Incoming call from: Kyle Fenton
It was the second call from Kyle in as many minutes. Adam’s insides twisted, and he mentally kicked himself for not getting over that response yet. He ignored the phone and queued up another episode of Sherlock. There was an empty carton of takeout Chinese from his earlier dinner, and he walked it to the garbage. A text message blinked across his phone.
Answer your phone. Please.
After the graduation, Kyle had called a few times and left a couple voice mails to plead his case. But there hadn’t been anything from him since.
The text disappeared as another call came in.
Incoming call from: Kyle Fenton
Adam ground his teeth. He had done a pretty good job of creating distance between them, and Kyle was not doing him any favors right now as his name flashed on the screen.
The phone went silent. Another text appeared a few seconds later.
please it’s about Caroline.
Adam read the message suspiciously. What about Caroline? The last time he’d fallen for that trick, he’d wound up with Kyle whirling into his apartment with too many snacks and plans for a movie night.
i’ll phone Rebecca.
That was a low blow. Rebecca had already called Adam an asshole several times that week. He didn’t need Kyle to give her more ammunition.
The phone resumed ringing. Adam sighed and thumbed through to the call.
“What?”
“Oh, thank god,” Kyle said. His voice was staticky and there was a lot of background noise, like he was outside somewhere. “Adam, I’m sorry.” You should be. “I wouldn’t have called, but I’m running out of options.”
“What do you want?” Adam tried to toe the line between angry and hurt. He put a chip in his mouth to keep himself from saying anything else that he might regret after he’d heard whatever breathless monologue Kyle had called to give him.
“My van died.” There was the sound of a car passing near wherever Kyle was.
“Are you okay?” A dead van was not the opening line Adam had expected.
“Yeah. I don’t think it’s coming back from this one, but I managed to pull over and I’m okay. I’m still three hours from home though.” Adam’s eyes narrowed. If Kyle had the balls to call him to ask for a lift . . .
“And?” Three hours so close to Kyle, in the confined space of Adam’s car, wasn’t a solution that would allow him to keep himself on a steady emotional keel.
“The tow truck’s coming, they can give me a lift into town, and then I should be able to catch a bus in a couple hours. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the van, but they said they’d check it out and call me. I was thinking Ben could come give it a once-over too, but maybe it’d be easier to let them tow it to the scrap yard. Do you think they’d do that? Maybe if I let them keep part of the money? It can’t be worth a lot, but I think—”
“Kyle, what do you want exactly?” Adam said, more abruptly than he meant to. Every syllable of Kyle’s monologue squeezed tighter at Adam’s insides.
“Right,” Kyle said. There was the sound of another car passing. “Right. Sorry. No. My dad. It’s my dad. Or my uncle actually. My aunt called from the hospital. They think my uncle had a heart attack and my aunt’s freaking out, and the rest of our family lives out of state so my dad needs to go and—”
“You need someone to take care of Caroline?” Adam could do that. It would limit the amount of time he had to spend with Kyle. Better than giving him a ride.
“Could you?” Kyle’s relief was audible, despite the crappy phone connection. “You wouldn’t have to do much. She’ll be asleep so you only—”
“It’s fine.” Somehow the longer Kyle talked, the deeper the ache in Adam’s chest settled. It pissed him off that Kyle’s run-on sentences were still endearing.
“Oh,” Kyle said. “Okay. I’ll call my dad. He said if you could come for nine o’clock, that would be great. Caroline will be in bed.”
“Sure.”
There was a pause, filled only by tinny background noises on Kyle’s end of the call.
“Okay,” Kyle said again. “Good. Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Adam said. He ate another chip when his brain prompted him to speak again.
This is the right thing to do, Adam told himself, as he drove over to Kyle’s house. Whatever had happened between them, his own stupid heartache was minor.
Kyle’s dad greeted him with a tired smile and a thank-you at the door. As Kyle had said, Caroline was asleep.
“Did you talk to Kyle?” Gord asked as he headed towards the door.
“I did,” Adam said.
“I appreciate you helping out. I know the two of you aren’t . . .”
“We’re both adults,” Adam said. “We can behave ourselves.”
Gord hesitated, like he wanted to say more, but instead he just nodded and clapped a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Thanks for watching Caroline.”
