30. A Hostage Situation
A HOSTAGE SITUATION
PARKER
The first thing I hear when I wake up is my phone vibrating against the nightstand.
For one blissful second, I forget what happened last night.
Then Anders shifts beside me with a sleepy little sound, his bare legs tangled with mine beneath the sheets, and it all comes crashing back.
My stomach drops so hard it almost feels good.
I reach for the phone before it wakes him fully and squint at the screen.
Luca. Of fucking course.
I drag a hand down my face before answering. “You’re calling pretty early.” Beside me, Anders curls closer automatically, still half asleep. His forehead brushes against my ribs.
“I just heard some very interesting news,” Luca says. There’s already a grin in his voice. Instigating little shit.
I lean back against the headboard and glance down at Anders, petting him because I can. “Should I be scared?”
“ESPN says you have a big mouth.”
A laugh escapes before I can stop it. “That sounds like fake news.”
“Apparently you told the media I’m retiring because I’m old.”
“You are old.”
“I’m barely forty.”
“Exactly.”
Anders stirs properly this time. His eyes blink open slowly.
Sleepy. Warm. Completely unguarded. Loose blond curls are messily sticking up in every direction.
There’s a crease on his cheek from my pillow.
The sight of him hits me harder than it should.
Last night comes back all at once and I can still hear the way he’d said it was okay to be two things at once.
Like he’d somehow managed to reach inside my chest and put words to something I’d spent years refusing to look at directly.
He catches me staring. Immediately, he smiles. His hand drifts across my stomach before disappearing beneath my shirt. “You’re clingy in the mornings,” I murmur.
“You like it.”
I do. Way too fucking much.
He pushes himself upright and climbs directly into my lap like he belongs there. Maybe he does.
“You’re disgusting,” Luca says through the speaker.
I snort. “What now?”
“I can hear you smiling, you fucking heathen. You act like you’re not pushing thirty-nine.”
Anders buries his face against my neck, laughing quietly. My arm wraps around his waist.
“Maybe I’m just happy you finally stuck to reproducing,” I tell Luca. “The world could always use more Luca de Sousas. Hockey will survive without you.”
“Funny. Speaking of that, the baby woke us up at six this morning blasting Bluey.”
“She’s five. Aren’t they self-sufficient at that age?”
He laughs sarcastically. “Remember when Anders was five? Let him hold my phone and he called the fucking police and asked them to arrest me for taking away his iPad?”
“Yeah,” I snort, looking down at Anders, who rolls his eyes. “Such an Anders thing to do.”
Anders presses a kiss beneath my jaw. Then another. My grip tightens instinctively. “Hang up,” he murmurs against my skin.
I huff out a laugh. “One minute.” I mouth it more than say it.
Just one minute.
His expression changes immediately. It’s subtle. Most people wouldn’t notice, but I do. Anders has never been loud when he’s hurt. Not like this.
Luca keeps talking, something about another interview, but I’m barely listening now because Anders has gone still in my lap.
“You still there?” Luca asks.
“Yeah.”
Anders reaches over calmly and presses the mute button on my phone. Then he looks at me. “Seriously?” His voice is quiet. “You’re choosing a phone call right now?”
I blink. The word lands harder than it should.
Choosing. Because that’s always been the problem, isn’t it?
Anders needs to be chosen.
I reach up and cup his jaw. His eyes soften despite himself.
I kiss him once. Just slow and gentle, but long enough to feel him melt for a second. “One minute,” I whisper against his mouth. “Promise, baby.”
His gaze carefully searches mine, suspiciously hopeful in a way that hurts to look at. Finally he nods. “Okay.” He presses a kiss to my cheek before climbing off the bed.
The room feels colder the second he leaves it, his words coming out a little too soft.
I unmute the call. “Sorry,” I mutter.
“Jesus Christ,” Luca laughs. “Are you with someone?”
