Chapter Four

 

 

KYLE’S BODY had not completely returned to his control by the time they raced inside the Riverbend Diner, both trying to fit under the small umbrella Kyle kept in his car. Forrester had been impressed by Kyle’s Dodge Challenger 392 SRT8 in poison green with dual full-body stripes and a 392 CID Hemi V8. People noticed the car when Kyle drove down the street, which was part of the fun. She produced 470 ponies, and every time he slid behind the wheel, he felt like James Dean or Vin Diesel. Nothing said cool like an American-made muscle car.

Kyle was inordinately pleased that Forrester was into cars too.

Just one more thing they had in common.

The wicked rainstorm had kept many people away, so only a handful of patrons sat in the diner’s red vinyl booths and at the counter. Kyle had breakfast here several times and recognized the waitress when she waved.

“Have a seat anywhere you like, boys.” Vivian was an attractive brunette not much older than Kyle.

Folding up the wet umbrella, Kyle pointed at the booth in the farthest corner. Forrester nodded his consent as he dried his glasses off on his jersey, gifting Kyle with another flash of those sculpted, lightly furry abs. Kyle led the way, then slid into the booth.

Kyle twiddled his fingers on the table and glanced at Forrester, a fissure of desire stirring in his thighs. The epitome of sexy, Forrester was tall, but by no means gangly. The sharp angular structure of his face was softened by brown eyes with lashes so thick and dense they looked as if he wore eyeliner. His cheeks were still flushed from making out—damn, the man was a great kisser!—and his dark curly hair fell in wet ringlets across his brow. Kyle longed to brush the hair back, but they were in public, and he didn’t know how Forrester might feel about that.

As a man working in the business world, Kyle had to contain his instinctive impulse to touch people when he spoke to them or read their lips. Even as a child, he’d been very tactile, craving touch in every way. He’d slept in Mom’s bed after Dad died and until he was eleven because he hated to be far away from another person.

Kyle wanted to touch Forrester again so badly his entire being ached. He’d almost blown a load in his jeans when Forrester started licking Kyle’s lips. The lack of condoms had been a well-needed chance to rein in his powerful sexual cravings.

“Friendship before intimacy, and intimacy doesn’t mean sex, Kyle,” he heard his therapist telling him.

But the rousing visual of a man like Forrester, the scent and taste of his kisses, the electric feel of skin to skin—threatened to break all his self-control.

“They have the best burgers here,” Forrester said, flashing a big grin.

“I don’t eat beef.”

“Are you vegetarian?”

“No, I just eat mostly chicken and fish. Lean stuff.”

“Thank the good Lord.” Forrester shook his head. “I dated a vegetarian for a hot minute in college, and he was constantly telling me he was a vegetarian. Like, dude, I get it. You live off squirrel food. Do you know he actually called nuts nature’s meat? Total weirdo.”

Kyle chuckled. Forrester liked to talk.

He studied Forrester as he perused the plastic menu. Their playful banter and casual friendship had been a great learning tool for Kyle. He’d watched Forrester with Holly, and though they bickered like siblings at times, he’d seen the love and kindness in their interactions. The way Forrester would smile at her and kiss the top of her head. He’d been jealous of the familial affection. Kyle had observed Forrester’s thoughtfulness too, how gregarious and helpful he was with his customers.

Though Forrester seemed like a great guy, trustworthy and kind, Kyle warned himself not to get too invested too quickly. Everything had felt so intense earlier, it was best to cool off.

Dinner first, then they would see about dessert.

A nervous shimmer of excitement went through Kyle when those rich chocolate eyes glanced up.

“You keep looking at me like that and something’s going to be thumping on the bottom of this table soon,” Forrester warned him.

Kyle flinched and blinked a few times until he registered Forrester hadn’t spoken out loud, rather, he’d mouthed the words.

Clever man.

Mom and Dad had insisted Kyle learn to sign and read lips because they did not want him to have any problems functioning in society. His parents had learned ASL right along with him. Though he rarely signed these days, he retained enough to communicate with his deaf peers who didn’t speak any other way.

