Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4

by Amy Jo Cousins

He marched over and pushed his way between Denny and his dance partner by virtue of being twice the size of dark-haired guy. Rafi ignored him except to toss an “Excuse me” over his shoulder.

  Denny face said he was beyond pissed, standing there with his hands on his hips, dancers bumping into him now that he’d stopped moving. “What the hell, Rafi?”

  “What are you doing?” It wasn’t any of his business. He knew it wasn’t.

  He didn’t care.

  “I’m dancing,” Denny snapped at him. “I know I’m not as good at it as you are, but I don’t think it’s unrecognizable.”

  “You know what I mean.” He didn’t want to say it out loud, because it was already becoming rapidly clear to him that saying the words—What are you doing with that guy? Hooking up with him?—would make it clear just how far off the deep end he’d gone.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You were about to go home with that guy.” They were both speaking loud enough to be heard over the music, and heads turned at Rafi’s accusation. So much for keeping his mouth shut.

  The pink flags riding high in Denny’s cheeks would have given him away even if he’d wanted to deny it, but he didn’t try. “I don’t know that we were aiming quite as high as making it all the way back to his place. A convenient bathroom would do.”

  “Do you even know him?” None of your business. This is so not your business.

  “Like, biblically? Um, no. Not. Yet.” Denny’s spoke slowly and clearly, as if Rafi’s problem was his hearing.

  People were staring. Rafi didn’t know how much they could actually hear, but it must have been obvious the two of them were having a disagreement. Of course, since Denny still didn’t understand what the problem was, Rafi was pretty much having a disagreement all by himself.

  He grabbed Denny by the elbow and then raised his hands in the air in apology when Denny shook him off. Tipping his head toward the hallway that led to the bathroom and a door to the backyard, Rafi strode stiff-legged out of the room, hoping to be followed. Outside, he shivered in his T-shirt. The temperature had dropped after sunset, and although the cool air was refreshing compared to the heat of the crowded party, he wanted to make this quick and get back inside. He figured it was luck there wasn’t a crowd of smokers huddling on the steps, and turned around at the sound of the door opening again.

  “Seriously. What is your problem?” Denny crossed his arms, a glare that could melt steel making it clear he thought Rafi was an asshole of epic proportions.

  “What’s my problem? My problem is you, going off with some guy you don’t even know. It’s not safe. What if he—” He trailed off, the words falling to dust in his mouth under Denny’s stare.

  “What if he, what? Wants to fuck? Why do you think I hit on him?”

  The word fuck coming out of that mouth was just wrong. And he knew Denny was an adult. Of age. Able to have sex if he wanted to. Rafi knew that. But all he could think of when he’d watched him dancing with that other guy was how Denny had once sat on a couch with him past midnight and admitted that he’d never kissed another boy. The words—the dumbest words—burst out of him. “Jesus. Do you even know what you’re doing? How easy it is to end up in a bad situation?”

  Because that was all he could picture. And it was ridiculous, worrying that a six-foot tall, two-hundred-pound guy was going to end up hurt, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t even know if he was worried about Denny’s body or his heart, although clearly Denny wasn’t on the hunt for a romantic candlelit dinner.

  “Holy shit, Rafi. What the hell? Where is this coming from?” Denny demanded, taking another step down the staircase but still looming over Rafi, who stood awkwardly at the bottom. “You just declined to take me up on my very blatant offer to get together. Or even think about getting together. We are not a couple. Your decision.”

  Rafi didn’t have an answer for him. Stuff was coming out of his mouth that he’d had no idea was inside his head. He’d thought stress over not knowing what he wanted to do about his own attraction to Denny was the big problem, but this burning need to protect Denny was new. And clearly not welcome.

  Turned out being struck mute was just fine, because Denny kept talking. And the more he said, the stupider Rafi felt. “And exactly what do you think I’ve been doing for the past couple of years? I was seventeen when I met you and I’d just worked up the nerve to come out to my parents. Yeah, I didn’t have a lot of experience—”

  “Any. You didn’t have any experience.” Because that had been why Denny had asked Rafi to kiss him, in the middle of the most memorable late-night conversation of Rafi’s life. He’d spent the rest of that night trying to hide his hard-on, he’d been so turned on simply discussing the idea.

