Reckless (Pier 70, 1)

by Nicole Edwards

  However, that didn’t explain why Gannon thought the two were related. Cam distancing himself for fear of getting too close, along with his obvious distaste for Gannon traveling.

  Somehow they were connected. But for the life of him, he didn’t know how.

  Worse than that ... Gannon was scared shitless to ask. Because he had his own fears.

  It all boiled down to the fact that he was hooked on Cam already. Probably had been since the day he’d met him. Falling deeper and deeper with every passing second.

  And it was killing him now, knowing that Cam was pushing him away.

  Sure, Cam had every right to be cautious, but what Cam didn’t seem to realize was that Gannon had fears of his own.

  His number one fear…

  Gannon feared that Cam would abandon him.

  And he’d have to live through hell all over again.

  Twenty

  Somehow, Cam had managed to make it through the weekend. Work had kept him busy all day Saturday, which had helped. When Gannon’s text had finally come in, letting him know that he’d made it home safe and sound, a boulder had been lifted from his chest.

  If only things could go back to the way they’d been before Gannon had left for his trip. Unfortunately, Cam had fucked it up too much, and he knew he owed Gannon an explanation.

  Which was why he was pacing his living room, counting down the minutes until he had to leave to go to Gannon’s.

  A knock sounded at his door and he stopped suddenly. “Come in.”

  Expecting to see Roan, Cam felt his heart miss a beat when the door opened and Gannon stuck his head in.

  “Hey,” Gannon greeted.

  “What are you doin’ here?” Cam asked, the words rushing out of him.

  “I…” Gannon’s smile seemed fragile. “I wanted to see you.”

  Cam nodded, processing those words. “But I was supposed to come to your house.”

  “I know, but I was impatient.” Gannon held up a bag. “So I brought dinner to you.”

  Snapping out of it, relieved to see Gannon, regardless of where they were, he erased the distance between them. Without hesitating, he cradled Gannon’s face in his hands and gently pressed his lips to Gannon’s. He didn’t try for more, content to feel the stubble along his jaw, his soft lips, his breath against his face.

  Finally, after several seconds, he pulled back, keeping his eyes locked with Gannon’s. “What did you bring?”

  Gannon held out the bag for Cam to take, then closed the door behind him. Opening it, he peered inside. Laughing, he looked up at Gannon.

  “You said pizza is always good,” Gannon noted.

  “I did. But this is frozen pizza.”

  For the first time since he’d walked in, Gannon finally smiled, and Cam felt the tension in his chest break.

  “Look under it,” Gannon instructed.

  Moving the small box out of the way, he found a can of chicken noodle soup.

  “You want me to make you dinner?” Cam inquired, grinning.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Gannon answered, stepping forward. “But if you don’t want to, that’s okay, because I stopped down at the restaurant. Jeremy’s making burgers and fries.”

  Of course he was. Gannon was always thinking ahead. Something Cam found incredibly attractive.

  “You wanna eat down there?” Cam asked.

  Gannon shook his head. “Not really. But if you want to get drinks, I’ll run down there and grab the food.”

  “I can do that.”

  Gannon slipped out the door, and Cam headed for the refrigerator, his heart still racing. He still couldn’t believe Gannon was there, that he’d come to see him. Even though he had every right to be pissed at Cam for how Cam had acted, he was there.

  Cam swallowed hard.

  He shoved the frozen pizza into the freezer, then set the canned soup on the counter before retrieving two beers. He placed them on the coffee table, then went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. He wasn’t sure why he was nervous, but he was. Seeing Gannon … although it was a relief, there was still friction there.

  Cam knew that the only way to move forward was to explain to Gannon why he’d reacted so irrationally. He’d never explained it to anyone before. Only his closest friends—Roan and Dare—knew what had happened. Reliving that day, it fucked up his head every time.

  But Cam knew Gannon deserved the truth. He deserved to know that Cam couldn’t change who he was and he couldn’t promise he wouldn’t freak out in the future. The panic attacks made him do crazy things.

