Chapter 26
PERRY
It wasn’t like I wanted to be a “little,” at all. Or that I was going to call Alan “daddy” while he fucked me. If he ever did.
But he was the de facto leader of the team. He was bossy. He took charge. He let me be soft when I needed to be. He made me feel safe to not be in charge or control.
He fucking kissed like a god, and I felt every part of myself—well, almost every part—melt into his touch when he stroked his whole hand, light as a breath, down along my throat to rest on my collarbone.
I flailed, looking for an anchor, and immediately, Evan grabbed my hand.
If we’d been in private, I would have clamped that hand over my already aching cock.
Thankfully, I had just enough presence of mind to know that wasn’t a cool thing to do, out here in public, and instead, I probably crushed his poor fingers.
“Still gotta curl with those,” he said through clenched teeth.
I did try to ease my grip.
Finally, Alan let me go and I managed to jerk in one breath, then another, and settle back into my skin. Without letting go of Evan, because that connection was keeping me from floating off into oblivion.
“What everyone has said is right,” Alan said in that low, sexy voice that did things to my entire body.
“We will figure this out, whatever it looks like. I want you to put it out of your mind. You’ll let your lawyer and Mikko deal with whatever comes.
All you have to do is post your resignation letter, then focus on curling. Yes?”
I nodded.
Focusing on curling was only part of why I had done it, and not even the biggest part. I knew, we all knew, I’d been neglecting Evan, letting Alan do all the heavy lifting with him lately and that wasn’t okay.
It wasn’t that I was jealous. At least, I didn’t think I was. But I missed him. I missed them both. I wanted more of them in my life, and if something else had to give for me to have that, it wasn’t going to be my other love.
I was a good architectural draftsman. I liked my job. Up until a few minutes ago, I’d liked my boss even.
I was an excellent curler. I loved the sport almost as much as I loved my boyfriend. And let’s face it, I more than liked my Skip.
But once, years ago, I had taken Evan’s hand and asked him to follow me out the door.
And he had. He’d quit his partying ways, lost friends over that choice, lost the kind of ready, copious sex he loved to have.
He’d kicked a brother and a best friend out so he could move me into his apartment.
He’d learned to curl so he could spend more time with me.
He’d dropped out of his college program because we hadn’t been able to afford it back when I’d still been a poorly-paid intern, and I’d promised him we would find a way to get him back there once I was gainfully employed.
Then he’d followed me on this podium dream instead.
He’d blown up his life, again and again, for me. And now I’d quit the one thing that had made all those sacrifices sustainable for us.
So while he, and everyone else, sat there and told me it would be fine, all I could think was that we could never kick those Timmins boys out of our apartment now because without my income, we wouldn’t be able to afford it.
I had, effectively, lost us our home.
I didn’t say any of that to him. He knew it was all there, in our history, and still, he let me do this. Encouraged me to do it. Helped me to do it. I didn’t deserve him.
I did do all the things he’d outlined earlier. I ate a good meal with our new friends, worked out until my limbs shook, then showered with him and Alan before we headed to the rink.
I drove every other thought out of my head to focus on that practice because not only did Evan deserve my best effort to keep the promise of the Games alive but the rest of the team was counting on me too.
When we got back, I went to my computer immediately and typed up my resignation, emailed it off, printed it, and arranged for the snail mail delivery to both my former employer and my lawyer. Just in case.
Then I stayed there, typing up another list. All of the things Evan had given up for me, which I also printed out.
I’d left it on the dresser in our empty room, intending to give it to him later, so he knew how grateful I was for all of it but when I came out of my second shower of the day, he was sitting on the bed reading it.
“Hey. Um…”
“Sit.” He patted the bed beside him. “We have to talk about this.”
“Ev, I just want you to know how grateful—”
“Sit. Down.”
Was he mad? I sat next to him.
“I need a pen. Wait there. Do not move.”
I waited and when he came back, he took my hand and moved me to lean against the headboard next to him.
“So let’s go over this.” He put a little dot beside his brother’s name.
“First, I did not kick Jacob out. He had a girlfriend down in London he couldn’t be with because with our parents gone, he knew I couldn’t afford the apartment and go to school even with a roommate.
He put his life on hold to help me get mine set up.
So when I met you, he realized I was set and he could go live his life, and he did.
He asked Emileigh to marry him a week after he moved down there, and you know how that turned out, with their two gorgeous kids. ”
“They are pretty cute.”
“Him moving out was a mutually beneficial decision for both of us to get on with our lives, so not a sacrifice. He doesn’t need to be on this list.”
