by E M Lindsey
Mat’s entire body went hot with want, and he hated the fact that he was stuck at the shop for another three hours. “Do I get sexy rewards now? For my French skills?”
Wyatt laughed and dragged Mat in for another kiss. “If you like.”
“Hell yeah, I like. Come on, I better get back to my post, but you can come hang out in my stall with me while I work on my sketch sheets.” He fell in step with Wyatt to take his arm, and he showed his new lover the way to the shop front door.
Luckily, Derek was too busy with his client to be an asshole, and James didn’t do much besides grin as he greeted Wyatt. Mat pulled the extra chair out for the other man, then used his rolling one to set up at his drawing table.
“Who else is here?” Wyatt asked as he fiddled with the loop on his cane.
Mat shrugged. “Just Derek and James for now. Luke’s coming in to take over walk-ins and I know Sage and Sam both have late night appointments. I think the kids are all over at Tony’s tonight.”
“And you?” Wyatt asked. “Very busy today?”
Mat shook his head. “Nah. Like I said, weekday afternoons are shitty for walk-ins, but it lets me work on other stuff.” He set his pencil down when he realized Wyatt was still tense. “You okay, babe? Did something happen?”
Wyatt let out a trembling breath, then shrugged. “I…my doctor confirmed that my sight loss is progressing. He gave me the name for a doctor in Montréal who has been having some success with treatment there—it’s a stem-cell treatment. He doesn’t think it’ll give me anything else back, but it could slow the progress now.”
“That’s good, right?” Mat asked.
Wyatt’s shoulders slumped, but it looked like it was more relief than it was disappointment. “Yes. It could be very good. I mean, I know it’s not much—what I can see. But I don’t want to lose it if I don’t have to.”
Mat bit his lip when he realized what Wyatt was saying. “But you’d have to go home.”
Wyatt nodded miserably. “Not forever. Not for long. I have my job, my visa. But when my family finds out…”
“How long does the treatment last?”
“The treatment itself is only a day. But I’ll need to have testing done, and they’ll want to observe my progress,” Wyatt said softly, his face tilted down toward his feet.
“So like…a while,” Mat said. His head was spinning with ideas, his mouth threatening to get ahead of his brain, but his heart was kind of on board with it all. “I could…I mean, if you don’t want to go alone, I could always tag along.”
Wyatt’s entire body went stiff, his head lifting, and he pushed his glasses out of the way, rubbing at his eyes the way he did when he was stressed or deep in thought. Mat immediately regretted opening his big mouth and very obviously pushing Wyatt too fast. He took a breath to tell Wyatt that he wasn’t serious, that he didn’t mean it, when Wyatt suddenly reached for him.
Mat reacted automatically, rolling the chair so he could meet Wyatt’s hands, and he let the other man gather him into a kiss.
“You’re out of your mind,” Wyatt murmured.
“I know. I uh…I kind of have no chill, as I’m sure you can tell.”
Wyatt huffed a laugh. “It’s very far, and for longer than just a few days. I would hate to drag you from your work—your obligations—just because I’m feeling too cowardly to face my family.”
“Oh, hell no,” Mat said firmly, taking Wyatt’s hands in his. “First of all, I want to go. I have my passport and I think I can get six months on it, right?”
“Ouais,” Wyatt said quietly.
“I mean, I don’t speak shit for French, but I could get by,” Mat went on.
“Just maybe don’t ask any of my brothers if they want to go to bed with you tonight,” Wyatt murmured with a half-grin.
Mat smacked Wyatt’s knee lightly. “Oh, shut up, you thought that was cute.”
“I thought,” Wyatt said, bringing the back of Mat’s hand to his mouth to kiss it, “it was bold, and it was sexy. I was terrified, because I wanted you so badly, and I didn’t think I could have you.”
“Well, you do have me,” Mat said.
There was a beat of silence, then a too-familiar voice. “Holy fuckin’ shit, y’all listening to this sappy fuckin’ bullshit over here?”
Mat groaned, letting his head drop to Wyatt’s shoulder. “First of all, fuck all the way off, Jamie. Second of all, what does a guy have to do to get some privacy around here?”
