“I wish I could say the same, but even though I can’t, no one’s topped me since we were together, and I’ve not been with very many men total. Ben in college, Bryce, a few one-night stands here and there. Mostly, it’s been just me, my fantasies, and my hand ever since I first fell for you,” he confessed in a whisper.
A quiet chuckle escaped Reed. “Every time I hear your voice, my cock goes ballistic. You wouldn’t believe the hard-on I’m sporting right now.”
Evan laughed, imagining Reed naked in his bed with a huge hard-on. “Sure, I would. I have one myself.”
“You’re touching it, aren’t you?”
The breathless excitement in Reed’s voice made Evan wrap his fingers around his cock, stroking in a way guaranteed to make him come in minutes.
“Hell yes, I’m touching it. I have a broken leg not a broken dick, and when it comes to you, my dick is always at attention.”
Now Reed laughed. “That’s good to know. If I was there, you wouldn’t need to stroke it because it would be deep in my throat with my tongue wrapped around it.”
Evan groaned. Reed had a way with sex words that had him at the brink of orgasm in moments.
“God. I just want to sink my fingers into your hair and fuck your mouth,” he whispered, his hand moving more quickly on his swollen cock.
“Mmm.” Reed’s quiet groan sent shivers down Evan’s spine. “I would let you. You can do whatever you want to me. No one turns me on like you do. Every night I dream of you deep inside my ass, fucking me into the mattress.”
Balls pulling tight to his body, Evan writhed on his bed, his sheets twisting around his cast. “I’ve never had such a tight ass as yours,” he admitted. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a virgin hole. It was definitely the best ass I’ve ever been in.”
Panting came from the phone. “You’re going to make me come. Just your voice telling me how much you loved fucking me is getting me off,” Reed admitted.
“Your hand is getting you off. You are jacking yourself, aren’t you? Stroking that big dick that’s all mine now?” Speaking with Reed on the phone in such an intimate manner made Evan felt possessive. Despite the miles between them and the years that they’d been apart, when they whispered to each other as they did now, Evan thought of Reed as his, and it made his heart soar.
“Yesss.” Reed’s voice came out in a hiss. “I’m going to come, but I’m holding it back, waiting for you.”
Twisting his slick fingers around his cock, Evan drove himself to the edge of orgasm. The sound of Reed’s excitement in his ear made him hotter than he’d ever been with Bryce or any other man. Reed had always just done it for him.
“Come now, Reed. Come for me. Just for me,” he urged as he let go of his cock long enough to squeeze his tightly drawn-up balls.
A soft sound filled his ears, rumbling from the phone into a long groan as Reed came. Evan stroked his cock twice more, and then, with Reed’s voice echoing in his ears, he let himself come. Hot fluid gushed over his fingers and splashed onto his abdomen. A low, guttural moan escaped him.
“Oh God. You sound so hot when you come. I love you.”
Reed’s voice had a plaintive note that Evan responded to instinctively. “Love you too. So much.”
They breathed quietly into their phones, catching their breaths. Finally, Reed said, “Babe, heal quick. I miss you so much. It’s all I can do to stop myself from coming there to bring you home. I need you, Evan.”
“I need you too. We’ll be together soon. This whole thing just needs a little time. Then we’ll be together, and we can say everything that we’ve never said, do everything we’ve never done…”
“And always wished for,” Reed whispered. “Always.”
Evan hung up with Reed’s words echoing in his mind. As he drifted to sleep, he wondered how they would work everything out. After all, they had a lot of time to make up for, a lot of silence and deception to overcome. None of it was completely bad, but they both apparently carried scars from the time they’d spent keeping secrets from each other. For his part, Evan felt a deep relief that he no longer had to hide his feelings. The truth had set him free emotionally if not in every other way imaginable.
In the end, Bryce became polite but remote toward Evan for the next few weeks as Evan’s leg healed. They slept in separate rooms as they always had, and Evan arranged to have his belongings packed and shipped to California. They stayed out of the press’s way, and Evan let his agent do all the talking when it came to the NFL inquiry and the lawsuit against the player who’d ended his career.
