Prologue #3
“Nah, I got shit to do”—he didn’t, not at all, but he wasn’t going to tell him that—“I better get going.”
Trevor smiled. “Guess I’ll see you around, man,” he said and tapped him on the shoulder.
Lane tipped his head back against the headrest as Trevor walked up to the house.
Despite its size, it looked homey. Flowers in pots, but with a handful of weeds in the beds which made it feel real.
One of those little garden flags with a doctor joke on it.
The mailbox was freshly painted, shiny and black.
How warm and friendly, but also how lived in the house looked was what had convinced Lane initially that the guy who lived here wasn’t a serial killer.
Okay, so the doctor wasn’t a serial killer.
Nothing was that bad. Maybe his mom and the doctor would get married and he and Trevor would become well .
. . not brothers. He was never going to call him that, but still, he had to believe it would be okay.
He’d get over it. Get out of here. Go to school.
Nothing would feel this fucking awful again, not with some time and distance and maybe a dozen boys who were all cuter than Trevor Thompson.
Five years ago
It was still really fucking weird to sit at the breakfast table and look down and see only shiny polished wood. Not the ugly Formica tabletop that had sat in his and his mom’s tiny kitchen in the double-wide trailer for as long as he could remember.
It was a concrete reminder—another one—that while Lane had been away in California for his freshman year, everything had changed.
Right before he’d left for football orientation, his mom and the doctor had tied the knot in a small civil ceremony, attended only by Lane and Trevor.
Lane had seen it coming, but it had still stung. He’d tried so fucking hard to be happy for them, happy for her, but it felt like everyone was forging ahead on this new merged life, with no thought to how Lane felt about it.
Maybe that was fair, because Lane hadn’t been here for it.
Wouldn’t be, if he had anything to say about it. He’d only been home a few days, and he was already ready to leave. Run the fuck away.
“Hey, sweetie,” Delia said, pushing her bangs out of her eyes. “You want some eggs? Toast?”
Lane raised his eyes. Seeing her in this kitchen was weird too. Expensive and spacious, with its granite countertops and pristine cabinets. Shiny white tile everywhere. It was what she deserved; he’d never believed any different. But it still stupidly hurt.
Logically it didn’t make sense. Why did it matter how it happened? Just that it happened at all? But Lane couldn’t shake the deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. Of failure.
“Oh, Trev, you’re up too,” Delia chirped and of course Trevor came into the kitchen and gave her a big hug and a smile, like she was actually his mother too, now. “I’ll make you both some breakfast, how about that?”
Trevor smiled at her, big and warm, and then turned to Lane.
And then there was that.
Lane had been so sure that after a great freshman year—full of all the football and the no-strings sex he’d wanted—he wouldn’t feel this way about Trevor still.
He was just a guy he’d thought was hot while he was lifting weights. There was no reason for him to bury himself so deeply underneath Lane’s skin.
But he’d come home three days ago, taken one look at Trevor sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter, shirtless and laughing, and had to swallow down a whole litany of swear words, each one worse than the last.
It was so fucking unfair. Like Trevor was a splinter he couldn’t seem to extract.
“Hey,” Trevor said, approaching the table like he belonged.
And frankly, he fucking did. Lane was the interloper here.
They’d spent the last eight months playing happy family while Lane was in California, trying to forget it was happening at all.
He settled down in the seat next to Lane. Nudged Lane’s knee with his own. “How’s it going, man?”
How was it going? Lane wanted to fling himself out a window, and he couldn’t tell a goddamn soul.
“Fine,” Lane said shortly.
“Trevor’s got official workouts starting in a few weeks, but he’s free before then. I know he’s going to the gym every day. Maybe you could tag along.”
Tag along, like Lane was the younger one, the guy who didn’t quite fit in. And maybe he didn’t, anymore.
“Oh yeah,” Trevor said, lighting up in a way that made Lane a little nauseated. “I’m sure all the guys would love to see you. You’re a fucking legend, bro.”
Fucking bro.
He certainly didn’t feel like he fit into this house.
Sure, his mom had made sure he had his own room, next to Trevor’s of course, and she’d scrupulously made sure it was full of his own stuff and nothing else. Not like a lot of his friends’ parents, who had already started to convert their rooms into dens or exercise rooms or storage.
There was none of that here.
