by Lily Love
Something a lot like hope welled in Craig’s chest. Jack spoke with purpose, the hidden message intended for Craig’s ears. In his own quiet way, he was telling Craig that what they shared had meant something. Jack wasn’t looking for a rushed relationship or a quickie.
Craig shouldn’t have felt good about it, but he did. Jack cared for him. That was a lot more than Craig could say about Cecilia.
“That’s why you’re going to date him instead of hook up with him,” Lane said. “He seems like the sweet type, if you can believe that. A real softy behind his stern demeanor. I’m pretty sure he’d be all about dating you. A long, slow-burn relationship. The kind that makes you fall so deeply in love that there’s no way you’ll ever get out.”
“I… no thanks.” Jack shook his head.
Lane puffed his cheeks in anger. “Really?”
“It’s sweet you’d go so far out of your way to introduce me to men, but if I want to find somebody to share my life with, I will.” Jack plucked a paper plate from the stack and passed it to Roman. “You found your happily ever after all on your own, after all. I don’t need bad matchmaking to help me out.”
“I’m offended.” Lane pouted dramatically and lifted his chin. “My matchmaking is only bad sometimes. Right now it’s pretty spot on.”
“Cut him some slack, Lane,” Roman said. He kissed the top of Lane’s head as he passed him by on the way to the food, and Lane melted. “No is no. You know that.”
Craig watched the whole exchange in a daze. The discomfort he felt manifested into nausea.
“Besides,” Jack said. “As long as Craig’s here, I’m definitely not going to be bringing any guys home. He deserves that much respect.”
“If it’s only a month, Warren will wait for you.” Lane waggled an eyebrow. “I think he was interested.”
Jack’s face fell. “You showed him my picture?”
“I might have shown him your Facebook.”
“You are the worst friend, Lane.”
“Or the best. Probably more like the best.” Lane winked. “I bet your friends don’t hook you up with hot chicks you’re compatible with, do they, Craig?”
“They don’t.” Craig’s gaze lingered on Jack. He read the tension in Jack’s shoulders and the flightiness in his eyes. “I do have some incredible friends, though.”
Jack met his eye. The connection only lasted for a second, but it was staggering in its intensity. Craig’s heart skipped a beat. His body urged him to close the distance between himself and Jack.
Jack wasn’t the kind of friend who would set him up with women. Jack was the kind of friend Craig wanted to fall into bed with.
God, it was wrong. It was wrong to think that way. A cold sweat broke out along the back of Craig’s neck. He stepped away to lean against the railing again.
“Hey guys,” Roman called, breaking the moment. “Food’s ready.”
The ensuing chaos was enough to take Craig’s mind off his racing heart. He focused his attention on Isaac and waited for the crowd to pass. Once it had and all the guys were settled, he helped himself to what was left.
Jack stood by the grill, and as Craig served himself dinner, Jack leaned in close.
“If they’re too much for you to handle right now, let me know and I’ll get them to knock it off,” Jack said.
“Too much for me to handle?” Craig gave him a little look. He held back a grin. “You were the one who was suffering through that conversation. I thought for sure you were going to implode from embarrassment.”
“Oh. No. It’s Lane. I know what to expect from Lane.” Jack bumped their shoulders together. “You don’t. At least, not so much.”
“I think I’m starting to learn,” Craig said. He didn’t let slip that what bothered him about the conversation wasn’t so much Lane’s enthusiasm and relentlessness, but the topic. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”
“Hey!” Brad called from the picnic bench. “Are you two coming over or what?”
“On our way,” Jack answered. More quietly, so only Craig could hear, he said, “And thank you for letting me have everyone over. It really does mean a lot.”
“Your house, your rules,” Craig said.
Jack shook his head. “Your vacation, your say.”
“It feels a lot less like a vacation and a lot more like I’m at home,” Craig admitted. He didn’t realize what he’d said until Jack smiled at him. It was a simple, charming kind of smile. The kind that lit Jack’s face up the best.
