CHAPTER 4

Sawyer

 

I could see the way his jaw tightened and his hand flexed against the table. Reagan was annoyed at my bullshit answer. Even I knew it was crap. I had no idea what to say to this man. A man I loved since we were sixteen years old. Deep down, I had a feeling it wouldn’t take much for me to fall for him all over again. Mari would be pissed, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wanted to give Reagan as much of the truth as possible without laying it all on the line. In the end, whether or not Reagan and I were friends, he didn’t need to know about me being gay. Nothing good could come from it. Exactly why I’d kept it under wraps for so long. Until I found someone worth coming out for, I was keeping that shit locked up tight in the closet.

“The beginning, huh? You still don’t beat around the bush?”

“Not when I’ve been waiting years to hear the answer so I can stop questioning how I fucked up.”

“Is that what you think?” My hand itched to reach across and take hold of his. Never in a million years had I wanted Reagan to blame himself for the way I left. I hoped he would have put it all on me.

He scoffed. “No, most of the time, I assume you were being an asshole. But we both know what happens when you assume things. Then there’s the small part of me, the nagging voice in the back of my head that makes me question what kind of person I am to push away my best friend.”

“You didn’t push—”

“Here you go.” The waitress placed the beers in front of us.

For the second time, I couldn’t help but notice the way his eyes drifted over her. How for one brief second, I wished he’d look at me that way. That somehow, he’d find me sexy the way I found him. The strong biceps expertly defined by the tight shirt covering his torso. I wondered how his abs would feel beneath my fingertips, at least until I forced myself back to reality. Reagan was straight and would never see me like that. That kind of thinking would get me in trouble. Before he caught me staring again, I moved my gaze to the pint glass in front of me. Picking it up, I swallowed back a few gulps, letting the smooth but bitter liquid warm me from the inside out.

“Thanks,” he said, flashing her his dimpled smile. The one that had girls tripping over themselves to get to him. If I thought for one minute it would do me any good, I’d be at the head of the pack.

He picked up his own beer and I tried not to be envious of the bottle as it touched his lips. I watched the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed it down. Get it together. It was like I’d suddenly lost my head and didn’t know how to keep myself on track.

He gestured toward me with his bottle. “Go on.”

“It wasn’t your fault I left. I had a lot of shit going on that I wasn’t ready to share with anyone.”

“Why does this sound like one of those bad breakup speeches? It’s me, not you.” He laughed, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“I guess it does, but it’s the truth. My head was a mess before I went to school. Shit I kept buried way down deep. I had no idea how to deal with any of it, so I ran. I ran from you. Ran from my parents. Ran from everyone.”

He twisted his thumb around the neck of the bottle, his gaze never moving from the table. The rest of the bar faded away, as the pounding of my heart became the only thing I could focus on.

He set the bottle on the table and brought his head up. “You know, it pissed me off after a while. For my entire freshman year of college, I questioned myself. Questioned what I’d done to push you away. We weren’t two chicks having a cat fight, but it didn’t stop me from wondering.”

“That was never my intention.”

“Even when I asked your parents how to get in touch with you, they refused to tell me.”

I dropped my gaze, afraid of how much to let him see. “I asked them to. They had no idea why I left without a word, just that I didn’t want anyone to get in touch with me. I didn’t want to drag you down with me, not when I wasn’t ready to explain.”

Which was partially the truth. There were only two outcomes I could see if I told him the truth. One he’d be completely disgusted by my choices and quickly run the other way. Or he’d feel sorry for me, but slowly create distance between us until there was nothing left of friendship to salvage. I just made the first move.

“You wouldn’t have taken me down with you. I would have done anything I could to pull you out of the hole you were in. That’s what we did for each other.”

His words set off something inside me and I wanted them to be real more than anyone could ever imagine. For him to want to hold me up no matter what, but with my secret there were always exceptions. I shook my head. “I didn’t give you the chance to try. Whether either of us like it, this was something I had to deal with on my own.”

“So you’re still not going to tell me what it was.”

I twisted the glass beneath my fingers. “It took me a long time to climb out of that hole and it’s not one I’d rather fall back into.”

