The Quarterback by Tal Bauer

Chapter Twenty-Three

Nick racedout of his bedroom, chasing the scream that had cut through his condo. Colton. Was he all right? Though that hadn’t sounded like Colton’s voice. It had almost sounded like—

He slammed to a halt. Time stopped. The world jerked sharply to the left, and he stumbled.

Justin and Wes faced him and Colton. A carton of eggs lay shattered on the kitchen floor. Wes’s eyes were as big as dinner plates, and he stared at Colton, motionless.

Justin was nearly hyperventilating.

Oh, God, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Wes and Justin were supposed to get home next week. He had days, he’d thought, to figure out what to do. What to say—to Colton, to his son. When he’d watched Colton sleep last night, he’d thought that, that weekend, he was going to tell Colton how much he meant to Nick. What their summer had turned into for him, and how, even if Colton was going to move on when his real life restarted, Nick would cherish these memories for the rest of his life. He’d cradle them in his heart forever.

He couldn’t, wouldn’t ask Colton to stay, though. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think Colton would pick him over football and a life of fame, and he was too much of a coward to hear Colton say that to his face. Better to let Colton go gracefully, leave him with the good memories, than leave him with the image of Nick asking for something Colton couldn’t give.

Even if together they could shake the stars, and even if, when Colton fell asleep in his arms at night, Nick knew that what they’d become had gone far outside the boundaries he’d tried to scribble around his heart.

Whatever was going to happen with him and Colton, he was supposed to have had a week to figure it out. One week, one hundred hours, at least. More moments when Colton was his, when he could look at Colton and think, I cherish him, and for right now, he cherishes me.

One week until he had to decide what to tell Justin. He’d punted that decision, that conversation, waiting for Colton to pull the plug and call an end to their affair. If they were over, Justin didn’t need to know.

But they weren’t over—not yet—and Justin did know. Right now.

“Did you guys…” Wes spoke first. He sounded like he’d been choked. His huge eyes bounced from Colton to Nick and then back to his best friend. “Did you guys have a threesome?” He asked the question like he was asking if Colton was pregnant. Like it was impossible, but so was what he was seeing, so he had to ask. “Is there a girl here?”

Nick dragged in a breath—

“No, Wes,” Justin spat. His voice was as hard as a diamond, as brittle as old glass. And certain. Justin knew. God, he knew. “I know what it looks like when someone gets fucked.” He pointed at Colton, at the bruises Nick had left on his hips.

“Justin,” Nick started.

Justin twisted. Faced him.

Nick’s heart shattered.

He’d thought that he’d seen every emotion Justin’s eyes could ever show. He’d nurtured his son from his toddler stages to elementary school, through the tortured preteen years and into the brooding silences of adolescence. He’d seen Justin happy, sad, angry, hurt, irritated, frustrated, and exhausted, and every shade in between. He’d seen him bellowing at his mother and him, purple and incandescent with rage, and he’d seen the joy in his eyes on his birthdays and Christmas mornings when he tore open the presents Nick had lovingly picked out for him year after year. He’d seen Justin happier than ever last year after Paris and then witnessed the thunderclouds of heartbreak when Wes had told him goodbye. He’d held his son as he wept over Wes’s hospital bed and had nearly come apart himself when Justin told him yes, he did want Nick to move down to Austin to be with him, and yes, he did want to repair their relationship after so many broken years. Yes, he did love him, and he always had, and he always would, Justin had said. Nick’s mind had taken a picture of Justin that day, sitting across from him at that restaurant.

He’d never seen the emotions in Justin’s eyes that he saw now.

Horror. Revulsion. Disgust.

Betrayal.

Anguish. So much anguish Nick couldn’t breathe. He was drowning in his son’s agony, in his devastation. In the Why and Why and Why that stabbed him through the heart.

Your child was never supposed to look at you like that. Like you’d just unpinned the four corners of the foundation to their world. Like you’d torn apart their surety, their safety, everything they relied on. Like you’d taken their happiness and poisoned it, killed it in front of them.

Justin hadn’t looked like that when Nick had told him he and Cynthia were divorcing.

“Justin, please.” He stepped forward, held out his hands. They were shaking. “It’s not what you think—”

“Not what I think?” Justin took a giant step away from him. “This isn’t my dad fucking my friend? Behind my back?”