Reed had taken to calling multiple times a day, including when Evan went to bed. He’d never thought he’d be doing phone sex at his age and certainly not with Reed, but Reed seemed to relish their conversations. Every time Evan got tired of waiting to go home, Reed cheered him and made him feel better about having to wait. They kept recreating their plans of how it would be when they finally saw each other after three years, and it became a running joke between them. The only thing they never spoke of was the future and whether they could actually build one together.
Evan chafed at the time needed to heal his leg. He ached to go home. All he needed was the doctor’s okay to travel, which came the day they put a walking cast on him and handed him a cane. Now that it was time for Evan to go, fear reared its ugly head, filling him with doubts. He stood quietly, leaning on his cane, apprehension stalking him as the movers carried out his furniture and boxes, bound for his parents’ garage in Encino.
Bryce was away on a business trip so Evan had no good-byes to tender; for that he was grateful. He sat in the sterile contemporary living room of the South Beach house and waited for the limo that would take him to the airport. Everything he’d gone through to keep his feelings hidden from Reed had really been for nothing. All this time, Reed had loved him too. A flash of bitterness made the bile rise in his throat. How could he have not known? Especially the night he’d made love to Reed. Knowing the man had never been fucked before, how had he not known that Reed had loved him?
Part of him wanted to bewail the lost time and the agony they’d both suffered. Part of him feared what would happen when they finally were together. Talking on the phone and having phone sex wasn’t the same as being face-to-face with the person. But despite his doubts, his heart was just too happy to let the dark fears hold him back. When the limo driver rang the doorbell, his heart leaped with anticipation. He and Reed together. No more unrequited love. No more sleeping alone. No more stifled dreams of happiness. Everything he had ever wanted lay one long flight away. And Evan was high as a kite on happiness, fear, and pure unadulterated panic.
Almost exactly seven weeks after Evan broke his leg, a limo pulled up to the entrance of the Sterling Inn Spa and Resort. The driver held the door for Evan, and he struggled out of the car and limped up onto the curb, clutching his cane. A doorman greeted him while the driver took his cases out of the trunk. With his luggage loaded onto a cart and the bellboy following his slow progress, he headed toward the lobby. At the check-in counter, he flipped out his credit card. A dark-haired woman in a neat gray suit took the card and began typing on the computer in front of her.
“You’re in the Condor Suite, Mr. McAdam,” she said cheerily. “Compliments of Mr. Matthews.” She handed him back his card. “I won’t be needing that.”
Evan’s brows rose, and the woman smiled at him, “You played football with Mr. Matthews, didn’t you?”
He nodded slowly, unwilling to acknowledge that the old pain of loving Reed still lingered inside him. “For twenty years.”
“Since you were little kids. I think that’s amazing. I don’t have any friends I’ve known that long.” She slid a key card in a golden folder toward him.
Evan pocketed the card. “You don’t look old enough to have had a friend for twenty years,” he teased smoothly.
She actually blushed, and Evan could barely contain his smile. “Thank you, Mr. McAdam. Enjoy your stay.”
The bellboy pushed the cart to the elevator. The doors slid open, and Evan limped in, stepping to one side to avoid the luggage cart. It wouldn’t do to bang his cast around, not after all the work that had gone into the flesh and bone inside it. He winced as the elevator lurched into action, winging them upward to the third floor. Top of the building. He got out and followed the tasteful signs to the Condor Suite.
The bellboy took his key card from him and opened the door, ushering him in and then following with the luggage. He unloaded the cases near the closet in the bedroom while Evan wandered around looking at everything. The suite was quite luxurious, almost reminding him of the suite they’d stayed at in New York City for the draft. He should have had the same level of apprehension now that he had back then, but he found he didn’t have the energy for it. He felt old and tired and numb.
