Gambling on Love

by Jane Davitt

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 1537

  Burnsville, NC 28714

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  Gambling on Love

  Copyright © 2011, 2016 by Jane Davitt

  Cover art: Jay Aheer, jayscoversbydesign.com

  Editor: Delphine Dryden, delphinedryden.com/editing

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at marketing@riptidepublishing.com.

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-453-4

  Second edition

  September, 2016

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-454-1

  ABOUT THE EBOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED:

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  When Gary and Abe came out to each other in their final year of high school, a longstanding friendship turned into a new love. Keeping their feelings a secret was easy until a coach caught them together in the locker room, and their fragile relationship shattered around them. Panicked, angry, and rejected by his mother, Gary fled town, breaking Abe’s eighteen-year-old heart.

  Eleven years later Gary returns just as unexpectedly, crashing into Abe’s truck during a blizzard. He’s as arrogant and stubborn as ever—and just as irresistible. Time has changed them both in ways they never imagined, but the heat that flares between them is enough to thaw any ice.

  While Abe discovers what Gary did to survive in the city, Gary realizes that Abe has grown into a man with needs to match his own, and they fall in love all over again. But Gary’s determination to carry out one final order from the rich older man he’d lived with—and obeyed—for years means that a dead man’s plans might split them apart again . . . this time for keeps.

  (Note: This is a heavily revised second edition, originally published elsewhere.)

  About Gambling on Love

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Dear Reader

  Also by Jane Davitt

  About the Author

  More like this

  The summer before senior year . . .

  The heat of an August afternoon poured down like honey from a cloudless sky and made it too much effort to move. Gary lay on his damp towel, squinted at the blue arch above, and panted like a dog. He wore denim cutoffs, still soaked from his dip in the river, but the air was heavy, sticky against his bare skin, as smothering as winter clothing.

  “Think we could sleep in the river?” Abe asked. “Because I swear, when I woke up this morning, I felt cooked. The sheets stuck to me. I can’t take another night of it.”

  Gary turned his head, a slow roll, and adjusted his vision from far to near. Abe was worth looking at these days even if he hadn’t grown into the wide shoulders and muscles that had replaced his adolescent scrawniness. Slate-gray eyes and a sweep of thick, straight hair, black as soot, no shine to it, just a distracting sense of softness, added to his appeal. Gary swallowed an appreciative hum and tried to keep his hands where they were. There was a scatter of water droplets across Abe’s chest, clinging to tanned skin and the few sparse hairs around his nipples. Gary wanted to lick them away, one by one, taking his time, with Abe’s fingers tight in his hair, guiding him lower when he’d finished his task.

  “Worth a try. Might get your toes nibbled by a fish.”

  “You saying my toes look like worms, Fox?”

  Fox. Gary hated that nickname when anyone apart from Abe used it. It wasn’t for his dark red hair, but his reputation of being too smart for his own good. People were wary of him. He knew what they were picking up on, even if no one had said the word gay. Not yet. It might be a new millennium, but here in their small town on the border between Idaho and Montana, things were slow to change. Nobody was out. Everybody suspected Gary was in the closet and silently judged him for it.

  Everyone except Abe. Abe liked him, always had. They’d met in fourth grade and been best friends ever since. And everyone liked Abe, which was probably why— Gary cut his thoughts off, unwilling to cast himself as Abe’s sidekick when that was so far from the truth. He smiled, beguiling, innocent. “Well . . .”

  “You little shit.”

  The growl that went with the words was halfhearted, the move to punch Gary’s arm a sketched-out wave. Gary got off on provoking Abe enough to make Abe wrestle him to the floor and administer a tickling with strong, merciless fingers. He lived for moments like that, with Abe’s weight on him, Abe’s breath warm on his face, but it was too hot for that today.

  “A year ago, I was taller than you,” Gary reminded him. That would never be true again. He supposed he might have a few more inches to go before he stopped growing, but he’d never catch up to Abe, who at seventeen was already six feet of strength and raw masculinity. Arousal flared. Jesus, he’d better hope Abe didn’t look down and see the bulge pushing insistently against wet denim.

  Abe knew Gary was gay. When he’d asked about it several months earlier, Gary had told him and braced for a frown, a grimace, a step backward. Abe had shrugged indifferently and planted a kiss on Gary’s forehead, a loud smack of a kiss followed by a hair ruffle. “Yeah, I thought so. Listen, I cut math class to work on my car. Can I borrow your notes?”

  Math suited Gary, always had. There was one answer to a question, a clean, clear answer, and a teacher couldn’t take marks off him arbitrarily, the way the ones marking his essays did. He could score perfect, over and over, and he loved that feeling. But he disapproved of Abe’s truancy.

  “I don’t know. Can I borrow your car?”

  “When hell freezes over.”

  “You don’t have your license yet, so you can’t drive it solo anyway.”

