The Quarterback by Tal Bauer

Chapter Nineteen

Got any plans tonight?Nick was one closed door away when Colton texted him. Nick had disappeared into his office after lunch, telling Colton he needed to focus and seeing Colton shattered his concentration.

Colton watched the three little dots bounce and stop. Bounce and stop. My social life centers entirely on you. A better question would be, do you have plans tonight?

Colton bit his lip. He swiveled left and right in his chair, trying not to grin. I’d like to take you out on a date.

Silence. He sucked his lower lip into his mouth and waited. Refreshed the screen when it started to dim. Waited some more.

What did you have in mind?Nick finally texted.

He couldn’t take Nick to a restaurant that could compare to Kimbrough’s steak house. He didn’t want to take Nick to a movie and spend two hours not interacting with him. He wanted… something that was them. Something that would make Nick smile. Something that was fun but heartfelt, too. Something that had little bits of things Nick loved, brought to him by Colton.

Two counties away, he’d discovered, the local high school held an exhibition game near the end of their county fair. Alumni came back to face off against the current team of freshmen to juniors. It was a scramble, flag football instead of tackle, with music piped over the loudspeakers in a stadium that was a rodeo ring the rest of the year. The fairgrounds surrounded the stadium, stuffed to the brim with bright carnival games and glittering midway rides, 4-H animals, craft exhibitions, and fair food. Sugar and neon and summer, and Texas high school football beneath the sodium lights.

It’s a surprise. :) Can I pick you up at five? In the kitchen at home?

LOL. Sure. This will be my first date in twenty-one years. ;)

I’ll make sure it’s worth the wait.

He saw the text bubble appear, saw those three little dots bounce, then fade. He waited, but Nick never texted back. Maybe he was on a call, or Jim had buzzed him, or an email had come in. Colton set his phone down and turned back to his own work.

He was a live wire for the rest of the day, humming to himself as he proofed slide decks and checked Kimbrough Oil Mobile network traffic coming out of the Permian Basin.

Nick had said yes. They were going on a date.

* * *

At exactly five p.m.,he held out his hand to Nick over the kitchen island. They’d slipped out early and headed home, and Nick had changed into jeans and a T-shirt when Colton had told him to dress casual. “Ready?”

“I hope so.”

Colton walked him down to the street, bypassing the turnoff to the condo’s parking garage and leading Nick to his truck. He’d ducked out for coffee that afternoon, taken an Uber to the jock house, and driven his truck back across town. Taking the Porsche tonight would have been fun, but for how he wanted things to go later on, he wanted more room. Unlike Wes, he had the extended cab in his pickup and a full second row of bench seats where he and Nick could—hopefully—stretch out.

He opened the passenger door for Nick. Nick grinned.

They talked on the drive out of town, Colton seemingly heading toward nowhere on a two-lane farm-to-market road. As soon as they hit the city limit, he reached across the dash and took Nick’s hand. He brought it to his lips, then laced their fingers together and laid their hands over his thigh.

The summer sun was still up when he pulled off the highway at the county fairgrounds. Dust billowed around the truck and caliche crunched beneath his tires as he wound the truck into a parking spot beneath an oak tree, a thick branch over the windshield providing a tiny hint of privacy. Before he climbed out, Colton leaned across the console and kissed Nick. “We’re here,” he whispered.

“A fair?”

“A football game.” He pointed to the stadium lights. “The Summer Alumni Annual Classic for…” He forgot the name of the high school and shrugged. Grinned. “We’ve never watched a game together.”

“Every game I’ve been to this past year, you were playing in.”

“Tonight, we get to watch a game together.”

Their shoulders and arms brushed as they walked, elbows and forearms swaying together and apart. Carnival games clattered and chimed and whirled, electronic clings and clangs and cymbals mixed with digital piano riffs and penny-whistle slides. Garish neon light warred with the pastel watercolors of the sunset. A Ferris wheel rose over the rodeo-grounds-turned-football-field, the blinking lights like falling stars in primary colors. One of those towering swing rides spun in front of the Ferris wheel, hurling riders in chairs over the midway. Buttered popcorn and spun sugar soaked the air and filled their lungs. Kids ran screaming from carnival game to ride to their parents, sticky fingers clutching impossibly huge stuffed animals.

Colton paid for their wristbands and, at the rodeo booth, their football tickets, then escorted Nick into the stands. They sat in the bleachers over the fifty-yard line, and they were early enough to see the cheerleaders and the drill team perform. Then they laughed with the rest of the crowd as a rodeo clown did a routine with a dalmatian dressed up in stuffed Texas longhorn horns. In the end, the dog jumped into the clown’s arms and licked his face, smearing his white-and-red makeup.