He wrote Emileigh’s name down under Jacob’s and drew a heart around them, then put a dot beside his old friend Kevin’s name.
“Kevin, it turns out, was a raging homophobe.”
“You and he joked about your sexcapades all the time.”
“Little did I know that sex was just sex to him. A release, and a perfectly acceptable and safe one, doing it with other guys. No strings and all that. No surprise babies. And because he was an even bigger idiot than he was asshole, he believed there was no risk of STIs because he full-on for real thought you could only get them from women.”
“I’m sorry? He what? Wasn’t he in university?”
“Outdoor Rec.” Evan shook his head. “Dumb as a post. To him, relationship was something completely different and separate from sex.”
“Like having sex with guys was okay but…”
“Dating a guy was the worst. Less than a month after I introduced you, he came to me with a ton of photos and video of me getting fucked by all kinds of guys. I had no idea he’d done that. He threatened to show it all to you if I didn’t dump you.”
“Jesus fuck! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t matter. I pointed out how very illegal it was to even have that on his phone.
Because none of us ever knew he’d recorded it, he’d essentially sexually assaulted all of us.
Funny how it all magically went away in a hurry when I pointed out one of the men he’d recorded was a cop.
” He shrugged. “Not that I told him that right away. Not before I’d copied it all while he was in the shower then sent it to said cop, and to my brother’s lawyer, because I’m not as stupid as he is.
I’ve been assured it’s all on record in case any of it ever turns up anywhere. ”
He violently crossed out Kevin’s name. “Him I definitely kicked out for being a shit friend and generally crap human being.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Getting him out of my life to make room for you was no sacrifice.”
As he was straightening up again, Alan let himself in.
“Come sit,” Evan invited, indicating the bed on my other side. “We were talking about our relationship history.”
“Oh dear.”
“Perry has a list of things he thinks I gave up to be with him. I was just explaining how it actually is.” He quickly caught Alan up on the first two points before moving on to the diminishing of his sex life.
“I won’t lie and say I didn’t love all that sex.
But it would be disingenuous of me to not point out that ninety-nine per cent of it was hollow, physical nothingness.
Also, risky for obvious reasons. Also, having less sex that’s a million times better didn’t feel like much of a sacrifice from my point of view, so. ” He crossed sex off my list.
“Lost friends.” He put the pen to his lips as if in deep thought. “Let’s see. I lost touch with the guys who, as it turned out, only wanted me around for the convenience of my hot, tight hole.” Hard dark line through that point. “Not much of a loss.”
Alan leaned past me to grip Evan’s face. “No more of that,” he said sternly.
“No,” Evan agreed.
“Will you tell me about it?”
“So no one can try and broadside you with it or use it against us, yes. But not because any of it matters to me anymore.”
Alan nodded. “Good.” He waved at the paper and sat back. “Continue.”
“Started curling.” He panned to look at me.
“How would you even think this a sacrifice? I love curling, I just didn’t know that until I met you.
Added bonus, I have new friends who actually like me.
We’re in that quality over quantity territory again.
” Instead of crossing curling off the list, he drew a heart around it, along with a bunch of smaller hearts with initials inside each.
R, S, D, M, M, C, and a bigger one with Alan’s full name.
“Robbie, Shaw, Michael, Mikko, Carol. Who’s the D for?”
“Darby, obviously. You don’t even know how often he texts me about Shaw. Those two.” He shook his head. “Anyway, what’s next?”
“School,” I said. “I promised you—”
“You have no idea how close I was to flunking out anyway,” he said softly. “I hated it. I was doing it so Jacob could get on with his life but I loathed every second of it and if I hadn’t quit when I did, I would have wasted so much money so I could feel like absolute shit for failing.”
That list item got almost as dark a line as Kevin had. “That wasn’t a sacrifice, it was a save.”
He turned so he was facing me. “And that’s the end of the list. You see all these things as sacrifices.
I see them as improvements. My life got better when I met you.
I made smarter choices. I tried harder to be kinder to myself.
It isn’t that you made me a better person, but you did give me all the reasons to make myself a better person. ”
“That’s… Really nice of you to say.”
“It’s true.”
“I owe you so much.”
He shook his head. “You don’t, but if you won’t believe me, then what you can do is focus on the dream. We win the Trials. We go to Milano Cortina. We bring back gold.”
“Just like that.”
“We start with a good night’s sleep, and another productive practice tomorrow,” Alan said. “Then we keep doing that, day after day, until the Trials.”
I nodded. “Okay.”