“I knew you would. We all will.” Nia scrunched up her face, and little furrow lines formed between her brows. “But let her tell you, before you mention anything, all right?
It should be her good news to share, but I knew she never would without you knowing how to nudge her toward the conversation.”
“Right. Of course.” Sirus shook his head and tried not to laugh. He and his siblings
always
knew when their mother spilled important, sometimes private news to another member of the family. They’d all gotten used to getting “just because” calls out of the blue. “You never told me anything. Understood.”
His mother flashed him a winning smile. “Thank you, sweetheart. Oh, this isn’t on my list,” she leaned in and squeezed his hand, “but I must tell you I just met the most strikingly beautiful young woman at a law firm where I was doing some interpreting work. It was for Kline and Sheuster. Do you remember years ago when I worked for them almost nonstop for two years while one of their clients transacted a deal for a European hotel chain? No, of course you don’t, you were too young to remember. Anyway…”
His mother went on, but Sirus sat up straight, his proverbial “Meddling Mother”
antennae twitching at full alert.
Not on her list, my ass
. She
just so happened
to meet a beautiful young woman recently? Now, finally, Sirus understood the true reason for his mother’s little detour up to his cabin. A woman.
Goddamnit.
“…I tell you,” his mother raved on, “this girl is as smart and kind as she is attractive, but at the same time she works side-by-side with the big boys and is nobody’s pushover.
We got to talking about our families, and when I mentioned I had a talented, handsome, artist son—”
“Truck driver, Mom.” Sirus gritted his teeth.
Double goddamnit
. “I drive a truck.
You have to stop telling people you have a son who is an artist. It gives the impression I earn my living in that trade, when you know I don’t.”
“You probably could if you became aggressive with it. You just have to want it badly enough to pursue it. Now, where was I? Oh yes, this amazing woman. Her name is Marisa, and I would just love for you to meet her when you come home for Diana’s concert.”
Stop. Stop. Stop
. Sirus slammed the table with his open palm and shot to his feet, kicking the chair out and careening it into the wall. “I cannot believe you, Mom.” He planted both hands on the table and zeroed his focus right in on her face. “If I met her …
what? What do you think would happen? That I would fall madly in love with her and your gay son would turn straight, and then all would be right in your world?”
Nia did not rear back in the face of Sirus’s explosion of emotion, or even blink.
“First, don’t speak to me in that tone,” she said. “I am your mother, and you will show me respect. Second, Marisa is a beautiful, educated, sweet woman. Plus, she has an interest in the arts. You will be completely enchanted by her, I know it.”
Curling his hands into fists, Sirus looked away, unable to tolerate his mother’s relentless barrage to alter his sexuality. His gaze alighted on his canisters of cereal, all of them now lined up against the backsplash according to size, like little soldiers. They hadn’t been that way yesterday.
Grey
. Suddenly, pictures of the man who had spent last night in Sirus’s bed flooded him, filling him up to the brim.
Sirus turned his attention back to his mother, but it was as if he could feel another person in the kitchen, reinforcing his voice. “Enough,” he said, his voice firm. “You need to stop this. Right now.”
“Stop what?”
“Don’t you dare—” Sirus bit his lip and held himself back from shouting. He straightened his chair and sat back down, his heart heavier than he ever remembered it feeling. It hurt. His mother’s behavior
hurt
him. Physically.
He spread his hands on the table and looked up at her, trapping her gaze. “You know what I’m talking about,” he said calmly. “Are you really going to keep doing this?
Forever?”
“Doing what?” she asked. A newborn baby would have looked guiltier than his mother did.
Breathe, just breathe
. “Okay, if this is how you want to play it, we can.” Sirus continued to look at her pointedly. “Are you going to keep trying to fix me up with women, hoping one day one of them will turn me straight? Are you going to continue to refuse to respond to anything I say about a man, and in fact pretend like I never even told you I was gay? I can only assume you’re hoping that if you don’t acknowledge what I say, then you can also tell yourself my homosexuality doesn’t really exist. I’m just your late bloomer straight son who has never had a girlfriend. Right? Is that what you tell your friends when they ask?”
