EPILOGUE
Beau
Six Months Later
I feel like we live in a fairy tale! We all lived happily ever after. ~ Love, Kenny
“Are you going to play with my hole, or what?” Ash asked, making a laugh shoot up my throat and jump from my lips. You’d think he wouldn’t be able to shock me anymore, but he could. He basically did it every day.
He wiggled his ass at me, making me shake my head at him. We were naked, in bed. We’d woken up, taken a shower, and then somehow ended up back in bed together, where he made love to me for hours on end. There was nothing like the feeling of Ash inside me. Sometimes I still couldn’t believe he was mine. That we made it from those two boys who were in competition with each other, to the guys at the end of that dock that night, to where we were now—living together, coaching together, loving each other. Life was funny like that sometimes. You never knew what would happen.
“For someone who doesn’t like to bottom much, you sure like my fingers or my tongue in your ass,” I teased him. Not that I was complaining. I loved that Ash liked a part of me, any part of me, inside him.
“It’s not that I don’t like it. I’m still getting used to it. I have a tight hole, Campbell. You said so yourself.”
Ash had bottomed a few times over the months, but it wasn’t something he wanted often. He was mostly a top and that was that, just the same as I preferred to bottom.
“But I still like to feel you…know you get that part of me no one has ever had.”
Okay, so my heart might have melted a little bit. How could it not when Ash said things like that to me? “I don’t even know where to start. That was sweet, Ash.” I leaned in and rubbed my nose into his neck. “You’re so fucking sweet to me…and I also have to make sure I say that I have a tight hole too. You said so yourself. But I love playing with yours, and it would be okay with me if I never got to fuck you again. I just want you. That’s all.”
“Oh my God. Stop being so sappy, and finger me before we have to go.”
We laughed like we always did when we were together. I didn’t remind him that he started the sappiness. I had more important things to do. So I slid down the bed, used my tongue on him, savored the feel of him writhing and moaning beneath me, then used my fingers to bring him to orgasm.
After, I licked him clean, kissed his stomach, his chest, his lips. “Come on. We have to go to Mom’s.”
“Hurry. Get off me. I don’t wanna be late. I’m stoked for K-man to see what I got him for his birthday.”
I rolled off Ash and watched as he climbed out of bed and walked naked toward the bathroom. We’d decided I would move in with him, and now the place was a mishmash of his things and mine. I was renting out my house. Part of me wanted to sell it, but then I thought maybe I could keep it. Maybe there would be a time when Kenny might be able to use it as his own. It was close to Mom’s.
Once Ash’s tight ass disappeared into the bathroom, I got out of bed and went with him. “What did you get him?” I asked.
“I already told you, I’m not telling. You’ll see when Kenny does.”
We got into the shower again because one couldn’t go to their mom’s house for a birthday party smelling like sex and come.
After we got dressed, Ash donning a Fever Falls Fire Department cap, we went out to my truck and drove to Mom’s. There were already a few cars in the driveway and on the street when we arrived. Just as we got out of the truck, Linc pulled up behind us, so we waited for him.
“Hey, sweetie.” He gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then turned his attention to Ash. “Hey, sexy. You ready to give me a try yet?” Linc reserved a wink for Ash, and I rolled my eyes. He was forever flirting with Ash, but I knew it was all in fun. Lincoln would never hurt me, and I also knew that it was his way of trying to feel involved with us. I’d learned things about my friend that I hadn’t realized were there, just by being with Ash.
Linc talked a big game…but he needed me, needed to feel he wouldn’t lose his place in my life. I didn’t know what made him need me, and he sure as shit wouldn’t ever lose me, but it was just a part of who he was.
“No, but I can put a feeler out for any other closeted football players, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Ash teased, leaning in and hugging Lincoln too.
“Sigh, he must really like you if he’s still turning me down,” Lincoln told me.
“I guess he must.”
We went inside. The house was decorated from top to bottom—pun not intended. Kenny stood by the table, pouring punch in a glass. He handed it to his girlfriend, Lori, before his eyes landed on us.
“Ash! Beau!” He grabbed Lori’s free hand because he was a gentleman like that, and the two of them came over.
“What about me?” Lincoln asked.