After handing the bellboy a tip, he turned toward the balcony, hardly registering the soft closing of the door. Alone with his thoughts, he opened the slider and stepped out, the sea air stinging his nostrils. Leaning on the railing, he closed his eyes and for the hundredth time since he’d packed his bags in Florida, his panic overtook him, and he asked himself why he was there. Did he really have the nerve to believe that all the years of pain were gone? That he and Reed would be together as he’d always dreamed? Or was he letting himself in for yet another disappointment?
“It’s been a long time, Evan.”
The simply said words sent a shudder through Evan. “Did you come in when the bellboy left?” he asked, not turning around.
A tanned forearm came to rest on the railing not two feet from his own arm. “Yes, but I own the place. I have a key to every room, and then some.”
Evan couldn’t look to his right. He didn’t want to see Reed standing there, whole and healthy and sexy as hell while he shook from fatigue and his leg could barely hold him up. It wasn’t how he’d imagined their reunion. He deliberately kept his gaze on the Pacific Ocean.
“You’re practically falling down,” Reed said, a stern note entering his voice. “You need to get off that leg.”
“It’s fine.” Evan gritted his teeth and turned finally, taking in Reed’s wind-ruffled dark hair and healthy tan.
His best friend wore faded jeans and a dark-green polo shirt with the inn’s logo on the pocket. A tentative smile curved his lips, but Evan could see a bit of apprehension in Reed’s dark eyes. Unable to resist that faint expression of anxiety, he reached out and let Reed wrap him in a hug. For a moment, he breathed in the spicy scent of the only man he’d ever loved, letting Reed hold him up with hard arms tight around his body.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” Reed whispered fiercely. “I missed you so much.”
Evan pulled away and leaned heavily on his cane. “Until I got hurt, you never said.”
“No, I didn’t. Just like I didn’t tell you when I realized I was gay.” Reed made a face. “I seem to suffer from an excess of fear when it comes to telling you my deepest feelings. At sixteen, I was afraid to tell you I was gay because I knew in my gut my parents would hate me for it and I didn’t want you to hate me too. And all those times we spoke on the phone while you were in Florida, I could have told you how much I missed you, but I didn’t because I was afraid your life there meant more to you than I did.”
Annoyance spiked within Evan. “Nothing and no one has ever meant as much to me as you, Reed. After all these years, you should have known that,” he growled.
Reed shook his head. “I never knew shit. I suppose I should have, though. Whenever I needed you, there you were.”
Evan turned on his good heel and limped heavily into the living room. Reed followed him, and Evan could feel his friend’s eyes boring a hole into his back. He slipped off his jacket and carefully eased himself down on the couch. Reed took the overstuffed chair opposite him.
“Before you got hurt, if I had asked you to come home, you would have left Bryce, wouldn’t you?”
It was a loaded question, and they both knew it. But Evan was exhausted both emotionally and physically. He couldn’t answer the question nor could he dissemble. So he ignored it.
“You have room service in this fancy joint?” he asked with a frown. “I’m starving.”
“Dinner’s already on its way,” Reed assured him. “On the desk is all the information for your physical therapy. The therapist here has already spoken to your doctor in Florida and the team doctor. You’re all set to start day after tomorrow. They all want you to take it easy for the next twenty-four hours.”
Evan grunted, his face scrunching into a scowl. “They all act like I had a heart transplant, not a broken leg.”
Reed shook his head and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “A broken leg is a big deal. People can actually die from one.”
“Yeah, if you’re ninety, not twenty-nine and healthy as a horse.”
A frustrated sound escaped Reed. “You’re minimizing this. Why? Because you don’t want to acknowledge the fact that your career is over?”
Evan shot him an angry glance, noting that Reed seemed totally focused on him, focused and determined. Evan’s anger rose. He unleashed it on Reed even though it was really anger at himself. “Oh, I know I’m done. No more football. No more Bryce. No more Florida. No more South Beach parties. No more being half of the world’s most charming and beautiful gay couple…” An angry, disgusted snort punctuated his last words.
“So you never wanted to be part of the Golden Gay Couple with Bryce?”
Reed’s quiet question put a damper on Evan’s anger. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the couch cushions as he stretched out his good leg alongside the rigid cast.
