closer to me?—
“. . . one . . .”
—and press my lips against his.
“Happy New Year!”
Tahegin leans into me, not pulling away as I feared he might. Our mouths move together the same way our hands and body fit, perfect and without conscious thought. He’s all warmth and light, firm pressure but oh-so-soft lips. I revel in the feel of him and the fact that he is responding as ardently as I am.
Kissing has never felt this good before. It has never sent electricity buzzing from my mouth to my stomach to my toes, shocking me everywhere Tahegin and I touch. I’m hyperaware of every breath he feverishly gasps in during the half seconds we part, never taking too long to come back together. There’s a heavy thudding against my breastbone, though who it belongs to is a mystery. We’re pressed so close, so tight, that it could be either of our frantic hearts.
I latch onto his full bottom lip, nipping and sucking instead of letting him retreat for air. He gasps, then groans, and I immediately want to hear more. I need to hear more. This very damn second.
Licking into his mouth, I glide my tongue over the flat plain of his and am rewarded when he loses all self-control. One moment, he’s straining to kiss me over his shoulder, and the next, he’s swinging a leg over me to straddle my thighs. When did I lower my knee? When did we release our clasped hands? How did my hands find purchase on his hips?
Though I have no idea how we ended up like this, I am not at all displeased. My fingers dig into the muscles of his sides, thumbs brushing the thin skin over his hip bones. His weight rests low on my thighs, nowhere near high enough to lend friction to my groin, but that’s fine. I’m not sure I’d be able to go any further than this tonight. There are so many things to consider about being intimate with Tahegin, the main point being that, as far as I am aware, I’m not his type.
Oh, please, for the love of God, do not let him be pity-kissing me.
Dragging my mouth away from his is like willingly putting my hand into a fire, asking to be burned, but somehow I manage. Tahegin has a harder time with it, and he proceeds to trail teasing bites across my jaw, then open-mouth kisses down the column of my throat. He sucks the skin lightly, pulling a rumble from my chest that would have been a purr if I was a cat.
Jesus, I’m like putty in his hands.
Hands that— oh fuck —are sliding beneath my shirt and tracing my abs with wicked and clever fingers. Every muscle in my stomach clenches as he gently scrapes his fingernails through the strip of hair between my navel and the waistband of my pants.
“T,” I groan, my voice all gravelly and guttural. He’s turned me into a primal beast, stripped to my base desires, and I want to give in, but . . . “Tahegin, don’t— mm —don’t do this out of pity, please. I . . . I won’t be able to handle it if you say this means nothing.”
He jerks back, and I’m met with the beautiful sight of his kiss-swollen lips. His eyes, though—his eyes are full of hurt. “ Pity ?” He spits the word like poison on his tongue.
Swallowing hard against the lump in my throat, I avoid looking directly at him. His damn eyes are so expressive I don’t want to see the moment he realizes this isn’t what he wants. “I know there’s . . . Look, I’m new to-to this ”—I gesture between us—“but I know there’s a . . . preference. I know about tops and bottoms, and I-I don’t know, you know?”
Tahegin’s palm cups my cheek, and he gently turns me to face him, meeting my gaze with nothing but pure compassion. “Rix, honey, you aren’t making any sense. You know, but you don’t know?”
“Right.”
“Hendrix.”
“I’ve never been with a man,” I whisper. “I’ve never even watched gay porn, though I guess now I should, huh? Might learn a few things, maybe. But, T, I . . . I don’t know how to be intimate with a guy, and I certainly don’t know if I’ll enjoy being on the bottom—or however you say it. Micah and I talked some, and it seems like you prefer more . . . feminine men? Men like Micah. Tahegin, in case you haven’t noticed, I am very much not like Micah. So if you only kissed me back because it was the polite thing to do—or, hell, even the fun thing to do but aren’t looking to do again—then I need us to forget the last however many minutes it’s been since that ball dropped because I can’t do this—know you like this—and never be able to do it again. Okay?”
