“I’ve always wondered…” he started.
“What?” I asked.
My heart sped up, and my skin turned clammy. I’d never kept anything from him that he’d directly asked me about, but there were things I’d kept to myself. He was my best friend, but there were things I couldn’t tell him.
My sexual orientation was not something I ever discussed. I’d known I was on the gay side of bisexual since middle school. Girls, in general, just never did it for me. I’d slept with a few women over the years, but soft curves under me couldn’t hold a candle to rough hands and a chiseled body over me.
My desire to be a Navy SEAL was the thing that kept me from leaving women in the past forever. DADT kept me from being who I wanted to be, who I really was. It kept me from being honest with my friends and teammates. Hence, the women and the facade I’d put on.
Then there was Adam. He presented one hell of a problem. Not that he was aware he was a problem. He thought everything was hunky-fucking-dory, but it was far from it.
I’d been attracted to him from the jump, but I’d kept that to myself too. DADT was part of that as well, but if I’d had any inkling that Adam returned those feelings, I’d have risked it all. But he was decidedly straight—even if there had been some blurry lines when he and I picked up a woman to share for the night.
The other thing I’d never really spoken to him about was my family or childhood. Adam knew I was a foster kid and that I didn’t have any family at all. Being severely abused made people leery of adopting me, so I’d bounced around for years until I’d turned eighteen.
I feared he would ask about something I wasn’t ready or able to discuss. I hoped like hell I was reading this situation wrong, and he was going to ask something about the mission we had in the works.
I didn’t get off that lucky. Adam asked about one of the two things I never spoke about.
“How’d you get that scar?”
I peered at him, wetting my lips. “What scar? I’ve got quite a few, and you know the stories behind most of them.”
We were both riddled with scars. You didn’t go through BUD/S without getting hurt and sometimes even injured. Adam and I’d both gotten lucky and weren’t ever hurt enough to constitute being recycled into the next class and starting BUD/S over.
Undeterred as always, Adam said, “The one on your back, Rocket. That huge-ass one that you’ve always had.”
I huffed softly. “I got it on the farm when I was about ten.”
Adam studied me, his head cocked. “What the fuck happened? It looks gruesome.”
I sucked my lips in between my teeth, biting down on them. Walking into the kitchen, I pulled the Jameson from the cabinet. I walked back to where Adam sat waiting, poured a couple of fingers into both glasses, and offered him one.
Adam wasn’t a whiskey man, but I’d gotten him used to drinking it on occasion. He sipped it, whereas I’d down the shit like it was fucking water and I was a man dying of thirst. I watched him grimace as he sipped his. I swallowed mine, then poured another and sat back down. I placed the glass and the bottle on the table before me. The smell of the whiskey burned my nose as I leaned over my legs with my elbows on my knees.
“Rocket…” he started.
I waved him off. “When I was a kid, I talked about this shit so much I should be used to it, but I’m not. It still turns my stomach and puts me back on the farm, half-frozen with more broken bones than not. I’m fucking lucky to be sitting here, honestly.”
Adam opened his mouth. I was sure he would ask a bunch of questions, but I cut him off and told him the whole sordid tale while I downed shot after shot of Irish whiskey. By the night’s end, I was so drunk I couldn’t remember my own name.
I remembered Adam’s, though, and I remembered how much he turned me on when I let my guard down. As I drankthat night, I had no filter and divulged way more than I should. Way more than I ever intended, and not all of it with words coming out the piehole in my fucking face.
Adam helped me to bed, promising to stay with me. “I’ve got you, Rocket. Let’s get you to bed."
“Fuck, you’re gorgeous, Woody,” I said, cupping his cheek and pulling his lips to mine.
I took his mouth like I’d been dreaming of since we met all those years ago. Years of pent-up sexual frustration and fantasies all came out as I pulled him closer and closer, determined to enjoy every second of our first kiss without a girl sharing it with us. He wrenched his mouth from mine.
Adam’s eyes burned into mine as he licked his lips. “Okay, Rocket, it’s time for you to go to bed and for me to sack out on the couch.”
He pushed me back on the bed and pulled the blankets over me. As Adam turned to go back to the living room, I grabbed his hand, tugging it to get his attention.
“You could always slide in next to me. I don’t bite. Not unless you ask nicely.”
“You’re officially cut off from Irish whiskey, if not all whiskey in general.” Adam laughed dryly and walked away, leaving me with a raging hard-on.
When I woke up the following day, the feel of his lips against mine and the taste of his mouth were imprinted on my mind. Heat suffused my face, making my cheeks catch fire.
