10. Mason
TEN
Mason
The alarm was an obnoxious bastard thing that needed to sort out its life.
God knows why it had gone off, given it was five a.m., and I was on vacation.
I reached for the phone, randomly pressing buttons until raucous music faded into nothing, and then stretched the kinks from my exhausted body before rolling back on my side to check on Xander.
We had a ton of things we needed to talk about this morning, not least of which was how we were going to keep this a secret for now, and how we were going to keep our hands off each other.
Also, it was his birthday, and I thought I could wake him up with a birthday blowjob if the alarm hadn’t already spoiled that idea.
Only there was no sign of Xander, and the bed wasn’t warm, the sheet pushed back and his side empty. My chest hollowed, and a rush of pain consumed me—he’d made a choice and given up on me. On us.
I had to live with that. Just because I loved him, it didn’t mean he had reciprocal feelings or even wanted to run the gamut of emotions and conversations that we’d have to deal with.
A cool breeze whispered into the room from the open door to the patio, and the voile there moved gently.
I spotted a flash of color, immediately rolling off the mattress and shoving my feet into shorts and yanking them up, forgetting the button was gone so they slipped to my hips.
I stumbled over discarded bedding and scrubbed my eyes as I headed for the door and out into the early morning.
Xander was staring out at the ocean, cross-legged, hands resting on his knees and his back straight.
He wore the shirt from last night, open and loose, and he’d pulled his shorts back on. He looked calm, from the back at least.
“Morning,” he half-whispered. Given Eli was right next door maybe he was whispering to avoid being discovered outside my room. But then, why was he sitting right there in the open, and why make it so obvious? Shouldn’t he be hiding away with me, so we could keep our big secret?
I stopped beside him and then dropped to sit next to him, our knees touching. “Happy birthday,” I whispered back.
“Thank you.”
“Do you feel any different?”
“Being thirty, no. But finally admitting I’m in love with my best friend’s brother, yes.”
Uh oh. “What are you doing out here?” Where anyone can see you?
“Thinking.” He reached out for a hand, and I took his without hesitation. “About how we do this.”
“Do what?”
He looked troubled, uncertain. “I thought you wanted us to be together?”
“I do, God, you don’t know how much. I didn’t mean about us. I meant about everything else.”
“You mean the world, the press, Eli?” He smiled then and squeezed my hand. “I need to be honest with everyone, and I’m not sure how’s Eli going to take it.”
I scooted a little nearer, and he released my hand and gathered me close to him, hugging me briefly and then laying his arm over my shoulder as I leaned in.
“He’ll forgive us in the end,” I murmured, although we both knew that wasn’t entirely true.
He sighed heavily then shook his head. I didn’t want him to be thinking bad things right now. I wanted him to have the happiest thirtieth birthday ever.
“Do you remember your birthday?”
“Which one? I’ve had a few.”
He shot me a look, and I saw the narrowing of his eyes. “When you turned eighteen.”
I stiffened in Xander’s hold because I knew where this was going.
That was the single night where Eli had turned from being a loving older brother to a man convinced the entire world was out to hurt me.
Aarni Lankinen had cornered me in the kitchen where I’d been sulking because I’d fought with Becca, stupid to look back on it, but I’d been young and stupid, and three beers was enough to make me an idiot.
Abruptly, I needed Xander to hold me closer when I shivered with the memory of that night.
“You mean what happened at the party.”
“I wanted to kill Aarni,” Xander said. “I wanted to put my hands around his neck and squeeze the life out of him. I could have, you know, and it would have solved so much. Bryan Delaney, Henry Greenaway, Tennant Rowe, what Aarni did to those others, using his size and his anger to try to force you—”
“What stopped you?” I interrupted because I didn’t want to think about the guilt I carried for what he’d done to the other men.
Or remember the way Aarni had pushed me against the refrigerator, hard against me, grinding against me, telling me all kinds of horrible things.
I’d just stood there, not knowing what to do, and it was only Becca coming into the kitchen that had stopped it from going any further.
I was small compared to a twenty-one-year-old physical hockey player.
I was weak. Becca had seen though, and it had to be her that told Eli.
“You stopped me.”
“Me?”
“Do you remember what you said to Eli?”
“Not completely. I thought he was the one who wanted to kill Aarni, not you.”
“Eli wanted to kill him for what he did to you, but I would have done anything to make sure you still had Eli in your life. If he’d hurt Aarni, then you might lose the only family you had. So there was me, holding Eli back, and you have to remember that Eli was white-hot with temper… ”
“I never wanted Eli to know, or you. Or anyone.” I sighed and leaned closer to Xander, tucking myself into his neck.
“Even now I have a ton of regrets about that night. If I’d gone to the authorities, if I’d said something, then what happened to Tennant, and the others, would never have happened. It was on me.”
Xander shoved my shoulder just enough to let me know he didn’t agree with that at all. I’d had enough counseling that I knew it wasn’t my fault, but even now I couldn’t quite look Brady Rowe in the eyes in case he ever found out that I’d done nothing.