“It’s good to see you too, Lincoln,” Kenny told him.
I nudged Linc. “Don’t worry. He likes Ash more than me too.”
“Hey, K-man. Happy birthday.” Ash gave Kenny a tight hug, and then it was my turn. We said our hellos to Lori as well, the five of us chatting until Mom came into the room.
“Hey, boys.” She kissed Lincoln, who said hello, and then she went to Ash.
“Hey, Ma,” he told her, and they hugged before she and I did the same.
I loved watching Ash with our family. I knew he’d always wanted a big one, and even though it was only me, Kenny, and Mom, he had a bit of an extended family with Linc and the guys, and of course Wyatt and his family. I just wished his parents were alive to see it.
The house began to fill with people—from school, the football team, the center. We laughed, played games, and celebrated Kenny.
It was three when Ash was looking out the window like he was expecting something.
“What did you do?” I asked him.
“Nothing.” He feigned innocence just as a large delivery truck pulled up. “K-man! Your gift is here!”
We all crowded outside just as they began to pull out a full-sized Pac-Man arcade game, followed by an air-hockey table, which Kenny now played religiously too. When Ashton Carmichael introduced you to something, you couldn’t help but fall in love with it, just like people couldn’t help but fall in love with him.
“Ashton! Where are we supposed to put that?” Mom shrieked.
“I don’t know…move the couch outside? It’s an arcade game! What’s more important?” he replied, and Mom smiled.
They moved it into the garage, and eventually they would turn my old bedroom into a game room. Kenny was stoked.
The party was over, and Ash was in the garage playing the games, when Kenny came back inside. “This was the best birthday I’ve ever had,” he told me.
“It was pretty great, wasn’t it?”
He fingered the edge of his journal. “Yep! Will you take me and Lori on a date tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
Kenny looked at me, little wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled. “I’m glad you’re happy, Beau. No one deserves it more than you. You’re the best brother in the whole wide world.”
My heart swelled. “Thanks, but I think that title belongs to you.”
“Because of you.”
“What?” I asked him.
“I’m happy and a good brother because of you. I knew what to do because I watched you. I write notes when you tell me stuff so I don’t forget it, and when I see you do things, I write it down too because you’re a hero and I want to be just like you. Sometimes I’d see things, watching you, like when you were sad or lonely or falling in love with Ash, and I made wishes for you. They came true, didn’t they?”
My vision blurred as my eyes watered. I thought I might have been the luckiest man alive. “Yeah, Kenny. They came true. And you know what? You’ve taught me a lot too. You think I’m a hero, and I think the same thing about you.”
“I guess that’s what brothers do.” Kenny shrugged, and I laughed, hugging him.
Ash, Mom, and Lori came in, and we visited for a while longer before Ash and I got back into the truck to go home.
We spoke about the programs Ash was working on. Nothing was finalized yet with the LGBTQ youth sports program, but Ash had done a few talks at high school GSAs and college sports programs over the past few months. We would still be coaching together next football season. Other than that, Ash was trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He’d never given much thought to what his dreams were outside of football.
We got home, went for a night swim, and then watched a movie. We were naked in bed together later when he wrapped his arms around me and said, “Today was a good day, Campbell.”
“Yeah, it was.” Linc thought it was funny that Ash still called me by my last name, but I liked it. That was us.
“I like being gay,” he whispered a moment later.
“Huh?” That had come out of the blue.
“Remember when I was first trying to be honest with myself but I was still in denial and confused, and I told you I didn’t want to be gay?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I remember.”
“That’s not me anymore. I like who I am. I’m glad I’m a gay man. I wouldn’t change a thing, even if I could.”
My pulse went crazy, and I felt a smile in my chest. He had a way of doing that to me. I rolled over on top of him, held myself above him. “Good. I’m glad. You should never be ashamed of who you are. I like that person an awful lot.”
“Like or love?” he asked. “Because like is just okay. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with just being okay. You should love who I am.”
He’d said the same thing to me in the beginning when I’d said I liked his cock. Fucking Ash. “I love who you are.”
“I love you too. Mine, mine, mine, mine,” he teased.
I’d always been Ashton Carmichael’s, and we would spend the rest of our lives making waves together.