  Abe had winked. “Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t run.”

  They’d grinned at each other, a small knot of anxiety unraveling inside Gary’s gut. Abe had been cool about it. Well, of course he had; they’d been friends for years
. This wouldn’t change anything.

  Abe probably didn’t realize how often he featured in Gary’s fantasies though, and given that Gary had seen Abe naked dozens of times, he had plenty of material. Abe wasn’t body-shy. His parents had been hippies in the seventies, and enough of it had stuck that they’d brought Abe up believing the body was beautiful and nudity natural. They’d still freaked out when they found the stash of porn magazines under Abe’s bed.

  In a way, Gary had been relieved to see the porn confiscated. He’d spent way too many guilty hours flicking through the magazines with Abe, side by side on Abe’s bed, the only sound in the room the rustle of flicked pages and their increasingly heavy breathing. And way too many guilty nights jerking off afterward, over and over, until his dick resembled chewed string and his wrist burned.

  It hadn’t been the porn but the memory of Abe’s arousal he’d used as kindling: the shape Abe’s dick had made as it hardened inside his jeans, the way Abe’s scent had changed, musk and sweat heavy on the air. The magazines had featured a depressing number of women, a reminder that Gary didn’t have a hope in hell of making his fantasies come true.

  “Are you falling asleep on me?”

  Gary blinked, startled out of his reverie. “Huh? No, I was thinking about stuff.”

  Abe’s gaze traveled over Gary’s body, lingering pointedly on the telltale bulge in Gary’s faded, thrift-store shorts. “I don’t want to know, huh?”

  “No.” Gary made the single word a warning. Clouds raced in from the west, clustering thickly, white now, but they’d turn gray and heavy with rain soon. The air was humid, too close to endure, laden with static. If Abe touched him lightly, they’d feel a spark jump between them, but only Gary would feel the deep-down ache of longing for more. “You don’t.”

  Abe’s hand tightened, not into a fist, but a reflex curl of his fingers, shock flaring on his face. “You got that thinking about me? Jesus, Gary.” His voice had grown soft, tense.

  Gary couldn’t take that—Abe being kind or, more horrifying still, showing pity. “It’s not as if I can control it, for fuck’s sake,” he snapped. “You’re lying next to me close to naked. Yeah, I think you’re hot. So do half the girls in our year. Deal with it.”

  “Only half?” Abe asked, but the joke was forced and Gary didn’t want to drop into their usual banter. Not now.

  “Being gay’s not catching, in case you were worried. And you’re big enough to fight me off if I can’t help myself and try to jump your bones.”

  “I wasn’t worried. Look, stop being a fucking jerk, okay?” Abe sat up, his chest and arms glossed with sweat, starred here and there with fragments of dirt and grass. He didn’t look happy and with Abe, what played out on his face was what he was feeling. Right now he was apparently twitchy and on edge. Well, wasn’t that fucking peachy. “There’s a storm coming. We should probably go.”

  “You can if you want. I don’t feel like going home right now.”

  “You’d have the house to yourself. Your mom’s probably going straight from work to church, right?”

  “Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, it’s her and God,” Gary said with a shrug. “I think she’s got a thing for him, but does he ever buy her candy or send flowers? No.”

  Her religion kick wasn’t new. It had begun after Gary’s dad died of lung cancer, so it wasn’t hard to connect the dots. Gary missed his dad in a vague, dutiful way, but not the thick pall of cigarette smoke that’d hung around the house, staining the walls and leaving Gary’s clothes reeking. Smoking didn’t tempt him, not after listening to his dad’s way of greeting the morning with a cough and a spit into the toilet bowl. Gross.

  “You’re weird, you know that?” Abe told him, like it was news.

  “And going to hell according to the preacher man she’s listening to, but he doesn’t like dinosaurs either, and as a Flintstones fan, I gotta say, he’s full of shit. I mean, who doesn’t love Dino?”

  Abe opened his mouth to reply, then shook his head. “Never mind. If you don’t want to be alone in the house, can I come over or what?”

  “Oh, you want to come over. Well, why didn’t you say so?” Gary mocked. Definitely not his best work, but thinking about his parents always brought him down.

  They gathered up their things, then pedaled their bikes hard to beat the rain. At Gary’s house, he led Abe up to his room without thinking about it. They always hung out there, with the door locked and his mom safely on the other side of it. Not that she ever joined in any of their conversations—as if—but it was impossible to talk freely with her a silent presence, staring out of the window and drinking her coffee in small, careful sips, her hands cradling the mug tightly as if she expected that to get taken away too, like her husband.

  The room was dark, but Gary snapped on the red overhead light instead of opening the curtains. Daylight would expose too much shabbiness. The faint glow from the low-wattage bulb—he’d stopped thinking it was cool a few years back, but the damn thing wouldn’t die—was far less revealing, even if it made his head ache.

