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Carter shakes his head. “It doesn’t. Other people may not get it, but you know I do. I’ve never exactly worn my gayness on my sleeve either. I didn’t immediately start carrying the rainbow flag around when I ran to Boston.”
“You had family support, though, didn’t you?”
“Absolutely. Even my proud military father supported me. He didn’t understand in those early years, but he never tried to change me, and he never turned his back on me, even when I’m sure he was concerned about his own career. And Mom and Brady, well, you know them, so they were everything to me. None of that kept me from becoming a drunk.”
I reach over and squeeze his thigh.
Carter looks down at my hand and places his across mine. For the first time ever, I don’t flinch. I don’t pull away. I don’t instinctively worry about people seeing. I don’t care if they do or what they’d think. And I can’t recall ever feeling like that in my life before. Instead of flinching. Instead of pulling away, I turn my hand under his and thread my fingers through.
He smiles and squeezes.
“Do you have a tux?” I ask.
“No,” he says with a chuckle, like why on earth would he ever need a tux?
“Get one.”
He chuckles at me again. “Today, tomorrow, next week?”
“Two weeks.”
“Is this some fantasy of yours, to see me in a tux, out of tux, to take it off of me?”
“Carter,” I squeeze his hand tighter and lean over to whisper in his ear. “You are every fucking fantasy and wet dream I’ve ever had.”
I smile at the hard swallow that elicits and the shift in his seat required because of the erection I know is forming. And while I may not mind people seeing us holding hands, reaching for the bulge in his pants with people in the same area is a little beyond my comfort level, but damn if I don’t want to. I love turning this man on.
“Has this morning’s offer escalated in some way?”
“No,” I laugh. “You don’t need it for a wedding.” Yet, pops into my head, but thankfully stays contained in my mouth. “The charity gala. I want you to be my date.”
Chapter twenty-seven
The room is so dark that if I hadn’t seen his car parked in the garage, I wouldn’t know he was home.
I head for the bedroom, thinking he must be in the shower, when I spot him. Sitting on the couch. Staring. Staring out the windows. I run my fingers through my hair.
“Davey?”
“Hey,” he says. But he doesn’t turn to look at me. His tone is distant, cold. I exhale and look around the dark room as I head toward the couch, my heart racing.
“Why didn’t they come after me?” he asks.
I furrow my brow, not sure what he means. “Who?”
“Keith and all your…buddies…you asked me if I ever wondered…” he sighs. “I didn’t….wonder…I hoped like hell…I thought…”
“I told them not to,” I say.
“Why?”
“Why do you fucking think? Because I cared about you…and even if I didn’t, nobody deserves…that. I told them there is no way an athlete like you could possibly be gay.”
“And they believed you.”
I shrug. “I guess so…I also think they were freaked out by Luke’s suicide, even though they tried to brush it off by saying a lot of unimaginably hateful things.”
“Such as?”