Reagan nodded. “Fair enough.”

I could tell he was frustrated by my answer. The tight crease of his brow always gave him away. I wanted to reach out and smooth my fingers over the lines. If I thought eighteen-year-old Reagan was attractive, I had no idea what I’d been missing all these years. The man before me set my blood on fire. A light scruff along his jaw line accentuated lips I dreamed about for years. His muscles now stretched the fabric of his shirt. His arms had been well-defined from years of playing football, but this went beyond definition. I gave myself a mental shake. I didn’t need Reagan to ask any more questions I didn’t want to answer.

“I know that’s not the answer you wanted to hear. Maybe someday I’ll be ready to tell you, but today’s not that day.” I picked the glass up and drained half of it.

Reagan sighed. “You’re right, it’s not fair for me to ask.”

I shook my head. “No. It is fair. I’m just not ready for that and it’s on me.”

An awkward silence engulfed us once again, neither of us satisfied by the conversation. With only half the truth on the table, who would be? If we were going to get past this, we needed to find common ground again. Reagan finished his beer and I was surprised when he asked for another instead of the check. Maybe I wasn’t the only one looking for a way to mend things.

“So, law school?” I finally asked, hoping to push the conversation forward. “I thought you wanted to be a doctor.”

He shrugged, bringing the bottle to his lips. I forced myself to look away from his and the way they wrapped around the bottle. Getting a hard-on wouldn’t be the wisest way to keep my secret. Somehow, I needed to force my desire for him aside. Reagan was the one person I couldn’t have and if I didn’t remember that I’d lead myself down a path I couldn’t afford to go. One that would only lead me to heartache again.

“I did until my second semester in undergrad. The stress of trying to get into the best program was insane. I took a forensic science class as an elective and realized how much more relaxed they all seemed. The lab science didn’t interest me, but I found the process of evidence did. After that I decided to look into other fields similar to that.”

The waitress set his beer on the table and Reagan immediately picked it up and took a sip.

“Criminal justice was perfect. After that I started looking at law schools.”

I leaned back in the booth, my knee accidentally grazing his, and I had to swallow the groan that threatened to leave my throat. “So you work in criminal law?”

He twirled the bottle in his hands, the muscles in his shoulders and arms finally beginning to relax. “Nah, I thought about it for a second, but I’d never be able to defend someone I knew was guilty. My firm deals with business and contract law.”

All of that made sense. Reagan was a defender of innocents and I couldn’t imagine him trying to protect someone who might be guilty of hurting another person.

“Guess you could be my lawyer someday.”

The bottle in his hand stopped moving and a brow winged up into his hairline as he stared at me. For a moment, I wanted to shrink into the seat. Maybe find a way to reverse time and cover my mouth with my own hand. Either way, anything would work as long as I didn’t get a chance to jump headlong into crazy ideas. It had been years since we’d seen each other and I expected no repercussions for my actions? That Reagan would just jump at the chance of being my friend again? Though, it was hard not to think that way. We slipped into an easy, comfortable conversation without a problem, which made it so hard to remember all the time that had passed. It was like we were teenagers again. Stealing beer from one of our parents and sneaking out into the field to drink it.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that was probably when I started falling for Reagan. Those quiet nights, lying on the hood of his truck, not a care in the world. As if no one else existed. It took me years to realize when it started to happen. I’d thought it was because we’d been so close. Now, he sat across from me, sexier than ever. Never once did I imagine a world where I’d still want my straight best friend.

“You…ah…you know what I meant.” I twisted the glass in my hand.

“Sawyer?” The tone of his voice no longer held the same detached sound to it. I lifted my head to look into his eyes.

“Yeah?”

“It means a lot that even after all these years, you’d trust me with your career.”

I’d trust him with more than my career. I’d trust with my heart, my happiness, my life. “I’ve never not trusted you. It was me I didn’t trust.”

“I’m starting to see that.”

He polished off the rest of the beer and signaled the waitress for a new one. He settled into the seat, resting his arm along the back. That was when it hit me like a freight train moving at top speed. The time for excuses and apologies was over. I could have my best friend back. It might take a little bit of work, but I was willing to put the time in.