Of all the things he could do, Tahegin laughs . Not a taunt, but a genuine laugh of relief and giddiness that has his entire face lighting up, his blue eyes sparkling. He grabs my face in both hands. “You want this again? With me?” he asks, half in disbelief and half in joyous surprise.
My eyebrow twitches upward. “Yes?” It sounds more like a question than an answer.
“I thought you might have been trying to just ring in the New Year with whoever happened to be closest.”
I snort at that ridiculous notion. “I have never once kissed someone on New Year’s—it’s too cliché. And I didn’t kiss you because the clock struck midnight, Cinderella. I kissed you because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I leaned into you on Halloween. I almost kissed you that day beside your parents’ pool, too. If I’m being honest, I have been quite hopelessly pining for you for a while now.”
Tahegin’s mouth falls open comically wide. “ You like me ?”
“I do.”
“I thought I leaned into you on Halloween. And beside the pool. I have been hopelessly pining after you because I thought you were straight.”
Sheepish, I muster a grin. “I thought I was, too. Surprise, I guess?”
He groans loudly, tipping his face toward the ceiling. “Two months—at least. We could have been kissing for two months already!”
Taking his hands in mine, I press a kiss to his palms before holding them against my chest. “Is it okay?” I ask. “That I might not be a bottom?”
“You seem very concerned about this.”
“It seems important.”
“It is,” he considers. “But it isn’t everything. Besides, you don’t need to worry about that. I want to take things slow with you since you are a baby bi”—that’s a new one for the books, but okay—“and I don’t want to overwhelm you. Plus, if we’re both serious about this, we shouldn’t rush into it anyway. Now for when we do eventually get there . . .” He swoops down, lips brushing against my ear as he breathes, “You’re exactly the type of man I bottom for, Rix.”
I shudder, and I am fully aware of the prominent tent in my pants that hasn’t disappeared since we began kissing. That throaty whisper he just said in my ear is going to aid my hand tonight, much to my pleasure. “So, does taking it slow include making out tonight?” My voice is winded like I’ve just run back-to-back marathons.
Tahegin laughs his beautiful, contagious laugh, and instead of responding, he simply dives in and claims my mouth with his. “God, you’re such a good kisser,” he mumbles against my lips.
“That’s what Micah said.”
“Uh-uh, that is not the correct response.”
“Mmm, shut up and keep kissing me?”
He smiles against my mouth, and I bask in the authentically crooked feel of it. “Now you’re getting it.”
My hands slip under the hem of his shirt, holding his sides so tight I might be bruising his ribs. “You know,” I pant as my hips roll, seeking friction against the zipper of my jeans. “I’ve gotten plenty of handjobs before—and blowjobs. It wouldn’t be anything new.” He feels so different, I think to myself as my hands explore the hard planes of his body. Hard abs instead of a soft belly. Muscular pecs instead of breasts. I flick a nail over the barbell in his nipple, trace the divot of his hip bones, thumb across his nearly flat belly button—technically an innie, but barely.
The brush of my thumb across his navel pulls a sexy noise from Tahegin, something between a gasp and a moan. “Goddamn you,” he mutters, and I swear his voice is quivering.
I roll the interior nub of his belly button beneath the pad of my finger, and he arches back with a cry, our lips separating for the first time in what feels like ages. Mine are swollen—too swollen. I probably look like I got stung by a fucking bee. Ignoring the way they ache like a bruise, I grip Tahegin’s sides firmly and tilt his body back far enough that I can dip down to tongue his exposed navel. He shouts a curse and flexes his hips, the brush of his hard length against my collarbone enough to jolt me out of my lust-induced haze. Worried I’ll fall into his all-consuming gravity once more, I do the only thing I can think of and toss him away.
His body bounces at the foot of the bed, and he scrambles to remain on the mattress instead of tumbling to the floor. The glare he shoots me is only half-assed. “I understand why you did what you did,” he states. “But for the record, you were seconds away from getting that blowjob.”
Oh, I am so fucked for this man.