Finding North (21 page)

“You mean freezing my dick off?”

“You wouldn’t freeze. I’d keep it warm for you,” Will says, cupping my cock in his long fingers. The fucker strokes his hand up and down, and I swat it away, even though I’m already hard and raring to go. He laughs and then sobers, and I roll so I can see his face in the moonlight. “I’m serious.”

“I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it.”

“I think about it.”

I roll my eyes. “No shit.”

After a long pause, he says, “I’m going, and I want you to come with me.”

“What, like travel together? How would that look?” A lump forms in my throat, and fear nips at the pit of my stomach.

“Plenty of friends take overseas trips together.”

I scoff. “Do they also fuck in the snow in Siberia?”

“Aspen’s in the US, you uncultured swine.” Will laughs.

“What-the-fuck-ever. You know I’d never get the chance to see it, so who the hell cares where it is?”

“Why wouldn’t you get the chance to see it?”

“Come on, Will. You really think I can leave my dad like this? Who else is gonna remind him to eat? Fuck, most days we have to scrape together enough change to buy a freaking loaf of bread.”

“And yet you can still find enough money to buy booze,” he says, his tone oozing acid.

“You try telling him that he can’t drink with the money he earns.” I sigh. “Exams are finished, and I’ve already put in for a position at the steel mill. I start in January. I think I’ve almost convinced Dad to apply.”

Will sits up, angrily shoving his legs into his jeans. “So what? Because he can’t control how much he drinks, you’re just gonna stay here and babysit him for the rest of his life?”

“He’s an alcoholic.”

“You hate your dad. What has he ever done but beat you and tell you that you’re worthless?”

“He’s still my dad, Will.”

Silence takes up all the space between us. His anger is written all over his face in the tight set of his jaw and the furrow between his brows, and I know it’s not because I won’t go with him, but more because I should be angry. I should hate my dad. Will’s right; he’s never done anything but tell me how worthless I am. He made me this way—this pathetic, emotionally stunted kid who’s afraid of nothing and terrified of everything. I should hate him, but I keep waiting for him to tell me he’s proud, that he loves me, that he’s honoured to call me ‘son’. Seems I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear those words from my father and even though I know I’ll never hear them. I keep waiting.

I reach out my index finger and smooth it over the crease in his brow. “You should go. Get out of this town. Send me lots of postcards. You can fuck whoever you want—a guy in every country.”

“See, that’s the thing. No matter where I go I know I’ll only ever want one guy.”

“Go. Don’t come back,” I say, and I tighten my grip on his hand. “There’s nothing in this shithole town for you.”

“There’s you.”

“I’m not worth coming back for.” I smile.

“You have no idea what you’re worth; you’ve just never been told by anyone that loved you.” He traces a fingertip down my nose and across my lips. “Until now.”

I grab his hand and clutch it to my chest, hoping he can feel my heartbeat, feel everything I have inside, even though I can’t say the words. The lump in my throat swells and a knot forms in my gut. I’m glad the moonlight obscures us a little, because it hurts like fuck to say, “Don’t come back here. This town is nothing but angry, bitter hearts and unhappy people. I belong here. But you, Will Tanner, you may have been born here, but you’ve never fit in, because there isn’t another soul in this place like you. You belong to them out there—to Mexico and Greece and fucking ‘freeze your dick off’ Aspen. Not here. This is where hope comes to die, and you deserve better than that.”

“So do you,” he says thickly, kissing the tip of my nose.

“Nah.” I shake my head and turn onto my back, looking at a sky painted with stars. It fucking kills me to think that one day, he might be under that same sky in another time-zone, fifteen thousand kilometres away, lying with another man. “I’ll die alone, a bitter, angry drunk just like my dad.”

“Then I will, too.”

I laugh humourlessly. “That’s the thing about dying alone—you kinda have to be by yourself.”

“You hate being by yourself,” Will reminds me. “So I’ll keep you company.”

I wrap my arm around his shoulder and pull him into me. I kiss the top of his head because it’s a beautiful dream, but that’s all it will ever be. A dream. No one would understand. Not here. And I can’t leave. So for now I decide to lie here with my best friend, with the man who represents home, and for a short time I dream about visiting all those places he talked about together. I dream of a house on a hill, and long nights where my hands get to trail his body uninterrupted, of growing old and dying side by side.

But that’s the problem with dreams. Reality always slams you back down to earth, and you wonder why you ever hoped for anything more than what you have because it’s all a lie. All the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell each other—they don’t do anyone any good.

I
sit for far too long on my back patio. The house is so quiet without anyone here. Tammy came back and took all her stuff earlier today while I was at work. She left her key on the bench, which surprised me, because I didn’t know she’d had one cut. This is Red Maine; no one ever locks their doors. It makes me realise that I gave her nothing but false hope letting her move in here with me, and I feel kinda shitty about it. I mean, it’s not like I ever told her I loved her, but I guess she read into whatever I didn’t say and in her head she made us out to be something we weren’t. Along with the key, she left me a note:

North,

Rot in hell.

