9. Back Road #2
The cab was cooling steadily. Caleb could see his breath now, and frost had formed at the corners of the window. Daniel was in Toronto, married and happy, while Connor sat on a back road outside Veil Lake. Some of it was love. Some of it was loss.
Neither life cancelled the other out. That was the thing Caleb kept circling.
Daniel had not been a mistake because Connor had come home.
Connor had not failed because Daniel had built a life somewhere else.
There were just two roads, both real, one taken and one not, and Connor had been living for years with the weight of having chosen.
“Do you regret it?” Caleb asked. “Coming back.”
Connor took his time. “No,” he said finally.
“My family needed me and I came. I’d do it again.
” He fixed his eyes on the frozen creek.
“But I think I told myself a story about it. That coming home meant that part of me stayed in Ottawa. The chapter was done, and I’d chosen this life, and this life didn’t have room for any of it.
” He stopped. “And then you showed up on my lake.”
“Your lake,” Caleb said.
Connor held his gaze. “You’re not a chapter,” he said quietly. “I need you to understand that. The silence wasn’t about you or what you are to me. You’re not something I’m going to pick up and set down.”
“I know,” Caleb said. “I knew that. I was scared anyway.”
“There’s a difference between knowing and feeling.”
“I’m learning that.”
Connor nodded. “I’m going to mess up again,” he said. “Not like this. But my family is my family and there’ll be more months like this one. I can’t promise…”
“I’m not asking for everything,” Caleb said. “I’m asking for honesty. When something happens, tell me. One sentence. Even a bad one.”
“One sentence with punctuation.”
“Obviously.”
Connor laughed, real and unguarded, filling the cab of the truck and making him look younger than Caleb had ever seen him. Outside, the birch trees were white in the last of the light and the creek lay frozen and still.
“Frank called me,” Caleb said when the laughing had settled.
Connor’s expression shifted. Not surprised. “What did he say?”
“That the tryout is real. That he thinks I could make the roster if I keep developing.” He opened his hands, staring at them. “That it would mean Thunder Bay in September.”
The truck was quiet. Outside, the light was going quickly.
“Connor.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Take your time.”
He took it. Caleb saw the small tightening around Connor’s eyes before he looked back toward the creek. Whatever passed through him then, he did not say it. When he finally answered, his voice was steady.
“I think you should do it,” Connor said finally. “I think you’re good enough. I think Frank knows what he’s looking at and doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. And I think if you don’t, ten years from now you’ll be sitting somewhere wondering.”
“That’s the practical answer.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the other one?”
A long pause. The wind in the spruce. The ticking of the cooling engine.
“The other answer,” Connor said, “is that you showed up on this lake a few weeks ago and I wasn’t expecting you, and I’m not ready for September.” The words came quietly, stripped of any attempt to soften them. “But that’s mine to manage. It’s not a reason for you not to go.”
“It’s a reason,” Caleb said. “It’s just not the only one.”
Connor watched him steadily, taking it in.
“What are the other ones?” Connor asked.
His father’s house rose in Caleb’s mind, the life mapped out before he had a chance to want anything for himself. Alongside it came the weeks since: the lake, the cabin, the bar, Maya’s kitchen at midnight, the back road right now. Choosing felt different from being pointed.
“I don’t know yet,” he said honestly. Thunder Bay surfaced in him: the arena, the ice, the possibility of it.
He tried to tell whether it felt like freedom or like another future handed to him too early.
He couldn’t tell yet. “I’ve never made a decision that was entirely mine before. I’m learning what that feels like.”
“How does it feel?”
“Terrifying,” Caleb said. “Good. Both.”
Connor nodded slowly. “September’s a long way off,” he said.
“Six months.”
“Long way off.”
“Okay,” Caleb said. “Long way off.”
The dark had come down fully. The road disappeared past the reach of the parking lights, the forest black on both sides, the creek a pale grey shape beyond the windshield. Neither reached for the ignition.
Connor’s hand moved across the bench seat between them.
Not dramatic. Just moving, the way his hands moved on the ice when he was reading the play: with quiet intention.
It found Caleb’s hand in the dark and stopped.
His palm was warm against the cold building in the cab, rough with the calluses Caleb had noticed from the beginning.