“What you getting?” Forrester asked.

He shook his head in answer. He’d been too busy thinking about Forrester to study the menu.

A moment later, Vivian arrived. “What can I get you boys tonight?”

“A bacon double cheeseburger, onion rings, french fries, and a Coke,” Forrester said confidently before returning his menu to the holder. “And a vanilla milkshake with whipped cream and cherries.”

Kyle was shocked. “Didn’t you just eat pizza?”

“That was, like, two hours ago.”

“I don’t know where you put all that food.”

“I have a hollow leg.”

Shaking his head in silent laughter, Kyle pointed to a grilled chicken, spinach, and rice dish. “This, please. And an iced tea.”

With a smile, Vivian left. Mirroring each other’s stance, hands on the table in front of them and fingers laced, they waited for their drinks and Forrester’s milkshake to arrive. The memory of Forrester’s kisses, the musky scent of his skin, and the bigness of those hands roaming up Kyle’s back were still crisp in his mind.

He squirmed in his seat.

Forrester’s phone buzzed on the table. He checked the text, then looked at Kyle. “My friends are going to the Flames tonight. I can still hardly believe Shiloh has a gay nightclub.”

Kyle sniffed his agreement. He liked how Forrester made an effort to face him when he spoke. Yes, Kyle could hear him, but he relied on lipreading too when there was too much background noise.

“You didn’t want to go with them?” Kyle asked.

He scrunched up his nose in the cutest way. “Nah. And I’m glad I didn’t. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.” Forrester reached across the table and fingered Kyle’s hand.

For a moment, Kyle thought they might hold hands, but Forrester withdrew.

Kyle smiled. “The Flames is fun but crowded. And the beer is piss-warm.”

“Wouldn’t know. I don’t like beer. How come I’ve never seen you there before?”

“I’ve only gone a few times with some friends from work. I love to dance, though. My mom used to turn the bass on her stereo up all the way before I got my CI. So I could feel the music and we could dance.”

“That’s cool,” Forrester said, grinning. “I bet you’re a great dancer.”

“All right I guess.” Shrugging, Kyle glanced down at his hands, searching for the right words. “You should know I have a tendency to be a recluse. It’s not exactly healthy, but it’s the truth.”

“Nothing to be ashamed about,” Forrester assured him, adjusting his glasses on his nose. “One of my favorite things to do is just chill at home with a good book. But I like to go out with my friends too. We meet up at Reverends Thursday nights to play darts.”

“Sounds fun. The last night out I had was with Steve and some girls from the office.”

Forrester sat up straighter. “Who’s Steve?”

“He’s the other gay guy at work. The girls hoped we’d hit it off.”

“And did you?”

Kyle eyed him for a moment. “Why, Mr. Giordano, is that a hint of jealousy I hear?”

Forrester quickly schooled his face. “Nope. Just curious.”

“Let’s put it this way—Steve’s a great guy, but he’s a forty-two-year-old queen, and the only thing he knows about baseball is that he likes to be a catcher.”

Forrester laughed. “That’s no fun, playing only one position. I don’t get guys like that.”

Hearing Forrester reiterate his versatility pleased Kyle. He’d worried Forrester was a top-only kind of guy. Kyle really had to trust a man to bottom. And that hadn’t happened in years. Rather than say that, he teased, “You were jealous for a second, weren’t you?”

Blustering, Forrester admitted, “Okay, maybe a little.” Then he smiled. “Hey, next time you wanna go out dancing, I’ll go with you.”

“Thanks. I might have to take you up on that.”

While Kyle didn’t go out much, it wasn’t for lack of wanting to be social and out with friends. It was just so much work, trying to keep up with conversations in a really loud environment if people didn’t face him so he could lip-read. The different settings on his CI helped tune out some background noise and amplified the voices, but Kyle still felt like he was constantly asking people to repeat themselves or pretending he understood. Most people were impatient for their own good time, so he wouldn’t ask them to write down what they’d said. If he wasn’t with someone who cared to include him, bars and clubs were very isolating places.

