The Long Game, page 8
Colton eyed Grady. “Okay. That’s not what I’m worried about…now.”
Jack nodded. “Good. Do you want Christian or someone else with you in the locker room? Gabriel, maybe?”
Colton glanced at Christian, then up at Jack. “Will you stay?”
“If you want me there.”
“Yes,” he said.
Christian gave Colton a couple of encouraging bumps on his shoulder then went to join the rest of the clinic. Jack waved to his team to assure them all was fine and led Colton and Grady down the tunnel to the deserted locker room.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Colton spun on Grady. “What do you mean you were disowned?”
Grady sighed as he took off his helmet and sat on the nearest bench. He looked exhausted. “They told me I was no longer a member of the family and to leave and not come back,” he said. “So I did.”
“Why?” Colton whispered, holding perfectly still. “Why’d they do that?”
“Because I’m gay.”
Colton wavered on his skates. Jack jumped forward and urged Colton into a folding chair facing them, then slid onto the bench so his shoulder pressed to Grady’s.
Grady flashed him a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Jack hesitated, then went with his gut and took Grady’s hand. Tomorrow they’d go back to not touching any more than strictly necessary. Right now, touching Grady, supporting Grady, felt imperative, and holding hands had made a huge difference for Jack the night before.
He considered Colton, struck again by the obvious similarities. “So, you two are brothers?”
Grady let out a quick laugh and even Colton smiled.
“Cousins,” Colton said. “Though, you look just like my brother. Taller, I guess. But your face…”
“Everyone always said I looked like Uncle Tag,” Grady said. He turned to Jack and explained. “Colton Michael’s dad is Taggart Ezekiel,” as if that clarified anything, then said to Colton, “And you look like my brother, Brock David. Or what he looked like twenty years ago, I guess.”
There were more important issues, but Jack was stuck on the weird double name thing that made the entire family sound like they were destined to assassinate an American president.
Colton frowned. “He doesn’t look like me anymore. Now he looks old. And mean.”
Grady absorbed that, nodding slowly. “Colton Michael, what are you doing here? How did you end up at Pathways?”
Colton glared down at his skates. “I left. Before they could disown me, too, I guess.”
Grady swallowed hard, looking even more upset. “How long ago was that?”
“You going to send me back?” Colton asked, his eyes darting to Jack and the door.
“No,” Grady said firmly. “I would never. You have my word.”
Colton studied Grady for a long, quiet moment. “Two years.”
That rattled Grady—literally. He shook against Jack’s side.
“You’ve been on your own that whole time?” Grady asked, his voice hoarse.
Colton jumped to his skates. “Yeah, but don’t worry about it. I’m fine. It’s all good.” He gestured at the door. “I’m going to go change into my stuff, then I’d like to go back to the shelter.” His challenging glare dared them to try to stop him.
“Okay,” Jack said, rising to his feet but keeping a hand on Grady’s shoulder. “The bus will be leaving in an hour, or I can take you there myself as soon as you’re ready.”
“I’d like to go right away.”
Jack nodded, but Colton was already gone, the door swinging shut behind him.
Silence hung heavy in the locker room.
Jack had never seen Grady’s shoulders slump like that, never seen such sadness in his friend’s eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asked, feeling useless.
Grady shook his head. “No.”
It hurt to hear Grady admit that, an actual physical ache in Jack’s chest.
He hovered, wanting to help, wanting to comfort Grady, even as half his brain was screaming at him to follow Colton and make sure he didn’t disappear.
“You go,” Grady said. When Jack hesitated, Grady touched his arm. “Please. Make sure he’s okay.”
Jack gripped Grady’s shoulder harder. “I hate to leave you alone.”
Grady’s smile was grateful and sad. “I’ll be okay, Jack. Thank you.”
With another nudge from Grady, Jack dashed into the hall and dug his phone from his pocket as he jogged toward the other locker room.
Travis picked up immediately. “What the heck was that all about?”