Adam settled himself down in the den, with the next few episodes of Sherlock ready to go. Around ten thirty, he felt a sudden pang of anxiety. Kyle had said after eleven, which meant he’d be arriving soon. He had texted to say he was on the bus, but Adam hadn’t heard from him since. The idea of texting him now to find out where he was only ratcheted up the anxiety further.
He went to the kitchen and got a glass of water. This was stupid. Over the course of the week, he’d had some time to think, and could admit now that he hadn’t handled Kyle’s announcement well. He’d reacted emotionally to the idea that Kyle was considering leaving. Yelling backstage of the school’s auditorium and then a week of silent treatment had not been the best problem-solving approach. It hurt like hell that a relationship that had felt so promising was over.
Another episode finished, and Kyle wasn’t back yet. Adam dozed on the couch. It was nearly midnight, and his eyelids were heavy and his brain fuzzy. Was there another guest room somewhere in the house where he could lie down if Kyle was going to be much longer? The couch was small, too small for him to stretch out fully.
The sound of the front door opening made him nearly jump out of his skin—and the suddenness of it made Adam wonder if maybe he’d fallen asleep after all. He was still blinking, his pulse thumping in his chest, when Kyle walked into the den.
“Hi, Mr. Hathaway,” he said. His words made Adam’s throat hurt.
The only light in the room was a table lamp by Adam’s head. Kyle’s face was hidden in the shadowed hall. He set down the worn suitcase he carried, and slid a bag off one shoulder. He stepped into the room, and Adam could see his face clearly now which, it turned out, wasn’t helpful. Kyle looked tired, his hair lay flat against his head, but his eyes were smiling.
“I took the job,” he said.
Adam stiffened as blood rushed to his face and ears. He bit his lip and nodded.
“Good,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll be great at it.” It was the truth, but it represented an ending. He couldn’t do long distance. He wanted a home and a life and he couldn’t chase after Kyle to get those. Kyle’s lips slid into a sad smile, but his eyes were still soft.
“You’re an idiot,” Kyle said. Adam opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, Kyle crossed the rest of the distance between them and lay down across the couch, his head on Adam’s knees.
“What?” Adam asked. Kyle’s face split into a grin.
“You’re an idiot,” he said. Adam felt him shaking from suppressed laughter. “A stupid, bad-at-feelings, bad-at-words, self-sacrificing idiot. That’s it? You’re just going to tell me I’m going to be great at it? Don’t you want to know the details?”
“Not particularly.” Adam didn’t want to have this conversation. He wanted to go home where he could mope in peace before Rebecca showed up and threatened to drag him outside by his hair if he didn’t get his head out of his ass, but he couldn’t think of a way to escape that didn’t involve dumping Kyle off his lap and onto the floor.
“Idiot.” Kyle turned and wrapped his arms around Adam’s torso. He had craved this closeness all week, but now that craving warred with jagged hurt. Kyle turned his head so that one of his brown eyes met both of Adam’s blue ones.
“I took the conference center job.”
Adam’s brain hiccupped for a second because that didn’t make sense.
“What?” he heard himself ask. Kyle pinched him. “Stop that!” He tried to squirm out of reach, but he was trapped in the corner of the couch. Kyle laughed and twisted himself up, until he was straddling Adam’s lap. Warm hands cupped Adam’s face, and Kyle pulled him in for a hard kiss. Adam held back for a minute, as he tried to catch up with what was happening.
“The conference center—” he managed to say, before Kyle dove back in for another kiss, this one more demanding than the first.
“Mm-hmm,” Kyle said, and the vibration against Adam’s lips made him groan. Kyle took that as an invitation to slide his tongue in. Heat bloomed through Adam’s body again, different from the warm anxiety he’d felt minutes before. He held Kyle’s body against his.
“The conference center in Red Creek?” he asked. It seemed so stupid to need to talk this out now, with Kyle in his lap, obviously with other things on his mind, but Adam needed to know. He may have been an idiot, but he wouldn’t let Kyle break his heart twice.
“The conference center in Red Creek. I’d already made up my mind to stay anyway. There was this woman at the coffee shop in Richmond, and her kid was sick, and I started to think about what I would do, and then I realized maybe you and my dad were right. I probably could have been okay in Richmond, but it would have been a lot of work, and—”
“Kyle.” Adam couldn’t help laughing. “I need you to stick to the topic here.”
“I’m not leaving. Because we need to be here.” Kyle smiled. “And then the conference center called to offer me the job this morning just as I was going in to talk to the charity. I start in three weeks.”
