Page 58 of Two for Holding
Of course.Tom’s head hurt thinking about it.Or maybe the headache was a byproduct of too little sleep after a long dinner in which his mom had gone over every minute of the disaster of a game against Toronto, picking out his mistakes.And then…well, what had happened in Jax’s hotel room last night.“And you think this would be good for the team?”
“Not everything is about hockey.”
“No, I know, but I thought you were doing this for the team.”
“Iam, but it’s also really important to me.”
Tom swallowed heavily.“Okay.It’s a good idea.It is, Jax.I’m only…” He turned and opened the fridge to avoid saying “scared” out loud.He should probably offer Jax something for dinner.All he had were precooked meal plan deliveries.
“I know.I’ll keep your name out of it.”
“No, it’s a team thing.If it’s all of us, I have to support it.”
“Tom.”
“What?”
The stool creaked, and Jax’s footsteps came nearer, but it didn’t prepare Tom for having Jax’s arms suddenly wrapped around his middle and his chin hooked over Tom’s shoulder.
“This isn’t something you have to sacrifice yourself for,” Jax said.“If you don’t want to be involved, we’ll do it as a volunteer thing.You don’t owe anyone the truth about yourself, and if you don’t feel safe doing this, I won’t ask it of you.”
Tom let himself lean back into Jax’s embrace.“If it’s a team thing, it’ll be fine.”Maybe if he said it enough, he’d believe it.“But I can’t take the lead.”
“It’ll be me and Breezy all the way.”
“And if people think…”
Jax pressed a kiss to Tom’s shoulder.“Fine by me.I hate living this way.You know I do.”
Tom did know, but selfishly, he wanted Jax to keep on hiding.If Jax came out, there would be no more shoulder kisses or hugs in Tom’s kitchen.They’d only kissed twice—or, well, had two discrete incidents of kissing—but Tom already needed more.Was this what addiction felt like?He’d been clean and sober of this thing he wanted more than breathing for half his life, but now he’d had it, he was jonesing for his next fix.
“I understand,” he said.
“And I get that you don’t want people to know.It’s fine.If anything gets out, we’ll just…stop meeting up, the two of us.No one will have any reason to think anything of you.”
We’ll just stop.
Tom closed the fridge and twisted around, capturing Jax’s mouth with his.
If they had to stop at some point, he would get everything he could from this beforehand.
They kissed right there in the kitchen until Tom’s hip complained about standing still for so long, and then they moved to the gray sectional in Tom’s living room.Jax separated their lips for long enough to critique Tom’s sparsely furnished apartment, the main room devoid of anything besides the couch and a TV.When Tom pushed him into the cushions, he shut up about it.They only stopped after Tom’s stomach growled so loudly Jax could hear it.
After dinner, which Jax also complained about because it was bland and reheated, Tom took Jax to the bedroom to test out the memory foam pillow.Since Tom cared about only two things in this apartment, the bed and the couch, it pleased him when Jax groaned in pleasure as he lay down.He was even more pleased when Jax refused to get up.
They didn’t kiss again—Jax had emails to answer about the project Tom didn’t want to think about, and Tom wanted to watch the East Coast games.They’d be playing New York and New Jersey soon, and it paid to know your enemy.But when Tom cautiously curled closer during the intermission between the first and second periods, Jax made space for him to rest his head on Jax’s chest.He fell asleep before the third period started.
The next day, they woke late, so he offered Jax access to his home gym and spare clothes to do a light workout routine.He staunchly ignored the hum of pleasure at Jax’s continued presence in his home and in his clothes.
“Oh, thank God,” Jax said when he saw the spinning bike.“I’d have to go to the practice rink or for a run otherwise.”
“Rookie mistake.Literally.I went running twice my first year, and it messed me up for the next game both times.”The Bay Area hills weren’t easy on the joints, even for fit hockey players.
“I can imagine.Whoever thought building a city here was a good idea?”
Tom, who at this point had a dedicated drawer for masks for when the air quality got too terrible during fire season and paid an extra insurance premium for earthquakes on his apartment, said, “Christian missionaries, I think.”
Jax shook his head in consternation.“Man, why did people keep listening to those guys?They never got anything right.”