“Maybe not go rom-com all up in a tattoo shop,” James declared.
Mat sat up, rubbing a hand down his face, but he couldn’t stop his grin. When he chanced a look over at Wyatt, he saw the other man was fighting back a grin of his own. “Anyway, as we were so rudely interrupted by the world’s worst cock-block…”
“Hoooo damn! Boy’s got an attitude now that he’s getting dicked down!” James crowed.
Mat pinched the bridge of his nose, then stood up. “There’s a back room,” he told Wyatt, taking his hand as the other man stood.
“Oh damn, there’s a back room,” James mimicked.
Mat gave him a look. “Seriously.”
With a sigh, James leaned over the partition and clapped Wyatt on the shoulder. “He needs to learn if he’s in this with you, he’s in this with all of us. And he’s been livin’ in my house for damn near a year now. He gets it.”
Mat looked at Wyatt with some apprehension, but saw his lover was wearing no other expression beyond an indulgent smile. “He’s not wrong,” Wyatt said, squeezing Mat’s fingers. “He’s meeting all of my expectations.”
“Burn,” Derek said with a smirk as he picked up his machine and poised it over the client’s forearm.
“Come on,” Mat said with a sigh. “We have a little room in the back that we use for sketching. Call me if anyone comes in.”
“Will do. Enjoy,” James drawled, shoving his chair back into his stall.
Mat didn’t say anything until they were safely behind the closed door, and as Wyatt found the table with the side of his cane, Mat sagged against the wall. “Sorry. He is such a dipshit.”
Wyatt huffed a quiet laugh and shook his head, turning to face Mat. “I don’t mind. He wasn’t wrong, I have lived with him nearly a year. I knew what I was getting into.”
“Yeah, but knowing it and experiencing it are two very different things,” Mat couldn’t help but argue. It wasn’t like he was trying to talk Wyatt out of wanting to be with him, but he wanted to make sure the other man understood the full scope of it.
Wyatt sighed, then set his cane to the side and held out both hands. “Come here. I would really like to kiss you.”
Mat didn’t need telling twice. Stepping into Wyatt’s arms was the easiest thing he’d ever done, and he turned his face down to accept the gentle, soothing kiss Wyatt placed on his lips. “Thanks,” he said after he pulled back.
Wyatt nodded, but he didn’t let go. “Listen, about your offer to come with me back home…”
“I meant it,” Mat said in a rush. “I know we just got together, but I’ve known you for a while, and I can take the time off. If it means being able to support you while you get this done, it’s more than worth it.”
“Let me make some calls, get some appointments,” Wyatt said. As Mat’s heart started to sink at the thought that was being politely rejected, Wyatt leaned in and kissed the side of his neck. “Thank you, for wanting to be there with me. It means the world, and I…I would love to have you.”
Mat tightened his grip on Wyatt, and realized he was falling hard, and he was falling fast.
With Wyatt’s recent tests and his beyond-extensive history of being treated in Québec, getting the appointment date was easy enough. It was a complicated process, but not as long as some of the surgeries and treatments his parents had dragged him to as a kid. His condition was rare, two stacked on top of each other which made matters worse, and for so long there had been no treatment at all.
Part of Wyatt was tired of cha
sing something that was so far out of his grasp. This wasn’t going to give him sight—hell, he wasn’t even sure if he wanted sight necessarily. He had vague, strange memories of his childhood when he had more vision, but he wasn’t even sure if any of it was real.
In reality, he just wanted to maintain his independence. He wanted to consider another guide dog, and he wanted to consider moving to a place that was more his than James’—maybe a place with his own functional kitchen and not as many chances to run into half-drunk tattoo artists sprawled across the floor. Not that he didn’t like the guys at Irons and Works. He didn’t spend a lot of time with them, but he could see why they considered each other family.
And if this thing he had with Mat—whatever it really was—became something long-term, he could see himself feeling the same way. It didn’t hurt that they were not only willing to accept him as he was, but they were also happy to. Wyatt had gone to a school for the blind, had done a lot of work with the blind community, but after marrying Ioan and taking a job at the school, he’d lost a lot of his old connections. He hadn’t realized just how much he missed being in a group of people who understood him until he finally had something like it.
