Restoration 01 - Getting It Right (12 page)

Nothing ever seemed right, so he’d stayed silent. And he devoured every new email, savoring the words, missing his best friend in the world and hating himself.

But Nate was tired of hiding. Tired of being a victim. He’d blocked out the world all summer. He wanted his life back, damn it, and going to see James this morning was the first step toward reclaiming it. Nate’s feelings for James—his attraction toward James—had only intensified during their separation. Feelings he understood more than ever now because he’d had nothing except time to think about what he wanted. And who he wanted. He hadn’t been able to turn those feelings off, and now that he was home he couldn’t pretend that they didn’t exist.

He’d tell James, and then hope it didn’t ruin the best friendship he’d ever had.

His closet hadn’t quite switched over from winter to summer when he left. April showers had morphed into June humidity, which had crept into the dredges of early September heat, so he had to dig deep to find warm weather clothes. He unearthed a pair of cargo shorts that he cinched tight with a belt, then added a loose green polo. He considered styling his hair, but he needed to get it cut before Monday, so whatever.

Driving across town to James’s apartment building had never filled him with such a sense of dread. It was more than being out and about in the city again. It was his destination. James had kept the lines of communication open, repeating that he wanted Nate to contact him no matter when. But resentment had to have built up, even if James was keeping it hidden. No one got pushed away and ignored for four months without accumulating some bad feelings.

The building’s lobby was fairly quiet, and he rode the elevator alone. So far so good. No horrified looks. No recognition. His was a cold case, and he didn’t want or need condolences from strangers who may have seen a report on the news. All he wanted was James, even if James didn’t want him back. They could finally have a conversation about what was said on that parking garage roof.

He stood outside James’s apartment door, staring at the number and letter, drumming up his courage. Like with wiping off the bathroom mirror, he had to mentally unlock his shoulder muscles so his arm could rise. So his finger could press the doorbell. It buzzed, and his heart jumped. Silence. He gave it thirty seconds, then pressed a second time.

A third, his pulse racing faster with every passing moment. Finally a voice shouted on the other side, the words muffled.

James.

Nate’s hands balled by his sides, and he stuffed them into his pockets so James wouldn’t see them shaking. He was level with the peep hole, so the shuffled footsteps that turned into silence didn’t surprise him. He waited.

The knob turned. The door opened by slow, agonizing inches, and then James appeared, one hand clutching the jamb. His skin was sallow, clammy and he was breathing hard like someone two seconds away from blowing chunks. Classic hangover, but Nate couldn’t find a single snarky thing to say about it.

Every muscle in Nate’s body screamed at him to wrap himself up in James and never let go. The wide-eyed shock and horror on James’s face rooted him in place. The shock he understood, but the horror left him confused and alarmed. Were the scars that awful?

“Hey,” Nate said, breaking the ice. Someone had to.

“Nate?” James reached out, then recoiled. “You’re here.”

“Yeah, I’m here.” Duh, but he didn’t know what else to say. He hadn’t expected their reunion to be easy, but this was downright painful. “I just got back.”

“You’re really here?”

Nate pulled a hand out of his pocket and pinched James’s forearm. James flinched, those wide eyes softening a fraction. “Fuck, Nate.”

“May I come in?”

“Yeah.” James stepped back.

The smell hit him first—sour wine and salsa and liquor that had been sitting in a closed-up space all night. Remnants of the party were strewn around the apartment, and empty bottles littered the island. Streamers were falling off the walls, and a few balloons rolled around the floor in the breeze created by the opening and shutting of the front door. And for the first time, Nate noticed that James was only wearing a pair of boxers. Boxers he’d put on backward.

“Looks like I missed quite the party,” Nate said.

James blanched.

“Hey, Jay, who was at—Nate?” Elliott stood in James’s bedroom doorway, a sheet

wrapped around his slim hips, his hair askew. His face went comically surprised, with bug eyes and a wide-open mouth. “Oh my God, you’re here.”

Something dark slithered in Nate’s gut at the sight of them, both practically naked, at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. His heart slammed into his ribs. Heat rushed into his cheeks.