“You’re staying?” Adam pulled Kyle against him tighter.
Kyle smiled as he held Adam’s head in place. His brown eyes shone. Slowly, gently, he came down, lowering his lips against Adam’s. His mouth promised things Adam didn’t want to name.
“I’m not leaving.” He peppered little kisses all over Adam’s face and neck.
“But what about—” Adam started, but Kyle pinched the sensitive skin of Adam’s armpit. “Stop!” Adam said, but he didn’t move away.
“You’re an idiot.” Kyle rested his head against Adam’s shoulder. “But so am I, Mr. Hathaway.”
“No you aren’t.” Adam wrapped his arms around Kyle and pulled him close.
“Such an idiot.” Kyle exhaled warm air against Adam’s neck, making him shiver. “You tried to tell me, last week at the school, but you suck at words.” Adam took the chance to pinch Kyle, who laughed and tried to push himself away, but Adam held on to him tight. Given the current information, he wasn’t sure he’d let go anytime soon.
“Kyle.”
“And I’m an idiot, so it took me a six-hour drive, and a stranger at a coffee shop, and a short-lived interview for a job that would have needed me to work at least sixty hours a week to make myself indispensable, for me to realize that a new job in a new town is not what I need to pick up the broken pieces of my life. And then it took me a two-hour drive, and then two hours standing on the side of the highway, and then a five-hour bus ride for me to figure out how to tell you all of this.”
“You knew you were staying when you called me before?”
Kyle’s teeth flashed a white line in the dark as he smiled. “I might have, yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
There was more kissing. Kyle’s tongue pushed into Adam’s mouth, making Adam growl as Kyle’s hands roamed over his body. They gasped as they broke apart.
Kyle grinned. “You wouldn’t have believed me. And I wanted to see your face when I told you that as much as I loved my life in Seattle, the job and what I had there, it’s not what I need now.” He leaned forward for another kiss, but Adam pulled his head back.
“What do you need now?”
Kyle licked his lips. “I need to give Caroline a home and people who care about her. And she cares about my dad. And I guess . . . I care about my dad too. I’ll gouge my eyes out before I agree to move in here permanently, but it would be unfair to him for us to pack up and leave completely.”
“So you’re staying for your dad?” Adam said, but he didn’t feel resentful about it. Family was family.
“I’m staying for Caroline. And you,” Kyle said, so quietly that Adam nearly missed it. His fingers brushed through Adam’s hair. “I need you. I need you to tell me when I’m being an idiot, and when my pickup lines cross the cheese threshold. I need you to talk me through my panic attacks and to tell me to shut up when I can’t stop talking. If I’m staying here, and being all altruistic for the sake of my daughter’s well-being, then you can be damn sure that I’m going to be selfish and keep you. I don’t just need you. I’m choosing you.”
When he kissed Adam this time, Adam didn’t push him away. He welcomed him into his mouth as he tried to wrap his whole body around Kyle’s. Kyle, who was staying. Kyle, who was choosing him.
When the kiss ended, Kyle’s eyes were unfocused. He leaned back and let out a yawn that made his jaw pop.
“Come with me.” His voice and smile went soft as he brought Adam to his feet. They stumbled upstairs, tangling mouths and hands as they went. Kyle barely had his bedroom door closed before they tugged off their clothes and fell into bed. The mattress squeaked loudly under them.
“If you wake up my kid, Mr. Hathaway, you get to explain to her what it is we’re doing.”
“Then quit making so much noise.”
“I’m sorry I’m an idiot.” Kyle nipped at Adam’s chin.
“Takes one to know one.” Adam licked up the line from Kyle’s navel to his collarbones, then sucked on one of his flat nipples.
“God, I love your mouth.” Kyle moaned and arched his neck back.
“I love you.” Adam continued upward to Kyle’s exposed throat.
“That’s quite the declaration, for someone so bad at feelings.”
Adam fought a blush and tensed as he waited for Kyle to respond. He was in love with Kyle. It seemed silly to deny it, though he felt increasingly shy, the longer Kyle stared at him.
“Love you too, Mr. Hathaway,” Kyle said, and Adam practically lunged forward to devour Kyle’s mouth. The movement brought his aching cock in line with Kyle’s, which was hard as Adam ground down against it. Kyle’s hands came down to grip Adam’s ass, and Adam kissed him ferociously.