  “This place stinks of dirty socks and you.” Abe spoke with the brutal frankness of an old friend. “It’s a toss-up which is more rank. Do you ever open a window?”

  “Fresh air kills, man. Full of carcinogens.”

  With a disbelieving snort, Abe sat on the bed. It was a double, wide enough for Gary to sprawl out on, starfished across the cheap, rumpled sheets. Big enough for two, not that he’d ever tested that theory.

  Abe still looked moody, subdued and brooding about something.

  Gary figured it had always been a matter of time. He had been an idiot to let his guard down now that Abe knew the truth. He sat at the head of the bed, leaning back against the wall, a pillow cushioning his back. “So is this the break-up talk because I got a boner for you? Do I have to promise to forget your locker combination and avoid eye contact in the hallways?”

  “How about you try not to be a jerk for five minutes.” Abe’s attention was on his hands, folded in his lap, his fingers wound together, the skin over the knuckles pulled tight enough that bone gleamed white through the thin covering. “Think you can do that for me, Fox?”

  The emptiness in his voice made the stuffy room—yeah, it stunk—seem colder. Gary bit at his lower lip, worrying it until it stung. “Sure. Yeah. Say what you need to say.”

  “I’m gay, I’m in love with you, and I can’t handle it.” Abe said it in a rush, then slumped forward and put his head in his hands. “Shit. Shit.” His right hand lashed out and down, punching the bed with enough force to make Gary put his hands down, bracing himself, his world rocked, physically and emotionally.

  Gay? Abe, gay? No fucking way was that possible. In Gary’s dreams, sure, but not for real. Abe had dated girls, kissed girls, and slipped his hand up their T-shirts to fondle their tits. Gary had heard all about it, in excruciating detail. No sex, but that was down to caution, not lack of opportunity. No one wanted a baby to support, not at their age. One problem Gary was spared, at least.

  The rest of what Abe had said finally registered with him. In love? Oh God. That was fucking scary. He liked Abe, and lusted after him with heartfelt appreciation, but love was a step over the edge of a cliff with a hard landing. Still, hearing Abe say it made something twist inside him, a complicated response, half yearning, half panic. Abe would be so fucking easy to fall in love with.

  The final part of Abe’s little speech made it unlikely he’d ever take that step, though. It didn’t take a trained therapist to deduce Abe wasn’t happy to discover he was gay. Gary hated seeing Abe miserable.

  “I told you. Gay’s not catching. It doesn’t make you gay to have a dude think you’re hot. If you’re unhappy, stick to being straight. It’s worked fine for you the last seventeen years. You’re probably just going through a phase.”

  God, listen to him spout bullshit. He should take over from the preacher next time the asshole got sick.

  “I wish.” Abe looked at him dir
ectly. “Don’t you get it, Fox? I’ve known what I was for years. Before you, I bet. I saw you working shit out and I wanted to say, hey, me too, but I don’t want to be different. I don’t want to be the freak kid beaten up and laughed at. I don’t want that for you either, but I can’t stop thinking about you and what I want to do to you.”

  He inhaled sharply, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “God, earlier, knowing you were hard over me . . . You’re lucky I didn’t grab you, because I don’t know if I could’ve stopped myself, that’s how bad it’s gotten. I’m walking around and I see you, and I— Fuck, why is this so hard to say?”

  “You don’t seem to have a problem talking.” Gary felt numb, stunned. All this was too much to take in. His dick was rigid and his skin thirsty, hungry for a touch. “I know what it’s like to feel that way. And I know you’d stop, but I can’t picture me telling you to.”

  Abe made a small sound, pitiful, needy, and Gary couldn’t do it anymore. He didn’t give a fuck if things ended with the whole town outside waving pitchforks and burning torches; he wanted his mouth on Abe’s and his hands on the ass he’d been dreaming of for months. Years.

  He leaned forward, going to his hands and knees to get close to Abe. Abe swallowed visibly, a faint tremor running over him, but his mouth met Gary’s without hesitation, opening to the push of Gary’s tongue a moment later.

  Gary arched closer to press against Abe, shameless, avid, the movement made without conscious thought behind it. Abe stroked his bare back, soothing him, though Abe was the one trembling, not Gary.

  “Are you sure?” Abe whispered against Gary’s hair, dipping his hands lower, brushing the waist of Gary’s shorts, and pushing the fabric lower by an inch or two. That might have worked with gym shorts, but not with denim. Their hands met, fumbled over the snap and zipper, somehow freeing Gary’s dick. It stuck up, tall and straight, a pole waiting for a flag. Jesus, his balls were a mashed-together throb, tight and aching. “It won’t be easy. We can’t tell anyone. We can’t be, uh . . .”

  “Out,” Gary supplied. “We’re in the fucking closet. I get it. It’s cool. Stop talking so fucking much.”