“I can’t get into it now, but can you or Barnaby find Grady? Maybe sit with him? He’s in the home locker room.”
“Of course,” Travis said. “I’ll peel B off the boards and send him there right now.”
“I heard that!”
Jack smiled but it faded quickly. “Can you take over the scrimmage, too? I hate to ask but—”
“Jack, we’ve got this. Go take care of whatever you need to do.”
Jack thanked Travis, then hung up and knocked on the locker room door twice before entering. Seeing Colton again was a shock, even after only a couple of minutes. He looked like a shorter, younger, angrier Grady.
Jack wanted to ask how he could help, but Colton didn’t look open to talking, so while he changed back into his street clothes, Jack focused on texting Garrick and the others, asking them to finish up the clinic in his absence and promising he’d be back to clean up.
Jack noted the frayed cuffs on Colton’s jeans and the holes in his sneakers. They might have been fashion choices, but Jack suspected it was more about a lack of choice. His instinct was to fix it, to do something, but he was at a loss. He didn’t think Colton would want his charity, even if Jack had new clothes or shoes or anything else to offer him.
Together they packed up Colt’s hockey gear in a bag, labeled it, and tucked it into the storage area Jack had set aside for this purpose.
Colton was halfway to the exit before Jack was done locking up.
The ride was silent, with Colton staring out the window and Jack wishing he had some idea of what to say. As soon as he pulled up in front of the shelter, Colton was out of the truck and gone.
* * *
Grady sat on Barnaby and Travis’s couch and stared at the television. The game was on, but Grady had no idea who was playing. He felt adrift, his brain going a thousand miles an hour in no useful direction while his body felt heavy with fatigue.
He’d had no intention of going out tonight, but Jack had shown up and dragged him upstairs to the third floor, where Barnaby and Travis lived in the apartment above his own. He wouldn’t have been willing to go any farther.
Jack stood in the kitchen, not twenty feet away on the other side of a butcher block-topped island, speaking quietly to Travis and Barnaby. Grady had given him permission to tell their friends what had happened, but he didn’t listen to anything beyond Jack’s initial assurance that everyone was okay.
Grady didn’t have Jack’s confidence.
He startled when Jack dropped onto the couch beside him, their elbows bumping and knees knocking. Not for the first time, Grady remembered waking up with Jack in his arms and wondered how that could have been just that morning.
What would Jack do if Grady asked to sleep with him again tonight? Only maybe this time Jack could hold Grady, and Grady could cling to Jack until he stopped picturing Colton’s shocked face over and over.
They said Grady Samuel was dead.
Normally, Jack and Grady barely touched each other, a policy Grady had stuck to as a means of self-preservation and because Jack had seemed to prefer it that way. Jack mostly kept a clear margin between himself and any of his friends. Hell, if this morning was anything to go by, Jack kept it with his mother, too.
But not with Grady last night. And not today.
Grady was trying not to read too much into it and to just be grateful.
“Hungry?” Jack asked as he balanced a plate piled with pizza slices on their knees and pressed their thighs together to ensure it didn’t fall to the floor. Objectively, it wasn’t that intimate, but it sure felt that way compared to the eighteen-inch minimum distance they’d been maintaining for years.
Stuffing a slice of pepperoni into his mouth, Grady watched New York score a run—because of course. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Jack was a Habs fan, he also loved the Yankees. The New York fucking Yankees.
Trash-talking Jack’s deplorable taste in sports teams, and Jack’s subsequent indignation, went a long way toward restoring Grady’s equilibrium. By the time the game ended, the only lingering weirdness—other than Jack’s body pressed to his side—was how obviously everyone was keeping an eye on him.
Grady gave Barnaby a pointed look. “Just ask.”
Barnaby gestured helplessly. “I’m just…I’m a bit worried. Jack told us one of the kids at the Pathways Center is your cousin.”