It made pursuing Mat that much more appealing—though really, he didn’t need another reason apart from who Mat was as a person. He’d been through a lot. Wyatt could hear the pain in his voice, could feel it in the way his fingers shook, or the way he disparaged himself when trying to learn braille. Every failure struck him like a bullet, and although he got up each time, Wyatt wasn’t blind to the struggle.
He had made up his mind just seconds after Mat offered to go with him, though he still hesitated at dragging Mat so far from home. He knew the other man didn’t travel much—if at all—and he knew that he still had some issues from his brain injury. But Mat seemed more than willing to go, and Wyatt was almost desperate for the support.
He loved his family, but he didn’t want to let them have even a moment to talk about him staying. He was finally finding happiness, finally reaching his goal of moving on. Going home felt like taking steps backward, but with Mat there, he’d be constantly reminded of what he had waiting for him when everything was finished.
He sent a quick email off to his older brother telling him the dates, and that he’d be bringing his new boyfriend, before texting Mat and telling him dinner was almost ready. James was with Rowan for the night, so Wyatt used the kitchen to throw together burgers and scalloped potatoes. He took everything back to the guest-house and was just setting up the little dining nook when he heard the crunching of shoes on the gravel outside.
He turned toward the door when it opened, and he couldn’t stop his smile when he smelled Mat’s familiar cologne. “Hey. Are you hungry?”
“Is it more poutine?” Mat asked, and though Wyatt knew it was partially a joke, he also knew he had his lover hooked.
“It isn’t,” Wyatt said, reaching for Mat’s hips and drawing him close. “But I promise you can have all the poutine you want once we get to Montréal,” he answered, kissing Mat’s jaw.
Mat laughed. “Is that so? Are we going to survive on fries with gravy and shit the entire time?”
“Mm. And bagels. You don’t know bagels until you’ve had one from Montréal,” he promised. In truth, he was a semi-traitor. He loved Montréal bagels, but he made the mistake of visiting a quaint, family-owned kosher deli on a trip to New York with Ioan, and suddenly he was a traitor to crown and country. Not that he’d ever admit that aloud.
“What else are we going to do there?” Mat asked, nipping at Wyatt’s earlobe.
Wyatt lost himself in the sensation for a moment before coming back to himself. “Ah…mostly the doctor,” he said. “Then we’ll go to my hometown where there is nothing to do but walk little paths around the woods and avoid all of the rebellious teenagers having too much sex and stealing their parents’ whiskey.”
“Sounds like fun. Sounds like everyone’s hometown,” Mat said with a light chuckle. He pulled back and leaned over Wyatt’s shoulder. “That looks so good. Can we eat?”
Wyatt laughed as he pushed him away. “Yes. Then we can talk dates?”
Mat went a little stiff, but before Wyatt could worry that maybe he’d changed his mind, Mat kissed him. “You really are cool with me going?”
“I don’t want to inconvenience you,” Wyatt said as he took his seat and pulled his plate close to him. He pushed the prongs of his fork into some of the potatoes, but didn’t take a bite. “But if you can spare the time, I’d love to have you with me.”
Mat was quiet for a long moment, apart from chewing, then he took a drink and set the glass down with a careful thud. “I want to go. I’d like to meet your family. It’s just…I’m worried this is fast for you? You just got divorced.”
Wyatt couldn’t stop his laugh, though he wasn’t mocking Mat. The fact that Mat was so worried about him was endearing. The mark of their age difference, if he was being honest, but he didn’t hate it. And it didn’t make him nervous the way it once had. Mat might have been younger, but he had lived a lot more life than most people by thirty-five. “My marriage ended a long time ago. Even before I found out what Ioan was up to, there wasn’t much love between us. My anger—my pain—wasn’t from losing him. It wasn’t even from the betrayal. It was the fact that he tried to use me to cover up the things he’d done. Falling out of love with me was not an excuse to…what’s that phrase where you give someone else the blame?”
“Throwing you under the bus?” Mat offered.
