Mason pushed up so he was looking down into my eyes. I could barely make out his features, but there was no missing the adoration radiating from his smile. “You mean that?”
“Of course I do,” I responded without hesitation. “I have for a while, but I didn’t want to freak you out.”
“Sean, you should know by now that you’re stuck with me,” Mason teased, wrapping his fingers around the back of my neck. “There’s nothing you can do or say that would scare me. I love you, too.”
We shared a tender kiss before settling down to sleep.
19
Mason
Sean recruitedEric and Jason to help load up everything that needed to be moved from Chicago to the house so we’d be able to stack the boxes in the garage in time to kick back to watch the Homerun Derby. A lot of the married guys used the break as a time to get away with their families, so those of us with nothing better to do were banding together to cheer for our buddies.
“Jason seems like a good guy,” I observed as he climbed into Eric’s pickup to follow us to the condo.
“He is,” Sean agreed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d paid him to smack me upside the head when I start thinking too much.”
“How so?” I asked, reaching across the console to rest my hand on Sean’s knee. I
wanted to slide closer to him, maybe lean my head on his shoulder to catch a quick nap while he drove, but I still wasn’t totally comfortable with any sort of affection where others might see us. It was unlikely that anyone would even realize who was in the truck, but it was a chance I wasn’t willing to take.
“He figured out something was going on between us from that first night, and it’s like he can tell when I’m worried about anything and he knocks some sense into me.”
“Does that happen often?” I asked, wondering what exactly Sean was worried about when it came to me.
I tried convincing myself that it was the normal insecurities that came along with any new relationship, and that he wasn’t still thinking I was going to suddenly realize my feelings for him were nothing more than some sort of morbid curiosity.
“Not as often as it did at first,” he assured me. “You know I’ve never had a real relationship, and he keeps telling me that what I’m feeling is totally normal. And he’s good about making sure no one overhears us talking specifically about you, because he knows neither of us are out. I know you might not want to hear it, but without both him and Eric, I probably would have gone crazy by now.”
Now that I knew Eric a bit better, it didn’t annoy me as much as I thought it would that Sean turned to him for a friendly ear. I still wished he’d talk to me when uncertainty crept in, but I was glad he had people he didn’t have to worry about judging him for who he was. If anything, I was a bit jealous because the only people I could talk to were my parents, and there were some things I really didn’t want to talk to them about.
The movers were already waiting in front of the building when we pulled up. Seeing that white box truck at the curb made what we were doing suddenly seem much more real. I was about to move in with the man I’d fallen in love with. It had taken Teresa almost a year to convince me to let her move in, and all Sean had to do was make the suggestion once and I’d given my notice to the property management company with relatively little protest.
Even more surprising, I wasn’t freaking out about losing my freedom. I was looking forward to knowing there was the possibility of coming home to him. I couldn’t wait to see what our future held.
While the guys lugged boxes out to the trucks, I supervised the movers as they loaded my barely used furniture. Sean found me standing in my bedroom, staring at the unmade bed. With the dresser and nightstands already on the truck, the room was little more than four walls and beige carpeting.
It made no sense that I felt as though I was leaving something behind, but I’d lived here just long enough to make a few life-changing memories. This was where Sean and I first admitted that we wanted to be more than friends. It was where I started to understand what real love was. Logically, I knew that there was more for us in the future, but I wasn’t expecting it to hit me quite so hard to walk away from our beginning.
“Not having second thoughts, are you?” he asked as he wrapped his arms around my waist. I leaned my head back on his shoulder, loving the way the hard planes of his arms and chest cradled me. Grounded me.
I turned in his arms and simply held him with my face buried in his neck, loving the way he kissed the side of my head. “Not a single one,” I promised him. “I was thinking about that first night and how much different everything could have turned out. Driving to the hotel to pick you up may go down as one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.”
Suddenly, Sean and I fell onto the mattress as Eric and Jason tackled us.
“Hey now, if I remember correctly, I think both of us deserve to be part of this little love fest,” Jason teased, planting a sloppy kiss on Sean’s cheek. “Eric for having the misfortune to get traded, and me for telling Mason to get you out of the hotel for the night.”
“And you owe us extra, because you two were about ten seconds away from a couple of burly moving guys walking in on your make-out time,” Eric added. “Seriously, Tucker, you used to be careful about no one catching you even looking at someone the wrong way. Now, you’re making out with strangers in the house?”
On top of the fact that Sean and I were lying with two other men in my bed, it irritated me hearing Eric talk about their shared history while his hand was so close to my boyfriend’s cock. I twisted my way out from the tangle of arms and legs and stormed out of the room.
I needed to get some air before I said something I couldn’t take back. Something I knew I wouldn’t say if I didn’t know what I did. Eric was Sean’s friend, and I had to trust him when he said there would never be anything more.
I walked down the block, muttering to myself like a crazy person. By the time I got back, Sean was sitting on the front steps waiting for me. He reached out for me when I went to walk past him. “Hey, you want to tell me what that was all about?”
He didn’t let go of my arm when I tried pulling away, so I sat down next to him. “Look, you have your issues to overcome and I have mine. I walked out because I was being petty and immature and didn’t want to make an ass of myself.”
The movers asked me to sign off on the paperwork so they could get on the road. I asked Sean if there was anything left inside that they were supposed to have moved and signed the bottom of the list when he said my bed had been the last of the big stuff. They gave us a suspicious glance, but said nothing before they jumped in the truck.
