Chapter 25
MATTY
There's a couple of cabins on the property that Miya rented out for the family, and as we settle into ours at the end of the day, there's still an unresolved tension hanging around.
Elias never responded to my declaration—his mother had come to steal him away—and I can't help but feel like there's a rejection waiting for me.
I know how hard it can be to let go of your ghosts; mine are still hanging over my shoulder whispering how they were right all along, and I keep batting them away, but if Elias turns me down, they might latch on again.
The cabins are decently sized with a little kitchen nook right off the entrance, a couch near the center with an electric fireplace, a bathroom to the left, and on the right a ladder to the loft with a queen sized bed.
We haven’t talked about sleeping arrangements, but when Cal starts giving his tired scream at only ten o’clock, Elias ushers him up the latter and pulls the little curtains closed behind them.
After a couple of minutes of fussing and fighting, the noise from the loft settles down, and another twenty minutes or so later, Elias comes out looking like he lost a fight with an elephant.
“I think the wedding may have been a little too much for him.”
Elias is still in his dress shirt and pants, but the shirt is no longer tucked in and a couple of buttons have popped open. His blond and teal hair is mused all over the place, and he closes his eyes on a rumbled groan as I drag my fingers through it.
I stripped down the moment that I was alone, so when Elias reaches for me he’s met with bare skin. Hands stroke along my back while he presses his face into my neck.
“I’m so tired,” he mumbles. “Let’s go to bed.”
Unsure what he’s asking for, I bite my lip and wrap my arms around him in return. We haven’t slept together in over a week, and I don’t just mean sex—we haven’t shared a bed either.
“Why didn’t you stay with Cal?” Because I had planned on sleeping on the couch, and while it’s wide and fluffy, it’s surely not made for two grown men.
His lips ghost my neck, followed by a sigh. “I missed you.”
“Lee.”
“I’m stupid.” He refuses to lift his head, burrowing in deeper, so the slew of words that follow are completely lost on me.
Before I can correct him, he straightens where I can see his face, but his shoulders are slumped. “I just wanted to protect you, but all I did was make us both miserable.”
“That’s what I love about you, though.”
“That I’m an idiot.”
“No,” I growl, and the pout on his face morphs into one of surprise. “That you care enough to do the hard things. You love so incredibly strongly, and maybe it’s a bit overwhelming at times, but—look at me.”
I clasp my hands onto the sides of his face and bring his forehead down to mine.
“I can handle it. I’ve been the one who held their love back until their heart started to crack.
Who held on so hard to the broken shards that it left me in tatters.
You, Elias, you brought me back to life.
Love me as hard as you want. I can give it right back. ”
Elias’ hands come up to my half-undone braid and twists it around his fingers. The slightest tug and I’d fold for him, because I’m so deeply, helplessly in love with him.
“Can you tell me about him?” he asks so softly it nearly doesn’t register. “You don’t have to, but I’d like to get to know that part of you. The one who fought. Who wants to fight for me.”
I nod, pressing forward so our lips touch, but neither of us takes it deeper.
“Why don’t we get you out of these clothes, and then we can sit and talk.”
Our mouths come together again, a slow tangle of tongues as I slip my fingers through Elias’ open shirt and flick open the last of the buttons, my hands exploring his warm skin as the fabric slips down his shoulders.
They glide down the jut of his ribs, the ridges of his abs, slipping beneath the band of his dress pants, working them open and over the curve of his ass. Then, we’re both in the same state of undress: left in only our boxers and socks from leaving our shoes at the front door.
Elias breaks our kiss and guides me toward the couch, but instead of shoving me down, he gently nudges me to sit on one cushion while he takes up the other, draping the throw blanket from the back of the couch across our laps.
“I think we need to do a little more talking and a little less touching.”
It’s my turn to pout, but I can’t help but smile at how his toes brush my thigh under the blanket.
We take our time settling so our legs are tangled together, Elias stroking his fingers over my knee while I do the same to his ankle.
It feels nice to be connected like this.
Just touching one another without an ulterior motive.
“So. Riley.” I blow out a huff of air and stare down at the blanket.