How would Forrester treat me in a situation like that?

When Vivian arrived with their food, Forrester beamed. “This looks great. I’m starved.”

Kyle was glad they’d opted to grab dinner. He was having a really nice time.

“I love to dance too,” Forrester said before he stuffed a few fries in his mouth. “I used to party a lot at OSU. But not so much these days.”

“Define party?”

“Drink, dance, hook up.” Forrester counted each word off on his long fingers. “You know, the usual.”

He chuckled, liking how easy it was to talk to Forrester. “Yeah, it’s a rite of passage, I guess. We all do it, but I’m just a small-town boy at heart. Meaningless sex isn’t for me anymore.”

Hard lessons learned.

Forrester leaned back in the booth. “I deleted Grindr and Scruff a while ago. Deluded myself that with a new gay club in Shiloh, I might meet someone nice, ya know? Face-to-face. But it was just the same as the apps: Hi, wanna fuck? Then you do and they never text you back.”

“Exactly why I avoid those apps.”

Their eyes met.

“I’ll text you back in the morning,” Forrester said.

“You better,” Kyle warned him, half joking but totally serious.

Forrester looked directly at him but spoke so softly Kyle had to concentrate on his lips. “I know we were, like, making out earlier, and I really wanted to do it.” He chuckled and his cheeks reddened. “Like, really wanted to do it. Still wanna do it. And having another gay bar around here is pretty awesome, but for the record? I want a real boyfriend, Kyle, not just another piece of ass.”

A warmth fluttered inside Kyle. “Good to know.”

Blushing and smiling, Forrester picked up his burger and took a huge bite. “Where are you from?”

“Just outside of Portland, Indiana.” Kyle took a bite of the rice. It was delicious. “It’s a pretty typical farm town. We have a McDonald’s and a Wal-Mart, but life pretty much centers around the fairgrounds. Plus there’s a very large Amish community nearby. Can’t tell you how many times I got stuck behind one of their buggies on my way to school.”

Slurping some of his shake, Forrester grinned. “Did you ever hook up with any Amish guys in their buggies?”

Kyle laughed. “Actually, yes. They were very grateful. So repressed.”

“Shut up! You did not!”

“I did,” he assured Forrester. He took a bite of his chicken, enjoying Forrester’s shock. “Actually, there was only one Amish guy. Samuel tried to sneak away to go to our high school parties and bonfires whenever he could. We hooked up quite a bit.”

“Boyfriend?”

Kyle smiled, remembering Samuel and his weird haircut and one crooked tooth. With a little orthodontics and modern fashion, he would’ve been stunning, but Kyle had seen past that. They’d had a connection from the get-go, neither fitting in the world they were born into. Kyle not a hearing person, but no longer a deaf person because of his CI. And Samuel not English, but not really Plain Folk either.

Two lost boys who found friendship and comfort in their isolation from those around them.

“Yeah, kinda sorta, I guess,” Kyle finally said. “I mean, we both knew he’d marry some chubby little Amish girl. So I wasn’t delusional about it.”

“I had one of those in high school too.” Forrester chewed thoughtfully on a fry. “But I was delusional about it.”

“How so?”

“I told him I loved him,” he said simply, face lost in the past. “And he told me to stop acting like a fag, so I punched him. Last I heard, Nick Anderson is married with two kids. But man… he could suck a dick.”

Kyle grinned and raised his glass of iced tea. “Hear! Hear!”

Forrester clinked his glass against Kyles’s.

Though they laughed, Kyle imagined Forrester’s hurt had been as sharp as Kyle’s when Samuel began “courting” a girl by driving her home from church every Sunday. Samuel had meant more to Kyle than he’d allowed himself to admit, not grasping the real loss until he was gone. He’d fooled himself into thinking their relationship had only been about sex.