He’d interrupted something. Getting his ribs kicked in had hurt less. “I’m here,” he ground out.

“I can’t believe you’re back!” Elliott sprang across the room and flung his arms around Nate. Nate tried not to tense up, but his body tightened like a wire. He let Elliott hug him, unable to get his arms to move in order to return the gesture. He missed the days when hugs were easy.

“I’m back.”

“Give him room to breathe, for fuck’s sake.” James peeled Elliott off, a question in his big hazel eyes.

Nate nodded.

James enveloped him in the kind of hug that Nate had missed. Muscled arms, broad chest, a sense of safety and certainty in the embrace. Nate didn’t care that his insides were burning with jealousy over the fact that James and Elliott had slept together. He’d missed this thing he’d once taken for granted. Missed James.

“I’m, um, going to go get dressed,” Elliott said. A moment later, the bedroom door shut.

“Tell me this is happening,” James said, his voice a pleasant rumble in Nate’s ear. “Tell me this isn’t some hangover-induced hallucination, and that you aren’t going to disappear if I let you go.”

“This is real, Jay.” Tears tightened his throat and he fought them off. He’d shed enough tears these past few months, damn it. “I’m here, I swear, and I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

“For what?” Nate mourned the loss of James’s full embrace, but he had to see his friend’s face. Look him in the eye. “For shutting you out for four months, how’s that to start?”

“Something horrible happened to you, Nate. You dealt with it the best you could, and I understand that.”

His insides churned. “I shouldn’t have ignored you, and I’m sorry.”

“Fine, you’re forgiven.”

He hugged Nate again, and Nate didn’t protest. He stood there, existing in the warmth and security until his feet ached from being still for so long and his ribs gave an uncomfortable throb. The broken ones had healed, but they would be sensitive to strain for a while longer yet.

“I missed you,” Nate said. “Every single day.”

“I wish you’d called me. Or texted or something. I wanted to be there for you. I’d have moved you in with me and hired a nurse to help out, if your parents hadn’t spirited you away.”

“That was my call. I needed to be away from here for a while.”

“I get that.”

“But it still hurts that I didn’t let you help?”

A burst of air gusted across Nate’s hair as James sighed. “Yeah, it hurts. Understanding a thing doesn’t make it hurt less.”

“That the friend talking or the therapist?”

“Both. I have so much I need to say.”

“Then maybe we should sit down. You’re shaking.”

They both were, but James was in minor shock and hungover, so it was up to Nate to be the adult. He deposited James on the sofa, then fetched him a bottle of Gatorade someone had kindly stocked in his fridge.

James cracked the cap and sipped. “Thanks.”

“You want toast? Something to settle your stomach so you can take some ibuprofen?”

“Sure. I can fix that myself.”

“Forget it. Last thing I need is you yakking on the kitchen floor.”

Nate made himself at home in the kitchen, preparing toast and shoving empties into garbage bags for the recycling center. Elliott appeared right as the toast popped, his green-tipped hair combed flat, shoulders hunched.

“I should go,” Elliott said. “Thanks for the party.”

“No problem,” James said.

Nate allowed another stiff hug from Elliott. “Happy birthday, Ell. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“It’s okay, honey, you’re home now. Don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t.”

He locked the door behind Elliott, not really thinking about the instinctive action. Not as if he could really lock out the past. He handed James the plate of toast with a side of ibuprofen caplets, then started collecting paper plates from the coffee table. James ate slowly, neither of them talking, even though words were burning a hole in Nate’s gut. So many words.

Tossing trash from last night’s wild party was easier.

He about had the place set to right, and he no longer noticed the smell, when James said,

“When Kate Alden called me and said you were in the emergency room, I nearly died on the spot.”

Nate froze next to the TV console, his heart wrenching from the emotion in James’s words. He faced James, unsurprised to see his eyes glittering. James put the empty toast plate down on the coffee table and clasped his hands in his lap. Nate waited.

“When it hit me that I could have spent the rest of my life without you in it, I saw things clearer than I ever have before.”

“What things?”

“Us. I told you in my first email that I hated that the last thing I ever said to you was a lie, and I wanted to make it right. Did you get my emails?”