  “Any. Fine. But that was two years ago.” Denny ran a hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. “You know I had a boyfriend in New Orleans, right? And I hooked up with guys here at school last year too.”

  I’ve been shooting down guys—good guys… The idea of all the other men who wanted Denny made Rafi angry. He wanted to shout at every last one of them—hands off!—and knew he had zero right to do that.

  His choice.

  “Fine. You’ve fucked guys.” Simply saying the words out loud was a nut tightener. And he refused, he absolutely refused to picture that. To wonder whether Denny liked to fuck or get fucked, or if he switched. To picture the length of him, gleaming in the dim glow of moonlight through a dorm window as he stretched naked across an empty bed, waiting… “But knowing how to fuck isn’t the same as being safe when you do it.”

  “You want to know if I’m safe?” Denny bit out the words, coming down the last few steps to the ground. “If I know what I’m doing?”

  He slapped his hands against Rafi’s chest and pushed until Rafi backed up against the wall. The bare lightbulb mounted next to the door backlit his face as he dove in until his mouth hovered above Rafi’s. “How about you tell me?” Denny demanded.

  And then his mouth was on Rafi’s, hard and fast and not like a boy’s kiss at all. This was a man leaning into Rafi’s body until the siding pressed sharply against his shoulders. A man who wedged a leg between Rafi’s and snaked a hand down to Rafi’s belt while sucking out his soul via his tongue. Heat poured through Rafi’s body and he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t make his hands do anything but grip at Denny’s T-shirt as Denny’s cold hand reached into his jeans and wrapped around his dick.

  Denny bit at his mouth, then scraped his teeth down the side of Rafi’s neck and sank them into the muscle there until Rafi cried out, at the pain or the pleasure or his inability to tell the difference. Before he could take a breath, Denny was on his knees at Rafi’s feet, eyes glittering as he stared up at Rafi and yanked on his hips. “Tell me if I know what I’m doing now.”

  Rafi should have stopped him. He knew that. Knew the back door could open at any moment and someone could walk out, and Denny was the one who’d bear the brunt of the gossip. Knew this was exactly the unsafe crap he’d worried about with Denny. Knew this didn’t change anything between the two of them. But Denny’s mouth was hot and wet and sucking him as hard as Rafi had been imagining for two years of late-night fantasies.

  In an embarrassingly short time, he was biting his fist to muffle his shout as he came, hunching over as Denny kept Rafi’s dick buried deep in his mouth and his eyes locked on Rafi’s face. As soon as Rafi sagged against the side of the building, though—before he could even make a gesture toward reciprocating—Denny was up and on his feet, striding off into the dark corners of the backyard.

  Rafi tucked and zipped and sat on the steps, waiting for Denny to come back. After pacing around the backyard for a while, he finally did.

  “Rafi, what’s going on here?” Denny asked.

  “What do you mean?” He was pretty sure pretending to be oblivious wasn’t going to work as an escape strategy, altho
ugh it turned out he had been oblivious to how strong his own feelings were.

  “You know what I mean,” Denny said sharply. “I’m…sorry about that.” He waved his hand at the spot on the wall where Rafi had leaned back and cried out. “I was frustrated.”

  That’s one word for it. But Rafi knew better than to interrupt.

  “I know you’re interested,” Denny said firmly. “Maybe you didn’t want my help with school stuff or making friends, but you can’t bullshit me on this. And I think I’ve been more than clear that I’m interested right back.”

  Jesus. So…he was just going to say it, out loud. Okay. Rafi crossed his arms and stared over Denny’s shoulder, neither confirming nor denying what they both knew was true.

  “But you’ve been blowing hot and cold for weeks now, and I’ve been waiting for you,” Denny said, and the relief Rafi had felt at learning Denny hadn’t messed around with anyone else since school started surprised him again. “I know you had this idea that you needed to prove you could be your own man or whatever, but I think you’ve figured it out.”

