by Lisa Henry
“I like the rush of driving fast and saving lives.”
He wanted that back.
Kate pulled in to the small car park, and Hayden dashed through the rain towards her.
“How’d it go?” she asked him.
He wiped the rain off his face. “I’m gonna call John, tell him I want to come back.”
He forced down his uncertainty, and ignored the knot in his stomach at the thought of having that conversation with John. The longer he waited, the harder it would get.
“Good,” Kate said. “The place is as boring as shit without you, my love.”
Hayden tugged the seatbelt across him. “How long until you’re back on the road?”
Kate patted her moonboot. “At least another few weeks. You reckon you can put up with Greg until then?”
“Greg’s a dickhead, but yeah, I can handle him.”
“Good,” Kate said. “Now I’m going to take you to get coffee, and you’re going to reassure me that Matt has been looking after you.”
“He has.” Warmth bloomed in his chest. Because Matt wasn’t perfect—neither was Hayden—but he was trying, and that counted for something, didn’t it? All either of them could do was try. “Promise.”
“Lucky,” Kate said, turning the car back onto the road. “I’d hate to lose my job and go to jail for castrating a copper.”
Hayden rolled his eyes and reached out to change the radio station. “I think Matt could take you in a fight.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Kate said, baring her teeth in an evil smile. “You’re forgetting I fight dirty.”
Hayden laughed, affection for Kate flooding through him, and it felt like the first time he’d done it in days.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Matt had to hand it to his mum—it took her at least twenty minutes to bring up Hayden, even though she was clearly bursting to ask.
“So,” she said, as though it had only just occurred to her. She was packing a bag to take up to Grandad at the hospital. It was lying on the bed, flat and unzipped, like a shed skin. “What about this Hayden?”
“You’ll meet him tonight,” Matt assured her, leaning in the doorway. “How’d you know about him anyway?”
Mum snorted, tugging a drawer open. “Dad can’t shut up about how you’ve got a boyfriend.”
Matt smiled despite himself, and stepped inside Grandad’s bedroom. “His pyjamas are in the next drawer down.”
He told her a little about Hayden: what he did, and how he’d been here last night. How Matt wasn’t sure he would have known what to do if he’d been on his own.
“I’m glad he was here with you,” Mum said, pulling him into a hug.
“Yeah.” Matt closed his eyes and breathed in the familiar scent of her perfume. “Me too.”
It turned out that Mum and Dad didn’t have to wait until that evening to meet Hayden. When they got to Grandad’s room at the hospital, Hayden was already there. He was sitting in a chair, long legs stretched out, his feet on Grandad’s mattress. He was showing Grandad a video on his phone.
“Hayden?” Matt asked.
Hayden spun around, the tread of his shoes squeaking as they hit the linoleum floor. “Matt. Hi.”
“I thought you had your…your thing.”
“I did,” Hayden said. “Kate dropped me back at my place so I could get my car, and then I figured I’d come out and see how Joe was doing.”
Matt tried to read his expression. It seemed a little too bright, a little too much like he was trying too hard to be everyone’s favourite ambo Hayden Kinsella, and not the Hayden that was reserved for their private moments. Not like the Hayden who’d showed Matt his vulnerability. The Hayden that Matt knew. But maybe he wasn’t deflecting, or hiding anything. Maybe he was just being friendly because Mum and Dad were here.
“This is my mum and dad,” Matt said, moving forward into the room. He curled his fingers around Hayden’s shoulder. “Kelly and Alan. Mum and Dad, this is Hayden. My boyfriend.”
Hayden stood, and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
He shook hands with Dad first, and then with Mum, his easy smile at odds with the awkward way he was holding himself. Which Matt recognised now for what it was: Hayden was bracing for a barrage of questions.
What do you do, Hayden?
Where are you from?
Do you have any family here?
Where is your family?