Tammy

She was pissed, and I don’t blame her, but she had no right to speak to Will like she did. It embarrassed me that someone I’d fucked, someone I let live under my roof had spoken about him that way in earshot, and in a lot of ways it frightened me. Is that how people will look at me if I ever come out?

Come out. Jesus, don’t you have to be gay to come out of the closet?
I mean, fuck. I love fucking Will, but I can’t see myself with any other man. In fact, I can’t see myself with anyone else, period. Man or woman. I’m still not sure that makes me gay. It’d be so much fucking easier if I just liked pussy, but no pussy ever made me feel the way Will does.

I get up and pull another beer from the fridge. Twisting the top off, I fling it into the empty sink and realise that I don’t like my house. It’s too big, too quiet, and too lonely. It looks like a fucking showroom. Tam had decorated for me after I’d built it. She’d wanted to talk tables and sofas and all of that shit, and I’d just handed her my credit card and let her loose while I went to the pub. I wasn’t interested in things. I had things. Things are not important. It’s whether a house feels like home that matters. And no place ever felt more like home than Will’s shitty, untidy room above that dingy pub.

I put down the stubby and before I really even know what the hell I’m doing, I’m collecting the keys from the side table and walking out the door. I climb into my truck and fire her up. Now this baby is a thing I can get behind. Toyota Hi Rider Double-Cab—best fifty Gs I ever spent. I pull in behind the pub, where I usually park this late at night so no one will see my truck if they happen to drive past. It’s after one, and like all of the residents in the houses all over town, I should be asleep, but I couldn’t close my eyes now if you paid me to.

He must have heard me drive up because Will meets me at the back door, the same one he disappeared through earlier today after he gave me his little pep talk. He doesn’t say anything, just steps back to let me in, but I grab his face in my hands and say, “I wanna be happy.”

He nods, and I bring my lips down on his and kiss him. We’re in full view of the street. It doesn’t even occur to me that someone might see—all I care about is being with him.

Breaking the kiss, he whispers, “Let’s go make you happy.”

He closes the door with his foot and we wrestle up the hallway, clawing at one another’s clothes until we reach the internal staircase. Will goes first, and I grab his hand as he walks up the stairs. He glances down at me questioningly. There’s a million things I want to say, but I’m too chicken shit.

Will turns and leads me to the door, pushing it opened. I close and lock it the second I’m through. He unbuttons his jeans and kicks them off. His T-shirt follows and he stands naked before me, his cock jutting out proudly from his body. I sink to my knees, buried beneath the weight of my grief, over what I’m not even sure.

“Well, that’s not quite the reaction I’d hoped for,” he mutters. My face crumples. White-hot pain shoots through my chest, and I feel as if I can’t breathe. My throat tightens, tears prick the back of my eyes, and a sob, much more animal than human, escapes me.

“Hey,” Will says, dropping to his knees and enveloping me in his arms. “Shh. It’s okay.”

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I hiss.

“Nothing.”

“This isn’t nothing, Will. This isn’t normal. I don’t want to be me anymore. I don’t know who the fuck I am. I just wanna be normal.”

“Who’s to say this isn’t normal?” he says quietly.

“This whole fucking town, for one.”

“And who are they to you?”

“Don’t.” I jerk in his arms, but he doesn’t let go.

“Don’t what? Make you question what you really want?” he says. Gone is the soothing calm from his tone. “Let it go, North. Do what you want, and fuck everybody else. Those arseholes can eat my dick. What do you want? When you lie your head on a pillow at night, what’s the last thing you think about?”

“You,” I say. It’s the truth, and if I’m being honest with myself, it’s all I’ve ever wanted. “You’re all I think about. Have been for years.”

He lets out a sigh. “Then do something about it. If I’m what you really want, then take me.”

“Just like that, huh?”

“Just like that.” Will nods. I take his chin between my fingers and lean in. He doesn’t come closer. Instead, he waits for me to press my lips to his. I kiss him, but not with my usual vigour. I kiss him slowly, like we have all the time in the world.

He pulls my shirt over my head with the same patient indolence, and I’m grateful that he doesn’t try to rush it. For maybe the first time in my entire life, I need this to be about a connection, about someone seeing me not just as a good lay, but as a worthwhile human being. No, not someone.
Will
. I need Will to see me that way.

I push him back on the hardwood floors, shoving at clothes and whatever else is in the way. He runs his hands over my chest and down to the button on my jeans, popping it open and unfastening the zip before sliding them down over my hips. I remove them the rest of the way and toss them aside, shifting into the space between his legs. Will pulls me down on top of him and holds me. My thundering heart does somersaults, and as much as I want to bury myself inside him, as much as I want to take my feelings and shove them as far into him as my cock will go, I can’t. Instead, I collapse against him. I give him the weight of the secrets that burden me every day, and I allow him to hold me together as I come undone.

B
linking tired eyes at the grey sky outside, I roll over and look at the clock. Shit. “Fuck. Get up,” I say, and smash my pillow over North’s head.