Wyatt jabbed his fork in Mat’s direction. “Exactly the one. I’m angry that I was worth so little to him. I’m not angry that our marriage was over. If he hadn’t done what he did, our marriage would still have ended.”
“Okay,” Mat said, and he sounded a little more confident. “Then I can’t wait. I mean, this is all still pretty new for me. The boyfriend thing. I mean, we are, right? Boyfriends?”
Wyatt laughed softly as he finally put some potato in his mouth. “Yes.”
“But I mean, I was married too. I’d been with Melissa for…god. Forever, you know? She was supposed to be it for me, but then the moment I couldn’t give her what she wanted…”
Wyatt licked his lips. He knew some of Mat’s past. During braille lessons, they’d talked about it a little, but Mat had always been reluctant to bring it up. “Was she always so…superficial? Before the accident?”
“I want to say no,” Mat said thoughtfully, “but honestly, I don’t think she’d ever been faced with something like that. I mean, how do you know that you’re willing to stay in sickness if you’ve never been put in the position to test yourself? We were both pretty spoiled. Really privileged.” Mat let out a small sigh, and Wyatt heard his glass lifting, then hitting the table again. “My dad’s a doctor, my mom’s a lawyer. They were always busy, and always rich. Melissa came from the same stock—her dad and mom were both in finance. We paid tuition out of pocket, we had an Ivy League education. Then one day I couldn’t talk anymore—or read, or write, or practice medicine. I think when she was forced to accept that her life had reached a crossroads—either stay with me with no idea how much I’ll recover, or go find something she really wanted, it was an easy decision.”
“It was a cruel one,” Wyatt said, his heart aching.
Mat laughed softly. “It was the right one. At least I knew early on. And hell, if she hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be here. I owe a lot of the man I am right now to the people at the shop. My parents didn’t want some brain damaged, half-man making things awkward in public. It was much easier to just…try to make it all go away.”
There was something in Mat’s tone that triggered Wyatt’s alarm bells. “Go away?” he repeated.
Mat was silent for a long time, apart from the sounds of him pushing food around his plate. Eventually, he took a long breath. “I need you to understand that I’m not that person anymore, okay? I’m…I’m good, and I’m healthy.” He took another breath. “But after Meli
ssa left, when I realized I was more than just alone, I tried to kill myself.”
“Mateo.” The word fell so easily from Wyatt’s lips. It was a small prayer. It was pain for the man he was falling for.
“No,” Mat said. “It’s not…I’m glad I didn’t succeed, and I never tried again. I got a lot of help—I still get help when I need it. I was just in a really fucking dark place then. I couldn’t communicate, I didn’t know if I would ever get better, I didn’t know what the hell my life would end up like. My parents just kind of abandoned me to the rehab place, and my wife walked out on me. But it was for the best.”
Wyatt understood—on a fundamental level—but the idea that Mat had been tossed aside so carelessly sent waves of frustration and anger through him. “You shouldn’t have had to endure that.”
“No,” Mat agreed. “No one should. My parents have sort of tried to make amends over the years, but I’m not sure I’ll ever really be ready to forgive them. But Tony and James—they were the first two people I met when I came to Denver, and within hours, they gave me more unconditional support and affection than I’d had in years. Moving here was the easiest and best decision in my life.” Mat cleared his throat. “Then, of course, I met you. And having the balls to hit on you in my bad French and kiss you in that alley is right up there with everything else that makes my life worth living.”
Wyatt felt his cheeks heat up, and more than anything he wanted to throw himself around the table and kiss the other man until neither of them could breathe. He settled for tangling their feet together under the table and digging in to his burger before it got inedibly cold. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad our…tragedies, I guess you could say, have given us gifts.”
“Me too,” Mat said, and there was a smile in his voice.
Chapter Fourteen
Spread out on the cool sheets, Wyatt laid there with one arm behind his head, the other resting on his stomach. He was half hard with anticipation, listening to the sound of Mat in the shower as he scrubbed off the day. Mat had playfully hinted at Wyatt joining him, but most of the accommodations in James’ guest house were barely large enough for one person, and the last thing he needed was a sex injury before his trip back home.