Colton had become a shadow, a comma of stillness in the doorway to his bedroom. He stared at the floor, his spine curled like he was about to collapse.

Justin’s eyes flashed. “It’s more than that, though, isn’t it?”

Yes, it is, it’s so much more. Colton, he’s—

“You replaced me!” Justin’s words were vicious, daggers flying at Nick’s heart. “Colton is just the perfect son for you, isn’t he, Dad? A football player. A manly man. What, I leave, and you grab on to the guy you wish you had for a son?”

“No! Justin—”

“You and Colton in the park throwing footballs. You and Colton going on business trips,” Justin hissed. “You and Colton going to a fucking winery!” he roared. “You could have taken me to a winery with you! Me, your son! Not him! You don’t even pretend to want me in your life anymore!“”

“He tried.” Colton set his jaw and glared. He grasped one elbow in front of him, his voice defiant but his body screaming that he was about to disintegrate. “I tried to show you what Nick did with Kimbrough Oil Mobile, weeks ago. All you did was laugh about the champagne and the helicopter. You didn’t even care what Nick did! You just laughed it off, like you laugh everything off.”

Cold fusion burned inside Justin, and nuclear-hot eyes flashed murder at Colton. Pinned him to the wall. Justin took a step forward, but Wes held him back. “Nick,” Justin spat. “You mean my dad.”

“Yeah, but who was here with him?” Colton shot back.

Justin gritted his teeth and spun back to Nick. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he gulped in three rapid breaths before he screamed, “You did replace me!”

“No, I didn’t—”

“But even better than a son, huh?” Justin wiped away his tears like they were betraying him. “Someone you could fuck, too. What could be better? Football and fucking?”

“Jesus Christ, Justin.” It was Nick’s turn to bellow. “That’s not what happened!”

“Colton stole you from me!”

“He didn’t! He can’t! You are my whole world, Justin!” Nick held out his hands to his son. “You are everything to me. From the moment you were born, you were the love of my life. I’ve spent every day, every single day, wanting nothing but the best for you. Every choice I made, everything, I did it for you. Always. You are my life, Justin.”

“You didn’t choose this for me.” Bitter laughter spilled from Justin. Fresh tears replaced the ones he’d angrily brushed away. “You fucked my friend behind my back. Were you ever going to tell me, or was this going to be your little fucked-up secret, how one summer you fucked your son’s friend before you went back to pretending we were close?”

Nick exhaled. His world turned hollow.

“Or is this nothing new? How many other times has this happened? How many other friends of mine have you fucked? Have you always been into guys, Dad?”

Colton was a statue. A statue of Nick’s mistakes, every single one. Why the fuck had he thought he could taste happiness with Colton? Why had he ever imagined they could explore what had sparked between them?

“Never. I’ve never been with a guy before. This… it just happened,” Nick breathed. “I didn’t plan it. It was just summer— It wasn’t going to last. It was just… It just happened. And I thought—”

Colton stared at the floor, at the collection of candles Nick had lit the night before.

Justin wiped his nose. Squeezed his eyes closed. Waved his hands in front of his face before another wave of tears cascaded down his cheeks. “I thought you wanted me in your life. Not him.” He glared at Colton. “I thought I had a dad again.”

“Justin—”

“I can’t do this.” Justin tore away from Wes. He grabbed Wes’s truck keys from the counter and turned to the door.

“Wait, Justin, please!” If Justin walked out that door, he might never come back. Nick might never see his son again.

Justin yanked open Nick’s door and fled.

What else could he do? Nick took off after him, leaving Colton and Wes behind.

* * *

Colton breathed out slowly.

Would he breathe in again?

Did he want to?

His lungs stubbornly filled, shallow pants that left him dizzy, made the walls melt and the world spin.

Had Nick really said all that?

It wasn’t going to last.

It was just summer.

His heart had popped like a water balloon inside his chest. He could feel parts of himself slipping and sliding, escaping from the shape of the man he’d thought he was becoming. He’d thought he was becoming someone, especially to Nick.

Now he was nothing but pieces, the same broken jigsaw puzzle he’d always been, kicked over and scattered by other people. Pieces lost. Pieces broken. Pieces thrown away.