Caleb turned his hand over.
Their fingers caught, rough and warm in the cooling cab.
For half a second that was all it was. Then Caleb unbuckled, slid across the bench seat, caught his knee on the gear shift, and pulled Connor toward the passenger side.
Connor came without hesitation. Caleb climbed into his lap and kissed him hard, one hand already working Connor’s jeans open.
Connor made a rough sound into his mouth, surprised, then answered, hands sliding under Caleb’s jacket and shirt, palms hot against bare skin.
The truck was too small. Caleb’s shoulder hit the window, the glass already fogging from their breath.
He freed Connor’s cock and stroked him, feeling Connor’s hips lift into his grip.
“Jesus, Caleb,” Connor breathed against his mouth, voice already fraying.
Caleb opened his own jeans and rocked against him, their cocks sliding together in the urgent press of their hips.
Connor’s hand pushed between them and wrapped around both of them.
Caleb braced one hand on the seat back, the other on Connor’s shoulder, and moved with him.
The confined space forced them closer, every shift of weight making the seat creak beneath them.
The windows fogged faster. Outside, the dark forest and frozen creek disappeared behind white haze. Inside, there was heat, breath, and the metallic tick of the cooling engine. Connor gripped Caleb’s ass, pulling him down harder. Caleb pressed his mouth to Connor’s throat and felt him shudder.
Connor’s rhythm faltered, his head falling back against the seat, breath coming in harsh pants. Caleb covered Connor’s hand with his own and stroked with him. A low groan escaped Connor as his thighs tensed and his grip tightened.
Connor came hard between them, undone against the passenger door of his own truck.
The sight pushed Caleb over. He buried his face in Connor’s neck, hips jerking hard as release tore through him, messy and fast between them.
They stayed like that, breathing hard, the truck cab thick with the smell of sex and cooling metal.
Connor’s arm came around his back, holding him close as the seat creaked under their weight.
The windows were completely fogged now, the outside world reduced to a pale blur.
Cold crept back in at the edges, but inside it was still warm.
Connor let out a soft, disbelieving laugh against Caleb’s hair. “February,” he said, voice rough and amused. “Back road. Jesus.”
Caleb smiled into his neck. He didn’t move yet. Neither did Connor. Their breath was still loud in the quiet, the engine ticking as it cooled around them.
The text came on a Thursday afternoon.
fixing trap under mom’s sink. prob a few hours.
Caleb read it twice. He was at the bar where he was supposed to be doing inventory while actually sitting on a crate eating an apple while Maya did the actual inventory.
That sounds awful.
not great. drain’s been slow since nov
Then, after another longer pause:
you could come hang when ur done
That was all. Caleb ate the rest of his apple and read the message again. Connor had invited him over. To his mom’s place.
After his shift, he told Maya he was going for a walk. She gave him the expression she used when she knew he wasn’t telling her the whole story and wanted him to know she knew. He grinned and waved as he left through the front door.
It was a twenty-minute walk in the cold, which was fine. The cold was useful. It occupied his mind with anything other than what Connor could do with those hands.
The door was answered by Jessie, who took him in with the same assessment she’d had the first time. “He’s under the sink,” she said, pointing to the kitchen with a tilt of her head.
“Okay,” Caleb said.
She stepped back to let him in, which he was beginning to understand was her version of welcome. “You know anything about P-traps?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“Neither does Connor,” she said, “but he watched three YouTube videos so now he’s an expert.” She disappeared into the kitchen.
The house felt the same as last time. Connor’s boots were by the door beside a toolbox that had been there long enough to have its own spot. Metal protested from the kitchen.
Connor was on his back on the kitchen floor, his upper half disappearing into the cabinet under the sink.
He’d taken his flannel off and was in a grey T-shirt that had ridden up on one side, showing a strip of olive skin above the waistband of his jeans.
A tool belt sat beside him on the floor. His boots were unlaced.
Caleb stood in the kitchen doorway and took a moment to drink in the view.
“Hand me the channel locks,” Connor said, to the inside of the cabinet.
Caleb surveyed the tool belt. There were several things that could be channel locks. He picked the most plausible candidate and held it toward Connor’s hand.
Connor’s hand found it without looking. “Thanks.”
“Sure.”