Page 48

CHAPTER 48

A LIMITED RADIUS OF CARING

EMORY

No matter what excuse I give Mom and Dad about why I want to move back to Colorado, they refuse to believe me. The fact that they don't fall for any of my lies becomes so infuriating that I finally give up and go to my bedroom. A room I haven't set foot in since the summer after my junior year of college.

The walls are covered with the pictures of boy bands and K-pop groups I hung in high school. They're faded now, and their loose edges are worn. I run a finger across a few of them. There's not a speck of dust, but no spark of that past either.

My cork board is still here too. On the wall beside my bed. At one point, it was filled with photographs of me and my friends, but it's nearly empty now. Seth was in so many of those photos, but even when he wasn't, the people who took his side were. The people who told me I got what I deserved. That I should have never expected him to acknowledge our relationship in public.

How many hours did I lie in bed staring at those pictures and hoping the people in them would realize they were hurting me almost as much as he did? But after the first couple of days, not one of them tried to contact me. So one day, I ripped them all down, tore them into hundreds of pieces, and sprinkled them over a fire Dad made for me in the backyard. He held my hand as I watched the edges of my supposed friends curl and brown before the flames burned them out of my life.

I get lost in the blank spaces for a moment before letting myself fall on to the bed. As soon as my head hits the pillow, my eyes search for the crack above my closet. I don't know how many times that crack has been painted over, but it always comes back. Eventually, it became the last thing I looked at before I closed my eyes at night.

I was convinced everyone would leave me if they knew the truth of who I really was, but I decided I would be okay as long as the crack was always there. And it was. Through internet searches I kept hidden from the rest of the world, the first time I experimented with makeup when no one else was home, the heart-racing panic I felt as I heard the back door open before I'd washed it all off. The crack became the one constant in a life where I was sure nothing else would be.

God, I was such a melodramatic teenager. And misguided. Not a single person left me when I came out as trans. And afterward, I met the best friend I could ever ask for. A friend I never would have made if I were still hiding myself.

Maybe I should just tell Mom and Dad the truth now too. "I want to move back to Colorado and force my fiancé to come with me because some anonymous commenters on a website pissed me off." Because that doesn't sound idiotic. I can't even say it under my breath in the privacy of my own room without rolling my eyes.

But it's not just some commenters. It's comment after comment. It's the so-called journalist who wrote that trash, the editors who ran the story. The owners of the goddamn Sting for ever making Kayden doubt that he deserves a spot on that team.

What better way to send a giant fuck you to every one of them than by leaving to play for their rival?

I pull out my phone and stare at the photo of him on my lock screen. He's frozen in time at the last youth league game before he left for the all-star break. His hands are raised in applause, and his blond hair is beautifully wild from an entire game of anxiously running his fingers through it. He's just starting to turn my way, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smile as he catches me sneaking the picture.

If I were home, we'd be curled around each other on the couch watching a movie right now. Or sitting shoulder to shoulder, him reading a book from the library I still can't believe he has and me with my Kindle in my hands.

In the last few weeks, we've developed a system. When one of us reads a line we love, we wriggle our shoulder. That's the signal for the other to ask if we've read anything good recently. Then we read the line out loud. He always smiles at me when I do it, so now I'll skim through a book, looking for good lines just to earn that smile.

Fuck, I miss him.

Just as I close my eyes, imagining him here with me, my phone vibrates against my chest. As if he could somehow sense what I was thinking.

"Hey," I answer, keeping my voice little more than a breath. "How'd you know I was thinking about you?"

He chuckles on the other end of the line. "Because you're always thinking about me. How could you not? I'm the most phenomenal boyfriend ever."

"You mean the most phenomenal fake boyfriend."

I'm only teasing him, but there's a pause. He must not be in the mood to play along. "You know better, Nyx."

I roll to my side, and I can almost feel his body against mine. "I know, babe. Wait, are you okay?" I bolt upright in bed. "Did you call because you need something? Is Lily there?"

He pulls in a long breath. "She's… I wanted to hear your voice. Will you tell me yet what was so important that you had to go back to Denver?"

"Boulder, not Denver. I'm at my parents' house in Boulder. I came to ask for my old job back."

"Emory." The panicked word hisses like a pressure cooker .

"Not like that. Never like that. You're stuck with me."

I want to tell him the truth, but this is too soon. He's so damn loyal to that team, he'll never agree to leave. Not until I have everything in place and can show him that this is the best move for him.

"Then why won't you tell me?"

I draw in a breath and hold it while I try to think of some way to distract him, but I can't. "So we can move here. Together. I'm just so angry. Salt Lake City has the best player in hockey history, and all they want to do is drag you down instead of celebrating you."

"Thank you!" He shouts so loud I have to yank the phone away from my ear. "You'll tell Brant and the other boys that the next time you see them, right? They never believe me, but they might if they hear it from you. You probably have the stats to back it up."

"I do have the stats to prove it, but that's not the point. Kayden, I'm serious. The things people said about you… they were savage. Not to mention the article itself. It should have never been written."