The rest of the night was spent in good company. They laughed and joked about everything and nothing. But the best company of all was Jack, whom Craig caught looking his way every now and then. Whenever their eyes met, a shiver ran down Craig’s spine that he couldn’t explain away.
Frankly, he didn’t need to explain it. Craig already knew what it was.
Against all odds, he was falling for Jack. He’d found someone who cared for him. Now he wanted something more. That craving would go unfulfilled. Craig’s future didn’t have a same-sex partner in it.
But even if it was only for a little while, he allowed himself to pretend otherwise.
19
Craig
“He’s outside the window again.”
“Are you serious?” Jack sat up, back too straight to be relaxed. “You have to be kidding me.”
“No,” Craig said. He frowned. “He’s sitting out on the porch. From where I’m sitting I can see the side of his head.”
“For the love of god,” Jack grumbled. He stood and stormed over to the front door. Before Craig could brace himself, Jack threw it open and stepped outside. The door slammed in his wake.
The windows were closed, but Craig heard Jack through the glass.
“Get the hell off my porch, Hunter.”
“Is that any way to treat the man you were with for years and years?” Hunter asked. “I’m not doing anything wrong, Jack.”
“Yes, you are.” Jack wasn’t backing down. “I told you not to come here anymore. This is getting obsessive. I don’t know what you think is going to change if you keep coming back, but it’s not happening. Got it?”
Isaac started to cry. Craig frowned and scooped him out of the cradle. They started a circuit around the house. He couldn’t hear the conversation any longer.
Since they’d come back from the game to find Hunter sitting on the porch, Hunter had been dropping by unannounced randomly. Sometimes he sat out on the porch and waited until Jack or Craig happened to walk outside. Sometimes he rang the bell. One time he’d come around back while Jack was at the grill, cooking steaks for dinner.
The man was obsessed. Craig’s relationship with his family was toxic, but Hunter was vile on a whole other level.
“It’s okay.” Craig stroked Isaac’s back and held him close. “You’re fine. No one’s angry at you. You’re safe here with me. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.”
Isaac’s wailing tapered off. Craig carried him upstairs and down the hall to look through the window. It surveyed the front yard. Below, Jack had chased Hunter from the porch onto the lawn. It looked like they were yelling at each other. Hunter’s face was screwed up with anger. Jack kept his composure a little better, but there were harsh words being said. When Jack’s eyebrows knitted like that, there was no way the conversation was pleasant.
“Uncle Jack’s taking care of it, see?” Craig asked. Isaac couldn’t see, nor could he understand, but talking it out made Craig feel better. “He’s not going to let anything bad happen to you, either. He loves you.”
Craig turned from the window and went to the stairs. On the way down he heard the front door open. Jack hissed an exasperated sigh through his teeth. “That man does not take no for an answer.”
“Have you considered a restraining order?” Craig asked.
Jack laughed. “Out here? I could try, but I doubt there’s manpower enough to enforce it. We’re out in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina.”
“A restra
ining order is a restraining order,” Craig said with a shrug. Isaac stopped crying so he laid him back in his cradle. “If you file one, you might be able to shake him for good.”
“I think Hunter would skirt by anyway.” Jack shook his head. “He’s a mess.”
“You wanna talk about it?” Craig settled on the couch. He rocked the cradle with his foot, just like he always did. “You really haven’t told me all that much about him.”
“That’s because I don’t want to have to think about him.” Jack sat on the couch beside Craig. “All of it is so juvenile. I wish I could go back in time and tell younger Jack not to get involved with him. He’s a lunatic.”
“What did he do?”
“We dated on and off for… god. I don’t even know how long. Five years? Three years? It’s hard to tell because the dates are all muddled. For a while we were just hooking up, for a while we were dating, for a while we had nothing to do with each other, and from there on out it was a different combination of those three every month.”
“Sounds rough,” Craig said.