I ordered another drink for myself and got comfortable. “How are your mom and dad?”

He smiled. As an only child, Reagan was really close to his parents. They were a very tight-knit family. Not that my family wasn’t, but things were different when you had a sister.

“Mom and Dad are good. My mom’s still teaching, but Dad retired last year.”

“She still in the same classroom?” His mom had been my teacher.

“Well…” he trailed off.

“Oh God.” I covered my eyes with my hand. “Don’t tell me she’s still in the same classroom.”

“Yep.” A mischievous glint lit his eyes.

“She found it, didn’t she?”

A booming laugh fell from his lips, causing a few people at other tables to look over at us.

“Dammit. Was she pissed?”

“Put it this way, if we were still in school she probably would have kicked our asses. But—”

The waitress dropped off our drinks. He kept his gaze on me as he tipped his head back, draining a quarter of the bottle. Asshole set it down and sat there like he hadn’t just stopped in the middle of his story.

I picked up my own glass and pointed it at him. “Don’t be an ass and leave me hanging. What did she say?”

Reagan’s mom was like a second mother to me before I left. Even afterward, I knew she asked my mom about me on more than one occasion. Even told my mom how proud she was of me when our contract got picked up. Not that we were always so well-behaved and appreciative. Mrs. Setton was our teacher in fifth grade. Our school didn’t always put students in their parents’ classes, but for Reagan, the school made an exception. We’d tortured our fourth grade teacher. Both the guidance counselor and Mrs. Setton thought she’d be the best choice to keep us in line. For the most part she did. We’d figured out real quick the consequences for acting up in her class. Extra homework and a weekend grounded. After that we played little tricks. Stuff that didn’t disrupt the class. Things she found later on. We were two ten-year-old boys who thought they were the smartest kids to ever run the school.

“She laughed her ass off and now has the book on display in front of her room with a sign above that says ‘how not to act in my class.’”

We decided it would be funny if we printed pictures of ourselves and glued them over every picture in one of her textbooks. It was one of the extra ones that sat on the shelf the whole year. God, were we idiots. When the next school year started, we waited to see who would get our book. No one did. And so it went the next year. By the time we got to be seniors, his mom hadn’t gotten new textbooks. We figured there was no reason to fess up about what we’d done and kept our mouths closed, hoping she’d retire before she found it. Apparently, we hadn’t been so lucky.

I made a show of wiping the non-existent sweat from my brow. “Well, thank God for that.”

Our laughter settled something inside me. I missed being able to laugh and joke with him. A weight I hadn’t noticed since I’d left began to lift from my chest. I was finally beginning to believe we could get past the choices I made.

“What about your family? Have you been home to see them lately?”

“A few months ago. Mom and Dad are both retired. They told me they talked to you the last time you were home on break.”

“I went to see them.” He tilted his head. “They didn’t tell you what we talked about?”

I shook my head. “Nope, just that they saw you.”

“Did you have any idea I was living in the same city as you?”

“Uh-uh. Mom stood her ground on that. If they weren’t allowed to tell you where I’d gone, I wasn’t allowed to know what you were up to.”

That made him chuckle. “I knew there was a reason I loved your mom. She was always the fair one.” He paused for a moment. “I’m guessing your sister didn’t have the same holdup?”

“You’d be surprised at how much she didn’t tell me. I only knew when you were home and other small details, but nothing more. She refused to tell most things.”

A whistle left his lips. “I’m impressed. I’ll have to remember that the next time I see her.”

Julia was the first person I told once I realized I was gay. I knew she’d be supportive of me and even sat and held my hand while I told my parents. In the end, she was the one to convince me to go to college and start over. She loved Reagan like a brother, but she knew me enough to see I’d never move on and find someone for myself. That I’d bury that shit as deep as it would go to make sure Reagan was happy. She was right, I had to learn to love me if I was ever going to be able to accept someone else in my life and not break apart when Reagan did the same with his. I thought I’d finally gotten to that point, but the more Reagan and I settled back into the friendship we once shared, the more I realized nothing had changed. The connection that had always been there flared to life.

Lust burned through me. I had to hope that was it, and not a prelude to falling in love with him.