“I met Riley when I was nineteen. I’d been living on the streets for a couple of months, and what little money I managed to gather went to food and hormones.
Before you say it, yes, housing should have been a priority, but I was finally—finally—starting to feel good in my body, and I was afraid if that got taken away, I’d lose my will to work for anything at all. ”
The tight, pitying smile he gives me makes my stomach queasy.
“Riley and I met when I was dancing on the street corner for extra change. He was new to the area, had just gotten traded to the Hornets—that’s Chattanooga’s ice hockey team—Well, he took one look at me and demanded—he did not ask or suggest—that I have lunch with him.
When I refused, he stomped away and came back with the messiest barbecue sandwich I had ever eaten. This went on for nearly a week.
One day, it was raining, and I was hiding out under an overhang, and instead of dropping off the food, he scooped me into his truck and took me back to his apartment.
After that … we just sort of fell in together.
I took care of things while he went to practice, to pay my way for the room he let me take over, and one day … we kissed.”
Riley had been my first everything. My first kiss. First sexual partner. First love.
“I was pre-transition at the time, so we never got very physical because I couldn’t handle it.
Tennessee had shit for gender affirming care, not that I could afford it anyway.
Riley, he … he had money saved from when he played in the majors, and one day he sent me to his family home in Colorado, and we went through the process together.
The therapists, the doctors, the top surgery, recovery, all of it. He was there every step of the way.
That’s the moment I fell in love with him. In pain, with drains on my chest, he never looked at me any different. Pre-transition. Post. Riley saw me exactly as I am from the beginning.”
Something flashes in Elias’ eyes, there and gone in the darkness, and guilt licks at the nerves in my gut. Despite how it sounds, Riley and I were no fairytale.
The weight of my sigh drags my shoulders down. “Riley had his own secrets, and him being gay was one of them. We were together, but nobody could know it. And I was okay with that to start. Riley was my world. What did I care if anyone else knew?
But little cracks started to form. Insecurities that I hid away so he didn’t feel pressured. It was a slow build, a suffocating sense of being something dirty and wrong. I was drowning in my own whirlpool of depression—until I was actually drowning.”
I bring a finger up to tap on the shell of my hearing aid. “I fell through a patch of ice. Hit my head really hard and passed out. I can’t remember how long I stopped breathing, but it was long enough to scare every doctor I saw for quite a while.
The head trauma fucked up my left ear, and during testing they found my right wasn’t one hundred percent either.
Some of it gradually came back, and there was a period of time where I hated the hearing aids so much that I kind of adjusted to lip reading and inferring, but it gives me a headache if I do it for too long. ”
I almost wish it were a grander tale, but no, I did something careless, and I paid the price.
“Riley fought so hard for me to get back to where I could love dance again. I’m incredibly grateful for that, but in every other regard, he wasn’t there.
He pulled away. I realized that hiding like that wasn’t enough for me.
So, I packed my shit, made plans here in Boston …
and I asked Riley to pack up his life and come with me. ”
Elias whistles, and I kick my foot at his hip, earning me a low chuckle. “Bold move. That’s a big ask.”
I sigh and rest my head on the back cushion of the couch. “It was, and I knew it wasn’t fair, but part of me wanted to force his hand. If he wouldn’t go with me, maybe he’d ask me to stay.”
Fingers brush my thigh, soothing and gentle. “He didn’t.”
Not a question, because Elias knows I wouldn’t be here if he had.
It’s hard not to feel the remnants of heartbreak in moments like these, where the memories play over in my head like a film reel burned into my retinas.
It felt like I’d been begging him to love me the way I loved him, like somewhere along the way we lost each other, and I wanted nothing more than to be found again.
“You found me,” I say, and Elias’ brows dip. “I lost part of myself with Riley. He was the first man I ever loved. But falling in love with you made me realize it wasn’t missing. I didn’t leave it with him. It was buried, hidden, because I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
Carefully, I untangle myself from him, and he reads me like an open book. His thighs part just as I fit myself on my knees between them. His hands come to my waist and mine loosely around his neck.
“Afraid that I would fall in love again and forget who I am. Afraid that I’d focus so much on the other person that I stop thinking about what I want and what I need.”