“Turn over,” he said.
“It was starting to get good.”
“It’ll get better.” Adam bit at the cord of Kyle’s neck. Kyle laughed, but wiggled until he had rolled over onto his stomach, head pillowed against his hands.
“Promises, promises, Mr. Hathaway,” he said, then jerked as Adam let one finger trail down Kyle’s spine and between the cheeks of his ass.
“Wait.”
Adam took his time with Kyle. He felt like he’d been waiting forever, and wanted every second to last, despite the ache in his body that told him to hurry. Kyle provided lube and an optimistically long string of condoms, but Adam took his time before he reached for either, working with his tongue and teasing the edges of Kyle’s anus with the soft pads of his fingers. Trying to limit the noise he and Kyle were making was torture. He wanted to see Kyle come apart, but if near-silence was the price of that, he’d pay it. He breathed against Kyle’s ass, making the muscles pucker, and reveled in the heat of Kyle’s body when he slid a finger in past the tight ring. Kyle groaned.
“Shhh.” Adam’s own impatience built, but he wanted this. He needed this, needed to touch and explore every inch of Kyle’s body. He wanted to claim every cell as his. So he took his time. He worked Kyle open while his own cock leaked steadily against the sheets. When he was satisfied, he rolled the condom down and moved Kyle around until they lay spooned together.
“Ready?” Adam asked as he lined up his cock.
“Oh, thank god,” Kyle said, already pushing back. Adam chuckled and thrust forward. There was a moment of agonizing silence. The only noise in the room was their labored breathing. Adam buried his head in Kyle’s neck as he slid forward painstakingly slowly. Kyle wrapped one arm around until his fingers were buried in Adam’s hair, gripping tight enough to sting. Adam’s mouth roamed over Kyle’s neck and shoulder. He tasted salt on Kyle’s skin. Kyle twisted his head around to meet his mouth, and Adam took full advantage, plunging his tongue in between Kyle’s open lips.
When his cock bottomed out, they both sighed, and then Kyle groaned as Adam began to thrust, short movements at first. He enjoyed the soft smack of his hips against Kyle’s ass, careful to control his movement as the mattress gave the occasional creak under them. He pulled them together as tightly as he could. He loved the way Kyle tried to do the same thing, rolling and arching as if he needed to fit every nook and angle of their bodies together. Adam pressed on as Kyle started making small gasps with each of Adam’s thrusts.
The heat and the friction of their bodies together made Adam feel like he was going to burst, and as much as he wanted to take his time with this, he wasn’t going to last. He consoled himself that there would be more opportunities in the future. The way Kyle buried his face into his pillow when Adam palmed the other man’s cock said that Kyle wasn’t going to last very long either. Adam rolled them together so that Kyle was on his stomach and Adam could press his entire weight across him again. He felt Kyle clench around him as Adam changed his angle and slid across his prostate. Kyle’s hand slipped under his hips. He wrapped it around Adam’s hand and helped him find the rhythm as he thrust in time with Adam.
“More,” Kyle gasped.
Adam grinned into his neck, pleased that he’d reduced Kyle’s vocabulary down to single words. He picked up his speed, while his body began to tighten. Kyle made an inarticulate noise beneath him. With one last thrust, Kyle spasmed and clenched, and then Adam was coming too, all of his rhythm lost as he ground down, growling into the pillow as he came.
They lay gasping for long seconds. Kyle was softening in Adam’s hand, and he let himself have a few last lazy thrusts against Kyle’s ass, just to feel him shudder.
“You’re very heavy, Mr. Hathaway,” Kyle said. They disentangled themselves. Kyle reached over the side of the mattress to pull up a pair of boxers off the floor. He used them to wipe up the worst of the mess on his skin.
Adam indulged in another long kiss to tell himself that this was real and Kyle was his, before he rose. He slid on the sweats and T-shirt he had discarded on the floor when he had come in and went down the hall to the bathroom to deal with the condom and clean himself up a bit. When he came back, Kyle was spread out naked on the mattress.
“I should go,” Adam said. Now that the anxiety and the high of being with Kyle again were wearing off, he was exhausted.
“No.” Kyle wrapped a hand around Adam’s wrist. “Stay.” He shimmied backward and used his weight to pull Adam down.
“Kyle,” Adam said, but Kyle grumbled a protest and kept pulling.