Even the doctor—no, he’d told him a million times to call him Tom and Lane had to start doing it even in his head or he’d never think of him any other way—had gone out of his way to try to bond with Lane. Make sure he knew he was welcome here.
Everyone was trying so goddamn hard, and all Lane felt like doing was snarling at them that it wasn’t going to work. That it could never work.
He didn’t belong here.
He certainly didn’t belong in a high school gym, but what was he going to do about it? Turn Trevor and his mom down? When they were looking at him with the same hopeful expression in their eyes?
“Sure, yeah, that sounds great,” Lane said, attempting to dredge up an enthusiasm it was difficult to really feel.
“Awesome,” Trevor said, beaming, like this was the greatest thing he’d ever promised. “Can’t wait to introduce you to everyone. Well, the new guys anyway. Sure you know a lot of the team, still. We all just . . . your freshman season, tearing it up like that? It was so fucking cool.”
“Mom said you guys watched the games every week.” She and Tom had come out for two games, too, but Lane wasn’t disappointed—had been relieved, actually—that Trevor had stayed at home, since he was playing in games of his own.
“We wouldn’t have missed them,” Trevor said.
There was that note of hero worship in his voice again, and if Lane could actually look at him, he was sure he’d see it in Trevor’s eyes, too.
It fed the best and worst parts of him. The part that wondered, deep down, if Tom had been wrong about his son after all, when he’d called him an ally, and that hoped the next time he looked over at Trevor, he’d see something more than just that general brotherly affection.
Brotherly affection that Lane had certainly never did anything to earn. That he didn’t even feel himself.
“Great,” Lane said flatly.
Delia came over with a pan full of eggs and started dividing them between their two plates. “Toast’ll be up in a minute. You know, Lane watched your games too, Trev.”
Lane choked on his first bite.
“What, really? God, that’s so freaking cool.” Trevor’s smile could have lit a small city block. Lane looked away. “I didn’t realize.”
She had sent the links to the YouTube streams. Lane had tried to resist their siren call.
He’d not needed any more reasons to think about Trevor, not when he was trying so hard to not think about him.
But he hadn’t been able to resist, and of course, he’d accidentally mentioned something in one of them on a phone call with his mom two months into the season, giving away once and for all that she wasn’t sending him those links in vain.
“I gotta have something to teach you in the offseason,” Lane said, eggs tasting like ash in his mouth.
If he was one of his friends, he’d tell them they were being overdramatic and an asshole, and he was, but somehow even the painfully hard truth didn’t change anything about how he felt.
He could think it sucked, and yet still feel the same way.
“I’m sure you’ve got so much, dude,” Trevor said eagerly. “I can’t wait.”
He was like a golden retriever puppy. Adorable and impatient to jump all over the furniture.
Except Trevor wasn’t into the furniture, he was inadvertently traipsing all over Lane’s good intentions.
The promises he’d made to himself when he’d realized that his living situation this summer had fallen through and he had no choice but to come home and spend the two months living in the bedroom next to Trevor’s.
“That’s so thoughtful of you, Lane,” Delia said, her smile warm as she came up with the toast, and after setting it on his plate, tucked him against her, arm around his head as she pulled him in.
For a second, Lane closed his eyes and nothing had changed. She felt the same, smelled the same. Whichever kitchen she cooked in, she was still his mom. He still loved her.
Then Trevor spoke up, “He’s just like that,” and the dream punctured.
Lane’s eyes opened. “Eat up,” he barked. “We got work to do.”
“Ah, don’t work him too hard,” his mom said, chuckling under her breath. “But who am I kidding? You’re going to do it to each other.”
“Probably,” Lane admitted. At least if he was exhausted, maybe he wouldn’t lie awake like he had the last two nights and try to picture what every single noise from Trevor’s room meant.
“Well, don’t kill each other, okay?” Delia shot him a smile, clearly delighted they were going to go work out together. She probably thought they were going to be friends. That these two months would mean they’d get close and be like real brothers.
He’d always hated disappointing her, but it was inevitable that he would in this, and that fucking sucked.
“Sure,” Trevor said easily, grinning back at her. “Like I could even do that to this big guy.” He tapped Lane on the bicep, an easy friendly touch.
It wasn’t Trevor’s fault that even the barest graze of skin on skin made something in the base of his stomach heat and then curdle.
He forced out a smile. “You could try.”
Trevor laughed, like pure sunshine in a bottle. “I sure will, buddy.”