  Denny paused, waiting. All the words in Rafi’s head were lodged behind his teeth. Everything Denny said was true. But somehow Rafi had gotten stuck in one way of thinking, about school and Denny and his place on the team, and he didn’t know how to change it.

  Sighing, Denny kept talking. “Today was the first time you called me to go out since you got here. And yeah, I got the wrong idea. I thought—” Denny bit his lip and shook his head. “Never mind what I thought. You want to be just friends? That’s fine. Seriously. We can be friends. It’s cool. But you don’t get to, I don’t know, pee in a circle around me and call me off limits to other guys, you know?”

  Rafi put his head in his hands. “Man, I know. I know I’m being an asshole. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “S’okay. It would’ve been better if you’d made it clear about the friends thing so I didn’t make a fool out of myself, grabbing you at my door, maybe,” Denny said ruefully as he sat next to Rafi.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, really.” The warm length of his thigh pressed against Rafi’s. Not, like, sexy pressed. Just, there wasn’t enough room for the both of them on the staircase pressed. “I was rubbing it in, picking up that guy right in front of you. I was pissed, you know?”

  “You were?” He knew it definitely wasn’t supposed to make him happy, knowing Denny had been trying to make him jealous. Fuck it. He was a screwed-up, twisted asshole, because it totally did.

  “Yeah. I don’t even really like him.” Denny shrugged, their shoulders brushing. “We hooked up last year. Total mistake. I forgot he tries to talk you into barebacking.”

  The warm glow in his chest vanished in a swirl of murky swamp water. “See, you shouldn’t do things like that. Pick up guys at parties while you’re drinking. Blow me in the backyard. I know you think you’re all grown up now, and maybe you are, but what if you get into a situation where you’re taking risks you shouldn’t be?” Rafi paused to take a breath and keep lecturing, but Denny cut him off with a hand slashing through the air.

  “Okay, one. Dude, you’re not the boss of me.” Denny lowered his voice. The playground taunt carried a lot more weight when the guy saying it to you could bench two hundred pounds. Sometimes the mismatch between how he thought of Denny and who Denny actually was caught Rafi off guard. “Two, I was hardly drinking. Dancing, remember?”

  “But still, picking up a guy who wants to bareback?” His heart was pounding out a rhythm, full of anxiety. Not safe. Not safe. Not safe.

  “Trust me. He wasn’t going to get that. And even if I made all the mistakes in the world, I’d still be okay.”

  That was crap, obviously. “But—”

  Denny interrupted him by the simple expedient of clapping a hand over his mouth. “Rafi, I’m on prep.”

  Rafi didn’t understand. Was that some kind of East Coast rowing lingo he didn’t know? Yet another thing to learn? He mumbled from behind Denny’s palm, his lips tingling where they pressed against Denny’s hand. “What?”

  “Prep. P-r-E-P.” Denny said which letters were uppercase and which were lowercase, like it mattered. He dropped his hand from Rafi’s mouth and leaned back against the stair railing. “Truvada. It’s a drug that protects you from HIV, pre-exposure.”

  “Wait. What? Are you—” He felt sick. Actually, physically sick at the idea. That Denny had taken such risks, was in so much danger. That there was nothing he could do now to protect him. Dizziness swept his brain clean of thought. He bent over, hands braced on his knees. Maybe he was going to throw up.

  “Shit. Are you gonna be sick? How much have you been drinking?” Denny grabbed him by the arm and led him away from the foot of the stairs to some bushes at the side of the yard. “Here. Do you want some water?”

  He swatted away Denny’s hands rubbing at his arms. Stood up straight. “I’m not drunk. I’m sick to my stomach. Are you telling me you’re—” He couldn’t say it.

  Denny could. And calmly too, which was surreal. “Positive? No.”

  Rafi closed his eyes. Thank God, thank God, thank God, gracias a Dios, Dios te salve, Maria, Llena eres de gracia… He hadn’t even known he could still say a Hail Mary in Spanish. Church was a long, long time ago for him, although some things stuck, apparently. Instinctive prayer in moments of need, or gratitude.

  He opened his eyes. “So why the hell are you taking…that stuff?”