“Stay. It’s late. If you’re half as tired as I am, you shouldn’t be driving. Sleep for a couple hours.” His eyes closed, but he smiled. “We might even get in a repeat performance before you go.”
“Well, when you put it like that . . . Let me go get my phone. I’ll set an alarm—”
“We can use mine.” Kyle patted around his nightstand, his eyes still closed, until his hand connected with his phone. He fumbled with the alarm settings, fumbled more when it started beeping unexpectedly, then set it back where it had been. “Satisfied?”
He scooted back until there was enough space for Adam on the mattress. Adam let himself be pulled down. He was so tired, and the warm place next to Kyle was incredibly inviting. He lay down and murmured sleepy and incoherent nothings when Kyle splayed his body over Adam’s like a blanket. Then they were asleep between one breath and the next.
Adam didn’t know how long he had been asleep when a soft sound woke him, but thin morning light streamed through a window that neither one of them had thought to pull the curtains over. Adam blinked a few times, and then he focused on a pair of dark-brown eyes that stared at him. He smiled and stretched. He could get used to waking up next to Kyle, although it seemed they were going to have to work on someone’s alarm clock setting skills.
A few more blinks, and he realized that those brown eyes were not Kyle’s, but Caroline’s. She was standing at the edge of the mattress, nose to nose with Adam.
The sleepy bliss in his head evaporated between heartbeats.
Shit. This was bad.
Caroline blinked at him, motionless and silent.
This was not at all how meeting a significant other’s kid was supposed to go, despite the fact they had already met before. Especially because they had met before.
Fuck.
“Good morning,” he whispered. Caroline just watched him. Adam fought panic as he reached behind him to shake Kyle awake. He needed Kyle. This was Kyle’s daughter, and he should be the one doing the talking.
Kyle didn’t respond. His breathing didn’t so much as change. It was like the night he had fallen asleep on the couch. Adam shook again, harder, and then froze as he realized that his hand was resting on Kyle’s very naked hip. A little further quiet inspection revealed that the rest of Kyle was equally naked. Adam ground his teeth. The idiot hadn’t bothered to put any clothes on. And then Adam remembered Kyle wiping come off his hand with a pair of boxers. Where were those?
Caroline hadn’t stopped staring the whole time.
It was so not his job to explain all of this to her.
“Mr. Hathaway?” she said.
Now that he was good and awake, he could see her clearly. Her hair was a frizzy nest around her head, and she wore purple princess pajamas. In her arms was a floppy stuffed rabbit.
“Yes?” His voice was a croak.
“I’m hungry. And Daddy’s asleep.”
“Okay.” Had she already tried to wake Kyle up? “Hungry. Do you want breakfast?” She squeezed the bunny and nodded. “Okay.”
He cursed Kyle silently and slid out of bed. There was going to be some amazing sex later, to make up for this, but it was going to be at Adam’s place. He thanked whatever fates had managed to get him back into all his clothes, so that he followed Caroline downstairs in his sweats and T-shirt.
“What do you want for breakfast?” he asked as Caroline took a seat at the kitchen table. He crossed his fingers that she liked her breakfasts simple. He could do cereal, or probably toast if it came to that.
“On Saturdays we make pancakes,” Caroline said.
Adam frowned. “It’s not Saturday.”
“We could make them anyway?” Caroline squeezed her bunny.
Adam cursed Kyle one final time. He had been promised a cushy babysitting job in which Caroline would be asleep the entire time. Cooking had not been part of the plan. Trying to figure out how to explain why he had slept in the same bed as her father had not been part of the plan.
Twenty minutes later, there were pancakes stacked on a plate. Caroline turned out to be a very helpful sous chef, pulling out a bag of blueberries from the freezer.
“Daddy said we need to eat fruit.”
The pancakes were pretty good. There were a couple that were on the well-done side, but Adam kept those for himself. He stayed on edge with the whole situation, and marveled at the way Caroline seemed to take eating breakfast with her teacher as an unremarkable experience.
“Do you have to go to school today?” she asked as she finished her second pancake. There were blueberries and syrup smeared on her chin.
“Not today,” he said. “I’m on summer vacation, like you.”
“Then will you watch Princess Amazonia with me?”
Adam was about to respond when he heard a door opening. He turned toward the hall in time to see Kyle’s dad walk through the front door.