TWENTY-THREE ARI
TWENTY-THREE
ARI
The light penetrated through the window, burning the back of my eyelids and forcing me to turn away to the darker side.
With a yawn I switched sides, the events of the previous night flashing through my head like polaroids that hadn’t quite developed all the way, and still, they made me smile. I was fully expecting to find an empty bed beside me, like yesterday morning.
But he was there, eyes open, head propped up by his hand and watching me.
“You’re still here,” I muttered under my sleepy breath.
I wouldn’t have blamed him if he walked out again. If he’d run. Lots of men were far more comfortable doing things under the guise of darkness than they were sticking it out in the light of day.
“I am,” he said and smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It was a sad smile. A thoughtful smile.
“What’s up? What’s wrong?” I asked.
I rubbed my eyes and sat up in bed while he stayed in position and looked up at me like a puppy dog that had been denied attention for far too long.
“I should go,” he said. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Why do you think that?” I asked, trying to settle beside him, but my heart was pounding in my chest.
“Because I’m not the guy for you. You deserve better. I ruin everything I touch.” He looked down at the empty space between us.
I shook my head and reached out to cup his face and force him to look back at me. “You don’t. Why would you say that?”
He shrugged and blinked as if to avoid my gaze. “I ruined my last relationship. We were together for so long, but I was too scared to come out that I lost him.”
I stroked his cheekbone with my thumb and sighed. It was so endearing for such a mature man to battle with such emotions, such feelings. It probably wasn’t fun dealing with them, but it made him all the more sweet in my eyes.
“You shouldn’t have to come out for anyone,” I said.
He grimaced. “Really? Not even for the one you love?”
I shrugged. “Not if it would make you uncomfortable.”
“He had a point, though. We were together for a decade. He bought a house for us. He wanted to have forever with me, and I couldn’t do it. You see? I ruin everything.”
“Stop saying that,” I said and dragged myself a little lower so I was on the same eye level with him.
I kept my hand on his face though, an anchor for him and for me.
“It’s the truth, though. Look at me. I ruined my relationship, my house, my island. I’m a monster.”
“Wyatt! Stop. Don’t say that. You’re not a monster. You’re only human, and you’re doing the best you can.”
He didn’t say anything, just stared into my eyes for a few moments. Moments that felt like whole eternities.
“I should go,” he said and turned away, pulling away from me.
“Why?”
“Because—”
“Don’t you dare say you’ll ruin me again, because I’m not afraid of smacking your face. Your beautiful, handsome face.”
Wyatt smirked for a moment but then turned his back to me. “You say that now, but you’ll see. You’ll feel the same way as my ex. You’ll want more from me than I can give, and you’ll resent me for it—”
I rushed out of bed by his side and stood up in front of him and grabbed either side of his head so he could look at me. “Don’t tell me what I’ll feel or what I’ll want. I’m my own person.”
“Yeah, he said that too—”
“I’m not your ex, Wyatt! I’m my own person. I have my own wants and needs. I have my own personality.”
He sighed and his shoulders slumped. “So what? You want to start something with me in the closet? You were married to another man, but you’ll go back in the closet for me?”
I frowned. “Yes, why wouldn’t I? What we do, who we are, doesn’t need to be public knowledge.”
Wyatt rolled his eyes. “It might sound doable now, but I can tell you you won’t feel that way forever.”
I pushed him back a little and climbed on his lap, my balls pressed against his soft cock. I went a little hard at the naked contact between us, but I focused on the man rather than his manhood.
“If you don’t want to come out, you don’t have to come out.
I want you for you, not the ideal version of you.
You’re putting the cart before the horse here.
We don’t even know if we’d work together.
There’s still so much I don’t know about you and you don’t know about me.
How about we take it one step at a time and be with each other before we worry about the rest of the world?
Unless all you wanted was a hookup, which is also fine, you know. ”
“No!” he rushed to say and wrapped a hand around my waist. “I’m too old for hookups. But you’re…you’re right. We should get to know each other better.”
“Mmhmm,” I said and put my arms around him, reaching for his lips with mine.
Wyatt placed his other hand around my waist also and held me tightly in place, and I felt his cock twitch against my balls.
“So about me…” I started. “I hate it when the hunks I sleep with call themselves old.”
He chuckled. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Thirty-eight.”
“And I’m fifty-eight. I’m twenty years older than you. Therefore, I am old.”
I shrugged and kissed him again. “Well, you don’t kiss like an old man.” Another kiss. “And you definitely don’t blow like an old man, therefore, you’re not.”
He shook his head with an eyeroll and a smile, but he kissed me back, and soon we were both tasting each other again, like we did last night. Like we’d done all night long.
It didn’t take long for both of us to get hard as a rock, and I wasted no opportunity. I wrapped my hand around both of us and beat us off while sitting on his lap, and he dragged his hands down to my ass cheeks and used his fingers to play with my hole.
I deepened our kiss and the intensity of my strokes and felt his breathing grow rugged and hard before he shot his load all over my hand and stomach. Using his cum as my own personal lube I kept stroking and let go all over his hairy abs and pecs.
