Chapter 12 #3
“How to not be small,” he said then, voice tilting soft in understanding, and—fuck. It cut too close, something that left me briefly dizzy as if he’d rearranged the ground beneath my feet.
“You know how some people politely avoid the tender parts?” I asked. “Because you just keep going straight for them.”
“That a bad thing?” he asked, quiet.
Yes. No.
I shook my head. “It’s not. It’s really not. Just catches me by surprise sometimes.”
“Sorry about that.” He sounded genuine even though his tone lightened by a fraction. “I know you like predictable.”
I like you. Too much.
“I don’t mind,” I said, touching his arm. “Not with this. Turns out being seen is sexy, too.”
“I guess it is.” A smile crept into his voice, and I thought of his bedroom wall, of how he hid it somewhere most people wouldn’t dare to tread, right along with his sexuality and the fact that he liked to relax with piano music.
“Anyway,” I continued after a moment, looking down at the city glow caught in the counter’s polished stone.
“If we wanted to do more, we’d need structure.
Money, yes, but mainly to buy us time. Naomi could shift real hours into it, instead of modeling and figuring out an alternate career since she quit the agency.
She’d be amazing at the operations side. Smooth, smart, a little ruthless.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I can definitely see that. What about you?”
I took a sip of water. “What about me?”
“Would you cut back at the shop?”
I’d never even let my mind stray that far. I hesitated. “Maybe a little. I like the shop, don’t get me wrong. And Simone gave me a real chance when not many people would have. But… dream big, right?”
“I think it could be possible.” He said it simply, leaning against the kitchen island in the dark, still naked and sipping water. And I…
I lost my breath.
For no good reason—or maybe because he seemed to believe in something I’d built out of a vague idea and a lot of old hurt. Because he seemed to believe in me.
I swallowed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” His voice stayed even. “The team foundation has an event in two weeks.”
It took a moment before it made sense. Then I inhaled. “What kind of event?”
“Donor thing,” he said. “Sponsors, community partners, board people. Servers passing around trays of finger food that’s mostly tiny pieces of toast with stuff on it.” One corner of his mouth hitched up. “I’m going to need an outfit for it.”
I let out a breath. “Okay. Sure.”
His eyes held mine. “Also, I think Suit Up Wednesdays would make sense there. Because it fits, not as a favor or whatever.”
A chance to turn it from something we barely kept afloat into something real and durable. More kids, maybe. A setup that didn’t need to be packed away every time we were done.
My chest ached with it.
“Matt,” I started, and he cut in, voice quiet.
“I’m not saying it’s guaranteed, okay? But if you and Naomi can put together something professional enough to show people what you do, what it costs, what it could become…” He lifted one shoulder. “I think I can get you into the room.”
A door—that’s what it felt like. A door straight into his world that didn’t depend on keeping the lights off.
“We’d need…” I stopped to think it through. “We’d need numbers. A clearer ask. Something that doesn’t look like we pulled it together at two in the morning.”
He nodded. “Two weeks.”
“Not a lot of time.”
“No.” He let it hang between us. “But it’s real.”
Yeah. Yes.
I set my glass down carefully. “Why are you doing this for us?”
“Because it does fit.” His voice softened. “And because it matters.”
It made sense. It did—but something hot and stupid still flickered through me, the impulse to turn the words over and blow them up into a promise, the outline of a future.
Bad idea. Fucking terrible idea.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to Naomi, see what we can realistically put together.”
“Good.” He pulled me in with an arm around my back, skin on skin. “Tomorrow, though. Sleep now, okay? You’re going to need it.”
I managed a huff of amusement. “Is that your usual kind of pep talk?”
“No,” he said. “Not before games, anyway. There’s a lot more grunting and bullshit involved. Tape ripping. Music up too loud, guys talking themselves into a war.”
Macho bullshit.
“Sounds like a riot,” I said, wry, and he shrugged.
“It’s just part of the game.”
He didn’t sound bothered, and maybe that right there was my cue.
He lived in that world, had grown up in locker rooms where people like me didn’t fit, and people like him only did if they bent a little.
If they compartmentalized, just like how he packed his suitcase, shirts and jeans and socks all tucked into neat little packing cubes.
It didn’t mean he’d want to keep doing that. At least not forever. But it was his normal, and the fact that he’d opened a door into that world for me didn’t mean he was about to question what he’d been living since his childhood.
I squashed the thought. Tried to, anyway—but hope dragged fear behind it like a rattling tin can on a string.
I kissed him just to soothe the noise inside my head.