“Yeah,” Grady sighed. “His name is Colton Michael and I haven’t seen him in fourteen years. He would have been about two when I came out to my family and they told me I was dead to them.” A humorless laugh jerked up from his chest, bitter as bile. “And apparently, that’s what they told the younger kids had actually happened. That I died.”
Which shouldn’t surprise him but for some damn reason hurt. He should have been well past the point where his family could wound him. It pissed him off that he wasn’t.
Barnaby and Travis appeared speechless, which, Grady thought with a wry smile, was a first.
Jack slid his hand onto Grady’s knee and Grady grasped hold because, fuck it all and anyone who had a problem with it, they were the kind of friends who held hands now.
Did it make sense? No.
Did he care? Also no.
Barnaby and Travis cast what they probably thought were subtle glances at Jack and Grady’s clenched hands before meeting each other’s eyes in a silent conversation Grady was glad he couldn’t hear.
Then Barnaby raised his hand, and if Travis had looked any more fond of his giant dork of a boyfriend he’d have melted into a puddle of goo on the floor.
“Can I ask another question?” Barnaby said hesitantly.
“Sure,” Grady said, hoping it was about his family and not the whole hand-holding thing. He didn’t have any answers about that. Generally he had a policy against talking about his family and what they’d done to him, one he’d adopted after over-sharing with his college boyfriend, Trent. He’d loved the man so much he’d come out to his family, hoping they’d love and accept them both. He’d been an idiot, and Trent hadn’t been able to stick around past six months of the fallout. Grady couldn’t even blame him.
“Where did you grow up?” Barnaby asked.
“Not far from Calgary, in a little town where a lot of us were related in one way or another and the whole community revolved around the one fundamentalist Christian church. I’m sure you can guess their objections to what they considered my lifestyle choices.”
Even his one-handed finger quotes at the end were bitter.
Travis looked sympathetic. Barnaby looked angry, which Grady appreciated but knew was useless. Getting worked up about it was like howling at the moon. It might make him feel better for a little while, but it wouldn’t change shit.
“So Colton didn’t know you were here,” Barnaby said.
“Colton didn’t know I was alive. He was as shocked to see me as I was to see him. Practically sent him running from the arena.”
“Actually,” Jack said slowly, like he was turning it over in his mind, “it was more than that.”
“What do you mean?” Grady asked.
Jack grimaced. “He was terrified. I could be wrong, but I think it was because he thought you were his brother coming to get him.”
They all considered that for a few seconds.
“So Colton thinks your family is searching for him,” Travis concluded.
Grady frowned. “Maybe. He told us he left home two years ago.”
“And he definitely doesn’t want to be found,” Jack added.
Grady’s stomach dropped. “Oh fuck.” He jumped to his feet. He was such a fucking idiot.
Jack stood, too. “What? What is it?”
“I have to get to Pathways before he takes off.”
Jack put his hand on Grady’s arm. “It’s okay. He’s still there.”
“How do you know?” Grady asked, heart racing.
“I checked in with Gabriel a little while ago and he volunteered that Colton was helping to make dinner. I don’t think he can say much more than that, but he said I could call tomorrow, too.”
Legs weak with relief, Grady collapsed back onto the couch and Jack immediately sat next to him again. Grady put a hand on Jack’s knee, pressing his palm to the worn denim, and took a deep breath when Jack’s hand curled over his and held on.
The hand-holding was definitely becoming a thing.
Grady would worry about that later.
Barnaby raised his hand again and waited for Grady to nod. “So, some part of your family may be searching for Colton. Do they know where you are?”
“They do if they want to. Last I knew, my older brother, father, and an uncle were all RCMP. I’m sure a bunch of my cousins are on the force now, too. And probably my younger brother, for that matter.” Grady smiled grimly. “I guess you can say it’s something of a family vocation.”
“I’m surprised you decided to follow in their footsteps,” Travis said.