“No. You shouldn’t be surprised. I told you I didn’t love him. He and I were a convenience. Most of the time, we weren’t even exclusive. And after that phone call at the hospital between you and me, you knew I didn’t want to stay with him.”
“I hoped you didn’t want to. I hoped you wanted to come home. But seven weeks felt like forever, and I’m only human. I’ve been scared.” Reed’s quiet voice held a note of pleading. “I know this is what we talked about on the phone, but are you sure you want to be here?”
Pain radiated out from Evan’s chest. It made the throbbing in his leg feel like a pinprick. Reed wasn’t the only one who was scared. The weeks of his recovery had been fraught with his fears. He’d come home to see if maybe he and Reed could build something more than friendship. His coming home was a Hail Mary pass, a last-ditch effort to grab something wonderful for himself. If it didn’t work, he’d have to find a way to regain his equilibrium and become Reed’s best friend again, to be the man who stood by Reed through thick and thin and loved him enough to keep that emotion to himself.
He scrabbled blindly for his jacket on the couch cushion, slipping his hand into the pocket and pulling out a bottle of pain meds. He popped the cap and shook out two pills. He put them in his mouth and swallowed them dry. While he waited for them to kick in, he remembered that Reed had asked him a question. “Yes, I want to be here. Do I want to go through the hell of physical therapy? No. Do I want the press to hound me about breaking up with Bryce and breaking my leg? Hell, no. Do I want all the e-mails and phone calls from my agent, my broker, my attorney, and my financial advisor all asking me what I’m going to do? Jesus Christ, no. Do I want to face Darcy or the NFL Commissioner or the attorneys for those two players who deliberately broke my leg? No fucking way.” He groaned, waiting for the meds to kick in which he knew they would in the next few minutes. “Do you know what I really want? I want to go to bed and wake up sixteen again. I want to do so many things over.”
“I suppose you want to do the night before Len’s death over.”
The half-whispered words held pain, and Evan jerked upright, ignoring the ache in his leg. He opened his eyes and saw a wealth of sadness on Reed’s face.
“No! Why the fuck would I want to erase that?” he asked harshly. “It’s the only thing I cling to. I hold the memory
of that night close to my heart. It’s the only thing that’s sustained me for years.”
“What are you saying?” Reed breathed, his dark gaze locked on Evan.
“Fuck. What the hell do you think I’m saying? What the fuck have I been saying every night for the last seven weeks while I’ve stroked my cock to the sound of your voice? What the fuck did I tell you when I was doped up on morphine in the hospital? I told you fucking everything!” Evan’s anger at himself returned. He wanted to get up and pace, but he couldn’t. He sat trapped on the damn hotel couch, his leg throbbing, his head pounding, and his heart breaking.
Reed’s eyes warmed a little, but caution still lurked in the dark depths. “You told me you loved me, but Evan, you’ve said that countless times over the years.”
“Wrong. I told you I was in love with you. It’s not the same.”
As Evan watched, emotions chased themselves across Reed’s handsome face. Finally, a sheen of tears appeared in his eyes. “When I asked you on the phone how long, you told me since you knew what romantic love was. When was that?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. “Just exactly how long are we talking about?”
The weight of all the years past and all the years he thought he’d have to look forward to, carrying his love for Reed inside him, without hope of ever being anything more than friends, slammed down on Evan like a wrecking ball. He slumped on the couch, out of energy, out of patience, and completely unable to protect himself from the world of hurt that might be only moments away.
“Always. There isn’t a day when I haven’t been,” he admitted softly. “I’ve been in love with you since I knew what that meant. Since I knew I was gay. In fact, it’s how I knew. The thought of being with you made me happy, and the thought of being with you sexually made me horny. I was sixteen, and I just knew I was gay and in love with you.”
“You never said it. Damn it, Evan! You never said it!” Reed’s voice held a note of panicked fear. “If all this hadn’t happened with your leg, if you hadn’t babbled in the hospital, would you be here now? Would you ever have told me?”
Scrambling (Out in the NFL Book 1) Page 14
