“Everything alright?” he asked, dragging his hands up Thad’s arms and tucking his fingers under the hem of Thad’s T-shirt sleeves.
The room was quiet. Huh, apparently the movie was over now.
“Yeah.” Thad looked down and gave him a crooked grin as he traced his thumb across Graham’s cheekbone. “Don’t want to rush this.”
“Why not?” Graham asked, lifting his head a little. “You do with other guys—other people.”
An expression flickered across Thad’s face before Graham could read it. “Because they didn’t matter,” he said simply. “And you do.”
“Oh.” Graham let out a shaky breath, the sting of rejection fading.
“I want you,” Thad said roughly. “Trust me. I just want to do this right. Get to know you and all that.”
“We’ve been friends for almost a year,” Graham pointed out. “What more do you need to know?”
“I don’t know.” Thad glanced away, his face half-illuminated by the screen. “I know you think I’m experienced and maybe I am when it comes to sex, but I’ve never done the emotional stuff, Graham. Not likethis. Not when itmatters. I’m out of my depth, okay?”
“Hey.” Graham gripped him tighter. “Yeah, I get that.”
“I’m a prickly asshole who’s spent more than twodecadesputting up walls with people. It’s … it’s gonna take time for those to come down. I don’t know how to be—be somebody’s boyfriend.”
“But you want to be mine?” Graham asked.
Thad’s laugh was low and rumbling as he pressed their foreheads together. “I guess I do.”
“And that means … that means you’re not going to fuck anyone else, right?” Graham whispered. He probably should have clarified that earlier, but … better late than never.
“Yeah.” Thad lifted his head, looking down again.
He looked so serious.
“Yeah,” Thad repeated. “I’ve never been monogamous, but I’m willing to?—”
He broke off abruptly. “I guess that’s not true. I guess that’s what Teddy and I were.”
“Teddy?” Graham asked, because he’d never heard Thad say that name before.
“A guy in prison. I didn’t—I didn’tlovehim, but I cared about him. We were—we kept the craziness at bay for each other during our time inside, I guess.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good.”
“It was, uh, complicated though,” Thad said. “A couple of years after I got there, they passed a federal law. It’s called PREA. Prison Rape Elimination Act. It means there’s zero tolerance for sexual assault, rape, and harassment. It protects guys from predatory COs and inmates.”
“That’s good, right?” Graham asked, not quite sure what that had to do with Teddy.
Thad nodded. “It is. Where it gets complicated is, uh, consensual sex between prisoners. There’s some debate about how much the law applies to cases where both people want it, but some people believe that, essentially, when you are in jail or prison, you become state property. That you have no legal ability to consent toanythingso the law treatsallsexual contact between two prisoners as non-consensual.”
“Oh wow.”
“Not everyone believes that, so it’s not always enforced. For the most part, Teddy and I, we got lucky. We had to be careful, keep it discreet, but most of the COs knew about us and looked the other way.”
Graham was tempted to ask what happened with the ones who didn’t, but he got the feeling that wasn’t something Thad wanted to talk about.
“Anyway, it wasn’t … it wasn’t like we could be open about it. Could actuallybetogether the way we could if we had met on the outside.”
“What happened between you and Teddy after you were out of prison?”
Thad shrugged. “He got released a while before I did and we didn’t stay in contact. Couldn’t risk a parole violation, and all that. After I got out, I did dig around online to see what he was up to, and it looked like he had a nice little life for himself. I never contacted him or anything though.”