Just small talk. Just typical getting-to-know-you stuff. It had never occurred to Matt before how isolating questions like that must be if the answers weren’t what people were expecting. He remembered starting at the academy. Remembered someone asking in passing if he had a girlfriend, and how suddenly he’d had two choices: he could have deflected and brushed the question off, or he could have corrected the assumption.
Matt had corrected the assumption.
But how fucking tiring it got when it happened over and over again.
“Thank you,” Mum said, not letting go of Hayden’s hand. “For being there for Dad. For knowing what to do.”
The colour rose in Hayden’s cheeks. “I didn’t do anything.” He glanced at Matt. “And Matt would have…Matt would have figured out what was going on.”
Hayden was right; Matt would have realised it was a stroke sooner rather than later. But it hadn’t just been about figuring out what had been happening. Hayden’s presence, his calmness, had stopped Matt’s worry from slipping over the sharp edge into panic.
“Thank you,” Mum said again, and then released Hayden and sat down beside Grandad’s bed. “How are you feeling, Dad?”
Grandad hummed, and patted her on the hand. “Tired. Bit tired.”
He was still slurring a little, but the tugged-down corner of his mouth wasn’t as pronounced today, and he seemed more—Matt wasn’t exactly sure how to describe it—more present. There was an awareness in his eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday. A bit of the customary gleam, because Grandad was a shit-stirrer, and always sitting on his next smartarse comment, just waiting to drop it into conversation. Matt didn’t want to believe that the stroke could have robbed him of that.
Dad joined Mum at Grandad’s bedside.
“Hey.” Matt caught Hayden’s hand, and tugged him closer. They moved toward the door. “How’d your appointment go?”
“I don’t know.” Hayden chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “I’ll go back though. I mean, that shit works, right? Eventually?” He shook his head slightly. “Anyway, I went and saw John. My next shift is on Thursday. 8 p.m. until 8 a.m.”
“Straight back onto nights?”
Hayden’s mouth quirked into a faint smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Gonna hit the ground running.”
Yeah, Matt thought. That was the nature of the beast, wasn’t it? There was no warm up. You either hit the ground running, or you stumbled and fell. He rubbed his thumb over Hayden’s knuckles. “I’m still on mornings then. I could come in early, meet you for a coffee?”
“You’d get out of bed early just to share a shitty Macca’s coffee with me?”
“Crazy, yeah?”
Hayden’s smile seemed genuine this time. He elbowed Matt in the ribs. “Certifiable.”
For a moment they stood there quietly, hands clasped, and Matt allowed himself to take comfort in the fact that Hayden was here. After the shit the universe had thrown at them in the past few days, Hayden was still here. They’d done everything arse-backwards, hadn’t they? Neither of them had approached this in the beginning like a relationship, but they’d still managed to build something that was worth having. And this past week…Well, if they could handle this past week, surely they could handle anything? But no, that was not a challenge Matt wanted the universe to rise to, thanks.
“I should get going,” Hayden said at last. “Turns out when I went to stay at your place I left a gym bag full of stinky clothes in my room. The passage of time has not been kind to them. So I sort of need to either wash them or find som
ewhere to bury them before Monique complains I’m stinking out the whole apartment.”
“Gross. You’re still staying over at my place though?”
Hayden nodded. “That was the plan, right?”
Matt squeezed his hand. “Yeah.” He smiled. “That’s the plan.”
Grandad’s prognosis was hopeful. The doctor was optimistic he’d make a good recovery. When she delivered the news, Mum sagged like a deflating balloon, as though stress had been the only thing keeping her on her feet.
Dad caught her and steered her toward a chair.
Grandad would need to be on medication to keep his blood thinned, and he would need rehab to regain the strength in his left side. It was likely, because of his existing mobility issues, that he’d be reliant on a wheelchair for some time. He would also be kept in hospital under the care of the stroke team for at least the next week, and then he’d be referred to enough specialists to field a cricket team—a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist, a speech pathologist, a dietician, a social worker, a psychologist, and a neuropsychologist amongst others.