“Watch your smart remarks, Sirus Allen Wilder.” Nia slipped into the voice used on Sirus and his brothers and sister when they used to misbehave out in public as children.
“No matter how old you get, I will always be your mother. Remember your tone.”
Kicking back in his chair, Sirus threw his hands into the air and rolled his eyes. “Oh, that’s just perfect, coming from you, after the performance you gave on the porch just a bit ago.” White heat filled Sirus’s body, completely washing away the cold. “Do you really expect to sit there with a straight face and lecture me about respect after the way you treated Grey today? Let’s just ignore for a moment that you were terribly rude to him, not to mention incredibly disrespectful to me in the process. Let’s instead focus on how you would have smacked me upside the head if I’d behaved the way you did with Grey. Only, because you refuse to acknowledge I’m even gay, and hope one day I’ll move past this ‘phase’, you think it’s okay to say or behave however you want, and that it doesn’t matter.” His throat tightened on the consequences of the words he spoke, but Sirus could not keep them contained a second longer. “Guess what, Mom? It’s not okay.
You cannot keep doing this.”
“Sweetheart,” reason filled his mother’s voice, “you are my son, and I want you to be happy.”
Agh!
Sirus wanted to pull out his hair. “That is not an answer.”
“I just…” His mother glanced at her watch and then to her sheet of notes. “I don’t have a lot of time before I have to leave, and I have a dozen more things I want to share with you before I go. You’re really going to want to hear about Lorraine and Bobby.
They—”
Sirus snatched the list of gossip out from under his mother’s hand and flipped it over.
“Understand me right now, Mom.” He looked his mother in the eyes, and his heart cracked, but he blinked and managed to keep the catch out of his voice. “You can go on talking about whatever you want, and I will listen because I love my family and want to hear about the latest things in their lives. But one day, and it might come sooner than you think,”
God, please just open your arms to me right now
, “I am going to meet someone who is as important to me as Dad is to you, and I will create a family with him. When that day happens, you are either going to have to accept that I’m gay, or we will drift apart and become estranged. I will not get family updates from you; I will get them from Dad. I won’t come to Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter, and when I go into DC, I’ll see everyone individually and stay at a hotel, rather than with you and Dad.
“I don’t want to cut you out of my life, and it’s killing me to just consider it, but you have had better than ten years to get used to having a gay son. Either do it, or don’t.
That’s up to you. But we won’t continue as we have been. Today really drove home for me that things have to change. Soon.” Sirus looked at his mother, his heart racing a million miles a second with the magnitude of what he’d just done.
No taking it back now
.
Didn’t matter. It was long past due. He tried to smile, but with the tension coursing through him it didn’t quite form. “I just needed you to know that.”
Nia didn’t say anything for the longest time. She blinked rapidly, and her hands trembled against the table. “Ahh, all right, where was I?” She flipped over her list, and punched a hole right in Sirus’s gut. “Oh, yes, Lorraine and Bobby…”
His hand on his stomach, trying to control the bleeding, Sirus reeled, but listened to his mother share her news.
“You can’t do anything with our business without my signature, so you know you wouldn’t be able to make that bet.” Grey paced the length of his cabin, cell phone at his ear, unable to sit still or concentrate on work. He kept seeing Sirus, and he couldn’t let go of a nagging feeling that he should be with the man right now. He glanced at his watch.
Five o’clock. Still two fucking hours until Sirus was supposed to come over.
Damn it
.
This day had gone on forever. “Anyway, I just called to say hi and see if everything is going all right. Say hi to Kelsie for me; I’ll talk to you later.”
A bark of laughter echoed in Grey’s ear. “Oh, now you’re being evasive,” John said, still chuckling. “You’re more than fucking Sirus. You like him. You’re sleeping with a guy you actually like, who is your equal in just about every way, I might add. Will wonders never cease?”