During the game, Colton leaned back and spread his arms across the backrest like he was getting comfortable. He was, but a bonus—or maybe the real reason—was that he could wrap his arm around Nick without anyone thinking twice. He let his hand hang down and his fingers trail over the curve of Nick’s shoulder blade, out of sight. Nick pressed his knee against Colton’s and left it there through the second half.

Watching a game with Nick was ten times as fun as he’d thought it would be. Nick watched football like players did: he watched the defense, not the ball, and they traded commentary through the sometimes serious, sometimes silly plays on the field.

The alumni, a team of fourteen men ranging in age from nineteen to sixty-three, rallied and beat the current high school team by a two-point conversion. Nick and all the other men over thirty leaped to their feet, cheering and roaring and screaming for “the old guys.” Four of the alumni had played with their cowboy hats on, and they waved their Stetsons to the crowd as they jogged in front of the bleachers. Colton was on his feet beside Nick, cheering and clapping, and then they both doubled over laughing when the dalmatian ran onto the field and stole the football.

After the game, he bought cotton candy for them to share while they wandered the midway. He tore off long wisps of spun sugar and fed the ends to Nick, sometimes teasing him and tickling his nose instead of letting him take a bite. Nick wanted to try his luck at darts and ended up in competition against a five-year-old girl. He gave Colton a look of despair and then let her win. She jumped up and down and screamed like a banshee, then screamed again when the game attendant presented her with a four-foot teddy bear. He gave Nick a palm-size teddy bear holding a pink heart as a consolation prize.

Colton knocked down nine milk bottles with bean bags and chose a stuffed longhorn with a rose in its mouth as his prize. “Trade?” He held out the longhorn to Nick.

“That wouldn’t be fair. Yours is bigger than mine.”

“Well…” Colton grinned. “I mean…”

Nick elbowed him, then took his longhorn and kept his own bear, too. That’s all Colton had wanted, anyway: for Nick to have the stuffed animal he’d won. He wanted to throw his arm around Nick’s shoulders, too. Dig out his class ring and put it on a chain and let Nick wear it under his T-shirt. He bet Nick would look good in his letterman jacket.

They watched the wooden roller coaster rattle and clatter and the bumper boats thud and splash, then bought tickets for the Ferris wheel. Laughter followed them as they rode the neon glow toward the full August moon. As they neared the top, Colton scooted around to cuddle up to Nick. The sparkle and glitter from the fair caressed Nick’s cheeks, while the moonlight teased out the flecks of silver dotting his temples. Starlight slipped into the laugh lines around his eyes.

He was so beautiful. Every line on his face was a moment in his life, a million stories that had made Nick the man Colton had fallen hard for.

“Are you having fun?” He brushed his nose against Nick’s.

“I always do with you.”

“Awesome,” he whispered, capturing Nick’s lips in a gentle kiss as the Ferris wheel slowed and stopped.

He led Nick back to his truck, taking Nick’s hand when they reached the shadowed parking lot. When there was no one around, he drew Nick into his arms and kissed him until the laughter from a group of teens walking to their cars a few rows away made him pull back.

He drove Nick along a back road to an oak-strewn park and pulled off at an overlook by a lake. There were two other cars in the lot as he turned off his headlights and cracked the windows, then turned the radio on low.

Nick laughed. “Did you take me to the town make-out spot?”

“If Reddit is to be believed, yes. Or it’s the town pot-smoking park. Either way, I don’t want to get too close to anyone else.”

“Think you’re getting to second base, hotshot?”

Colton glanced at his back seat. “Well, there’s a reason I drove the truck…”

“And here I thought you were being a gentleman.”

“We could just hold hands and talk.”

Nick smirked. He wriggled into the back seat and patted the bench beside him. “Or we could do something else with our hands and our mouths.”

Colton scrambled after him, almost getting stuck between the two front seats before he managed to crawl beside Nick. Nick pushed him down to the leather and lay on top of him, covering him from his lips to his toes.

He lost track of time as they kissed, as he ran his hands up and down Nick’s broad back and slipped his palms beneath the hem of his T-shirt. They made out like they were in high school, thighs sliding together, hips grinding, hands tangled in hair and holding each other’s cheeks and chins. It would be so easy to pull Nick’s T-shirt off, reach his hands down Nick’s pants, stroke him off or even blow him, but that’s not how he wanted the night to go. Not yet, at least. They had a bed at home for that, where two guys over six foot could really get into each other. No, he wanted to keep this moment sweet, like the cotton candy he still tasted on Nick’s lips and the look in Nick’s eyes when he’d fingered the stuffed rose of the little longhorn that Colton had won for him.

