Chapter 19 #2
I looked at Rook. He shrugged. The leather was still warm from the man who’d just left it. I didn’t push back, and the Lab reorganized itself across my feet.
“Dad doesn’t give anyone that chair,” Rook’s sister said, dropping onto the couch with a mug of something. “I sat in it once when I was fourteen, and he stood in the doorway until I moved.”
“Tide was coming in,” his father said. He lowered himself onto the couch beside his wife with the dignity of a man surrendering a throne.
“What does he watch out there?” Rook’s sister asked. “He won’t tell me anything. I ask what he does on days off, and he says nothing. Locked safe.”
“Documentaries,” I said. “Things with maps in them. He’s been reading the same Civil War book since August.”
“The maps.” She put her face in her hands. “Oh, the maps.”
“Three remotes. He has a system. I’m not allowed to touch the system.”
“You’ve just described our entire childhood.”
I was enjoying myself. She handed me lines, and I handed them back. Rook sat in a hard chair he’d picked on purpose and watched me turn into someone his sister liked.
“And the baking show,” I said, because I couldn’t leave it alone. “Don’t let him fool you. He knows their names. He has a guy every season, and he gets upset when his guy goes home—“
“We watched that because of you,” Rook said.
We both turned and looked at him. He was right. Nobody made it a moment. That was the Maine of it.
“He cried once at a wedding cake,” Rook’s mother said, and his sister gasped.
Rook said, “I didn’t,” and we moved on.
***
Rook’s mother set out five mugs at breakfast. I almost missed it. I was telling his sister about Medve.
On the drive up, he’d told me his mother might do this. Sometime on the second day, she’ll put out an extra mug. That’s how you’ll know.
The flight home was nothing special. I slept on his shoulder, which I’d never been allowed to do, and woke up over Lake Michigan with a crease in my cheek. He said I’d snored, and I insisted that was slander. He said he had it on video.
Rook drove. The truck was where we’d left it. Chicago in early December was gray, flat, and familiar. I had every billboard memorized. Cross’s jaw was still enormous on the one by the Edens. I waved at it out of habit.
“That’s everybody,” I said. “Your people. My people. Mark. Heath and Kieran.”
“Everybody but the world.”
“The world’s the big one.”
“Yeah.” He changed lanes. “The world’s the one with a kid holding up a phone for a pic.”
The garage door went up on the first tap. Rook pulled in, and the door came down behind us.
“Bed,” I said as we stepped inside.
“Bed,” he agreed, and we climbed the stairs.
He got me up the stairs faster than a man his age had any right to, one hand gripping the back of my collar like he was hauling me off for a penalty.
“Careful,” I said. “If you break me, who scores on the dads?”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
He made me. He got me through the door and pushed me into the wall beside it, tugging my shirt up over my head.
I was laughing while he did it. We both laughed.
We were two grown men who’d sat at kitchen tables with our mothers and walked out the far side of it still breathing. The relief had to go somewhere.
“You’re in a mood,” I said, into his mouth.
“You noticed.” He bit my lower lip as he tugged my jeans open. He shoved his hand inside and wrapped his fingers around my cock.
I swallowed whatever I’d been about to say with a gasp.
I got him out of his shirt, backed him onto the bed, and dragged my mouth down his chest. I went down on him before he could decide to be in charge.
“Luki—“ His throat closed on the next words. “Up. Get up here.”
“Make me,” I grunted. He swore and hauled me back up onto the bed.
I reached for the nightstand and pulled out the lube. “You’re still slow, old man. Over or under, pick a lane.”
“Over.” He got a hand on my hip and flipped me as if I were weightless. I landed with my face in the pillow, grinning until his slick fingers pushed inside. He opened me up with one finger and then two.
I pushed back against his hand. “Now, Rook. I’m not going to—now.”
He lined his cock up and pushed in slow, one long press all the way, and I howled into the pillow. He placed his hand between my shoulders and held me down.
His hips moved forward and back, quickly picking up speed. It was hard and fast. He fucked me into the mattress, and I asked for more, loudly, in two languages.
“Stroke me,” I managed, and he got a hand under me, stroking in time with his thrusts. His chest dropped to my back.
“That’s it,” he said against my ear, low and wrecked. “Come on, Luki, shoot for me.” That was all it took. I came hard over his fist, clenching my ass around him so tightly he choked on a breath.
He lasted two more thrusts. Then he buried himself deep and came. His hips jerked through it, and a low, broken sound punched out of him against my skin while he held himself as far inside me as he could get.
He dropped onto the mattress beside me. After a long moment, he said, “You’re going to be useless at morning skate tomorrow.”
“Worth it,” I said.
He pulled out slowly, cleaned us both up, and then came back, pulling me onto his chest with a hand flat on my back. I lay there and listened to his heartbeat slow.
“I want this,” I said, pressing against his chest. “All of it. Even the boring version. I want the regular Tuesday where we’re standing in the Jewel-Osco, and I wrap an arm around your waist at the meat counter. That’s what I’ve wanted for years, Rook. I want to be unremarkable with you.”
His breathing turned deep and even. For a moment, I thought he’d gone under. Then he said, “Tomorrow.”
“Yes,” I said.
“We walk in and we start it for real.”