Chapter 13 #2
Ryland avoided his gaze and headed for the selfie station—an archway made of fake pumpkins with the farm’s name on a long rectangle of wood at the top.
“What was the winning word?”
He whirled toward Dabbs. “Huh?”
“In the spelling bee. What was the winning word?”
“Oh, uh . . . In my first year, it was bougainvillea. My second year was . . . becquerel, I think.”
“What the fuck is a becquerel?”
“I forget.” Ryland waved a hand. “Something to do with science. And the winning word the final year I participated was onomatopoeia.”
“Did you win a national championship or something?”
Scoffing, Ryland took a photo of the pumpkin archway to post to his socials later. “Nah. These were just school-led spelling bees.”
“So how come you can spell these difficult words but you’re terrible at Scrabble?”
“Hey!” Laughing, Ryland rounded on him. “That’s a totally different skill set.”
“Yes, that’s obvious. Know what else is a different skill set? Pumpkin carving.”
“Huh?” Ryland grunted with the effort of lifting the biggest pumpkin he’d seen so far.
“I don’t think you should be lifting that with your shoulder,” Dabbs pointed out. “Wait, stop. There’s a cart thing.”
There was, indeed, a cart thing nearby. A dozen of them parked like grocery carts at the supermarket, except these looked like rickety dollies.
Dabbs placed his pumpkins on one and wheeled it over. Together, they managed to mostly roll Ryland’s pumpkin onto it without re-injuring themselves in the process.
“You sure that’s the one you want?” Dabbs asked, standing back with his hands on his hips. “It’s massive. Think of all the guts you’ll have to clean out before you can carve Bellamy’s face.”
Ryland grinned and rubbed his hands together. “I’m willing to put in the time.”
* * *
Several hours later, Ryland had a few regrets.
He was literally elbow-deep in pumpkin guts when Dabbs returned to the kitchen after a phone call with one of his teammates—they called all the time.
From the one-sided conversation Ryland had just overheard, Sandbaker, one of the team’s call-ups, had ostensibly called to check in on Dabbs but had really wanted Dabbs’ advice on a commercial one of his smaller sponsors wanted him to shoot.
Before that, Dabbs had gotten a video call, this time from Sandro Zanetti and Michael Hughes, two Trailblazers veteran players, who really had called to check up on him.
Ryland had fielded his own queries from teammates, and Des had made sure to video him in during show-and-tell. He’d witnessed Singleton showing off his black belt—impressive—and Maymi’s collection of cicada exoskeletons—cool, but also gross.
“You do know you’re going to be at this for hours, right?” Dabbs said.
“It’s fine,” Ryland insisted, using a serving spoon to scoop out pumpkin innards, depositing them into a salad bowl. “My flight home’s in forty-eight hours. That’s lots of time to get this right.”
“More like thirty-six hours,” Dabbs corrected.
He stepped up behind Ryland, the move so unexpected that Ryland dropped the spoon into the salad bowl.
“Put this on,” Dabbs rumbled quietly in his ear. His arms came up around Ryland, as though hugging him from behind. He held an apron in his hands, which he brought up over Ryland’s head before tying it at the back.
Ryland stood frozen, barely even breathing, his heart beating so hard he heard the echo of it in his ears. Dabbs stood close enough for Ryland to feel his breath on the back of his head, and it was . . .
God. He couldn’t think.
“There,” Dabbs said. “Now you won’t get your shirt dirty. It’s a nice one. Brings out your eyes.”
Um . . . what?
Dabbs smoothed down Ryland’s shirt where it had bunched up under the apron’s tie, and if Ryland wasn’t mistaken, he took his sweet-ass time doing it too.
Giddy now, Ryland leaned back an inch, just to see what would happen, and nearly jumped for joy when Dabbs grunted softly.
Dabbs stepped back in the next second and cleared his throat. “How can I help?”
You can throw me down on the nearest surface, Ryland almost said.
Although, given his injured shoulder and the incision in Dabbs’ abdomen, nobody would be throwing anyone anywhere.
Pity.
Biding his time, Ryland removed a second serving spoon from the drawer. “It’ll go faster with two of us.”
Dabbs rounded the counter, shoved aside the barstools, and started scooping. “Do you even know how to draw Bellamy’s face?”
“Sure don’t.”
Dabbs coughed out a laugh. “So what? You’ll carve out a happy face?”
“I was going to give it horns, but now that I’m thinking about it, that seems a bit over the top.”
Eyebrows flying up, Dabbs paused in the act of transferring pumpkin insides to the salad bowl. “You don’t like Bellamy? I know you buried the hatchet for Jason’s sake, but—”
“I do like him,” Ryland interrupted. “I haven’t been pretending to for appearances’ sake, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Why the devil horns then?”
“I don’t know, it’s . . . ” Shifting his stance, Ryland dug at a stubborn hunk of innards with the edge of the spoon.
“When Jason chose him as a partner it was like he was replacing me with Bellamy. And yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds, and no, I didn’t feel that way with any of Jason’s previous partners. It’s just . . . it was Bellamy.”
Ryland had been threatened by him in college and threatened by him again when he’d started dating his brother.
It didn’t make any sense—there was nothing to be threatened by, not in college and not now.
But Ryland liked being first—in competition, in people’s lives.
“Did you ever think that Bellamy was just as threatened by you?”
Ryland blinked at him. “What?”
“Think about it. It couldn’t have been easy for your brother to date Bellamy given the bad blood between you, and Bellamy must’ve felt like at any point he could be cast aside if Jason decided he didn’t want to make waves. It was probably really hard on both of them.”