My answer comes automatically. “No, I’m not with someone, you fucking goon.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, tasting bitter and wrong. Across the room, Anders pauses near the doorway. I watch him hear it. Watch him go still. Watch something shutter behind his eyes. Fuck.
“Anyway,” Luca continues, completely oblivious. “I’m just saying ESPN made you sound evil.”
“Mhm.” My eyes never leave Anders. He gives me one long unreadable look, then disappears into the hallway. Panic hits so fast my pulse stumbles. “Hey,” I cut in immediately. “I gotta go.”
“That important, huh?”
“Yeah.” I swing my legs out of bed. “Real important.”
Luca laughs. “Alright. Talk later, you bastard.”
The second the call ends, I throw my phone onto the mattress.
“Anders?”
No answer. Something cold settles in my stomach. I stand, slipping into my boxers, and head for the hallway. “Anderson?”
Still nothing. The silence shouldn’t bother me this much, but after last night, after everything he told me about Frankenstein and monsters and abandonment, I suddenly understand exactly why it does. Because for the first time in my life, the thought of him walking away doesn’t make me feel guilty.
It terrifies me.
I run straight down the stairs. “Baby,” I call out. “Babe.”
I don’t breathe until I finally see him standing in the kitchen.
He’s here. He didn’t leave me. He’s making coffee like he didn’t just scare ten years off my life.
Relief crashes through me so hard I almost laugh.
He’s standing at the counter in one of my shirts and a pair of sleep shorts, hair still messy from bed.
Two mugs sit beside the coffee pot. Leaving me wasn’t even on his mind. My chest aches.
I walk straight over to him and wrap my arms around his waist from behind before I can stop myself. “There you are,” I murmur into his hair.
He leans back against me and chuckles. “You act like I disappeared.”
“You did disappear,” I say honestly. That quiets him. I press a kiss to the side of his head. “Don’t do that to me.”
His shoulders soften slightly beneath my hands. “You answered his call,” Anders says after a moment. He isn’t accusing me of anything as much as he’s just pointing it out.
I tighten my arms around him. “I know.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I know that too.”
He finally turns around in my hold, coffee mug warming his hands. His eyes search my face carefully like he’s trying to figure out whether I mean any of this now that daylight exists.
“I just…” He exhales softly. “I liked pretending it was only us for a little while.”
God. Something inside me folds in on itself. I cup the side of his face carefully. “It is us,” I tell him. “That phone call doesn’t change anything.”
His eyes flicker. “You say that now.”
“I’m saying it because I mean it, sweetheart.”
There’s a long pause, but then Anders looks down at his coffee before smiling faintly. “We’re kinda insane,” he murmurs.
My gaze drifts over his face. The sleepy blush on his cheeks. The bruises I left on his neck after sucking on it for maybe an hour straight. The fact that he’s standing in my kitchen wearing my clothes like he’s always belonged in them. My chest tightens almost painfully.
“This didn’t start last week,” I say quietly. “You know that.”
His eyes lift back to mine. Anders goes very still when I say it, like he’s waited years to hear me admit it out loud. “No,” he agrees softly. “It didn’t.”
I brush my thumb across his cheek. The vulnerability in his expression is almost unbearable now that I’m actually allowed to touch it. Allowed to keep it. Allowed to call him mine.
“You’re still mad at me,” I murmur.
“A little.”
“You should be. I don’t deserve you yet.”
His mouth slowly pulls into a smirk, his arms tightening around me. “This is a hostage situation.”
I chuckle softly. “Nuh-uh.”
“Believe it.” Anders completely ambushes me by genuinely climbing me like a tree. He wraps his arms around my neck and kicks his legs around my waist.
“You suck at holding people hostage,” I laugh, slapping his ass and digging my nails into his flesh.
“You’re never getting rid of me,” he murmurs, brushing his lips across my jaw. And somehow, those are the best words that have ever come out of his mouth.
“I’ve been stuck with you for twenty years,” I whisper, kissing him on his temple. “I could never imagine getting rid of you. You’re my sticky little leaf.”