“More than I’ll admit. Less than I should. My father grew up speaking Berber—it’s like Arabic—but I barely know any of that. He wanted to lose his accent because he thought he’d get better work that way, so he hardly speaks it at all now. Most people can’t even tell he wasn’t born here.”
A new note, something close to bitterness, had crept into Adam’s voice. Nick frowned and wondered if he’d made a misstep by opening this line of conversation.
Adam shrugged a little. “He totally bought into the American dream of capitalism and baseball and apple pie—only to end up with a Brazilian wife and a g*y dancer for a son.”
Adam’s father hid who he was. Then he’d asked Adam to hide who he was.
Nick wondered what his own father would have thought.
While he felt certain his mother would have understood him—
would have supported him, even—he had no idea how his father would have reacted. Michael had gotten into it with their father more than once, but never over something like this.
Nick stroked a hand across Adam’s face. “Do they ever come to watch you dance?”
“Nah. Not really anymore. Honestly, I think my dad secretly hopes I’ll outgrow it one day.”
“I think your dad should take a second look at how lucky he is.”
Adam laughed, but not like it was funny. “You know, if I wanted to do pretty much anything else with my life, I wouldn’t need a scholarship. If I called him up and said I wanted to be an accountant, he’d be drafting a check to the college of my choice.”
Nick thought of all those college letters sitting in his desk at home and felt a flash of guilt. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Adam almost gave him a smile. “It’ll mean more if I do it myself.” He pressed his face into the curve of Nick’s neck again. “Your turn.”
“My turn?”
“Tell me something uncomfortable about your family.”
“I’m pretty sure you witnessed something uncomfortable last night.” Nick paused, tracing a finger along the stretch of Adam’s forearm.
“Tell me something good then. Tell me something good about your brother.”
The words summoned too many memories. Nick couldn’t sort through them all. Setting fires on the beach, Gabriel using his power to send the flames coursing high into the air, Nick leeching oxygen from the atmosphere to help him maintain control. Hiding from Michael after putting spiders in his bed or peanut butter in his backpack or paint in his shampoo bottle.
Gabriel knowing every single time Nick was worried or hurting or just plain needed him.
“We used to trade places all the time. He loves sports, and I . . .
well, I really looked for any reason to stay the hell out of a locker room, so he pretended to be me so he could play more sports. The school limits you to two, so . . .” Nick shrugged.
“Hmm. And what did you do while you were pretending to be him?”
Nick snorted. “His math homework.” As soon as he said it, he realized Adam was going to misunderstand. “Not like you think.
When our parents died, he couldn’t keep up. I started doing it to help him, just so he wouldn’t be held back. It became . . . like . . .
a thing. He believed he couldn’t do it, and I wanted to do that for him. To be there for him. To—” He made a disgusted noise. “This is stupid.”
“No. It’s not.” Adam leaned into him again. “What does he do for you?”
“I don’t—it’s not—” Nick pressed his fingers into his eyes.
“Everything.”
He kept hearing Hunter’s words on the steps. I’m not his best friend, Nick. You are.
Nick realized he didn’t even know if his brother had made it home okay.
He hated that Gabriel had monumentally f**ked up, but he was still sitting here worried about him. “Can I use your phone again?”
Adam sat up and shifted to pull it out of his pocket. He held it out without a word.
Nick called the house phone. The line rang half a dozen times.
Maybe Gabriel had been hurt. Maybe they were all out looking for him. Nick remembered sensing someone in the woods near the house the other night—had he mentioned that to Michael? He couldn’t remember. He’d been stupid to go out of touch for so long. His world could be crumbling right this very second, while he was sitting on Adam’s back porch, completely out of reach.
Nick felt his heart pound against his rib cage, chastising him with each beat. He’d let his brother drive off in a fury. God only knew what he could have gotten into.
Tyler. Had Gabriel gone after Tyler? If something had happened, would Chris have thought to find Adam’s number on the caller ID last night?
Maybe—
The phone clicked as someone picked up. “Merrick Landscaping.”
Gabriel. Nick almost dropped the phone.
He didn’t know what to say.
The line filled with silence for the longest time.
Then Gabriel said, “Nicky.”
Not a question. He knew. Nick couldn’t read anything from his voice. He still didn’t know what to say.
And his brother wasn’t filling the silence, either.
Finally Nick cleared his throat. “I just wanted to be sure you made it home.”
Then, before Gabriel could say anything to that, Nick pushed the button to disconnect the call. He all but shoved the phone back at Adam.
They sat there in silence for a few beats.
Then Adam held the phone out. The display was lit up with an incoming call.
Gabriel was calling back.
“Do you want to talk to him?” said Adam.
“No.” His heart was still working double time.
He expected Adam to press the button to refuse the call, but he answered it, putting the phone to his ear and saying “Hello?”
before Nick fully comprehended what he was doing.