It was a lot to take in—Matt could see himself having to call in a shitload of favours and swap a lot of shifts in his future to get Grandad to all these different specialists—and the look on the doctor’s face said he knew it was overwhelming.
“The important thing to remember,” he said, “is that Joe’s stroke appears to have been very mild, so there’s no reason to think he won’t fully recover his motor functions and speech.”
Grandad gave an affirmative grunt.
Matt spent most of the day at the hospital with his parents. Grandad dozed off a few times, and woke up once to grumble about feeling cold, so Matt went and tracked down a nurse and asked for an extra blanket. It was late afternoon when they left.
“So Hayden’s been staying with you?” Mum asked on the drive back home.
“For a few days, yeah.” He didn’t want to elaborate on the reasons behind it, and hoped she wouldn’t press for details.
“How did you boys meet?” Dad asked.
“Through work,” Matt said. It was technically true. He had been working the night he’d written Hayden the ticket that had started their ridiculous feud. “We kept running in to one another when we ended up at the same jobs all the time.”
That was absolutely true. Matt could still remember how fucking irritating it had been to have Hayden fucking Kinsella turn up at every bloody incident. How much Hayden’s smile had made him want to roll his eyes, and his laugh had made him want to punch the arrogant little fuck. It was probably a good thing they’d sorted their shit out, because that would not have ended well for Matt’s career. At all.
When they got back to the house, Hayden was already there. He was sitting in the back doorway, legs stretched out into the sunlight, and a mug of tea cooling beside him. Charlie was slumped down next to him. The dog barely opened his eyes as Matt entered the kitchen, but Hayden turned around with a smile.
“It’s not exactly the view from your place,” Matt said, nodding toward the back yard. The shed. The chicken coop. At the cracked concrete path that led out to the old Hills Hoist.
“I like it,” Hayden said, climbing to his feet. He set his mug on the table and then stretched, arching his back. “How’s Joe doing?”
“As well as we can hope, according to the doctor.”
“That’s good.” Hayden knocked his foot gently against Charlie’s boof head. “See? I told you.”
Charlie opened his eyes briefly, and then sighed and sank back into sleep.
“You told Charlie?”
“He was worried.” Hayden raised his eyebrows, as though daring Matt to contradict him.
Matt wouldn’t dream of it. He dug his mobile phone out of his pocket. “I’m going to order a couple of pizzas. Save us from cooking, and washing up.”
The low murmur of his parents’ voices drifted down the hallway and into the kitchen.
Hayden glanced towards the doorway. “Are your parents staying a while?”
“Dad’s going back tomorrow,” Matt said. “Mum will be here for the week, at least.”
“I don’t do great with parents,” Hayden said, his voice quiet. “I mean, I presume I don’t.” He shrugged. “It’s never really come up before.”
Matt cupped Hayden’s jaw. “We did all this shit arse backwards, didn’t we? We had sex before we dated. Then I dragged you home with me before we could even talk about whether we were going to move in together some time in the future, and you’re meeting my parents way before we’ve had that conversation.”
Hayden’s jaw tightened, and he swallowed.
“And all that stuff you’re dealing with, and now Grandpa.” Matt held Hayden’s gaze. His heartbeat quickened. “We’ve jumped right into the deep end. Straight into the heavy stuff. We haven’t even done the ‘I love you’s yet.”
Hayden’s eyes widened, but he didn’t flinch away. He lifted his hand instead, and pressed it over Matt’s. “Right,” he rasped. “It’s all arse backwards.”
Matt’s breath caught in his throat. “Yeah.”
“I love you,” Hayden said suddenly, tilting his chin up like the words were as much a challenge as they were a declaration. And maybe they were, this week. “Just for the record.”
“I love you too,” Matt said, warmth bursting in his chest. “For the record.”
They kissed.
Hayden’s skin was a galaxy, and Matt mapped out constellations with his mouth. Hayden’s silent laughter as he squirmed under Matt’s attention was a new universe that expanded right before Matt’s eyes. He loved Hayden and Hayden loved him, and that feeling was too large to be contained in yesterday’s universe. It demanded an entire new reality.