Didn’t you know this was how it was going to end? It always ends like this.

People leave when you’re yourself.

Fuck, he’d opened himself all the way for Nick, given Nick everything he was. Showed him all the parts and pieces that made up his soul. He’d wanted Nick to know him like no one else ever had, not his mom, not Wes, not anyone. He’d wanted Nick to like him—no, to love him. To love what he saw when Colton showed him his carefully concealed heart, cradled in the palms of his hands.

It was just summer.

He’d been dreaming of forever, had wanted endless mornings and a thousand nights with his head pillowed on Nick’s chest, listening to his heartbeat. He’d imagined rings on their fingers, had whispered in the moonlight that he loved Nick. That counted, right? He’d said it out loud, even if Nick had been sleeping when he did.

He’d dreamed of forever, but Nick had been waiting for their end.

He was so stupid. He should have seen this coming. How the fuck were they supposed to last? Nick had a professional reputation. Business partnerships. What would Kimbrough think if he knew Nick and Colton had fooled around in Nick’s office? That he’d kissed Nick in Kimbrough’s chopper? Kissing Colton in public could cost Nick millions.

But, damn it, he’d wanted to kiss Nick in the park so many times. Wes had proven you could come out—be outed—and still be the best. Colton wasn’t the best anymore, not even close, and he wasn’t gay, but given the choice between letting Nick go and holding his hand in the park, Colton knew what he’d pick.

He used to think there was nothing in the world for him but football. He wasn’t any good at anything else, and the only thing people liked him for was how he threw the ball. Football was his first love, his only love, until…

Until Nick had shown him a different future. One where maybe it was okay that his shoulder had been destroyed, and maybe there was a life after being a damaged quarterback. Maybe there was something he wanted more than football. Football was his first love, but he’d been thinking that maybe he’d found his second love sometime between watching Nick play PlayStation and coming harder than he ever had with Nick’s cock inside him.

In some universe, there was a future where he didn’t play football and where he woke up in Nick’s arms every day. Maybe he worked in an office. Maybe he drank wine and held Nick’s hand every night. Maybe he had a quiet confidence that what he did, while not drawing millions of viewers on ESPN, made an impact on someone’s life. That man is alive today because of you, Nick.

That universe wasn’t this universe.

Clearly.

Nick was gone. The eerie stillness of his condo was like the hum of a bell after it had been rung, sound waves soaked in anger trying to drown him. Wes wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing, frozen in the middle of the kitchen like he didn’t know what to do.

Nick had gone after Justin, leaving Colton behind in the wreckage of them. With the ghosts of his hands on Colton’s skin, his kisses still lingering on Colton’s lips. He was still inside Colton, too. The shape of him. His wet heat. His come.

Nick had left the way he’d been planning on leaving Colton at the end of the summer, apparently.

Was he surprised, though? Justin was always going to come before Colton. Nick was Justin’s dad, and that didn’t change just because it was an inconvenient, uncomfortable fact. Colton had made the choice early on to defer to Nick about telling Justin and Wes about all the little things. The little things that, in the end, added up to one huge, gigantic thing. Them. Together. How had he been supposed to know that meant he was signing up for Nick to play him and Justin off each other? Hide the truth from them both?

Here he was, alone again, left behind by a man he loved.

Wes’s voice finally broke the cyclone of his thoughts. “Colton?”

He shook his head. Stared at the ground.

Turning, he plodded back into Nick’s bedroom—not their bedroom, not anymore—and dug around in the back of Nick’s closet for the duffel he’d moved all his things over in however many weeks ago. He shoved his clothes, still on the hangers, into the bag, then grabbed his toiletries from Nick’s bathroom counter.

“How long have you been living here?” Wes’s voice followed him into the bedroom.

His phone was on the nightstand, along with his charger. He averted his eyes as he slipped across the bedroom and unplugged the cord.

They’d made love in that bed. He’d slept in Nick’s arms in that bed. He’d carved his own heart out of his chest and laid it on Nick’s pillow for him to keep, if only he wanted to pick it up. His eyes blurred, and he blinked as his feet caught on the trailing edge of the sheet, tossed free sometime during the night.

God, it still smelled like sex in there. He could see spots where lube had stained the sheets. Other spots where he had spilled his come, or where Nick’s come had slipped out of him.