"You're right. It shouldn't have been. But when I went pro, I learned quickly that I can't care what strangers think of me."

It's a lesson I learned a long time ago too, but it hits so much harder when those strangers are saying their cruel things about someone I love.

"You shouldn't have to be calloused like that. They should do better. The new owners of the Sting should have done better. I already talked to your agent about this, and he said Denver would give up half their team to sign you at the end of the season. And working for Dad will just be temporary. I'm sure I'll eventually find something I love as much as the clinic in Salt Lake City."

He sighs. "When you make it to this level, you need to have a limited radius of caring. I choose who gets inside my radius and who doesn't. It's my teammates. The kids I coach. Lily and Chloe."

"Oh, not me?" I tease.

"My entire universe orbits around you, Nyx. Without you, there is no radius. I can't care about a single thing without you. "

My throat swells shut with everything I want to say to him. But all those thoughts boil down to the same thing. My life orbits him too.

Before I can say that, though, he changes the subject. "Remember how you told me your dad used to take you stargazing?"

I manage to force out a weak "mm-hmm."

"My weather app says it's clear right now in Boulder. Go outside."

"What?" My disbelieving laugh finally clears the jam in my throat. "Does your app also tell you that it's thirteen degrees with half a foot of snow outside? Besides, there's too much light here where I am. I'd only be able to see a few stars without driving up into the mountains."

Something rustles against his phone."I'm going out too. Go find your star. I want to look at it at the same time as you."

"This isn't some cheesy movie, Kayden. This is silly." But even as I say it, I'm lacing up my boots. They're not insulated and have too much of a heel to be practical in the snow. Lily would tell me they're impractical for almost everything, but there's no reason I can't look cute. Even if I'm just standing on the back porch.

When I walk into the living room, I find Mom and Dad sitting together on the couch—rather than in their recliners, which drifted further apart over the years until they were on opposite sides of the room. This is the way they used to be when I was growing up.

"Joining us, honey?" Mom asks.

I shake my head. "Maybe in a bit. I'm heading outside."

I go past them and into the kitchen. "This is so silly." I tell Kayden again, as I slip into my coat and pull on my mittens. "You get two minutes. Any more than that, and I risk falling into a cryogenic sleep. I'll wake up to find some psychotic computer has locked me in the pod bay."

"This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it, Dave."

I laugh at his flat computer voice. "Nerd. I knew you'd know that movie."

"Everyone knows that movie. Are you outside yet? "

I push the screen door open and step outside. Steam rises from my long breath as I tighten my coat around me. Maybe two minutes is too much time. I might be frozen in less than a minute, as cold as it is. My inhale burns my lungs, and my eyes are already watering.

"You'd better appreciate this, because I'm freezing out here for you."

I look up, and just like I told him, I can see only a few stars. But straight above me, there's Taurus with Aldebaran burning in its center. "Okay, I'm looking at it, and you've got nineteen seconds left before I go back inside."

"Nineteen? You told me two minutes. You're not playing fair, Nyx."

"Thirteen now."

"Hold on! Let me find it. Which one is it again? The bright red one, right? The one that's in the middle of the sky like it's the most important thing in the universe? Because it is."

I roll my eyes even though he can't see it. "Yes. The bright red star that's almost directly overhead. At least it is here. Maybe it's slightly different where you are."

"Nope. Same. Your star is the center of the sky no matter where I am, Emory. You're looking at it, right?"

The breath of my exasperated laugh freezes as it leaves my body. This would be cute if I weren't about to turn into a glacier. Okay, maybe it's still a little cute now. "Yes, puck boy. I'm looking at it. The bright red center of your universe," I tease. "Now can I go inside? I'm in the fifth stage of hypothermia. And there are only four stages. That's how cold I am."

"Just one more thing before you do."

I huff out a breath and immediately regret it because it means I have to inhale more icy air to replace it. "I can already feel the blood freezing in my arteries." Even with a sweater and my coat fastened around me, I'm shivering. I really need to move somewhere warm. I wonder if manatees need veterinarians.

"It'll be quick. Look down. "

I let my gaze drop to the deck. The only trace of snow here is smashed down in the gaps between the boards. Everything else has been cleared, exposing the dark, stained wood that looks almost black in the moonless night.

"Oh my god," Kayden groans. "Don't be such a literalist. Look up a little bit. Ninety degrees. Straight out."

When I look up, my heart freezes. There's a person who looks exactly like Kayden, standing at the edge of the parking lot.

But that's ridiculous.

Kayden is on the phone. He can't be standing twenty feet away from me.

"Hey, Nyx."

"You? You're here?"

"I'm here. I promised your mom I'd give her a copy of Gender Trouble. Judith Butler's writing can be dense but your mom can handle it."

I can only stare as his boots crunch across the small snow-covered yard separating the office parking lot from my parents' deck and climb the six steps up to my level.

"And I missed you," he says quietly. "Mostly I'm here because I missed you."