“So, you were standing there, with bruises still on your arm, and Becca holding your hand, and Eli and I were in kill mode, and you just looked right at us and said that you’d already lost two people you loved, and you couldn’t bear to lose anyone else.”
“I remember,” I admitted as the memories flooded back. Aarni had left the party, and Becca had sought out Eli, and where Eli was, Xander was, and I knew it wasn’t going to end well.
Aarni just held me against my will.
Aarni just whispered what he wanted to do to me.
Aarni just said that he could show me what it was like to know what a real man could do.
None of that was enough to go to the police.
At least that is what I’d told myself. All I could think about was that if I’d accused him of anything when I’d been drinking, only eighteen, and maybe it had been my fault?
Then for the two men I loved fighting over who was going to kill Aarni first, right in front of me, I couldn’t bear to think of losing either of them.
“We reported it, management eventually traded him to the Raptors, and now after what he did, he’s serving jail time for being the bastard he is. But you still have us, and you will always have us.”
We sat in silence for a while, and all the soft glow from last night, the connection and the love, was cold in the light of day.
“I’m too big, too clumsy off skates. I don’t know my own strength, and I could hurt you.”
I shook my head and pressed a kiss to his neck, feeling him shiver and press against my lips. “You could never hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t mean to—”
“Never.”
“I will try every second to be the best man I can be for you.”
He sighed then and tipped my chin to kiss me with the gentlest of touches, not deepening the connection but pressing the promise into my skin.
Then we were quiet again and time seemed to pass molasses slow as the sun climbed from dawn and into full day.
People began to walk on the beach, and still we didn’t move.
Dunny ambled along the shoreline just after seven, staring out to the horizon, not looking our way lost in his thoughts.
It was close enough that we had to decide what came next.
“Last night I said I didn’t know how to love you as I want to.”
I chuckled and kissed him again with a leer. “I’ll show you.” Only he captured my face in his hands and cradled me there, staring at me with emotion bright in his eyes.
“I didn’t mean that. Well, it’s partly that, but it’s not just the sex side. It’s Eli. It’s family. It’s your new business and changes in the team. It’s not knowing what to do for the best but absolutely sure about what comes first.”
“Eli.”
He released his hold on me, and I moved with my back to the ocean, facing him, our knees touching.
“I want to be completely honest with Eli, like properly old-fashioned. Ask him if it’s okay, explain to him that I won’t hurt you and that I’ll love you the best I can for as long as I can.
Maybe I could talk about kids, or my 401k, or the fact that Brady wants to put my name forward for captain if he leaves.
” He bit his lip then. “Pretend I didn’t say that last bit. ”
I mimicked a zip on my lips. “I want to tell Eli as well. I want to tell him I love you, that I’ve loved you since I knew what love was, and I want to love you the best I can for as long as I can as well.
Maybe I’ll mention kids and my pathetically small 401k, and I promise not to mention the captain thing.
” I leaned forward and added softly, “But that is so cool.”
He smiled at me, a small hint of pride in his expression. “Not sure if it will happen, I mean, we’re getting heat for me being… yeah, you know.”
“Everyone knows you’re the bravery and heart of the team.”
He wrinkled his nose and then got serious. “So we agree then. We’re telling Eli, up front and honest, and if he hates it then we… do what?”
“That’s simple,” I said with a smile that didn’t reflect the worry in my thoughts. “We move to Aruba on a permanent basis. I’ll take up a bartender job, and you can teach hockey.”
He raised a single eyebrow. “Not sure there would be many takers for hockey in Aruba.”
“So we’ll live off my tips.” I lowered my voice. “And your enormous 401k.”
He snorted a laugh and it felt lighter, but I knew we were both consumed with the worry of what we wanted to do.
Eli was so protective of me. His way of dealing with losing Mom and Dad was to pour everything into his career and to me.
He’d made it to the top in hockey, and he had the best little brother in the entire world if I say so myself, but how would he feel if the two people closest to him were hooking up?
Would he feel like the odd one out? It could be so good, to extend the family, and maybe he’d give in and finally date someone for longer than a week.
Then there would be four of us, and I knew I’d love whoever caught Eli, and then there would be kids, and we’d be this huge rambling family.
“We should tell him.”
Xander nodded, and we stood and hugged each other briefly before separating and grinning at each other like idiots. Somehow, whatever we had to do today, everything was going to be okay.
“He’ll probably be asleep still,” Xander said.
“Then we’ll break into his room and sit on him until he wakes up. Whatever, we have to tell Eli before we do anything else.”
“Tell Eli what?”
I turned slowly. Eli was there, with a wrapped gift in his arms, decorated with a gaudy silver bow. We’d chosen the gift together, a memory book filled with pictures of Eli and Xander, me and Eli, me and Xander, all three of us, and the plan had been to meet early and give it to him.
Hence the alarm. I set that when I’d wanted to shower, shave, and look as hot as I could to surprise Xander, that was before we’d ended up in bed and everything had changed. Shit.
Eli was grinning, probably psyched to see the two of us already standing there and ready to hand over the gift, but slowly the grin paled, and instead his chin took on a stubborn tilt.
“What do you need to tell me? What the fuck is going on?”