I tracked his gaze toward where my suitemates and my boyfriends were, near the front of the line, waiting to get on a wagon that was currently unloading. “Yeah, I guess I should. But I mean it. If you need me, call me.”
Before I left, I scribbled my cell phone number on a scrap of paper and shoved it into his hand. “I know there's something going on, and I'm not going to force you to tell me. But I hope that maybe you will, eventually. Those guys over there, they give a shit, too. I know it’s cliche as fuck, but we’re a weird little family and we take care of our own.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” Justice responded dismissively. “Go. Have fun with your roommates.”
I took a step back and stopped. They werehisroommates, too. He should be with us. But he was working. It wasn’t our fault he wasn’t part of the suite bonding time. Besides, we couldn’t have invited him, even if we’d wanted to, since he’d never given us a way to reach him if anything went wrong. “Hey, don’t be a stranger. We’ll probably have more nights like this, and it’d be cool to get to know you.”
Justice waved me away. He thought I didn’t notice the way he glanced over his shoulder, shrinking even more as the man I assumed was the boss, stormed over and started berating him. I didn’twantto leave but forcing my way into his life would be rude.
“Everything okay?” Daniel asked as I hopped over the fence to stand with the guys. Someone chastised me for cutting in line and Zach flipped them off. I was officially too drained to point out that the gesture was rude, and he would have gone off if we’d been in that guy’s shoes. I curled into Daniel’s side, not wanting to burden Zach with what had just happened. Daniel held me, rubbing his hand up and down my arm.
“Yeah, I feel bad that he’s not with us, you know?”
“Don’t. He’s the one who hasn’t made an effort to get to know anyone,” Daniel insisted. “If he comes around, we won’t hold it against him, but he has to make the next move. You can’t fix everyone.”
“Yeah, I know,” I grumbled, knowing it didn’t mean I had to like it.
20
Daniel
I tossedmy phone onto the bed, reminding myself it wouldn't do me any good to get pissed off at my mom. It wasn't her fault the property management company had raised the lot rent again and she had to take on a second job to make sure she could keep the shady trailer that had been home since I was a kid and my dad skipped out.
“Everything okay?” Zach closed the lid of his laptop and flopped onto the mattress next to me. “What's going on, babe?”
A shiver raced up my spine at the term of endearment. Since the fall festival, Zach had been much more open with his feelings. Knowing our friends didn't have a problem with the three of us being together, as long as no one got hurt, seemed to break down his walls.
“Mom’s working all week,” I told him. “Looks like TV dinner for Thanksgiving for me. I know I’m a complete asshole for being upset, but this was always the one holiday we spent together. Christmas was never a big deal to us, and I got used to her picking up the holiday hours so other people could be with their families. But Thanksgiving and Black Friday were our time. It just sucks, you know?”
“I don't want you being alone,” Zach insisted, wrapping his arms around my waist, pulling me onto his lap. “Why don't you come home with me?”
“Wouldn't your dad have a problem with that?” I’d resigned myself to Zach keeping school and home life in two boxes, kept as far away from one another as possible. Colin and I had talked about it a bit, and we weren’t going to pressure him into anything before he was ready. Colin’s family was idyllic in comparison to mine, but mine was a fairy tale compared to Zach’s. From the way Zach talked, his dad would probably go to his grave without knowing his son was gay.
“Would it be a problem for you if we didn't tell him that your my boyfriend?” He choked on the suggestion as if it physically pained him to say it.
I swallowed back my gut reaction, that I wasn't sure if I could hide how I felt about him. We all knew what an ass Zach's dad was. And I wasn't sure it was a good idea for me to spend a long weekend with the man who caused one of my boyfriends to padlock himself in the closet for the first two decades of his life.
My mom might have made her fair share of mistakes throughout my life, but the one thing she always made damn sure of was that I knew she loved me. It pissed me off that Zach's dad couldn't see what an awesome man he'd raised.
“You don't have to if you don't want,” Zach backtracked. “I just thought it would be nice to spend more time with you. And if you're home alone, you know I'm just going to sit at my house, getting upset about how much I wish you were there with me. So, really, you’d be doing everyone a favor if you kept me company.”
“I think that sounds like a great idea,” I lied. “And it's not like he has to know we’re sleeping together, right?”
“We’re doing a hell of a lot more than that,” Zach growled, flipping me over and pinning me to the bed. “When you say we’re sleeping together, it feels like this is just the world's longest hookup, and I don't like it.”
“You never told us you wanted it to be anything more serious than that,” I pointed out. None of us had really put a label on what we were doing. I knew I called them my boyfriends, and Colin made no secret that this was serious for him, but Zach had always been tight lipped, changing the subject whenever we got close to a serious conversation.
“Well, I do,” he ground out. “You and Colin are everything to me. I'm probably screwing up by not waiting until you're both here to say it, but I love both of you and, even if it means pretending we’re still just roommates, I want you there with me for Thanksgiving.”
Well shit, when he said it like that, there was no way I could turn him down. Zach—the guy who shit all over anyone who was openly gay just a few months ago—was damn near poetic about how he felt about us.
“I want that, too,” I admitted. I hated the idea of Zach going home to spend the holiday with his dad, but I had it had seemed inevitable. Zach might have had a toxic relationship with his old man, but they were all each other had. Then again, that wasn't the case for Zach anymore. He had us and, every day, we worked hard to make sure he knew we weren't going anywhere.
“I love you, too,” I admitted. “And I don't think Colin would be upset knowing that we said it to each other before telling him. Maybe we can find a fun way to show him how much he means to us.”
“By fun way, you mean a sexy way, right?” Zach's eyes glinted. I knew this was a coping mechanism for him. Even before we'd all gotten together, he'd always tried turning to sex whenever things got too heavy.
“Yeah, baby,” I assured him. “We'll find a good, sexy way to say, ‘we love you, Colin’. But it has to be something really special, because I don't know if we would have gotten our heads out of our asses without him.”
