EIGHT

 

It had been too long since Dane had last gotten laid. That was all there was to it, he told himself, as he looked down at Taylor on his knees for him, servicing him, pleasuring him. That was why he felt like he wasn’t even touching the ground with his feet, why his heart was pounding so rapidly.

Sex. That’s what this was, it was all Taylor wanted it to be, and God knew, it was all that Dane could ever have with his lifestyle.

Taylor himself seemed to have retreated a bit, maybe stunned, or even ashamed, by the force of his release. Dane didn’t think Taylor had anything to be ashamed of, and as they silently cleaned up, Dane once more slung his arm around Taylor’s shoulders as they left the woods together.

“Thanks, babe,” Dane finally ventured. That performance deserved thanks. Dane was fairly certain that he had never had anyone jump on his dick that eagerly, or suck him off with that much desire. It was nothing short of intoxicating.

Taylor smiled a bit, but he just nodded, and Dane found himself looking down at the other man’s face, pale and almost seeming to glow in the rising moonlight. He shouldn’t ask. He wasn’t going to ask. It wasn’t like it mattered, after all, and yet …

“Something wrong?” Dane heard his own voice ask, and he wanted to kick himself for that. He had just decided that he wasn’t going to say anything about it. Taylor was allowed to have his secrets, and Dane had no right to ask.

“Hmm?” Taylor’s eyes cleared as he looked up at Dane, and the young man gave a self-conscious little laugh and a shrug. “Oh. No. Not really. It’s just Danica saw me leaving and things got a little awkward.”

Dane had never thought before about that compilation. Taylor had come to him during the day with Danica, and at night by himself, and it hadn’t occurred to Dane to think about what happened in between.

He stayed silent, and Taylor, after a brief pause, continued.

“She talked to my mom, and …” His voice trailed off again, and then he tugged Dane, who didn’t resist, over to a bench and sat down so that they could face each other. There was an expression on Taylor’s face that Dane didn’t know how to interpret, but then, Taylor was quite the mystery to Dane a lot of the time.

“What’s going on?” Dane asked, mystified, and Taylor’s eyes seemed to turn glassy and reflective, glossing over Dane’s gaze even as they looked at each other. Taylor didn’t let very many people in, Dane got the sense, so why should Dane be any different?

“It’s stupid. But I promised Danica and Mom that I’d ask,” Taylor muttered, almost like he was speaking more to himself than to Dane. “Look, you don’t have to, okay? Promise me that you won’t say yes just because I’m asking. It wasn’t my idea.”

This was getting less and less comprehensible, and Dane felt anxiety knotting in his gut, spurred on by Taylor’s odd reaction. But Dane nodded because he also wasn’t going to be able to handle the suspense if he didn’t find out whatever Taylor was going on about.

“Promise,” Dane said, and Taylor sighed, but none of the tension left his eyes or his shoulders.

“Mom wants you to come for dinner tomorrow,” Taylor spoke all in a rush, so that, at first, Dane didn’t quite understand the words. Even once he’d deciphered them, he didn’t quite understand them. He was most decidedly not the sort of man that one would consider taking home to meet one’s family, and he knew it.

“Look, I know it’s stupid, I said it was stupid,” Taylor continued. “You don’t have to. I can tell Mom and Danica that you have to work tomorrow night. But I promised I would ask.”

And Taylor, Dane somehow knew, was not the sort of man who reneged on a promise, which was probably part of the reason that the beautiful young man didn’t make promises very often, because once he had, he would keep it. Damn it, this was the last thing he needed, to get to know and admire, Taylor more than ever, and yet, it was happening.

“Calm down,” Dane murmured, amused as Taylor kept on babbling, assuring him that this wasn’t necessary. The more he thought about it, the more the idea appealed to him. Not that Dane wasn’t nervous, but hearing that Danica wanted it helped calm a lot of that. “I’ll come.”

“Wait, what?” Taylor’s nervous babbling finally stilled, and he looked at Dane, suspiciously like he thought that he might be being teased. Was there some part of Taylor, however small, that wanted Dane to be there, maybe a part that matched the part of Dane that wanted to go?

“I’ll go. You can tell Danica and your mom that I’ll be there,” Dane informed him, and despite the fact that he had never done anything like this in his life, and this was completely unlike him, he found that he couldn’t even regret it.

Not when Taylor turned that tremulous little smile at him.

 

* * *

 

Taylor had come to pick Dane up, but they both hesitated outside of the small, but cute, little house. It was exactly the sort of thing that Dane had been avoiding his whole life, that house. There were even a literal white picket fence and a well-maintained little garden. The house itself looked older but had been cared for well.

