Seb never liked Cooper. The familiarity, the years Cooper and Oliver had known each other, made it so easy when they first got together. But maybe those years also blinded Oliver to Cooper’s flaws. He should have trusted his brother.
“You’re not together anymore, though, right?”
Oliver nearly laughed at Nick’s question. He’d accused Nick of the same thing, and knowing what he did now about Nick and his family, the idea was ridiculous. But waking up in the middle of the night to tell your new lover about your old partner was even more unheard of, so Nick’s was a reasonable question.
“He broke up with me. Cheated on me, actually.”
The words made his stomach turn again. He hadn’t spoken them out loud, not in the ten months since that bullshit day when everything blew to pieces.
Nick’s lips on his skin made him shiver, and he pulled Nick’s arms tighter around his body.
“A long time ago?” Nick asked.
“Last summer.”
August first. Eleven-thirty in the morning.
“What happened?”
Where did he even start?
“Oliver?”
“He was supposed to be here.” His voice cracked.
What an awful thing to say. He’d just had some of the best sex of his life, and now he was telling the man who gave it to him about the man who was supposed to be in his bed.
“It’s over between us,” he said quickly. “Even if he showed up tomorrow with a hundred apologies, it would still be over.” What Cooper broke between them could not be rebuilt, but it surprised Oliver how much it still hurt.
Nick rolled away, and Oliver nearly crumpled under the rejection, but then a strong hand gripped at his bicep, pulling him back down to bed, and he was wrapped up in Nick’s arms. Oliver nearly cried with relief. Nick had cried, earlier, when he’d talked about his son. He might have thought Oliver hadn’t seen him, but he had.
“We used to work so much. Eighty hours, a hundred hours, it didn’t matter. It was the job, and we were good at it, and we got paid well to do it. And then, one night, we were up late, again, working on this case that we were never going to win. And it was enough. Too much. We’d been so successful, but it was only a matter of time before the job killed one of us.” Nick’s hand was stroking through his hair, and the motion kept him from spiraling too hard out into the sadness and regret that always filled him when he tried to piece together how he hadn’t seen Cooper’s betrayal coming.
“We made a plan. We worked so hard for it. Took two years before we decided we were ready. We took courses, built the business models. He wanted to call it Habeus Juice Us, but I said that was a terrible name.” He laughed, then tilted his head to glance up to Nick, whose black eyes were bright in the dark room.
“I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound very good.”
“Lawyer puns. So is Pulpability, but it’s better, if you ask me, and it’s my business now, so . . .” He choked on the end of the thought. “We had a plan. We had leases signed and resignation letters written. And then . . .”
He trembled, walking into the board room where they’d agreed to meet afterwards. Turning in his resignation was one of the scariest things he’d ever done, but as soon as he walked out of that office, an incredible sense of lightness came over him. He’d set himself free. He and Cooper were free, finally, and they would—
“He changed his mind.” Oliver traced circles in the dark hair on Nick’s chest as he laughed bitterly. “Or, I guess, he got a better offer. Better job. Better boyfriend.”
Cooper’s face was miserable, but it didn’t help the numb sensation spreading through Oliver’s limbs. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I’ve met someone. He...We’re moving to San Francisco. There’s a firm there, a job—”
The sick feeling in his stomach might have been real, or it might have been a memory of that moment.
“But . . .” Oliver’s tongue felt too big in his mouth. “You’re telling me now? You couldn’t have told me yesterday, or this morning while we were driving to work? I just quit my job for you!” His career, the one he’d spent the last ten years building—he’d turned it to rubble.
“It’s okay!” Cooper’s smile was bright, like he believed his own bullshit. “It’s okay. You can come work with us! I’ve already told the partners about you. They want to meet you!”
The knowledge that Cooper planned it all out, right down to the best way to soften the blow, hurt the most.
Nick pulled him close and kissed his forehead. “So he left you?”
“I loved you so much...I did this for you.”
“I’m sorry, Ollie.”