Ryland, in his selfish annoyance that Jason had picked Bellamy out of everyone on the planet, hadn’t considered that perspective. And he should have. “Did Bellamy say that?”
“Not in as many words,” Dabbs said. “But I do know Jason didn’t want to hurt you, so Bellamy must’ve felt like he was caught in the middle.”
“That . . . must’ve really sucked for him.”
Ryland had been there, caught between two people and unsure how to move forward.
When his parents had first gotten divorced, he’d not only felt forgotten, but his sense of family had been so thoroughly shattered that he hadn’t known who to approach first with .
. . anything. Artwork he’d completed in school, a problem he was having with a classmate, stories from the schoolyard.
In the end, he hadn’t told either of his parents. Instead, Jason had become his best friend and confidant.
Which was why it had hurt so much when he’d started dating Bellamy.
Looking at it from Jason’s side of things, though . . . God, it must’ve been nearly impossible for him. Did he risk their relationship by dating Bellamy, or did he keep the status quo and miss out on the possible love of a lifetime?
And Ryland had actually told Jason that Bellamy was only using Jason to get to him.
Jesus fuck, he’d been such an asshole.
He stabbed at the stubborn pumpkin guts with a wildness the pumpkin didn’t deserve, and when they finally came loose, he scooped them onto his spoon . . .
Only for his arm to jerk reflexively when one of the dogs brushed against his leg and startled him.
The guts went flying . . .
Right into Dabbs’ eye.
“Ahhhh!”
The sound Dabbs made was nearly identical to the one he’d made during their middle-of-the-night pee break in Maplewood on the Fourth of July weekend, and Ryland couldn’t help but laugh even as he apologized.
“Oh shit, sorry. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“Ow, fuck.” Eyes squeezed closed, Dabbs patted the counter, perhaps looking for a towel as orange pumpkin guts dripped down his cheek.
Struggling to control his laughter, Ryland took him by the elbow and guided him around to his side of the counter and to the sink, where—because this was apparently the comedy of errors—Dabbs tripped over the kitchen mat and landed hip-first against the counter.
“Fuck, sorry.” Ryland sniggered. “So sorry.”
“I thought you were supposed to be my nursemaid,” Dabbs grumbled, though there was amusement under the pissy words. “You weren’t supposed to take the title of naughty nursemaid so literally.”
“Sorry. Really. It’s just—ahhhh!” Ryland dissolved into giggles. “It’s the same sound you made when you thought I was going to murder you in the woods.”
Dabbs cracked his good eye open and grabbed the washcloth off the sink, wiping pumpkin off his cheek. “So glad I could entertain you.”
“I really do feel bad.”
“I can tell.”
Ryland swallowed the next gurgle of laughter.
“I can be amused and contrite at the same time. Both things can be true,” he said, using Dabbs’ line from when they’d been at The Striped Maple in Maplewood.
“Here, give me that.” He took the cloth from Dabbs and gently cleaned around his eye, then grasped his wrist and walked him to the bathroom. “Flush it out with cool water.”
Dabbs did so, bent over the sink, slitting the affected eye open enough to check for pumpkin under his upper and lower lids. His eye was viciously red.
Ryland’s amusement fled. “Jesus, Kyle. Does it hurt?”
“Stings a little. The water helped.” Dabbs squeezed his eyes closed and blinked them open again. Blink, blink. No wincing. “It’s not bad. It’ll be fine in the next couple of hours.”
“Let me see.” Ryland turned him around, leaned him back against the counter so their heights were more evenly matched, and stepped into the V of his spread legs. Gently, he tugged Dabbs’ lower lid down, double-checking that it wasn’t still pumpkined.
Dabbs’ hands landed at his waist, traveled down to his hips and around to his lower back before he tugged Ryland into his chest.
Ryland gasped at the contact, his gaze flying to Dabbs’, one reddened from being pumpkined, the other darkening from gray to the color of a summer storm.
“Aren’t you going to kiss it better?” Dabbs murmured.
Heart threatening to leap out of his chest, Ryland framed his face. “Since you ask so nicely.” He brought his lips up to Dabbs’ eye, kissing one, the other, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth.
Dabbs let out a muffled grunt that sent pleasure zinging into Ryland’s chest. Dabbs’ hands drifted down, fingertips dipping into the waistband of Ryland’s jeans. Ryland trailed his own hands over Dabbs’ strong shoulders, kissing his way across the bridge of his nose to the other cheekbone.
Until Dabbs made a noise of annoyance and caught Ryland’s lips with his own.
Christ. Yes.
Dabbs kissed like he played hockey—with confidence and skill. He tasted like nothing Ryland could put his finger on—something uniquely Dabbs—and he felt like comfort and home and raw pleasure all mixed into one.
Ryland wanted to devour him. Taste every inch of him. Suckle his skin and draw out moans of pleasure.
Dabbs’ tongue brushed his, and Ryland groaned deep in his chest. Jesus H. Christ, the feel of Dabbs’ beard on his jaw was a potent turn-on he hadn’t expected.
Why hadn’t they been doing this for months?
Pulling back, he thwacked Dabbs in the chest.
“What was that for?” Dabbs asked, laughing.
“Why didn’t you let me kiss you when we were in Maplewood? We could’ve been doing this—” He waved between them. “—this whole time.”
“Ah.” Dabbs nuzzled his neck. “But the anticipation makes it all the sweeter, doesn’t it?”
“No,” Ryland protested weakly, his senses buzzing at the scratch of Dabbs’ beard. “It doesn’t.”
Dabbs nipped at his jaw. “Liar.”
And he kissed him again and kept kissing him until Ryland’s head threatened to float into the clouds.