Nick sat there and stared, torn between grabbing the phone to disconnect the call, and sitting in morbid fascination about what Adam would say.
Adam drew his knees up and rested an arm against them. His voice was low, quiet and confident. “He doesn’t want to talk to you right now.” A long pause, then he said evenly, “I told you, he doesn’t want to talk to you. Maybe you didn’t understand me since I wasn’t thpeaking in thtereotypes.”
Nick snorted with laughter before he could help it, and had to slap a hand over his mouth. It was nervous laughter more than anything. His eyes were wide. No one ever talked to Gabriel like that.
Then Adam sighed and spoke into the phone. “Guess what, sunshine? It’s not about what you want. I’ll tell him you called, okay?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He disconnected the call.
This time, the phone stayed silent.
Adam looked at him. “He wants to talk to you. That’s all he said.”
Not I’m sorry.
Nick’s emotions weren’t sure how to process that information.
Adam set the phone on the concrete. “Why did you want to call him?”
“I just wanted to make sure he got home.” Nick stared out at the dissipating fog. “I was going to tell him. Last night. That’s why we were at the coffee shop.” He glanced over at Adam. “I keep wondering if it would have turned out any differently.”
“You mean, if he would have hit you either way?”
Nick nodded.
Adam shifted across the concrete to sit beside him again.
“Look, I’m not going to defend your brother. I know he hurt you.” His voice softened. “I know he hurt you a lot. But when he came after me, I don’t think it had anything to do with me being g*y, and everything to do with protecting you. On the phone just now, he wasn’t an ass**le, either. And he could have been.”
“Do you think I should call him back?”
“Do you want to?”
Nick thought about it. He imagined his twin brother standing in the kitchen, deliberating whether to call a third time. Nick wished he could put everything back the way it had been.
Then he glanced at Adam and realized that wasn’t true.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t want to talk to him. Not yet.”
“Okay.” Adam took another sip of coffee. He laced the fingers of his free hand through Nick’s again, and they sat there for the longest time, watching the mist thin and swirl.
Nick hadn’t realized how easy this could be, sitting with someone who wasn’t judging him. Who wasn’t piling expectations on him.
Adam’s phone chimed again, and Nick’s pulse jumped. He should have known it wouldn’t last for long.
But Adam smiled. “Well, look at that,” he said. “Quinn wants to know if we’re still on for dance this afternoon.”
Nick hadn’t realized how worried he’d been about Quinn until that very moment. She was okay. She had to be okay if she was sending a text about dance.
Adam was texting back, talking while his fingers slid across the face of the phone. “Studio classes end at one, so I can meet her after lunch. Want to join me?”
Nick looked away. “She probably doesn’t want to see me.”
Adam poked him. “What do you want?”
“I want . . .” Nick paused, feeling weight in the words. His brothers were probably cursing him this morning, because Saturdays meant large landscaping jobs, and Nick knew Michael had blown one off last night. Quinn definitely didn’t want to see him at practice.
But his words were hanging out there. I want.
Such a stupid, simple phrase, but it felt so foreign.
“You want . . . ?” prompted Adam.
“I want to go with you,” he said, the words a jumbled rush that came out too quiet, completely uncertain.
Adam poked him again, harder. He was smiling. “What was that?”
Nick leaned into him and said, “I want to go with you.”
Another poke. “I can’t hear y—”
Nick trapped those words with a kiss. “I want to go with you.” Another kiss. “And if you’d shut up a second, maybe I could tell you what else I want.”
CHAPTER 28
Quinn leaned against the window of Tyler’s truck and closed her eyes, content.
She’d slept all night.
She’d taken a shower unimpeded.
No social workers or cops had shown up to break down the door or whatever they did in real life.
Her younger brother had responded to texts that yes, he was fine.
And Tyler was driving her to dance.
It had been his idea for her to go.
Actually, he’d narrowed his eyes at her over toast and orange juice and said, “Aren’t you supposed to be rehearsing for some scholarship thing?”
And she’d mumbled and made excuses until he’d all but sent the text to Adam himself.
Tyler was having none of her self-pity. He kept whispering to her, seeming to know every time self-doubts crept into her head to set up camp. “You’re not worthless,” he’d murmur, when she started thinking that maybe it was her fault that her brother had started smoking crack on her bedroom floor. Or, “You are brave,” when thoughts snuck up to talk her out of ever leaving his apartment.
But her favorite was “You are special,” whispered while dropping a chaste kiss on the back of her neck, stroking her hair down her back before moving away.
After going to sleep on a declaration of wanting to kill Nick Merrick, she hadn’t realized Tyler would wake up with a mouth full of Hallmark platitudes.
She loved this side of him, this gentle, thoughtful side. She suspected he didn’t reveal it often, or to many people.
The funny thing was, if Tyler and Nick weren’t mortal enemies, she could see them becoming friends.
“What time are you going to pick me up?” she asked.