“Colton?” Wes again, hovering in the bedroom doorway. He wouldn’t look at Colton, wouldn’t look at the sex-destroyed bed. “What happened?”

He shrugged. Forced himself to move. He grabbed his duffel and shoved his charger and phone inside, then skirted past Wes and went to the living room. “What Nick said. Just… stuff. It didn’t mean—”

He couldn’t even say it.

PlayStation unplugged. Controllers unplugged. He left the one-handed controller Nick had bought him on the couch. Grabbed his games and put them on top of the PlayStation in his duffel.

His football lay on one of the sofa cushions, tossed there and forgotten after Colton had decided kissing Nick was far more interesting than tossing the football to himself one night. How many times had they tossed that ball back and forth? If he picked it up, would he be able to feel Nick’s touch? Feel his caress, like Nick’s hands were ranging over his body and his curves instead of the ball’s?

He left it where it was.

“You’re not gay, Colton,” Wes breathed.

“No. I’m not. It was just something that happened.” He repeated Nick’s words, the shape and sound of them slicing him apart from the inside out.

He couldn’t tell Wes he’d fallen in love. After that? After Nick had said that they were just for the summer? That they had a predetermined end point Nick had chosen, like Colton and his heart were packaged food he could pluck off the shelf?

He couldn’t tell Wes he’d fallen in love with Justin’s dad.

“I was just a one-night stand that never went home.” He zipped up his duffel. Slung it over his shoulder. Kind of pathetic, really. He could leave with only one bag. Like he’d never really been there all. “What can I say? Two single guys alone over the summer… Nothing to do but each other.” He shrugged.

“That doesn’t make sense. That’s not you.”

“Well, maybe you don’t know me all that well anymore. How could you? All you’ve cared about for the past year is Justin.”

“Colton.” Wes’s voice was hard, sharp. Almost like Justin’s. “That’s not true.”

“It was just something that happened.” He shoved past Wes and headed for the door. “And like Nick said: you guys were never supposed to know.”

Because Nick was always going to end things, and Colton was going to be dumped, and he was going to end up alone. Again. Maybe not today, according to Nick’s timetable, but he’d have been alone before Wes and Justin got home.

He’d only had days left with Nick, and he hadn’t even known.

Colton walked out Nick’s front door—this isn’t home anymore—and headed for the elevator.

He left the football, the one-handed controller, and his broken heart behind.

* * *

“Justin!”Nick shouted, running through the condo’s parking garage. One of his neighbors, a waifish, sixty-year-old woman, froze in the middle of putting her yoga mat in the trunk of her Mercedes. Her wide eyes snapped to Justin, to his shaking hands trying to work the key in the lock of Wes’s truck, and then to Nick, in his boxers and his undershirt, bare feet slapping on the concrete. “Justin,” he said, finally catching up to his son. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving, his heart pounding. He grabbed Justin’s shoulders and tried to spin him around.

“No!” Justin roared. He shook Nick off, shoving him backward so hard Nick slammed into the Jeep parked next to Wes’s truck. He’d given Wes and Justin the second parking space that came with his condo. He’d told them to make a second home in his home, that they were always welcome there. That his life was theirs.

Now Justin was pushing him away.

Cries echoed through the cavernous garage, filling the dark concrete corners and clinging to the exposed pipes. Justin doubled over, falling to his knees as he clung to the truck’s door handle above his head. He dug his face into a dent in Wes’s door, violent sobs racking him.

“Justin…” What had he done to his son? What kind of a father, what kind of a man was he?

“Don’t!” Justin snapped. “Jesus, Dad, don’t!”

“Please, I just want to talk—”

“I can’t even look at you!” Another sob ripped through Justin, and he turned his face away from Nick as he wept. “All I see when I look at you is you and him.”

Colton. He wanted to carve himself in two, one half staying with Justin while the other half ran back to Colton. He’d be on his knees before both men, begging for apologies he didn’t deserve.

“For years,” Justin choked out, “years, Dad, I wanted you to love me.” Waterfalls ran down his face, fat teardrops raining from his chin and his jaw and soaking the pavement. “For years, I wanted you to love me as I was. I wanted you to want to spend time with me. I used to daydream about the two of us going to New York and seeing the ballet. I imagined I could tag along on a business trip with you and we could go to Broadway. We could go to the trendy restaurants and window-shop on Fifth Avenue. I thought maybe, somehow, you could like me, Dad.”