A human brain can optimize its unused portions—in Kyle’s case the hearing parts—to enhance the other senses. It wasn’t like Kyle had X-ray vision, lightning-fast reflexes, or anything fiction-like. But even after getting the CI, his other senses were more heightened, especially if he took his processor out. Sometimes food even tasted better. As a teenager, Kyle hadn’t really understood any of that, which was why he’d been chubby and overly sexual. And after Mom died, sex had eased the constant loneliness Kyle carried with him.

Unfortunately, that unquenchable libido had earned him a bad reputation and one night that changed his life forever.

At twenty-nine, and after years of therapy, he’d smartened up from that horny kid who interpreted sex as affection. Nowadays, he played everything so differently with everyone in his life. Men, friends, coworkers.

Maybe he’d tell Forrester about it all one day, but not tonight.

That story was a bit heavy for first date conversation.

Best to keep things light.

Forrester slurped on his pop, bringing Kyle back to the now. “How did you end up in Gilead, Kyle?”

“I got into law school at Shiloh U. Then the prosecutor’s office recruited me, so I stayed. When I saw a Rolling Stone spread about that country singer Jimmy Hart last fall, it had a photograph of his hometown. So I took a motorcycle trip out here. The minute I saw Gilead, I just fell in love.”

“Yeah, this town has that effect. My best friend Lucas—”

“The guy from the bookstore?”

“Yeah, he lives here with his moms. I used to love visiting. We’d walk by the river, get candy at the gas station, hang out in Galaxy Comics. I’ve always wanted to own a bookstore here. It’s just so peaceful, with the river and everything. A nice respite from my crazy family.”

Forrester’s phone dinged.

“Speaking of my crazy family,” he said, checking his message. “I swear, I gotta keep my cell on me at all times because somebody in my family will be driving in their car and realize they haven’t talked to someone for two hours, so there must be some exciting news. And if I don’t answer, they all start imagining that I’m dead in a ditch.” He read the message and quickly typed an answer. “My brother Dino. He wants to know when the car show is in Gilead.”

Kyle liked that Forrester explained his incoming text. Kyle was left out of so much already. “Does he have a classic car?”

“We have a car, as in it’s all of ours. A ’67 Shelby Fastback.”

“A real ’67 Shelby? Or a kit car?”

“Nope.” A grin split his face. “She’s the real deal. GT350 with forty-one thousand original miles.”

Kyle whistled. “Nice.”

“Yeah, Dad bought it brand-new, long before he met Ma. Dad and the car were a ‘package deal,’ he used to say. We used to take it to car shows, go on fun cruises around town. Us boys were always fighting for the front seat. We’re still fighting over who gets to drive it and when. Don’t wanna rack up too many miles, not that Joey ever listens.”

A pang filled Kyle for a moment. He’d always wanted siblings, but Mom had been forty-three when he was born, so Kyle was one and done.

“You like cars?” Forrester asked. “I mean, you got that sweet Challenger.”

He nodded. “I like loud cars. Cars that I can feel when I drive. Like my bike.”

“Really? The sound doesn’t bother you?”

Kyle didn’t mind when people asked him about his hearing, and with Forrester, there was no condescending tone, just curiosity. “I like a car that I can feel hugging the road, the rumble between my legs. New, quiet cars aren’t fun to drive because I can barely feel them. I don’t like that.”

“Makes sense. The Shelby definitely has a rumble.” Forrester snorted a laugh, tucked his phone away, but it buzzed again. He glanced at it and rolled his eyes. “Joey.”

“You’re a popular guy,” Kyle observed. “Maybe you should tell them they’re interrupting a first date.”

“Uh, no,” Forrester laughed. “If I do that, then it’ll be all: Who is she? Do I know her? What’s her name? How did you meet her?”

Kyle would have laughed at the way Forrester mimicked a variety of voices both male and female if he hadn’t picked up on the key word he’d said.

“Her?”

Downing some pop in an awkward gulp, Forrester looked away.

Kyle pursed his lips. “You’re not out.”

“Not really.”

“Meaning?”

“I haven’t told my family, just my friends.”