Grey bit down the denial that would have made him a liar. “How in the hell are you figuring all that?” he said instead.
Jesus
. Grey wiped his brow.
When the hell did it get so
hot in here?
“All I said was ‘his plumbing is fixed, and Sirus moved back to his cabin.’”
“I’ve known you forever, man,” John answered, his voice sobering. “Do you think I can’t read you, even over the phone? Let me answer by asking you this: how did you know I was in love with Kelsie?”
Rolling his eyes, Grey grinned at the memory of John’s attempts to hide his need to see and spend time with his best friend’s sister. “Easy. Everything gave you away.”
“Right.” John’s voice gentled. “Asked and answered.”
Grey’s pacing ground to a halt.
Oh Christ
.
I don’t love Sirus
.
I don’t
.
I can’t
.
I just
…
want
him with every fiber of my being
.
Care about him too
. Right now, a twist in Grey’s gut that he’d been ignoring all day had him grabbing his jacket and heading out the door.
“Grey?” John’s voice startled him back to reality. He’d already forgotten about everyone but Sirus. “Are you still there?”
“Sorry.” Grey tore down the steps and tried to put his coat on at the same time.
“Listen, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Drive safe,” John replied. “And tell Sirus I said hi. See you later.”
Already in the car, Grey threw the phone on the passenger’s seat and gunned the engine to life.
The shed doors were thrown wide open, and, as expected, Grey found Sirus working inside. Once again, he had his back turned, but this time he was still fully clothed. Sirus had a huge chunk of stone on the table before him, and he held a stone carving chisel in his hand, but he did not move. Instead, he stared to the side, clearly a thousand miles away.
Grey rapped his knuckles against the doorframe. “Sirus?”
Sirus jumped and spun, his eyes focusing as he found Grey. “Oh, hi.” The chisel fell out of his hand, clinking to the table. “What time is it?” Sirus pushed his sleeve up, didn’t have a watch on, and then glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s early. Wasn’t I supposed to meet you at seven?”
His chest constricting at the disorder he saw before him, Grey slowly moved inside the studio, toward Sirus. “I thought you might need a little company.” He made a few more tentative steps closer to his goal. “I wasn’t sure … you know … after your mother’s visit.”
Sirus jerked, as if slapped, and Grey was on him in a shot.
He wrapped Sirus up tight in his arms, and planted his chin on the man’s shoulder. “I am so sorry.” Grey didn’t need more than that one small reaction to know something rough had gone down after he left. He hugged Sirus to him even tighter, and pressed his lips high on Sirus’s cheek. “I’m sorry it didn’t go well.”
Shaking, Sirus mumbled into Grey’s hair, “I don’t want to talk about it.” His lips brushed across Grey’s hair, over his temple and down his cheek, ending with a desperate kiss to Grey’s mouth. “I don’t want to think about it.” He tilted Grey’s head back and made love to his lips. “I don’t want to know about it; not right now.” He bit, and his voice caught, tearing right through Grey. “I can’t.”
“Okay. Shh, it’s okay.” Grey stroked the tense muscles bunching Sirus’s back. “I didn’t come here for that anyway.” He started dragging Sirus toward the door. “Not unless you want to talk.”
“I don’t.” Sirus eyes were dry, but he could not hide the hurt and vulnerability living within. “Anything but that.”
Grey had ached for something from this man, from practically the moment they set eyes on each other. In his dreams and while awake; all the time. His body still hungered for it today.
“Take me to bed, Sirus.” Grey’s voice scratched like hell, but he finally said it out loud. “I want you to fuck me.”
Oh Christ, I did it
. Grey buzzed inside and he felt a little unsteady.
I really asked
Sirus to fuck me
.
Sirus stumbled to a halt and grabbed Grey by the neck, forcing his face up. The little-boy-lost look disappeared from Sirus’s eyes, and wide, clear shock took its place. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.” Grey slid his fingers up Sirus’s forearm and covered the hand Sirus had curled around his nape. He squeezed and moved closer until their bodies touched.