  The only thing he could hope was that Gannon understood and that they could figure out a way to move forward.

  One way or another.

  A couple of hours later, after they’d had dinner and watched a sitcom on television, Cam had convinced Gannon to go back to the spot where they’d first gone skinny-dipping. Reluctantly, Gannon had agreed, but he’d been relieved when Cam promised they wouldn’t be swimming tonight.

  Now, as they sat on the sandy shore, drinking beer and watching the lights in the distance, Gannon managed to relax.

  “I need to tell you something,” Cam said softly, causing Gannon to look at him. He was sitting, knees up, wrists resting on his knees, beer bottle dangling from his fingers.

  Okay, so Gannon had been relaxed. Now, not so much.

  Rather than say anything, Gannon allowed Cam to continue.

  “When you went to California…”

  Gannon waited, his breath lodged in his chest. He had no idea where this was going or what Cam was going to say or ask, but he managed to keep his mouth shut, his throat working overtime as he swallowed past the dryness.

  “I shouldn’t’ve freaked out and I shouldn’t’ve ignored you,” Cam admitted, and Gannon released the air from his lungs. “I told you my mother died.”

  When Cam looked over at him, Gannon nodded, hoping to encourage him to keep talking.

  “My mother worked for a local tech company. She traveled to other locations, training people. From what I remember, she was gone several times a month, sometimes a few days, sometimes a week or more at a time.”

  Cam lifted his beer to his lips and Gannon tried not to stare at him.

  Bringing the bottle back down by his legs, Cam continued, “When I was sixteen, she went down to Florida. Regular trip, supposed to be gone a couple of days.”

  Gannon swallowed hard, fearing where this was going.

  “She never came home.” Cam paused, took a few breaths. “A couple of the cops showed up at the house to let us know they’d found her body in a hotel room.”

  “Brain aneurysm,” Gannon said softly, remembering Cam’s explanation of how she’d died.

  Cam nodded, staring out at the water. “She died alone. And though they said it was probably quick, I still can’t imagine what it would’ve been like to be alone like that.”

  So Cam’s fear wasn’t about Gannon cheating. It was about Gannon leaving and never coming back. Gannon could’ve explained to Cam that the traveling had nothing to do with it, that his mother had died of a brain aneurysm, that it had ruptured. It would’ve happened whether she was on a trip or at home. Either way, Cam would’ve lost his mother.

  But he didn’t say that because it wouldn’t have helped.

  Placing a hand on Cam’s shoulder, Gannon squeezed lightly. He knew there weren’t any words that could make it any easier, no matter how he tried to rationalize it. Even all these years later.

  So, instead of offering empty platitudes or random explanations, Gannon decided to share his own secret. “A few weeks before my seventeenth birthday,” Gannon began, taking a sip of his beer and swallowing hard, “I remember sitting in my bedroom, talking on the phone with this guy I’d met at school. His name was Chad. I’d met him in my math class that year.

  “We’d hung out after school a couple of times and had just started talking on the phone. Endless hours of conversation about everything and nothing. Thought I was in
love with him. First boy I’d felt that way about and I knew I had to tell my parents. I wanted them to support me.”

  Gannon didn’t look at Cam when he felt Cam’s eyes sliding over his face.

  “Chad had warned me not to say anything, but Chad was a senior, and we’d been talking about prom. I wanted to go to prom with him so badly that was all I could think about. Not that it would’ve been a good idea either way. It wasn’t like either of us were out, but I wasn’t thinking about that. Here was this guy who was giving me all his attention, and I was soaking it up like a sponge.

  “Anyway, when I got off the phone with Chad, I went to the kitchen, where I knew my father would be reading the paper and my mother would be going through the monthly bills. I’d been so hyped from that phone call I didn’t think twice about telling my parents why I was smiling when they asked.”

  Gannon drained what was left of his beer.