Grady shrugged. “I was almost done with my degree when they cut me off. I finished my last year in school and walked through the first few years afterward on autopilot.” He didn’t tell them how he’d dreamed of being on the force his entire life, or how he’d idolized his older brother to the point of worship. Without that autopilot, he wasn’t sure any of that would have mattered anymore.
It certainly shouldn’t have.
At least he could say he had no regrets. Plenty of people left the RCMP long before the decade mark, but Grady had hit a dozen years and still loved it.
Vocation, indeed.
Jack squeezed Grady’s hand, drawing his attention. “Can I ask a weird question?”
Grady adopted a sympathetic expression. “Yes, Jack, the Habs suck.”
Jack shoved Grady’s shoulder. “Oh my god, you never give up. So salty my team is better than yours.”
Grady grinned. Some day he was going to write a book called Trash Talk Therapy. It totally worked. “Okay, seriously, what’s your question?”
“What’s with your names? The two-name thing?”
Grady rolled his eyes. “It’s a church thing. Ridiculous first names best suited to romance novels, followed by something biblical. As kids we all hated it, especially because the other kids in school thought it was hilarious the way we always used both names when talking about each other, but it becomes habit. Also, the names repeat but the combinations change. So I’m Grady Samuel, and Colton’s brother is Jackson Abraham, but in the next generation there could be a Grady Abraham.”
“Aren’t there any women in your family?” Barnaby asked.
Grady looked at him. “What?”
“You haven’t mentioned a woman once. They aren’t cops? They don’t have the double names?”
Grady ran his free hand through his hair, dismayed to realize Barnaby was right. “Jesus, that place is like a poison I can’t get completely out of my blood,” he muttered.
“I’m sorry,” Barnaby said. “I shouldn’t—”
“No, you’re right, B. I didn’t mention the women, and there are plenty, of course. I have a mother—or I had one. Her name is Sarah. And two sisters, Rachel and Rebecca.”
“Very old testament,” Travis observed.
“You have no idea. The church is steeped in misogyny. The women get single names, and no way could any of them have jobs outside the community or any kind of independent incomes, let alone be cops. Total bullshit stuff.” Grady shook his head, mostly at himself. “And here I was talking like the women don’t exist, which is pretty much the norm there and the best example of that whole cult as you’re going to get.”
And, damn it, there was the bitterness again.
6
How could anyone, let alone his own family, throw away a man as good and kind as Grady? Jack’s family wasn’t anything to write home about but, for all her faults, his mother had been there when he’d gotten out of prison and he’d been there for her since, whether she liked it or not.
But to throw Grady away? To put that sadness in his eyes, even all these years later?
It made the part of Jack that liked to help people, that liked to fix things, a little crazy.
He clung to Grady, aware it was weird and not the way two grown-ass men who are just friends normally supported each other. He wasn’t letting go, though. He rubbed his thumb back and forth across Grady’s fingers and ignored the way Barnaby looked ready to explode into a shower of sunshine and butterflies every time he glanced at their clasped hands.
Jack was going to have to talk to his friend about maybe finding an ounce of chill somewhere and hanging on to it.
At least Garrick wasn’t there to give him The Look.
They chatted for a while about less fraught subjects, and Grady’s shoulders came back down from around his ears. When Travis and Barnaby started cleaning up, Jack turned to Grady.
“Would you like to sleep together again tonight?”
Barnaby jerked upright, wildly juggling beer bottles and the bag of chips, only to have most of it end up on the floor. Travis, meanwhile, froze—mouth open, pizza in hand, half bent over the coffee table—like he’d been spotted by a bear.
Zero chill.
Grady cracked up. “You guys—your faces…oh my god.”
Jack sighed, exasperated, and eyed his idiotic friends. “You know perfectly well what I mean. Barnaby and I slept together just the other week.”
Travis jerked upright. “What?”
Barnaby’s eyes almost bugged out of his head, then he saw his boyfriend’s expression and dissolved into a fit of giggles.
