Page 140 of The Locker Room

always found a sort of spare beauty in that view, and he longed to be

120 Amy Lane

outside with the dogs. He could pretend that when he walked back in the

door, Chris would be there.

“Xander, we heard you last night,” Jed said now, and Xander

flinched his attention back to his only family. Jed"s hair used to be

darker, he thought. The color of wet sand. It was threaded with silver

now, longer than his collar, without the irrepressible curl that made Chris

look so young. But his narrow face, with his pointed chin, was still as

steady as it had ever been.

And he still hadn"t responded. “That happens all the time,” he said,

not wanting them to know about it.

Jed and Andi exchanged glances. “Even when you lived with us?”

Andi asked, and Xander shrugged.

“I used to hide it better.” He didn"t used to have Chris there,

quieting him down before he got too loud—he"d had to do it for himself.

“Xander….” Andi trailed off and ran her hands through her riotous

gold curls. Bottle-blonde now? Yes. But her face was nearly unlined, and

her smile was as serene as always. “Xander… God. You can"t just live

here in this house alone—”

“I"m not alone,” Xander said staunchly, standing up. His body had

just called a halt to this conversation when his mind couldn"t think of the

words to do it. “Chris still lives here. He"s just away on business. You

understand that, right? Business. Lots of guys have an on-season home

and an off-season home. This is his off-season home. He"ll get himself

an on-season home in Denver, and I"ll visit during the downtime and

he"ll come back here. It"s easy. It"s elementary. Lots of people do it—”

“But you don"t!” Andi shouted, standing up and stamping her foot.

She was five foot five, and Xander thought that to most people, she

wouldn"t look small. “My son might—might,mind you—be able to do