  “PrEP. It’s an antiretroviral that reduces your risk of HIV transmission if you take it daily when you’re negative.” Denny said the words as if he were reciting them off a cue card. He crossed his arms and kept a steady gaze on Rafi, who stumbled his way back to the steps and sat down heavily. “I’ve had boyfriends, Rafi. And one of them was positive. So I learned a lot about the science behind antiretrovirals and decided to go on PrEP as an extra safety precaution, although we always used condoms. And when I came to school and stopped seeing him, I stayed on it.”

  “Do you still talk to him?” Denny had said some other stuff that Rafi was clearly supposed to pay attention to, but his brain had clicked like a magnet onto one idea. Denny’s ex. Someone Denny had cared about enough to do all that research in order to be with him.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes.”

  “Sorry. You’re right.” He bit his tongue, knowing he didn’t have the right to ask any more questions. When Denny sighed and rolled his eyes and didn’t leave, Rafi braced his elbows on his knees and tried to keep his mouth shut long enough to act like a friend and not a jealous lover. Which he definitely wasn’t, for reasons he couldn’t fucking remember right now.

  “It wasn’t because of anything bad.” Denny shrugged, pulling the corner of his mouth in. “Neither of us wanted a long-distance relationship.”

  Rafi tried to say something nice. “Those are hard.”

  Close enough.

  Denny sighed and gestured at him to scooch over on the step, sitting down again. “He’s a great guy. Older, though. I’m planning to go back down to New Orleans and visit him. Next summer maybe.”

  “Is he one of the guys you’ve been turning down?” Rafi braced himself for the answer.

  “Yes.” Denny nodded, because Denny always told him the truth. “We still text and he’s been hinting he’d like to get back together. Give a long-distance thing a try. I haven’t been interested.”

  So far was what Rafi heard underneath Denny’s calm waters.

  Rafi needed not to think about that. “But you’re still taking this stuff?”

  “Yes. There’s some health risks, so I get tested for that stuff pretty regularly. I wouldn’t be able to do this if my dad didn’t have me on his awesome, everything-is-covered health insurance.” He shrugged. “I figured if I was going to do something stupid, sex-wise, college was probably when I was goi
ng to do it. Seemed like a good idea to have some extra protection.”

  Rafi didn’t know what to think. He’d spent so long walking around with this image in his head of Denny as the kid who didn’t know anything, who was so unsure of his sexuality he had to ask Rafi to kiss him, because no other guy ever had.

  But now here Denny was, sitting next to Rafi, so much more of a man than Rafi had ever imagined. Not only did he know more about this Truvada shit than Rafi did, but he was negotiating both a post-breakup friendship and his college years with far more savvy and skill than Rafi had in his own bag of tricks.

  He didn’t know what to say. “Should we…go back inside?”

  Denny raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want to be here?”

  Not a moment for lying. “Not really.”

  “Then you should go home. I’m going to stay for a while.” Denny’s face said Rafi better not ask him questions about what, or who, he was going to be doing for the rest of the night. Rafi told himself there was no way Denny would go from impulsively rage-blowing him to hooking up with some other guy, but he had to admit he didn’t really know what this Denny would do.

  He walked home by himself and arrived at an empty suite, full of regret and with no one he could offload it to. He was even willing to get lectured by his sisters—although not about this, because no way was he sharing sex talk with them—and it was an hour earlier in Chicago, so he tried calling home, but got voicemail across the board there too.

  Everyone had a life on Saturday night. Everyone who wasn’t busy shoving as many size twelves in their mouths at one time as possible.

  Practice on Sunday morning was mildly painful, even though he’d only had those two beers. Denny greeted him as he always did and asked Rafi if he wanted to grab a late breakfast after practice ended, making it clear he wasn’t going to hold Rafi being a jerk against him.

  “Thanks,” Rafi said. “But I’m gonna grab something on the fly. I’ve got a study group.” He didn’t, but the idea of sitting across a table from Denny for an hour, chatting as if everything were normal, and not picturing what Denny had looked like on his knees in front of Rafi, or asking Denny if he’d gone home with the bareback wannabe, or anyone else, from the night before, was…not going to happen.