When Kyle had arrived in Shiloh, he’d made the firm decision to be completely open and honest about his sexuality. The only way he had been able to climb out of the depression he’d fallen into after his mother’s death was to be proud of who he was. He wondered what had kept Forrester in the closet so long.

Forrester must’ve taken his silence as disapproval. “This is how I see it. Everything has its proper place. I like my privacy, so I keep this part of my life separate from the part with my family. It’s just like my bookstore. You don’t go putting romance novels in with the home-and-garden. You don’t put mystery with sci-fi, ya know?”

“You can’t organize your life like the Dewey Decimal System.”

Forrester said nothing, and Kyle realized he might have crossed a line. They’d been flirting for a while, but in reality, they didn’t know much about each other. “I know we just started whatever this is between us, but can I say something? One gay man to another?”

“Shoot.”

“Being gay is not about who you have sex with. It’s who we are. You can’t expect to be happy if you hide who you are from people you care about. The sneaking, the lying, it all catches up to you. No matter how hard you try, fate eventually outs you. You really think I wanted my high school principal to call my mom and tell her I was giving Samuel a blowie under the bleachers?”

Forrester’s mouth dropped open. “Shut up.”

He widened his eyes for emphasis. “Most humiliating moment of my life and not at all how I’d planned to come out. My mom cried at first. Said she worried being gay would just make my life even harder than it already was. I didn’t talk to her for weeks. I was so mad and embarrassed. It’s easy to tune someone out when you can literally turn your ears off. I refused to wear my processor and closed my eyes every time she tried to talk to me.”

“Wow, that’s harsh.”

“Yeah, it was.” Guilt twanged his heart, thinking back on what a jerk he’d been. “But I was so hurt. I thought she didn’t love me anymore. That she saw me as one big mistake, broken in every way.”

“I’m so sorry.” Forrester gripped Kyle’s hand.

He squeezed it back and forced a smile. “But then one day she wrote me a letter, explaining what she meant. That she didn’t think I was broken, but she worried other people might treat me that way. She just wanted to protect me. We made up, and in the end, we had a few great years of honesty before she died. You owe it to yourself and your family to have that kind of honesty in your life. Every time I remember how embarrassed and mad I was, I’m also grateful. What if I’d never told her? What then?”

Before Forrester could say anything, Vivian returned with their check. Forrester flinched and snatched his hand back, much to Kyle’s disappointment.

Vivian didn’t seem to notice. “Just to let you boys know, I’m bartending over at the Six-Shooter.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “I’ll be scooting out of here in about five minutes.”

After a little playful bickering over who would pick up the tab, Kyle gave in and let Forrester pay. It felt nice, being on a date with a guy who had no idea Kyle was worth several million. The sad perk of well-insured, wealthy older parents dying too young.

“What do you want to do now?” Forrester asked as they waited for Vivian to return with a receipt to sign and his debit card.

“What were your plans?” Kyle asked awkwardly, not wanting the date to end.

“I was gonna sleep in my store.”

“On that futon?” Kyle made a face. Impulsively he added, “You can sleep at my house.”

Forrester chuckled. “I doubt I’d be getting any sleeping done.”

“Sure you would. My couch is very comfortable.”

“Couch?” He glanced toward Vivian, then back to Kyle, mouthing the words, “If you need to wait and I’m moving too fast, that’s okay. I can just go home.”

A twinge of happiness tugged at Kyle’s heart at Forrester’s thoughtfulness. Kyle’s past left him guarded, and with good reason, but he refused to let it keep holding him back.

John would not steal another moment of Kyle’s happiness.

The connection with Forrester was more than casual chitchat in the bookstore. He was crazy about Forrester, had been for a while. And it had been far too long since Kyle made love. He wanted—no, he needed the touch of a man.

And he wanted that man to be Forrester.

Smiling, Kyle reached across the table and stroked Forrester’s hand. “I’d like for you to come over but not to sleep on my couch.”

“You sure?”

He sat back and nodded, his breath coming short.

Forrester licked his lips, and his eyes got heavy with lust. “How about you drop me off at the bookstore first?”

“What for?”

“So I can get that book we left behind.”