“It was. I have no idea how I put up with him for so long.” Jack ran his hand through his hair, then shook his head. “Actually, I do. I thought I was in love with him. For a while, I probably was. And more than that, I was afraid of being alone. I thought that since we’d been through so much we could work anything out. I was fooling myself and letting myself be manipulated. The whole time we were together, Hunter toyed with my emotions. He gaslit me. I thought I was going crazy.”
“Gaslit?”
“He made me doubt my own perceptions,” Jack said. “Little things like telling me I said something when I didn’t, or telling me I didn’t say something when I did. He trivialized my emotions to make me feel unimportant. When I started showing signs of growing a backbone, or when he pushed too far, he’d lovebomb me to make it up.”
“Shit.” Craig glanced toward the window, half expecting to find Hunter peering in. “Psychological abuse. I didn’t know it had a name like that.”
“Yeah.” Jack scratched his temple. “I didn’t either, until I was talking to Lane during one of the breakups and Lane brought it up. So I started doing research about gaslighting and it was like every article was describing my relationship with Hunter.”
Craig supposed, in a way, he’d been gaslit, too. All of the head games his family played and all of the ways Cecilia had wormed her way into his life were manipulative. But when it came to imagining Jack as the victim, he felt angry about it. The abuse wasn’t so bad when it happened to himself, but when Jack was the one being targeted? Craig saw red.
“If that jerk comes around here again, I’ll give him a piece of my mind,” Craig said.
“Don’t bother.” Jack sighed. “He only listens to what he wants to hear. You can chew him out until the end of time, and maybe he’ll sulk a little, but the next day he’ll go right back to whatever he was doing before.”
“Which is why you need a restraining order.” Craig needed to tone down his anger before it got the best of him. He made sure he wasn’t pushing the cradle too fast. “He’s a creep.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t think you’ve been in the situation long enough to understand,” Jack stressed.
“Or maybe I’ve been outside of it long enough to see the only logical way forward,” Craig deflected. “I’m worried about you, Jack. Behavior like his isn’t normal. What if he snaps and hurts you?”
“Hunter?” Jack laughed. “No. I mean, if he got lucky he might get a few punches in, but if I couldn’t handle him myself, you bet your ass Roman or Brad would be out here in a heartbeat to take his ass down.”
“Not if he doesn’t corner you on your property,” Craig said. “He might follow you when you go out, or wait for you in a place you regularly go to. He might have a knife.”
“I think you’ve been in LA a little too long,” Jack said. He winked. “Maybe I’m making it out to be a lot worse than it is. Hunter is stubborn and refuses to take no for an answer, but he’s not dangerous. I promise.”
“All right.”
It didn’t sit well with Craig. Craig wasn’t exactly muscular, and he wasn’t skilled in fighting, but he was determined to keep Jack safe. Jack had gone out of his way to host Craig when Craig needed it the most, and Craig wasn’t going to let him suffer. Besides, selfishly, the thought of Jack giving in to Hunter and taking him back made Craig jealous as hell. He wasn’t going to let Hunter weasel his way back in.
Craig didn’t consider himself gay, but he cared enough for Jack that he didn’t want to see Jack enter into a relationship with a known abuser. He didn’t want to Jack to enter into a relationship with anybody, but that was beside the point.
Hunter wasn’t going to get Jack back — Craig would make sure of it.
Two days later, while helping Jack bring in groceries from the car, Craig spotted Hunter on his way down the street. With his hands tucked into his back pockets and his shoulders loose, he looked like a normal guy out for a walk instead of a thorn in Jack’s side.
Craig knew better.
He set the bags of groceries he was collecting down and exited the garage.
“Uh, Craig?” Jack asked.
“I’ve got to take care of something,” Craig said. “You bring the groceries inside.”
Hunter was turning onto the property when Craig approached. Hunter whistled low under his breath, but he stopped when he noticed he wasn’t alone. The casual look on his face made Craig’s blood boil. Who the hell did Hunter think he was, coming around here when he so clearly wasn’t welcome?