He almost lost himself in the moment, almost forgot the one question he’d been waiting to ask. He cradled Nick’s face in his hands. This was harder than he’d thought, now that the time had arrived. All the days and nights and kisses they’d shared flickered within him like fireflies, memories that told him it would be all right. He could ask this. He could ask for this.

Nick looked more and more confused the longer Colton stared up at him and said nothing. He was balanced on his elbows, and he ran his fingers through Colton’s hair. His touch tickled Colton’s scalp, made him shiver.

“What is it?” Nick whispered. “What are you thinking?”

“Will you make love to me?” Days of imagining the moment, scripting his words, planning the perfect things to say, and he blurted it out like he always did. Smooth operator. What happened to telling him how much the idea of it meant to you?

“Don’t we already?” Nick frowned.

“I mean, more.” He ground his hips up into Nick’s. Hooked his ankles high around the back of Nick’s thighs and spread his legs as wide as they could go. He saw when what he meant, what he was trying to ask for, hit Nick.

Nick’s eyes went full-moon wide. “Colton… Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“That’s… a big step. Something like that, it means a lot. Are you sure you want—” Nick whispered.

“I want you to make love to me, Nick. I want…” How did he explain that he wanted to feel Nick as close to him as he possibly could? That yes, he wanted the heat, and he wanted the friction, and he wanted how mind-blowingly perfect their sex already was to be leveled up, if possible, but what he really wanted was more. He wanted to give this to Nick, because this was something he’d never have with anyone else. “I want you.” He swallowed. “If— If you want to. If you don’t, I understand. I mean, like you said, it’s a big thing, and maybe you’re not interested in that with me—”

Nick cut his ramble off with a hard kiss. “I do want that, Colton. I need some time, though. Is that okay?”

“Yeah. Of course.” He couldn’t stop the smile unfolding across his face. “It’s a little cramped in here anyway.” He’d had daydreams about how their lovemaking would go down, and none of them involved his truck.

“You deserve more than a back seat.”

“You always treat me so awesome,” he whispered. “You’re the best lover I’ve ever had. In every way. You know, the sex, and everything else.”

Nick kissed the tip of Colton’s nose. “You blew away all the sex I’ve ever had, too.” He kissed him again, oh-so-slowly. Colton’s toes curled, and he tipped his head back as Nick started kissing a path down his chin and throat. “You are very special to me,” Nick whispered against his pounding pulse.

He could say the other thing he wanted to say now, too. Three words he’d never said to anyone he’d dated before. Not like this, where just thinking them, never mind saying them out loud, meant he wanted to spend the rest of his life with someone. If you love me, I’ll stay forever. It seemed like a pretty good time.

Nick sucked a hickey into the skin beneath his collarbone, and Colton’s sweet thoughts fled as heat surged. He grabbed Nick’s waist and thrust, ran his hands up under Nick’s shirt again. “We should get home,” he groaned, “before I can’t drive anymore. I can’t turn the wheel if my cock is sticking straight out.”

Nick’s seduction ended in a giggle fit. Colton let him laugh, and he kissed his forehead and ran his fingers over the small of Nick’s back until Nick sat up again.

“Jesus, it’s after one a.m.,” Nick said, checking the dash as he wiggled back into the front passenger seat.

“Uh-oh. I need to get my date home. I don’t want to get him in trouble if I keep him out after curfew.”

Nick took his hand and kissed his palm as he started up the truck. “I think you’ll be all right. This time.” He winked and kept holding Colton’s hand, even when he fell asleep a few minutes into the drive.

Deep into the drive back home, Colton slowed the truck to a stop in the middle of the farm-to-market road and checked his mirrors. No one was around, and he’d been alone on the road for half an hour. He flicked off his headlights and interior lights, and pearl moonlight suddenly swam through the waves of summer grass, turning the waist-high prairie into a silver sea. Iridescence glowed off the asphalt, and starlight dipped in and out of Nick’s features, painting his lips and his forehead and the spray of his eyelashes on his cheeks in secret shades of colors Colton couldn’t name.

I love you. He tested the words in his mind. “I love you,” he whispered.

The moon didn’t fall, and the grasses didn’t wither, and Nick didn’t wake up. He didn’t stare at Colton and curl his lip, sneer at him, demand to be let out of the truck.

“I love you,” he whispered again, this time to Nick’s hand as he kissed the bend of his thumb. He rolled Nick’s hand carefully, then planted a kiss on Nick’s ring finger. One day, I hope.

He held Nick’s hand and listened to his lover’s steady, gentle breathing for the rest of the moon-drenched drive.