Page 29 of Two for Holding
“It’s okay,” Jax promised.“I’m sorry I acted like a dick.I shouldn’t have— I of all people should have known it’s not always easy to tell people this stuff.”
“I’ve never.”
“Never?”
“Never told anyone.That’s the first time I ever said it.”
“Never?”
Tom shook his head, water droplets flying.
“Jeez,” Jax said weakly.“Not even your parents?Or, I mean you must have an ex or two hidden in the closet.They’ll know.”
Tom shook his head again.
“Tom.”
Finally, Tom looked at him.It was too dark for Jax to see his eyes properly, but the vulnerability writ large across every line of Tom’s face bowled him over.
“Christ, Tom, you must have been so lonely.”
Tom collapsed in on himself, taking deep, heaving, sobbing breaths.Jax stepped forward before he could think better of it, and then Tom leaned on him, shuddering against him.His skin was cool to the touch, and Jax wrapped his arms around him to keep him warm.He didn’t know how long they stood there, but enough for the rain to trickle down the back of Jax’s neck and all along his spine.
A siren blared in the street below, pulling them apart.
“Let’s go inside,” Jax suggested as gently as he could.
Tom still shook too hard to be much help, so Jax steered him to the emergency exit with an arm still wrapped around his shoulders.The bright fluorescents in the stairwell seemed sickening after being outside in the dark.Now, Jax could see Tom’s red eyes; his skin, paler than usual, his wet-through clothes.
Jax’s dress shoes squeaked wetly on the linoleum, the only contrast to the heavy sound of Tom’s breathing.Jax wanted to speak, to say something to comfort Tom or lighten the mood, but he had nothing.They reached their floor in silence.
Behind the heavy emergency door, they entered the muted world of red-carpeted hallways and endless identical doors, another shock after the cold roof and the harshly lit stairway.Their footsteps squelched quietly against the floor.
Tom needed four tries to get his room key to work.
“Do you—are you—” Jax tried.
“I’m fine.”
It was transparently the least true thing Tom had ever said to him, and he hadn’t been truthful about a lot of things.
Tom seemed to know this because he corrected himself.“I’ll be fine.I just need a hot shower and some sleep.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”He paused.“You’ll, um… You won’t…”
A large part of Jax wanted to be insulted at the mere thought, but he held back.“Of course I won’t tell anyone.”
Tom nodded once, and then he disappeared into his room.The door clicked closed behind him, and Jax was left standing alone in the hallway in a wet suit at midnight.It wasn’t the weirdest thing he had ever experienced—nothing could top the night of the NHL awards his rookie year—but it made an easy second place on his mental list.
He didn’t sleep all night.
He tried, tossing and turning on the hotel bed.Hotel beds were always too soft or too hard, with no middle ground and always the wrong number of pillows.A two-pillow man, Jax preferred one big, firm one for his head and one long, squishy one to hug close to his body and throw a knee over.He had a great system at home, or rather, in the hotel room in San Francisco he currently called home.But in hotels they stopped at on the road for a night or two, the pillows were always too small, and he had to stack them under his head, leaving nothing to hold on to.
Still, he traveled professionally.He could fall asleep any place, any time.
Except here and now.