  “God, I remember my mother’s face. She was horrified. But my father… He went off the rails. I’d spent so much time thinking about that conversation, about telling my parents that I was gay. I guess I’d come up with my own ending to that story. A happy one, where they embraced me and told me that they were proud of me and that they loved me for who I was, no matter what.” Gannon grunted. “I’d been a dreamer, because that night, my worst fears were realized. They told me that I was an abomination, that I needed some help. My mother mentioned treatment, and my father harped on religion.

  “I told them there wasn’t anything to fix, I wasn’t broken. But when I refused to go to the church so they could try and exorcise the demons, they told me to get out and never come back. So, I calmly went to my bedroom, pulled out my suitcase, packed as much of my shit as I could take with me, and I left. Walked two blocks over to my friend’s house and asked to sleep on his couch. Haven’t seen my parents, or my brother, since.”

  In a sense, Gannon knew how Cam felt. He’d been abandoned by his parents, and though Cam’s mother hadn’t had the choice, from Cam’s perspective, she’d left him. Different but the same.

  “It’s not easy for me to trust people,” Gannon told Cam. He needed him to understand that it wasn’t easy for him when Cam tried to push him away. “I’m not ashamed of who I am. From that day on, when I walked out of my parents’ house, I made a promise that I’d be true to myself. No hiding. Not from them and certainly not from myself. But I had learned a huge lesson. I’d learned that even though some people claimed to love you for you, sometimes the version of you they loved wasn’t real. It was merely the version they could live with. And it only took one revelation for them to turn their backs.”

  Clearing his throat, Gannon broke out of his thoughts and glanced down at the ground. “I try not to give too much of myself, for fear I’ll be left to pick up the pieces again. Alone.”

  Cam didn’t say anything, so Gannon stopped talking. He’d cut himself open and bled for this man at this point. If Cam couldn’t deal with Gannon as he was, he wasn’t sure there was anything else he could do to convince him. They’d taken things slow, and Gannon didn’t have a problem with that. He didn’t want to rush this. It was that important to him.

  Cam was that important to him.

  But he wasn’t going to be with someone who cared about the version of him they could live with. He needed to know that when things got tough, he could depend on Cam.

  Because at this point, Gannon was fairly certain he was in love with the man.

  Twenty-One

  One week later

  With another week behind him, another Saturday under his belt, Cam was looking forward to an afternoon out on the lake. Sundays were usually busy enough to keep all of them working, but this one was slower than normal, and Cam had convinced Dare to manage the few appointments they had for the afternoon so Cam could get Gannon out on the water again.

  It’d been a long week, and they needed to do something fun, to take some time to relax and enjoy. Without all the stress of work, without the constant friction caused by Cam’s fears. Even though they’d talked it out, things had still been tense between them all week.

  Ever since the night Gannon had called him from California, letting Cam know that he missed him, Cam had been thinking about him often. About whether they should move forward, see where this took them. Whether or not it was time for them to take things to the next level, because if they did go forward, that was inevitable—seriously, the sexual tension between them was like a dry twig folded in half, ready to break at any second. But mostly, Cam had been thinking how relieved he’d been to share one of his deepest fears with someone and not be judged. Knowing Gannon had been in California, Cam had nearly come undone. And it hadn’t been until Gannon had landed back in Texas a week ago that he’d released the breath he’d been holding for the two days Gannon had been gone.

  Still, it was more than that. The fact that he’d been scared enough to run from Gannon meant he had feelings for him. This wasn’t casual anymore.

  “What’s up, bro?”

  Cam looked up to see Teague darting through the office.

  “Where’re you off to?” Cam hollered.

  “Gotta go see a man about a thing.”

  Cam had no idea what that meant, nor did he bother to ask; instead, he pulled out the appointment book and scanned through the next week, his thoughts drifting back to Gannon.

  It all came down to the fact that Cam missed him. More than he even cared to admit to himself, but more than he could deny. Although work had been hectic for both of them, they’d managed to spend several hours together over the course of the week since Gannon had gone to California. It had helped. Some. And when they couldn’t see each other, they’d talked on the phone late at night when Gannon got home, even texted throughout the day, but still, Thursday night had been the last time Cam had seen Gannon, and he was ready for more.