Wyatt smiled and pulled me down, on top of him, our cum combining between us and like hot glue keeping us pinned against each other.
“Good morning,” I said and kissed him again, not that I ever stopped.
“Good morning, Doctor,” he replied and used both his hands to cup my face and kissed my nose before letting go.
“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” I said.
“It wasn’t?” He raised an eyebrow, and I burst out laughing.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant,” he answered.
He held me for a long time. So long that our breathing synchronized and, hell, after a while, even our heartbeat.
“Your ex did a number on you, huh?” I said later, when we rolled on our sides and gazed into each other’s eyes.
“It wasn’t his fault. I thought it was. For a long time, I hated him. But then he came and reconciled with me, and I realized I never hated him. I hated myself for letting Dare get away.”
I blinked.
Had he just revealed another secret part of him to me?
“Dare?”
He nodded, pressing his lips together as if unsure of my reaction.
“Your ex was Dare? Wow. I had no idea.”
Then again, I thought back to when I first met the Navy SEAL turned blueberry farmer and his cryptic conversations with Warren made so much sense.
“Does anyone else know?” I asked.
He shrugged. “About Dare and me? No, I don’t think so. About me? Well, I guess after last night, Warren might know.”
I grimaced, unsure if I should tell him.
“What?” he asked.
“I think…I think he already did,” I said.
Maybe if he saw that he was accepted already, he wouldn’t feel so beaten down by his big secret.
“Why do you think that?”
He blinked, and his eyes went a little wider.
Shoot. Maybe this was a bad idea, but it was too late to back down now. So I told him about the conversation Warren had had with Dare back in October when I first met him.
“Shit. He told him?”
“I don’t know the specifics, so I can’t answer that for you.”
Wyatt sighed and lay on his back looking at the ceiling.
“I bet you think I’m pathetic. Such an old man and worrying about what people will say.”
I shook my head and ran my hand down to his chest, resting it in the middle, over his beating heart.
“You’re not pathetic. Everyone has their own journey. You think it was easy for me to come out?”
Wyatt pierced me with his glare, and I laughed.
“Yeah, maybe my journey has been shorter, but dude, I grew up in a deeply conservative country. Being gay was never discussed. I thought there was something wrong with me. I might have accepted it when I was younger, but up until I graduated high school and went off abroad to study, I thought this was going to be my dirty little secret for life.”
“I’m sorry,” he said and rubbed my cheek again.
I leaned into his touch and looked right at him. “See? I understand you, Wyatt. I get you. We’re not so different.”
He smiled another sad smile again before he said, “And yet we are. You’re a brave, beautiful man, and I’m—”
“A wonderful beautiful man too. That’s what you are.”
He chuckled as if I’d said a joke, and I squeezed his cheek as punishment.
“When did you realize you were gay?” I asked, then took pause and double-checked. “You are gay, right? Not bi or anything else?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I don’t know. I guess I always knew. I was always more interested in the male figure than the female. But I buried it deep for a long time.”
“I get that. Were your parents religious?”
He shook his head. “They weren’t fanatics, I know that much.
But like you, it wasn’t spoken about. No one announced they were attracted to the same sex.
Everyone did things discreetly or risked being, at best, ridiculed, at worst, imprisoned.
If anyone talked about gay people, it was to say how depraved or sinful they were for their ‘choices.’”
“See? And then you think there’s something wrong with you for not coming out. That shit is traumatic. It’s fucking hard to hear, let alone deal with.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I still remember my first week at Camp Hell. There was this SCO, Clarke, who, out of nowhere, decided to tell us queers aren’t men and most definitely not SEAL men, and I stopped breathing, clenched my hole so hard until he was done for fear of giving myself away.”
“I’m so sorry. That’s fucking horrible. And to think we still haven’t made much progress.”
“I don’t know. My squadron seems to be full of gay men. I just didn’t know it until they came here.”
“Maybe there’s a queer aura on the island that turns everyone gay.” I chuckled.
He laughed too. “Maybe.”
I breathed in and ran my finger in circles around his hairy chest. This was what I’d wanted since I met him. To be with him, to know him and his story, to bond with him. To forget myself with him.
Beep. Beep.
I stared at my phone, and I didn’t even need to check it to know what that was.
Evan. His text message.
The ghost of my past that I’d allowed to haunt me for far too long.
Why was I doing that to myself? Why was I letting my past haunt me morning after morning when I knew better?
It wasn’t healthy. None of this was a healthy way to grieve.
I didn’t need to be a therapist to know.
I was an intelligent, educated scientist and yet I’d allowed these messages to keep me anchored in a past without a future.
“That’s him,” Wyatt said.
I nodded even though it wasn’t a question.
“Do you miss him?”
“Every day,” I sighed.
“Tell me about him,” he asked, and I looked up at him and for a moment, it felt like I was staring at my actual future, and my heart…it felt at peace.
Even if only for a second.