Matt traced a trail of freckles along Hayden’s collarbone.
Hayden curled his fingers in Matt’s hair and tugged it warningly. “Matt.”
“We’ve got time.” Matt shifted into the space that opened for him between Hayden’s thighs, leaning in for a kiss when Hayden hooked his legs around him.
They had time, and not just tonight. There would be days, and weeks, and months and years of this to come. The idea was supposed to be terrifying—Matt had seen enough sitcoms in his time to know that fear of commitment was meant to be hardwired somewhere into his lizard brain—but it wasn’t. He and Hayden wanted to be together, and they would find a way to make it work for them now and in the future. It didn’t matter that they’d come at this whole thing backwards. It only mattered that they were both on the same page now.
Matt rubbed his thumb along Hayden’s collarbone, smiling as it brought up a red mark that faded rapidly. It reminded him of light trails in a photograph, ephemeral and beautiful. He also liked how Hayden gasped and arched off the bed, his spine bending like a bow, when Matt leaned down and bit him gently. The low moan that Hayden made went straight to Matt’s dick. It was hard, pressing uncomfortably against his constricting jeans. He slid a hand down between their bodies, finding that Hayden was just as hard.
“You locked the door, right?” Hayden whispered.
“Yes.” Matt kissed him.
From outside he could hear the television in the living room, and the click-click-click of Charlie’s claws as he waddled down the hallway. He heard his mother say something—too faint to make out her words—and the low rumble of his father’s response.
Hayden looked at him, and raised his eyebrows.
“We’ve got time,” Matt said again, and tugged Hayden’s fly open.
“We’re gonna get caught.” Hayden rocked against Matt, fingers digging into Matt’s hips.
Matt peeled Hayden’s jeans open, and shoved a hand into his underwear. He swiped his thumb over the head of Hayden’s dick, and Hayden huffed out another hot breath and jerked against him.
Matt unzipped his own jeans and hooked his fingers into the elastic of his boxers. He pushed them down in a knot of fabric, freeing his aching dick. Then he lined himself up against Ha
yden, and curled his hand around both their dicks. Hayden swallowed a moan, one of his hands finding Matt’s. They linked their fingers, squeezing.
They fell into a rhythm that more or less worked. It was a little stilted at first, and then a little awkward and a lot messy, and Matt’s knuckles kept rasping against the teeth of his zip. That small discomfort wasn’t enough to throw him off though. Not with Hayden’s legs wrapped around him, and Hayden’s dick pressing hard against his own.
Hayden’s skin flushed red as they both rocked closer and closer to climax, the colour rising on his chest, his throat, and his cheeks. He was beautiful like this, and Matt leaned down to kiss him and to nip teasingly at his bottom lip.
Heat caught between their sweat-slick skin.
“Come on,” Hayden urged. “Come on, Matt.”
Hayden’s voice spurred him on, and the need tightening in him. He finished with a frantic thrust and a gasp, coming hot spurts over their damp fingers, and Hayden arched his back and followed him over the edge. After a moment Matt sagged forward, burying his face against Hayden’s throat, and Hayden ran a hand through his hair.
God, Matt hoped it was his clean hand.
The air conditioning chilled the sweat on his back. He didn’t want to move, but yeah, they were stuck together with sweat and come, and a stud from his jeans was digging into his thigh. Also, he was probably crushing Hayden to death.
He rolled off Hayden regretfully.
Hayden shifted beside him, and Matt heard the rasp of a zip as he made himself decent again. For certain values of decent.
“I need a shower,” Hayden murmured. “I’ve been ravaged.”
Matt turned his head. “Is that what the kids are calling it?”
Hayden snorted and elbowed him.
There was a knock at the door.
Matt tugged his underwear up and his jeans closed while Hayden scrambled off the bed. “Give us a minute!”
“Oh, I’m not opening the door.” Dad sounded amused. “I just wanted to let you boys know the pizzas are here.”
Hayden covered his face with his hands.