  Because they both knew their relationship was escalating rapidly, they’d opted to keep playing it safe during the week, going to dinner out rather than eating in. Gannon had taken Cam to an Indian restaurant on Monday—apparently one of Gannon’s favorites—and Cam had been schooled on curries and spices. All in all, Cam hadn’t hated it. It wasn’t his favorite, either. Then, on Tuesday night, Cam had taken Gannon to Chuy’s, his favorite Mexican food restaurant in Austin. And on Friday night, they’d agreed to compromise with pizza again.

  Although that night had been awkward. Milly and some wannabe rock star she was dating had met them at a popular downtown Austin restaurant that boasted live music as well as good food. The guy had come off as a narcissistic asshole, and Cam was fairly certain Milly had decided she’d had enough of him.

  Still, Cam had had a good time because he’d been with Gannon.

  The bing of the door notification system had Cam looking up from the appointment book he was reviewing for the following week. A smile split his face as soon as he saw Gannon, looking pretty damn edible in shorts and a navy blue T-shirt.

  “Are those…” Cam laughed as he looked at Gannon’s feet.

  “Flip-flops.” Gannon lifted his foot, showing them off. “Like ’em?”

  Cam moved around the counter so he could get closer to Gannon. He kissed him on the mouth, still smiling. “I’m impressed.”

  That adorable dimple in Gannon’s cheek winked back at him.

  “I thought you might be. So, what’s the plan?”

  “Jet skis.”

  The horrified look that took the place of the smile that had been there previously made Cam laugh.

  “You’re gonna be fine,” Cam told Gannon. “Come on.”

  Taking Gannon’s hand, Cam led him through the marina office and out the back door, then down to the slip where they kept their personal watercraft. He’d convinced Dare to let Gannon borrow his since Cam’s was supercharged and likely too powerful for Gannon’s first time out.

  After a quick lesson on what levers did what, and helping Gannon into a life jacket, Cam mounted his own jet ski while Gannon got into
position on Dare’s. It was cute watching Gannon try to look calm when it was obvious his head was about to explode.

  “You’re gonna be fine,” Cam assured him.

  “Can I get that in writing?” Gannon retorted, his words terse.

  Yep, he was definitely nervous.

  For the first half hour, Cam took it slow with Gannon, helping him to learn how to navigate the wake, to speed up, slow down, make wide turns. He’d basically done the same for Gannon that he did for any of the clients who were new to the water sport. And because he liked the way Gannon watched him, Cam showed off a little.

  But then, fueled by adrenaline, sunshine, and simply being close to Gannon, Cam could no longer contain the energy that throbbed in his veins. Telling Gannon that he’d be back, Cam opened the throttle and took off, soaring across the water, controlling the powerful machine between his thighs. Twice he encountered a couple of guys who wanted to race, but Cam shrugged them off. And when he returned to Gannon, finding him rocketing across the water on his own, he felt his spirits lift even more.

  “Wanna race?” Cam challenged when Gannon made his way back around.

  “Not a chance,” Gannon said with a strained laugh. “I’m doing my best not to fall in the damn water as it is.”

  “Chicken,” Cam teased.

  He saw the spark in Gannon’s eyes, a banked flame that flickered at the dare. Yeah, Gannon wasn’t as level-headed as he wanted everyone to believe.

  Cam pointed to a buoy far off in the distance. “Down there and back.”

  Gannon studied the distance, probably mentally calculating how long it would take to get there and back while Cam continued to tease him.

  “Fine,” Gannon huffed.

  Feeling that renewed spark deep in his gut, Cam pulled up next to Gannon. “Loser cooks dinner for the winner.”

  “Deal.” Gannon flashed a smile. “I’m a damn good cook.”

  Cam laughed, then counted down from three. He gave Gannon a slight head start, but once again, when Gannon was several yards in front of him, Cam opened the machine up and roared past the buoy and then back, leaving Gannon behind in his wake.