“I do. I do like you. I love you. I love everything about you—”

“But you did all that with him!” Justin’s body heaved with his weeping. Nick tried to reach for him, but Justin curled away, slapping his hand through the air between them. Nick retreated, helpless as his son shattered before him. “You took Colton to all those places you and he like because you guys are such a better fit, right? Those pictures you and he sent—” He gasped, choking on his tears. “I thought they were just moments, but they’re not, are they? They’re the relationship you always wanted with the son you didn’t have!”

“No—”

“We could have had moments like that,” Justin moaned. “Why don’t you want to do things with me, Dad?” He let go of Wes’s truck handle, burying his face in his hands.

Nick started forward. He was going to wrap his son up in his arms and tell him he loved him so much—he’d always love him, forever, no matter how much Justin fought him. He was going to repeat himself until his vocal cords shredded, until his body withered, until his bones turned to dust. He was going to tell Justin every single day that he loved him, until Justin believed him again.

Legs wrapped in dusty Wranglers stepped between him and Justin, blocking his path. Strong arms reached down and gathered Justin up, helping him stand. Justin collapsed into Wes’s hold and buried his face in his chest.

“Nick,” Wes said. His voice was granite. He looked someplace beyond Nick, over Nick’s shoulder. “I’m taking Justin home.” It wasn’t a question. He wasn’t asking permission.

He closed his eyes as Wes loaded Justin into his truck. Justin clung to him, and Wes kept one arm around Justin like a shield, as if he could protect Justin from Nick.

Neither Wes nor Justin looked at him as they backed out and peeled away.

Numb, he stumbled through the garage and back up the stairwell to his condo. The door was unlocked, thank God, and he walked in in a daze. He took two steps and then collapsed, his legs buckling as he let out a scream and dug his hands into his hair.

Silence echoed around him. Silence and stillness, the weight of emptiness. His condo hadn’t felt like this since—

“Colton?” he whispered.

He heard his own heartbeat, frantic, like a desperate hummingbird. He heard the hum of the air-conditioning whispering over his skin. He heard a single drip from his kitchen faucet.

He didn’t hear Colton.

He scanned his condo—

The PlayStation was gone. He’d gotten used to the black box squatting on his floor, cables snaking to the wall and across to the couch to charge their controllers. But now the floor was empty.

He lurched to his feet and tore into the bedroom. The smell of Colton and sex slammed into him. They’d made love hours ago, right here, in this room. He’d wrapped his arms around Colton and kissed the back of his neck, and he’d tried to give Colton everything he was as he thrust inside him. He’d wanted that night to be so good for Colton, so wonderful that Colton would never forget him. That he’d never regret them, even years later, when all Nick was was a memory.

He knew Colton was going to leave. He’d known it from the start. But he didn’t think it would happen like this.

It shouldn’t feel like he’d taken a bullet to his chest to see his closet door open and Colton’s clothes scooped out. Or his toothbrush and his razor and his deodorant gone from the bathroom sink.

Or Colton’s charger missing from his nightstand.

He’d wanted more time, wanted a longer goodbye. Wanted the chance to tell Colton—

He fled back to the living room, trying to escape the hollowness of Colton being torn from his life. His bare foot scattered a cluster of empty tea light tins across the cold concrete, the dozens of candles he’d lit with shaking hands as he’d imagined making love to Colton. His eyes swept the room, then stalled on the couch.

Colton hadn’t taken everything when he left.

There was the controller, the one Nick had bought for him, that he still used even after his arm was strong enough to play two-handed. I like it, he’d said. You bought it for me. And I’m used to it now.

And his football, the one they threw every day. Left behind, discarded, like Nick had been discarded. I don’t need these things anymore.

He sank to his ass against the far wall as he buried his head in his folded arms. How could one morning go so wrong?

Was it the morning, though? Or was it every decision he’d made, every compromise, every rationalization, from the moment Colton’s lips had brushed over his, all the way to now?

You selfish, greedy bastard.

Justin, gone. Colton, gone.

Finally, noise tore through the oppressive silence in his condo: the sound of his weeping.