“Oh. The dad,” Hunter said. He looked Craig over dismissively. “Go away. Where’s Jack?”
“Jack doesn’t want anything to do with you.” Craig dug in his heels and braced himself for a bumpy ride. He got in close to invade Hunter’s personal space. Hunter made a face and took a step back, but Craig followed him aggressively. “Get the hell off his yard.”
“It’s Jack’s house and Jack’s yard.” Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know who the hell you are to think you can tell me to go away. I lived here with Jack for longer than you’ve even known him. It’s my house, too.”
“You’re delusional.” Craig was vaguely aware that Jack was watching from a distance. From time to time, he saw Hunter’s gaze flit in Jack’s direction. “He’s told you multiple times that he doesn’t want to talk to you and that you’re not welcome here. Why can’t you get that through your head?”
“Maybe because I know he doesn’t mean it.” Hunter pushed his lips together and balled his fists. Craig wasn’t afraid. Not all that long ago he’d taken a punch from Roman — a retired Navy SEAL — and survived. Enduring whatever Hunter had to dish out wouldn’t be a problem. “He loves me. I can see it in his eyes. What you need to do is butt out of matters that don’t concern you and let me live my life.”
“Matters that don’t concern me?” Craig laughed dryly. “You think that you terrorizing Jack doesn’t impact me? You need to leave us the hell alone and leave right now before I call the cops.”
Hunter bit down on his bottom lip, eyes little more than scrupulous slits. “So, it’s an ‘us’ now?”
Shit. He’s taking it the wrong way…
“Yeah, it’s an us now,” Craig said firmly. “It was an us the second I stepped through that door. Jack and I are a united front and I’m not going to let him suffer through you alone anymore. You have no power over him.”
Hunter snickered. “How many times did he have to suck your cock before you agreed to stand up for his sorry ass?”
White-hot anger momentarily blinded Craig to the world. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d slammed his fist into Hunter’s face. The sting of his knuckles as they met Hunter’s cheek jerked Craig back to reality. As Hunter stumbled backward, clutching his face, Craig didn’t back down. He followed.
“If I ever hear you talking about Jack again, I’m not going to go so easy on you next time,” Crai
g snarled. Roman had once told him close to the same thing and it had been the wakeup call he needed. Maybe it would work for Hunter, too. “Leave him the fuck alone and don’t come back. He doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
“We were together for years,” Hunter hissed. “Who do you think you are to tell me what I can and cannot do when it come to a man who loves me?”
“He doesn’t love you. Get it through your skull. Your relationship is over.” Jack pushed Hunter back until he stumbled onto the sidewalk. His car was down the street. “He’s not going to take you back. He doesn’t need you.”
“If you think your little relationship is going to work out, you’re wrong.” Hunter clenched his fists tight. Craig thought he might take a swing back in retaliation. His face was red where Craig hit it. “He always comes back to me. He’s been coming back to me for years. What we have is timeless. What you have is nothing.”
Craig wanted nothing more than to punch him again, but he held back. “Leave.”
The word sizzled. Hunter scowled. He squared his shoulders, spun on his heels, and left.
Craig hoped he’d have a black eye to show for their encounter. Maybe then Hunter wouldn’t be so eager to come around anymore.
Craig turned around to find Jack, but Jack was already gone. The groceries had already been brought inside. The garage was open, but the trunk was closed.
Craig hoped that Jack wasn’t upset at him for what he’d done — but if he was, Craig was fine with that. He liked Jack too much to want abusive behavior like this to continue. If that meant that Jack was upset at him, so be it.
Craig headed back to the house. He helped Jack put away the groceries in the cupboards and fridge. Life went on as normal.
To Craig’s delight, Hunter did not come back that day.
Craig hoped he’d never see him again.
20
Jack
The atmosphere in the house was different after Craig gave Hunter a piece of his mind. It wasn’t a bad change, but it still struck Jack in an odd way.