Dane should have taken one look at it and started running, but he didn’t. Instead, he got out of Taylor’s car, taking a deep, deep breath, all the way down into the very bottoms of his lungs.

He could do this. It was just a family dinner, not a firing squad.

“Come on,” Taylor said, giving him an encouraging smile. Taylor, at least, seemed to have some idea what a huge deal this was to Dane, and that helped. Dane returned the smile, and they walked toward the house together.

They hadn’t gotten even halfway up the walkway when the door was pushed open enthusiastically enough that it slapped sharply against the wall. Something that reminded Dane of some of the old cartoons that he’d watched, a sort of living whirlwind, spun down the steps to meet them, and Dane bent down to take Danica into his arms instead of against his knees, laughing.

He had never, not once in the entire course of his life, been greeted with this much joy, and there was an odd little lump in his throat that he tried to swallow down as the fragile little girl settled into his arms and clung to him.

“You came!” she told him like he didn’t know, and then she flung herself at Taylor and hugged him, too, just as enthusiastically as she had Dane. “I knew you could do it. I knew you could get him here.”

Dane rose to his feet and his grin slipped right off of his face as he saw that a woman had come to the door, a woman that he probably would have easily been able to pick out of a lineup if he’d been asked to identify the woman who was the mother of both Danica and Taylor. There was something very familiar about the eyes, the shape of the lips and the cheeks that made him think that he would have easily guessed if he’d seen her on the street.

“Hey, Mom,” Taylor spoke quietly, and Dane wondered if he imagined the nerves in Taylor’s voice. All of a sudden, he was glad that he’d taken the time to shower, to dress in the nicest clothes he had, and to braid back his hair neatly. He looked his best, which he didn’t think was saying much, but at least he knew he had tried. “This is Dane.”

The woman, who was just as short and slight as both of her children, gave him a smile that was small but seemed sincere. She beckoned them close and then offered her hand, which Dane took.

“Rebecca Lachlan,” she introduced, and he was struck once more by just how much she looked like her son and daughter. The only difference was that she had pale, pale blonde hair, and she was older, of course. It was hard to tell on Danica, of course, but Taylor, at least, was a little bit darker.

“Dane Galloway,” he responded, squeezing her hand and impressed by the firmness of her grip. This was a strong woman, strong as both of her children were strong, which didn’t surprise him at all. “Pleasure to know you. Your house is beautiful.”

He felt, rather than saw, Taylor’s start of surprise, and he wanted to grin to himself at the reaction. Taylor seemed shocked that Dane could be polite, which he supposed he should find insulting but was pretty funny to him. There was still so much that Taylor didn’t know about him.

So much that he never would, he reminded himself, and so much that Dane would never know about Taylor. It was probably better to keep that in mind.

“Thank you,” she told him, her voice composed, but her smile might be just a trifle more relaxed. This woman hadn’t yet made up her mind about him, but he was pretty sure that he’d made a decent impression already. Only time would tell, but why did it even matter to him? “Dinner is almost ready, come on in.”

Dane nodded and did as he was told, and the wave of delicious cooking smells was the first thing he noticed inside. He breathed in deeply because this was something that he was going to want to remember for a long time when he was stuck with fast food or convenience store food. This scent, he would hold on to.

“It’s not much. I did a stew,” Rebecca said, almost apologizing, and Dane shook his head.

“It’s been a long time since I had anything home cooked,” he assured her. “And this smells amazing. Can I help set the table?”

Her attitude toward him had been cautious, but Dane watched as she completely relaxed, as she smiled at him with so much sincerity that he felt like he’d been warmed completely through, like he’d been freezing and he didn’t even know it, and she’d given him a warm blanket and a cozy fire.

So few people in his life had treated him like he was worth anything, not once they found out what his job was. Dane had always taken a sort of grim satisfaction in that and that the good people of the world, with their nine-to-fives and their mortgages and their car loans and their superiority complexes could judge him so easily without even knowing him.

Rebecca was, though. And for the first time, Dane got a glimpse of what it could be like to be considered something other than a loser, and to his surprise, he liked it. Everyone in this family, as little as it was, accepted him, although it did make him wonder about Taylor and Danica’s father. He hadn’t seen any sign that anyone else lived here, but it was probably not polite for him to ask what could easily be a sensitive question.

So he lost himself in the simple actions of setting the table, something that he couldn’t remember having done even once since he’d last seen his parents’ place back in Texas, though his hands still remembered how. And he chatted with Danica, enjoying her simple presence, her bluntly charming honesty, and he tried to tell himself that he was not falling in love with Taylor’s family every bit as much as he …

That last thought that he had almost had, he realized, he needed to not even think. Because even thinking those words would give them power, and once he had thought them, would he be able to resist the urge to say them?