Page 66 of We Were Never Lovers
“I know,” he said though, unconvincingly. “But,” he took a deep breath, “how much you wanna bet they don’t wanna take the risk and end up getting sued down the line ‘cos my brain gets fucked up worse in a game. I got history, remember.”
Jack expected the line to be mean—it would’ve been three years ago, it would’ve been from the Sean who woke up in that hospital bed after the accident—but now it sounded like a simple reminder. As if Jack could ever forget. He’d been the one who’dhit him. Jack hadn’t even been aware of Sean ending up in hospital after the game because of it. But it was a stupid hit, one that Jack could’ve avoided if he wasn’t trying to show off, to be even rougher than usual as if to make up for what’d happened the night before. He’d tried to pull back at the last second when a shove from behind sealed the contact; but that was a poor excuse since he’d been in it until that moment and a push wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t been. He hadn’t even known the damage he’d done until Sean had told him after they started fucking—he’d thought Sean had gone home early with his family. He’d seen him recovering on the bench, seen the ambulance drivers leave him to watch the fourth quarter from the sidelines and assumed it was a precaution. It’d been after, Sean had explained, when he vomited in the locker room, when everything went black, that he’d gone to hospital. And Jack had assumed he’d skipped the TAC Cup because some boys did, especially the country boys, and some of the Aboriginal kids routinely skipped it because they didn’t want to travel that far from home, got recruited through the Colts competitions in their home states instead. Eventually Sean had believed Jack didn’t know how bad it was, hadn’t known, and he saw his mortification at the texts he’d sent right after—Jack still couldn’t think about them without cringing.
“Let’s not worry until we have to,” Jack said now, dragging his knees up, the sheet like a tent over his legs, shielding him from Sean’s blame, which he was entitled to, but which Jack still struggled to face. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Sean snorted. “You got all that on a poster somewhere?”
“No,” Jack replied, eyes on his knees.
“I gotta take her,” Sean said and slid out of bed. Jack watched him, his bare ass and naked back, his black hair skirting his nape since he hadn’t cut it after the accident. As Sean strolled out of the room to his own room—the room Jack had hastily shiftedhis clothes and stuff into before bringing Sean back from the hospital, the room that’d always been a guest room—he ached for a morning after like before.
He couldn’t tell Sean the reason he wasn’t telling him what they were was because it’d break his fucking heart if Sean didn’t believe him, but it wasn’t just that. How did he tell him how they became more than lovers, became boyfriends, when the way it’d happened was like a threat? The memory of Sean telling him, “Ya better fuckin’ not be,” when Jack casually said he wasn’t fucking anyone else had made his heart soar, especially with how pissed Sean had sounded, but would Sean see it that way now? As a confirmation of them being together? Jack wasn’t sure.
“C’mon, girl, wanna go for a run?” Sean said from the doorway.
Lola sprang off the bed like she’d been electrocuted—one moment she was dozing, but at the sound of Sean’s voice and that word, she was launching herself into the air and onto the floor, whining, jumping up at him, her nails skittering around the floorboards as she raced past him to the door and then back again.
Sean laughed, his beautiful features lighting up in a way they never did for Jack anymore. Jack threw himself back on the bed and told himself not to be jealous of their fucking dog. He closed his eyes and listened for Sean’s footsteps but didn’t hear anything.
“You good?” Sean eventually asked. He was still in the doorway.
“Yeah?” Jack tilted his head down to focus on him.
“I meant,” Sean jerked his chin at Jack’s body. “After last night…”
“Oh, yeah, I mean,” Jack shrugged. “Used to it.”
Sean frowned, schooled that, shook his head and went to leave.
“You used a plug on me once,” Jack blurted and went instantly red.
Sean froze, turned back to him. “What?”
Jack sucked in a breath. Well, he was in it now, and Sean wanted to know stuff, so. “Yeah, you ah, ordered it online. Bye week. Wanted to keep me open.” He was scarlet, his voice about to give on each word, but he got it out there.
He chanced a look at Sean. His lips were parted, eyes wide.
“Fuckin’,” he stuttered, “really?”
“Yeah,” Jack nodded, as red now at the memory of how hot it was and at telling Sean about it. “We got a place in Gracetown for the week and ya know,” he tried to smile in a sexy way, but it felt too self-conscious, “we did. That. So like, what we did last night? I can handle it.”
Sean groaned and squeezed his dick. “Man, don’t give me a boner. I can’t reel ‘er back in now.”
Jack laughed, a low rumble deep in his chest. Lola was very good about not getting in the bed until they’d finished fucking, and she was great at jumping off if they started up in the night or in the morning, but there was no way she’d accept a reschedule on her run after it’d been initiated. She raced down the hall again, jumped up at Sean and tore off back towards the door.
Sean shook his head, but he was smiling, lighter than he’d been all morning. “We still got it?”
“Yeah,” Jack replied.
“When I get back,” Sean said, eyes heated. “Be ready.”
Jack groaned and reached down for his dick.
“Jesus,” Sean said before his feet padded down the hall, “I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” he said to Lola.
Well, it was a nice distraction, Jack thought as he gave himself a few necessary strokes over the covers before getting up and pulling down the box of toys he’d stashed at the back of their closet under a bunch of other boxes before he’d brought Seanhome. If Sean had stumbled on that, there’s no way he would’ve been able to explain it to him—handcuffs, plugs, a vibrator—a small collection they’d only started working on last year.
In Jack’s mind, they’d been together for two years. He’d never asked Sean if he marked the day the same as Jack did, but before Sean got hurt, he was pretty sure that even if Sean didn’t, they’d made it to a place where it didn’t matter. They were together. Sean wanted to tell Ben, wanted to know if Jack was going to tell his sisters. It was Jack who was the hold out, not because he didn’t want people to know he was with Sean—hell, if it wasn’t for the football, he’d probably take his hand everywhere they went and let everyone come to the right conclusion. But he was a football player, and so was Sean, and he still had the fear, however residual, from when he was a kid about what that meant. He’d heard ‘faggot’ thrown around enough locker rooms to know exactly what that meant. He’d snapped, “Not cool,”—the most aggressive he’d ever been—when a few blokes talked shit about Finn after he got outed. And while he might be willing to go that far, he hadn’t been ready to be outside the privacy of him and Sean, to let Ben or his sisters look at him and know his secret.