“I got every single one. I loved getting them.”

James’s lips quirked. “You never responded.”

“No. I didn’t trust my emotions. I didn’t know if what I’d say would be the truth.”

“But you trust them now?”

“For the most part I do trust mine. I’m not sure I trust yours.”

James jerked a little, as though he’d been slapped. “What?”

“The emotional distress of nearly losing a loved one easily fucks with one’s ability to think clearly and make rational choices.” He couldn’t believe he was explaining the psychological nature of trauma to a therapist. But this was also one of the reasons he’d left town.

“You didn’t want me before I was assaulted, so I have no reason to believe you’ve truly changed your mind.”

“I haven’t changed my mind, Nate.”

Nate flinched. “Oh.” Embarrassment heated his cheeks.

“I haven’t changed my mind because I’ve always wanted you.”

He stared, not understanding.

James stood up, his perfectly defined abs rippling. “I didn’t change my mind because what I told you on that roof was a lie. When I told you I didn’t want you, I lied because I’ve wanted it for so long that I was scared to believe it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re everything to me, Nate. You always have been. You’re my best friend, my

conscience. You’re who I’ve always gone to when my mother’s being dramatic, or I need to vent about a patient. I fell in love with you in college, but I put that in a box and buried it deep because you’re straight, and it was never going to happen. I’d accepted it. And then we kissed and you said you had feelings, and it meant everything, but you were still you and my heart was still in that box, and I was terrified that the possibility of us wasn’t actually real.”

James was babbling, and he never babbled.

I fell in love with you in college.

Four months ago, Nate might have been overjoyed to hear those words. To hear them when
he’d
have an easier time believing them. Nate closed the distance and grabbed James’s shoulders. Squeezed. Grounding him.

James blinked hard, eyes still wet, then coughed out a harsh sound. “I hated lying to you like that. Hated myself for hurting you so badly when you’d just said the thing I wanted to hear most in the world. That you felt something when we kissed. What kind of a fucking psycho does that make me?”

“It doesn’t make you a psycho. A controlling asshole, maybe, but not a psycho.”

James snorted. “I am definitely a controlling asshole. I made a choice for both of us that night, and I’m so sorry.”

Nate sucked in a deep breath. Held it. Released it slowly, but it did nothing to calm his galloping heart. “I believe you’re sorry. I do.”

“But you don’t believe my feelings for you.”

“Would you? If you were me, would you trust it? How am I supposed to trust that when you were fucking Elliott last night?” Anger seeped into that final question, and Nate took a step back. And then another, until he was by the console again.

As far as he could get without leaving the room completely.

James was absolutely sick to his stomach, and not only because of the massive quantities of liquor he’d consumed last night. He was sick over everything Nathan was saying, because Nathan wasn’t wrong. If their roles were reversed, he’d have a hard time believing him too.

Believing that James changing his mind about wanting him didn’t stem from the trauma of Nathan nearly dying. Believing that James wanted him when he wasn’t even being faithful to the possibility.

Wasn’t he being faithful, though? Until last night, he hadn’t actually been with anyone else since before the attack. He’d gone out, yes. He’d gotten hard, and he’d been tempted, but he hadn’t brought anyone home. Hadn’t fucked anyone. A four-month dry spell. That had to mean something, right?

He sat back down and dropped his forehead into his palm and tried to think back.

Everything after those first few shots with Elliott and Boxer was a blank. He didn’t remember fucking Elliott, but he sure as hell remembered waking up naked in bed, with a very naked Elliott curled around him from behind. He’d stumbled over a torn condom wrapper in his haste to answer the insistent ringing at his door.

I fucked up. I royally fucked up.

“I didn’t mean to sleep with Elliott.”

“I’m sure he’ll be delighted to know that.” Sarcasm: check.

“Look, I fucked up.” He sat up straight but Nathan was staring at the far wall. “I kept looking for you to come to the party, and then you never showed, so I got hammered. Really hammered. I don’t remember sleeping with Elliott. Shit.” This was the second time in four months that he’d drank himself into a blackout, and then not remembered doing something with someone else. Something sexual and potentially hurtful.