Even when he's standing just a couple of feet away, my brain still doesn't register that he's really here. "I've only been gone ten hours."

He takes my hand, and I let him pull me against him, closing my eyes and savoring the heat flowing from him to me.

"It was too long. You didn't even tell Lily why you were flying back to Denver, so I started to worry."

"About me?"

He forces himself to grin, but it's obviously just a shield. "About us. I know you told me you didn't believe that article, but… God, Emory. When you left to come back here, I was terrified that it scared you away." His words are soft, as if he's afraid saying them too loudly might give them weight .

"Baby, nothing is ever going to scare me away from you." I rest my forehead against his. "But how did you find me here?"

"Your dad told me. I called him as soon as my plane touched down. He told me the address and then gave me directions, like my phone doesn't have GPS. By the way, I think you can take the phone away from your ear now."

"Oh." I disconnect the call and drop the phone into my coat pocket.

I want to kiss him, but it wouldn't stay just a kiss if I did that. Adult or not, I'm not about to strip a man naked on my parents' deck.

Parents. Shit.

They're probably inside wondering what I'm doing. "We should go inside so you can meet my parents. Officially, that is. One day, we really need to talk about how you've all been sneaking around behind my back." But I can't even pretend to be angry about it.

His mouth curves up into a smirk. "Yeah, since they're standing at the window pretending not to stare at us, I think we probably should."

I whip around. As soon as my eyes fall on them, they take a step back into the dark of the kitchen. But they're silhouetted by the light from the living room. "Seriously, guys?" I say loud enough so they can hear. "I'm not a teenager anymore. You don't have to make sure I'm not making out with some guy." They both stand perfectly still. Obviously under the assumption that I'm a distant relative to the T-Rex and can't see them if they don't move.

"It might just be the shadows, but your dad looks completely different in person than he does on FaceTime."

I jerk around to face him. "You've FaceTimed my dad?"

He worries his bottom lip and tries to flash the innocent whites of his eyes. "Maybe once or twice? Definitely no more than five times. But they were short calls. And we didn't talk about you the whole time. Why didn't you tell me your dad likes to fly fish?"

I toss my hands up as he starts to move past me toward the door. "I'm sorry. Should I have listed all of my dad's hobbies on our first date?"

He smiles a self-satisfied grin as he motions me inside. "Take off the drama pants, Emory. Everyone knows that's traditionally done on the second date."

"Oh my god, he told you about drama pants?"

I can't do anything but shake my head as we walk into the kitchen. Mom and Dad have disappeared, and now the living room television is turned so loud people in Wyoming can hear it. When I flick on the kitchen light, Mom and Dad pretend to laugh at something that sounds like a fiber supplement commercial.

"Oh my god, you two. Quit. Kayden already busted you. I can't believe neither of you told me he was coming." When I walk around the corner, they both glance up with overdone innocent looks on their faces. "If you'd told me, I could have at least cleaned up for him. Taken a shower and done something with my hair."

Kayden slips his arm around the small of my back, and I reflexively lean into him. "I'm glad you didn't. I like my girl dirty, if you know what I mean."

Three pairs of shocked eyes snap to him.

"You're welcome," he tells us. "I just broke whatever weird tension you three had going on. Is it too forward for me to hug you two?" he asks Mom and Dad, who are both up with arms extended before he even gets the question out.

When Mom finishes offering Kayden every kind of drink in the Western Hemisphere and Dad finally realizes it's too dark and way too cold for Kayden to go to the garage to see his collection of lures, they settle back onto the couch.

I take Kayden's hand and lead him to Mom's chair, but before I can take even a step toward Dad's recliner, Kayden pulls me down to his lap.

A squeak slips from my lips as I land, and my face burns as I turn toward my parents, praying that neither of them is seeing this. But they are. Other than a shared grin, though, they both seem unfazed. Even when Kayden pulls me tighter.

That's when I feel his erection poking into my ass .

Oh. My. God.

We spend the next hour talking. Well, they do. It's kind of hard to speak with a telephone pole trying to shove its way inside you. Seriously? A one-hour erection? Is his dick an endurance athlete?

When there's finally a break in the conversation, I hop up, quickly tossing a throw pillow onto Kayden's lap. "My very considerate boyfriend told me he booked us an early flight back to Salt Lake City in the morning."

It's a complete lie, but just add it to the list of lies I've told my parents. Number thirty-nine thousand, four hundred and twelve.

"You know how traffic can be between Boulder and the Denver airport, so I think we should get a hotel room near the airport tonight. So we don't miss our flight." Or so I can spend the evening doing things to this man that I would never be able to do to him in my childhood bedroom.

Kayden stands behind me, still clutching the pillow in front of him.

"Oh, and I think this pillow used to be mine, and I really miss it." Lie number thirty-nine thousand, four hundred and thirteen. "So I'm taking it with me." I grab Kayden's free hand and drag him toward the backdoor before anyone can stop us.

I might not have been able to tell him earlier that my life orbits him too, but I plan to show all the things I couldn't say. Not just tonight, but every night for a very long time.